This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on January 22, 2009.
Vermont's New Year's Resolutions
It is time for our state government to make its New Year's resolutions. Our constitution mandates that they meet on the first Wednesday after the first Monday in January, every other year. Of course, they end up meeting every year - the age of the true biennial legislature is long gone.
Though it took some time to catch up to Vermont, the bad economic times the nation is feeling are here. Layoffs are happening as we speak and most of us took marked hits when the stock and housing markets tanked.
With this atmosphere, the governor and the legislature have to be ready to make tough choices, choices that will affect all of us.
The new speaker of the house, Shap Smith of Lamoille, said he was borrowing a page from former Governor Dick Snelling's book when he proposed a new stimulus plan. On opening day, Smith was elected speaker and wasted no time in proposing a $150 million plan to bolster the Vermont economy by investing in infrastructure.
To pay for this, Smith would borrow $30 million and finance the rest in bonds to be funded by higher gas taxes, or something else, a detail to be worked out by legislative committees. The main point, though, to get Vermonters working, and to have that work produce something tangible and long-lasting, seems sound.
Before we start thinking seriously about a stimulus package, however, we need to think about the forecasted budget shortfall. The revenue shortfall is expected to be $27 million this year. Cuts are planned, but even so, projections are for $21 million in unexpected expenses.
Governor Jim Douglas has an interesting idea to help fill the hole - federal funds. Douglas says that Vermont should be getting $58 million in the form of extra Medicare reimbursement that the state could use to cover the $48 million shortfall, and have $10 million left over for next year's predicted shortfall.
The cuts, of course, are going to affect real people. One of the cuts is to the VPharm program, which helps elderly Vermonters with prescription costs. Another is to the Medicaid dental program, limiting covered expenses to $200 instead of $495. Unfortunately, these kinds of cuts are hard to make, since they affect the poorest of us, but it seems like there is little alternative.
Of particular interest to me, and to many across the state, is the governor's plan to ask that school budget votes be delayed past Town Meeting Day, as part of his plan to freeze education spending. Floated as a trial balloon by an aide, the plan seems to me to be a bad idea. School boards need to know their budgets as soon as possible - and if a budget is defeated, more time is needed to craft cuts for a new vote. Plus, if we're looking to save money, an off-schedule vote for just the school budget is an obvious waste of money.
All this talk of budgets, revenue, cuts, and taxes is exhausting. The machinations that are contrived to move funds from here to there, hopefully trimming slim percentages off as it goes, boggle my non-accounting-oriented mind. My biggest hope is that we get quick agreement from experts on the issues and get it done.
Easier for me to process are some of the other legislative proposals that have been advanced. Prompted by the Brooke Bennett case, the Senate has proposed a bill that features the addition of a twenty-five year mandatory minimum sentence for the crime of aggravated sexual assault of a child. I'm not a big fan of mandatory minimums, but I'm willing to set my general objections aside for this particular crime.
One of the Senate's other bills would extend employment protection to volunteer firefighters, similar to that members of the National Guard enjoy. Another would strengthen Vermont's employee protections for testimony given to the legislature or for serving on a jury.
In the House, one bill is specific to Williston, approving charter changes approved by us at the November election. Another changes fuel taxes to fuel fees, and raises the fee by six cents per gallon; the change is help make it easier to implement Speaker Smith's bonding idea. One more permits the state to seize and sell the car of any person convicted of a DUI with death or injury resulting, even on a first offense.
Hopefully, the legislature and the governor will work together and agree on reasoned solutions to our state's problems. I'll be keeping my eye on them.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
A Conspiracy of the Truth
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on January 8, 2009.
A Conspiracy of the Truth
Some people still believe that any day now, a terrorist attack orchestrated by the Bush administration will be Bush's entré into a third term of office. Others, even a decade later, still believe that Bill Clinton ordered the death of Deputy White House Council Vince Foster.
There is little that one can do to counter such conspiracy theories, because even if you provide evidence to the contrary, the theorists suspect the evidence.
The Internet is already rife with Barack Obama conspiracy theories. I have had some personal interest in one in particular, not the least of which because I've been accused of helping cover up the conspiracy.
These theorists believe there is something amiss with Obama's status as a natural-born citizen. Being a natural-born citizen, according to Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, is a requirement for being president.
The requirement is an original part of the Constitution, not added to nor altered since 1787. The concept is so basic that it appears to have been added to the Constitution in committee, and never questioned nor modified by the Philadelphia convention. So basic, in fact, that the authors of the Federalist Papers felt no need to expand on the topic, as they did, copiously, on so many others.
The Obama natural-born theory actually has two main prongs.
The first says that Obama was not born in the U.S. at all, but instead in Kenya or Indonesia. His Hawaiian birth certificate is a fraud perpetrated on us by his parents, who, like seers, predicted his rise to power. Or a fraud perpetrated by Hawaiian officials desperate to see a native son assume the office.
The Obama campaign sought to put this theory to rest back in August, when it released copies of Obama's state-certified birth certificate to the press and to specific organizations, like FactCheck.org. The state-certified copy, of course, is suspect because state officials are suspect.
Though it is impossible to prove a negative, the theory does not pass the smell test. While any parent might have aspirations that their child might grow up to be president some day, to begin a conspiracy from the day of birth is too far-fetched to bear scrutiny; and I have no reason to doubt the honesty and veracity of Hawaiian state officials.
The second prong of attack goes along these lines: even given that Obama was born in Hawaii, his father was a British subject. As such, international law says that Obama's citizenship follows that of his father, and so Obama was born British, not American.
The sum of the true parts, however, do not add up to a true whole.
First, Obama's father was a British subject - Kenya, in 1961, was a British territory. Second, Emerich de Vattel's "Law of Nations," first published in 1758, does state, at section 212, "The country of the father is ... that of the children." Third, Vattel was well-known and distributed by the time of the drafting of the Constitution, and the Framers knew about it.
All truths, but all irrelevant. The Constitution, for one thing, was a repudiation of many of the "laws" put down by Vattel. His work spends a great deal of ink explaining a prince's responsibilities to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their prince. If these parts of Vattel are ignored by our Constitution, why not section 212 as well?
Further, and more importantly, Vattel was never the law of this land, and certainly not in 1961. In 1961, U.S. law stated what it states now - that a citizen at birth is "a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
Finally, the theorists take issue with me and my website, which treat the constitutional phrase "natural born citizen" and the law's phrase "citizen at birth" as synonymous. In doing so, I've been told, I am deliberately lying to the web-using public.
I defend these charges as best I can - in one out of ten cases, my correspondent is willing to listen. Most of the time, however, it is quickly apparent that the conspiracy theory has taken over all sense of reason, and I abruptly end conversation.
Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States of America. With our vote in November, the Electoral College's vote in December, and the counting of the votes in Congress scheduled for today, Obama's status as our president-elect is in no reasonable doubt.
Call it a conspiracy of the truth.
A Conspiracy of the Truth
Some people still believe that any day now, a terrorist attack orchestrated by the Bush administration will be Bush's entré into a third term of office. Others, even a decade later, still believe that Bill Clinton ordered the death of Deputy White House Council Vince Foster.
There is little that one can do to counter such conspiracy theories, because even if you provide evidence to the contrary, the theorists suspect the evidence.
The Internet is already rife with Barack Obama conspiracy theories. I have had some personal interest in one in particular, not the least of which because I've been accused of helping cover up the conspiracy.
These theorists believe there is something amiss with Obama's status as a natural-born citizen. Being a natural-born citizen, according to Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, is a requirement for being president.
The requirement is an original part of the Constitution, not added to nor altered since 1787. The concept is so basic that it appears to have been added to the Constitution in committee, and never questioned nor modified by the Philadelphia convention. So basic, in fact, that the authors of the Federalist Papers felt no need to expand on the topic, as they did, copiously, on so many others.
The Obama natural-born theory actually has two main prongs.
The first says that Obama was not born in the U.S. at all, but instead in Kenya or Indonesia. His Hawaiian birth certificate is a fraud perpetrated on us by his parents, who, like seers, predicted his rise to power. Or a fraud perpetrated by Hawaiian officials desperate to see a native son assume the office.
The Obama campaign sought to put this theory to rest back in August, when it released copies of Obama's state-certified birth certificate to the press and to specific organizations, like FactCheck.org. The state-certified copy, of course, is suspect because state officials are suspect.
Though it is impossible to prove a negative, the theory does not pass the smell test. While any parent might have aspirations that their child might grow up to be president some day, to begin a conspiracy from the day of birth is too far-fetched to bear scrutiny; and I have no reason to doubt the honesty and veracity of Hawaiian state officials.
The second prong of attack goes along these lines: even given that Obama was born in Hawaii, his father was a British subject. As such, international law says that Obama's citizenship follows that of his father, and so Obama was born British, not American.
The sum of the true parts, however, do not add up to a true whole.
First, Obama's father was a British subject - Kenya, in 1961, was a British territory. Second, Emerich de Vattel's "Law of Nations," first published in 1758, does state, at section 212, "The country of the father is ... that of the children." Third, Vattel was well-known and distributed by the time of the drafting of the Constitution, and the Framers knew about it.
All truths, but all irrelevant. The Constitution, for one thing, was a repudiation of many of the "laws" put down by Vattel. His work spends a great deal of ink explaining a prince's responsibilities to his subjects, and those of the subjects to their prince. If these parts of Vattel are ignored by our Constitution, why not section 212 as well?
Further, and more importantly, Vattel was never the law of this land, and certainly not in 1961. In 1961, U.S. law stated what it states now - that a citizen at birth is "a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
Finally, the theorists take issue with me and my website, which treat the constitutional phrase "natural born citizen" and the law's phrase "citizen at birth" as synonymous. In doing so, I've been told, I am deliberately lying to the web-using public.
I defend these charges as best I can - in one out of ten cases, my correspondent is willing to listen. Most of the time, however, it is quickly apparent that the conspiracy theory has taken over all sense of reason, and I abruptly end conversation.
Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States of America. With our vote in November, the Electoral College's vote in December, and the counting of the votes in Congress scheduled for today, Obama's status as our president-elect is in no reasonable doubt.
Call it a conspiracy of the truth.
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