This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on May 22, 2008. This version includes a correction and information about a few more pieces of legislation that had to be cut for length.
The legislative session - a brief review
One of the biggest surprises of the 2008 legislative session was not in what passed or what was vetoed, but rather in who would not be back at the podium in the fall. Speaker of the House Gaye Symington announced that she would not be seeking reelection. Symington will, instead, focus her electoral efforts on winning the governor's seat.
Unless Governor Jim Douglas does something really stupid in the interim, however, I think it likely he will be reelected in November. This is nothing to do with Symington's credentials - she has garnered a lot of good will from her three years as Speaker and dozen as a representative. Instead, it has more to do with the built-in protection that incumbency gives Vermont governors, from Snelling to Dean to Douglas.
As I've mentioned in this column before, however, the splitting of the government between the parties, though frustrating at times, tends toward better law as the parties have to work together, to compromise, to get things done.
That sort of compromise was evident in much of the legislation that did make its way out of the legislature this year.
First, though, it was a busy year for action on suffrage issues which I, as a student of political science, found very interesting.
The effort to extend two-year terms to four years, of which I've written before, failed in committee, to my great relief.
A bill designed to help revamp the national Electoral College by mutual agreement between the states passed both houses of the legislature, but was vetoed by the governor. I have a certain fondness for the Electoral College, but after some soul-searching, I'm convinced it is time for a change.
The bill would have had Vermont join a coalition of states which vow to allocate their electoral votes according to the direction of the national popular vote. The compact would only take effect when enough states sign on to make a majority of the electoral votes. Adding Vermont's three votes would have been a drop in the bucket, but I think it would have been a nice boost to the effort.
One constitutional amendment that did make it through this session, and will come up for consideration by the next session. The amendment, if passed in the next biennium and by the people, will allow the Freeman's Oath to be self-administered. I support this amendment, which will make same-day registration and by-mail registration much easier.
Finally, the legislature passed, but the governor vetoed, a bill to authorize instant run-off voting for federal elections. I think IRV is a good idea and deserves to be taken up again.
The legislature did as good a job as they could to keep costs down, with compromises between the legislature and the governor allowing progress to be made in health care, transportation, and job retention and creation.
In these difficult economic times, it was heartening to see some belt-tightening which, even if relatively small, gave struggling Vermonters the feeling that they are not alone. The governor was able to get agreement to half million dollars.
One particularly short-sighted plan from the governor, to lease the lottery to a private interest, was widely and wisely lambasted by many and died a quiet death.
A few other highlights include an independent audit of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant; the creation of a new type of charitable organization, a hybrid between a non-profit and a corporation; a bill providing libraries with some backup when they refuse to release lending records to authorities without a court order; a law that closes a loophole in existing law that allowed some mammograms to be charged out at exorbitant prices; and a bill allowing students on maintenance drugs for allergies and asthma to administer those drugs themselves, without the need for a school nurse to become involved.
In the end, we got some good law, stifled some bad, and did it all on a balanced budget - going into election season, the legislators and the governor have much to be proud of.
Note: the original column mentions a constitutional amendment that allows those not yet 18, but who will be at the time of the general election, to vote in the primaries for that election. This legislation was reported on a web page from the Burlington Free Press, but the page is mistaken. The proposed amendment is the "self-administered oath" amendment mentioned above. The following is the stricken text from the original column:
One constitutional amendment that did make it through this session, and will come up for consideration by the next session. The amendment would allow those who will be 18 at the next election, but who are not yet 18, to vote in the primaries for that future election. Any plan that gives young adults a chance to join the process is a positive step, and I encourage the next legislature to pass the amendment and for we, the people, to pass it also.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Shining light on our own flaws
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on May 8, 2008. This version includes expanded commentary on the various books listed.
Shining light on our own flaws
A few months ago, one of my sons asked me to help him with a homework assignment by reading aloud a few chapters from a book. The book was
The Giver by Lois Lowry, and reading the back cover, I was curious and quickly agreed. After reading through two chapters, I was intrigued by the depth of a book given to a fourth grader to read, and by the memories it prompted in me, memories of stories of dystopia.
A dystopian society is one which may seem idyllic on the surface, but which has fatal flaws, at least from our perspective. I devoured science fiction novels in high school, and many have this theme. They raised deep thoughts and hard questions, and after reading some of The Giver, I wanted to ask those same questions of my son.
What would it be like in a world with no war? It could be wonderful - but what if the cost was that everyone was the same, that the state chose your profession, dictated your life down to the meals you ate and the pills you took?
What about family? Would it be worth it, for everyone to have a perfect family, if the cost was that the state not only chose your spouse, but also assigned you your children? Are the differences in people so antithetical to peace that they have to be eliminated?
Heavy questions for a ten-year-old, answered admirably. But I wanted to revisit these themes for myself, so I read all of The Giver, and then bought and reread many of my old favorites along with some new discoveries. All of them provoke questions worthy of asking and answering.
For example, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, all humans are produced in test tubes and raised by the state to do specific jobs. Individual achievement is discouraged. Whether you're born a ruling-class Alpha or a lowly Gamma, you're conditioned from birth to love your role in society and eschew all others. Everyone is happy, because no one has any choices of consequence. And if you ever find yourself unhappy, in need of a "vacation", a dose of government-issued soma will fix that.
In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the government of the United States has been taken over by a fundamentalist religion in the wake of environmental disasters. Mirroring the situation of many women in Muslim societies, women are highly respected and protected - to the point where they have no freedom. Because fertility is in rapid decline, some women are assigned to roles by the government, with the few remaining fertile women parceled out to high governmental officials for use as breeders. The story is told in the first-person, by a woman who used to be free, have a husband and daughter, a life. As she write, she recounts how she learned to wear the red dress of the breeders, and how she was conflicted between the self that wanted everything back the way it was and the self that wanted to just get along with the new order.
In Make Room Make Room! by Harry Harrison, the disasters of unfettered population growth, global warming, and declining agricultural production and water supplies lead to a world of have-nots, with only a few haves who can afford electricity, fresh food, and air conditioning. A luxury for the masses is a soylent burger, made of soybeans and lentil, or meat flakes, made from plankton. The water table around the city has sunk, replaced with undrinkable sea water; upstate farmers hold the city hostage by withholding water during the hottest summer on record.
In Jennifer Government by Max Barry, capitalism has gone awry. The Police has been converted to a private agency, available for hire, and only The Government, with no product to sell, watches out for the public - but with no taxes, The Government has to charge citizens for its services, like tracking down murderers. Murder, by the way, has become a marketing tool. One shoe company, for example, increases demand for its products by hiring someone to kill purchasers in a few large cities.
While usually not thought of as a dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding fits my criteria. It involves a group of young British boys marooned on a tropical island in the confusion of a nuclear war. One group tries desperately to organize the boys into a working society, with some gathering food, others building shelters, and still another group hunting for food. Paradise disintegrates, however, when the hunters decide they should run the show. I've written about Lord of the Flies before - in the end, savagery wins out over civilization, mostly because of fear and confusion.
One last example is a classic: In The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the Time Traveler takes his machine from urban 19th century London 800,000 years into the future, only to find that all of the buildings have been replaced by a verdant landscape inhabited by the gentle and diminutive Eloi. It doesn't take long for the Traveler to discover the horrible Darwinian secret of the Eloi - they are tended like cattle for consumption by the Morlocks, underground dwellers that tend the machinery of the planet.
And there are several other classics of the genre still on my reread list: 1984 by George Orwell, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
If movies are more to your liking, there are also many in this genre: Soylent Green, Silent Running, Logan's Run, and THX-1138 are classics. More recently, the TV series Sliders and the films Escape from New York, Blade Runner, V for Vendetta, and I Am Legend use dystopian themes.
In any case, be it a book, short story, or film, the intent of all of these works is to shine light on something in our own time or society, in a way that not only provokes thought but also entertains. Non-fiction works like An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore or The World Without Us by Alan Weisman can inform us, too, of course, but there is something about fiction that opens the topic up to a wider audience.
We all have lives to live, in the here and now. We have to worry about our jobs, the configuration of our schools, the price of gas and food, who the next president will be. These are all important concerns, and they can be all-consuming.
But what these works all tell us, fiction or non-fiction, is that we have to look beyond ourselves. Our society is not perfect, by any means. But we have a strong foundation, and if we are diligent and use some forethought, we can avoid the pitfalls all of these works show us are possible.
Shining light on our own flaws
A few months ago, one of my sons asked me to help him with a homework assignment by reading aloud a few chapters from a book. The book was
The Giver by Lois Lowry, and reading the back cover, I was curious and quickly agreed. After reading through two chapters, I was intrigued by the depth of a book given to a fourth grader to read, and by the memories it prompted in me, memories of stories of dystopia.
A dystopian society is one which may seem idyllic on the surface, but which has fatal flaws, at least from our perspective. I devoured science fiction novels in high school, and many have this theme. They raised deep thoughts and hard questions, and after reading some of The Giver, I wanted to ask those same questions of my son.
What would it be like in a world with no war? It could be wonderful - but what if the cost was that everyone was the same, that the state chose your profession, dictated your life down to the meals you ate and the pills you took?
What about family? Would it be worth it, for everyone to have a perfect family, if the cost was that the state not only chose your spouse, but also assigned you your children? Are the differences in people so antithetical to peace that they have to be eliminated?
Heavy questions for a ten-year-old, answered admirably. But I wanted to revisit these themes for myself, so I read all of The Giver, and then bought and reread many of my old favorites along with some new discoveries. All of them provoke questions worthy of asking and answering.
For example, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, all humans are produced in test tubes and raised by the state to do specific jobs. Individual achievement is discouraged. Whether you're born a ruling-class Alpha or a lowly Gamma, you're conditioned from birth to love your role in society and eschew all others. Everyone is happy, because no one has any choices of consequence. And if you ever find yourself unhappy, in need of a "vacation", a dose of government-issued soma will fix that.
In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the government of the United States has been taken over by a fundamentalist religion in the wake of environmental disasters. Mirroring the situation of many women in Muslim societies, women are highly respected and protected - to the point where they have no freedom. Because fertility is in rapid decline, some women are assigned to roles by the government, with the few remaining fertile women parceled out to high governmental officials for use as breeders. The story is told in the first-person, by a woman who used to be free, have a husband and daughter, a life. As she write, she recounts how she learned to wear the red dress of the breeders, and how she was conflicted between the self that wanted everything back the way it was and the self that wanted to just get along with the new order.
In Make Room Make Room! by Harry Harrison, the disasters of unfettered population growth, global warming, and declining agricultural production and water supplies lead to a world of have-nots, with only a few haves who can afford electricity, fresh food, and air conditioning. A luxury for the masses is a soylent burger, made of soybeans and lentil, or meat flakes, made from plankton. The water table around the city has sunk, replaced with undrinkable sea water; upstate farmers hold the city hostage by withholding water during the hottest summer on record.
In Jennifer Government by Max Barry, capitalism has gone awry. The Police has been converted to a private agency, available for hire, and only The Government, with no product to sell, watches out for the public - but with no taxes, The Government has to charge citizens for its services, like tracking down murderers. Murder, by the way, has become a marketing tool. One shoe company, for example, increases demand for its products by hiring someone to kill purchasers in a few large cities.
While usually not thought of as a dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding fits my criteria. It involves a group of young British boys marooned on a tropical island in the confusion of a nuclear war. One group tries desperately to organize the boys into a working society, with some gathering food, others building shelters, and still another group hunting for food. Paradise disintegrates, however, when the hunters decide they should run the show. I've written about Lord of the Flies before - in the end, savagery wins out over civilization, mostly because of fear and confusion.
One last example is a classic: In The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the Time Traveler takes his machine from urban 19th century London 800,000 years into the future, only to find that all of the buildings have been replaced by a verdant landscape inhabited by the gentle and diminutive Eloi. It doesn't take long for the Traveler to discover the horrible Darwinian secret of the Eloi - they are tended like cattle for consumption by the Morlocks, underground dwellers that tend the machinery of the planet.
And there are several other classics of the genre still on my reread list: 1984 by George Orwell, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
If movies are more to your liking, there are also many in this genre: Soylent Green, Silent Running, Logan's Run, and THX-1138 are classics. More recently, the TV series Sliders and the films Escape from New York, Blade Runner, V for Vendetta, and I Am Legend use dystopian themes.
In any case, be it a book, short story, or film, the intent of all of these works is to shine light on something in our own time or society, in a way that not only provokes thought but also entertains. Non-fiction works like An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore or The World Without Us by Alan Weisman can inform us, too, of course, but there is something about fiction that opens the topic up to a wider audience.
We all have lives to live, in the here and now. We have to worry about our jobs, the configuration of our schools, the price of gas and food, who the next president will be. These are all important concerns, and they can be all-consuming.
But what these works all tell us, fiction or non-fiction, is that we have to look beyond ourselves. Our society is not perfect, by any means. But we have a strong foundation, and if we are diligent and use some forethought, we can avoid the pitfalls all of these works show us are possible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)