The Prog Blog

Here’s hoping Bernie’s push will work. On Wednesday I noticed he put pressure on the Senate Ds to block the Republican filibuster so the health care bill could come up for a vote.

Also, he has been pushing to let a few states try a single-payer plan. This is important because if state-based single-payer has any hope of working, states will need to use all the federal money that goes into state health care budgets today. When people talk about medicare “waivers” this is what they mean. Essentially, it’s a waiver to use the money as the state sees fit (but still going to health care).

Isn’t it kind of sad that given the 2008 election and all the promises from Obama on down we’re left hoping Bernie can convince his colleagues to reject the Republican attempt to block the whole thing? And then, even if he succeeds, we’re still miles away from real health care reform. Pathetic really.

When I campaigned for office last year I was almost embarrassed to mention health care. Not that I was shy about supporting a universal, single-payer system - far from it. Rather, I just knew, no matter how many Democrats were elected at any level of government we simply weren’t going to see significant strides in health care. It made me reluctant to bring the topic up.

And yet, no issue is more central to our economic and physical health. No issue is as black and white in terms of justice AND in terms of the solution. If you want to talk about energy solutions, or hunger, or wages there are shades of gray in the discussion.

With health care, it really is black and white. Do you want to cover everyone? Do you want to have the most cost-effective system possible? Then a public system isn’t something we need - it’s the ONLY thing we need.

If Democrats in Washington don’t have the courage to figure this out, then we will be forced to up our pressure on state lawmakers and hope they can declare independence from the health care industry. If they do that we’ll start delivering cost-effective health care as a right of citizenship. Anything else is a shirking of responsibility and a failure of the public process.

Happy independence day!

Burlington is on the eve of kicking off its Quadricentennial celebration, which begins tomorrow July 2 and runs through July 14. There are several performances headlining the celebration, such as Tony Bennett, Buddy Guy, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, The Roots, Steve Earle and Aimee Mann, among others.  However the celebration will also include a focus on First Nation and French-Quebec events, including a Vermont Indigenous Celebration, a dance performance choreographed by Heddy Maalem featuring Vermont, Native American and Quebec performers, a Franco-American Day, Abenaki Traditional garden at the Intervale, an Iroquois Lacrosse weekend, and Aurelia’s Oratorio, fresh from its last performance in St. Petersburg, Russia.

It’s been a priority from the beginning of Burlington’s preparations for the Quadricentennial that multicultural and international elements should be emphasized.  Every day there are free events and ticket prices have been kept as affordable as possible. Check out the schedule at www.celebratechamplain.org – I hope to see you there!

Every year the most important bill that we pass is the budget. As most people know, this year was one of the toughest budgets to put together. The Governor presented a political document to start the session knowing that his proposal was totally incomplete. He knew that the Appropriations Committee would do the hard work to put together a document that would actually allow government to function. His proposal was not balanced. But it appeared to be due to many ridiculous scenarios.

First, it relied on a shift in taxes from the state level to the local level (moving teacher retirement expenses to the education fund and reducing the General fund transfer to the Ed fund).  This would have resulted in a tax shift of nearly $63 million to local property taxes, about $260 per family (average).

Second, he proposed raising fees all across government (particularly transportation fees, registration etc.), but refused to call them taxes.  Even though Vermonters pay more of them than some other of the taxes that the state raises (out-of-staters pay 80% of rooms taxes, and 20% of our gas taxes).

Third, he proposed cutting our state workforce by $17 million without any evaluation of what that would mean for state services, or government efficiency. It was not a “what works and what does not” approach, it was simply slash and burn. After 6 years, as the primary manager of our state services, one would have thought that it could have been done far more methodically and with solid input from many over the course of a number of years…but that is not his or his staffs’ philosophy.

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Activists fighting against Verizon’s sale of landlines to Fairpoint argued, among other things that tiny Fairpoint was taking on too much debt, and getting a declining business.

In a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fairpoint has put the possibility of bankruptcy on the table.

Journalist and gay rights activist Dan Savage was interviewed on NPR this morning, talking about the gay community’s disappointment with President Obama:

“President Obama should be very angry with candidate Obama.”

The reason?

“Our expectations have not been met,” Savage says. “Who raised our expectations? Candidate Obama.”

At the end of the radio story (not included in the web write-up), NPR asked Savage “if the gay community is, as you said, feels pretty betrayed by President Obama, where do you turn at this point?”

Savage’s response: “Nowhere, I mean that’s the problem… we can’t crawl into bed with Republicans, as alarming a mental image as that is.”

All the more reason to work in Vermont to build a Progressive alternative.

When I was first elected to the House in 2004, Governor Douglas invited small groups of freshmen in for a chat over coffee. Douglas was just finishing his first term in office. He spoke about his own mentor, Governor Snelling, who had warned him that in Vermont we search in vain for “waste, fraud, and abuse” in state government. Although everyone comes to office promising to “trim the fat,” close examination reveals a fairly lean operation. That, Gov. Douglas told us, he had just confirmed for himself.

I am therefore puzzled by the recent pronouncements about the need to slash state government. First we had the 400 position cuts that he proposed in 2008. Although department heads told us clearly that eliminating so many positions would impair their ability to meet the basic mission of each department, the legislature agreed to let the administration move ahead with the cuts. Those cuts were slated to be made by natural attrition, not layoffs.

Then we landed in the current fiscal year, and suddenly there was a need to slash the jobs of working state employees. Where did the fat come from? We have had the same governor for the past six plus years. Presumably he and his lieutenants have been watching the store. How is it that the operation that passed his inspection in 2004 has become unacceptably obese?

Money is an insidious presence in American politics. Critics say no matter where you squeeze money out it will find another place to pop up. Which means as long as the prevailing Supreme Court ruling stands that money equals free speech we’re in trouble. End soft money donations to candidates and you spawn independent expenditures. Bummer.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up. Public financing remains the best option available. Collect signatures from constituents and qualify for the ballot. Collect small donations and qualify for a
public grant to help you run for office. People complain that politicans are just living high off public dollars. But isn’t a campaign part of the larger public discourse? I think it behouves us to make a small investment in the dialogue that shapes our future.

Regular readers will remember I’ve been in Maine lately, for work. They have one of the most successful clean money laws in the country. A majority of legislators there were elected using a public grant to finance their efforts (even several Rs). Yes, they see lots of “independent” expenditures. But they also have several young members of the legislature. They have two members in wheelchairs and many who don’t fit the retired or comfortably-off mold we see in Montpelier. Is it a coincidence that the legislative body better reflects the population? I doubt it.

It seems plausible to me that there are people in the Green Mountains eager to serve but scared off by the need to raise thousands of dollars. I’ve been through it, and it’s distasteful. I promise.

Public financing isn’t perfect, but it’s time to give it a try. Otherwise, we can hope politicians will take it upon themselves to do the right thing. But the realities of a modern campaign are just too intense. Take a look at the pathetic routine Obama’s going through to preserve his campaign promise to shun money from lobbyists.

We can do better. Maine and Arizona have good data the legislature should look to next January when it comes time to deliver the much-promised campaign finance reform.

By now you have probably heard some of the controversy about how water is being disinfected by the Champlain Water District (CWD). To recap, in April, 2006 they changed from using chlorine to disinfect to the compound chloramine. (Chloramine is a mixture of chlorine and ammonia. Anyone remember science class and the warnings about bad fumes from the combination of these two?) During the last legislative session there was a bill to put a moratorium on the use of chloramine until further studies have been done. To date there have been over 300 reports of people with negative reactions to this water treatment. The way the bill finally ended the session is to require engineering studies to be done on all 12 VT municipal water systems (including the CWD) to see if alternatives to chloramine can feasibly be used.

To date much of the focus has been on the human health impact but chloramine is a devastating chemical for many species with mucus membranes and especially fish. In San Mateo, CA 93,000 gallons of water disinfected with chloramine spilled into the Polhemus Creek killing Steelhead trout. The utility was fined $199,350 for the spill and for its lack of disclosure. Faulty pipes, leaks, and malfunctions are not uncommon for water utilities. All this leads me to wonder what the worms in my garden think when I sprinkle them with this water and how the impact of this water use in the Champlain Valley will impact the fish in Lake Champlain?

It is important that we keep the pressure on around this issue. Whether you are concerned from a human, chemical, or environmental perspective it would be great if you send your comments, stories, and complaints to the EPA’s senior drinking water staffer, Stig Regli, at regli.stig@epa.gov.  Tell him your story, and ask him to stop the use of chloramine in drinking water.

If you live in the CWD and are having any symptoms (or know people that are) please contact People Concerned About Chloramines at 802/651-8753. They are continually building a database of people experiencing negative impacts from the water and can provide you the names of your representatives or others if you want to share your story further.

[From a June 13, 2009 BFP "My Turn"]

I’m writing in response to Douglas Greg’s My Turn criticizing activists who support single-payer universal health care (”Health care your responsibility,” May 11).

First, I would like to introduce myself to Mr. Greg: As a primary care physician working in Barre, I can assure you that I do not participate in protest movements as a favored form of amusement.

A few years ago, after crossing the midway point in my career, I decided that I had seen too many bankruptcies, too many mortgage foreclosures, too many financial crises to remain silent on the health care issue. I have seen too many patients deluged with bills after beginning cancer treatment, too many patients forgo treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes and other problems of major public health significance because they simply couldn’t afford it.

I work very long hours and struggle to find time to devote to this issue. But I will not be silenced.
Mr. Greg points out that taxpayers are already paying significant amounts of their tax money on health care. This also applies to those who are uninsured. Uninsured Americans pay taxes for federal, state and municipal employees, veterans, the military, prisoners, the Indian Health Service, the homeless, the community health centers, the renal failure program, Medicare, Medicaid. But after paying for all those groups to have health coverage, they themselves have nothing. This is one of the greatest injustices in our health care system. In a single-payer system, everyone pays in — as we do for the above groups, but then every single citizen has health insurance.

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The MN Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Minneapolis can move forward with plans to use IRV in fall elections.

“Reducing the costs and inconvenience to voters, candidates, and taxpayers by holding only one election, increasing voter turnout, encouraging less divisive campaigns, and fostering greater minority representation in multiple-seat elections are all legitimate interests for the City to foster,” the Supreme Court said. “Whether and to what degree implementation of IRV will achieve those benefits remains to be seen. But it is plausible that IRV may advance one or more of these interests.”

The relevance for Vermonters is that the ruling shoots holes in the anti-IRV arguments made by Vermont’s Attorney General William Sorrell.

“IRV methodology is directly analogous to the pattern of voting in a primary/general election system. In a nonpartisan primary election, each voter’s vote counts in determining which two candidates survive to reach the general election. In essence, those primary votes are the voters‟ first-choice ranking of the candidates. As a result of the primary, all but the top two candidates are eliminated. Then, in the general election, voters who voted for candidates eliminated in the primary are allowed to cast another ballot, which necessarily will be for a different candidate—presumably, their second choice. This is no different than the counting of the second-choice votes of voters for eliminated candidates in instant runoff voting. At the same time, in the general election, voters who voted in the primary for either of the two surviving candidates are allowed to vote again, and they are most likely to vote again for their choice in the primary…”

As I understand it, Sorrell’s argument has been that IRV creates a subsequent election and is therefore prohibited by the VT Constitution. The MN Court found that IRV is consistent with the primary/general elections we are all used to. Early IRV rounds without a majority winner are essentially part of the primary election, and the final round, whereby a candidate gets the majority of the votes cast, constitutes the general election. Written this way, IRV could only be considered unconstitutional if the courts would also agree that the current primary system we have is unconstitutional. I doubt that Sorrell would attempt to argue that.

While these findings may change the dialogue around the constitutionality of IRV, will it change the policy debate?  In Vermont, legislators have an interest in preventing IRV at the statewide level–should a Governor’ race fail to return a majority winner, those legislators, and not the public, get to elect the Governor.  IRV bills have been introduced in the house for over a decade now, under both Dem and GOP leadership, and with Dem and GOP Governors. Thwarting this critical democratic reform is clearly a non-partisan issue, but hopefully the news from MN will help build momentum in the Vermont Statehouse for finally passing IRV.