Gotcha.  That's some of what I've been hearing out there, when talking to people about their concerns... if they're well off, folks are as yet unwilling to even discuss the subject of secession. They haven't been hurt yet by the general decline.  They'll even agree with my first three Senate campaign points, but are afraid of No. 4:

1. NO further Vermont support for War, Torture…or deployment of VT National
   Guard. Order the Guard home now.
2. NOT a dime more for Wall Street…Invest VT funds in VT small banks and
   credit unions for lending here at home.
3. Build a Green Vermont via serious investments in alternative energy,
   human-food-agriculture, and all local community efforts towards self reliance
   and town/village life. Clean, green, decent, peaceful & fun. 
4. Start the discussion with all Vermonters re returning our state to the
   status of a free Independent Republic [as we once were], maintaining free trade
   & good relations with all other nations of the world. 

...and there's the rub.  Nos. 1 through 3, everything that we hope to achieve in Vermont, can happily be blocked or perverted by a federal government pushing its 'standards' and increasingly desperate economic measures and civil repression onto Vermonters.

If you've still got lots of money, the last paragraph may make me sound like a nutjob, a Jeremiah. If you're like most Vermonters, trying like hell to make ends meet as Montpelier cuts essential services; if your kids, parent, spouse (in one case both spouses, leaving the children behind) have been grabbed for Afghanistan, No. 4 begins to make sense!

by Dana Dwinell-Yardley

Do you know where you are? Do you know where you're going? Do you know how to get there?

These are good questions, often asked when examining one's life goals or larger purpose. But today I'm asking them in the most literal, physical sense: do you know where you are, right now? If you wanted to go somewhere else — somewhere you hadn't been before, perhaps — how would you figure out which way to go?

Okay, now turn off your electronic devices and answer again.

by Jane Dwinell

I just picked and ate my first radish. Really. No, I'm not that good at all-season gardening in Vermont — though I have managed to have fresh greens eight months of the year with a little work, the right weather, and cold frames. I'm in New Orleans, where I am starting anew on another urban homestead. (This blog is still local, don't worry: Common Sense's other half, my daughter Dana, is staying in Vermont.)

Besides publicly celebrating our kids (expendible, to Leahy) in the National Guard being shipped off to Iraq and Afganistan, he didn't bother to check if it was constitutional, or unconstitutional; legal or illegal. 

Watch as Nixon says, 'When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal'. 

Now watch as Senator Leahy (Democrat) says the same thing about his own branch of government.  This is a black eye for Vermont, folks. The world is watching us!  This man has no right to represent Vermont; he's plainly a collaborator with the worst elements in Washington.  Please vote against him next election, and demand his resignation in the meantime!  

When CNSNews.com again attempted to ask which provision of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to force Americans to purchase health insurance, Leahy compared the mandate to the government’s ability to set speed limits on interstate highways--before turning and walking away.

Frank Walker of California wrote an unpublished essay in 1980, in which he spelled out a seminal reform of taxation with respect to the Commons, a reform that I hope to see actualised in a free and indpendent Vermont. 

This morning I learned that his proposition will come to the ballot in California.  This represents for California a significant departure from the 'American Way' of economics, a 'free market' that is free in name only.  A departure from the empire... could secession be close behind?

Here's an even better review of Michael Moore's Capitalism, than the harsh one that I wrote.

From The Progress Report
by Fred E. Foldvary

What is “capitalism”? It is the free market. It is private enterprise. It is a label for the economies of the world. It is the mixed economy, government plus market. It is the practice and doctrine of governmental interventionism. It is the exploitation of labor by the big owners of capital. It is the source of our economic problems. All of these have been used to describe “capitalism.”

And that’s the problem; the term “capitalism” has no specific meaning, and has had contradictory meanings. Consider the following propositions:

• 1. The U.S. economic system is capitalism.
• 2. The U.S. economy has social problems such as poverty and unemployment.
• 3. Therefore, capitalism causes such social problems.

If “capitalism” in the first proposition means merely a label for the economic system, then the third proposition is meaningless, since a label does not tell us the cause of social problems. These propositions are the heart of the film Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore.

by Fred Foldvary, The Progress Report

The human tendency to procrastinate unpleasant things becomes toxic when corporate and government chiefs do it. For example, corporations and governments promised pension plans to their workers but did not fund them adequately. Big pension costs have now ruined the US automobile companies and have imposed higher taxes and services cutbacks in cities.

The US government has set itself up as the guarantor of all things bad, the lender of last resort, and the great insurer against all calamities. In the downward side of the business cycle, the government is bailing out homeowners, lenders, and speculators. Taxpayer are gifted with government “rebate” checks. All this is done with borrowed money, while billions are also borrowed to wage war.

The US government can spend lavishly with borrowed funds because the USA’s debt has been considered maximally safe.

Envion Facility

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/16/new-envion-facility-turns-plastic-waste-into-10barrel-fuel/#

Have a look; in San Francisco they are beginning to turn waste plastic into fuel.

According to Envion, 'The process removes hydrocarbons without the use of a catalyst, resulting in a net gain of captured energy–82% of all material that goes in is transformed into fuel.'  Unlike subsidised and highly lobbied corn/soy/canola farming, in which there's a net loss of energy.

Whilst spending a requisite ten minutes this morning perusing world news, I chanced upon an article in Ha'aretz, entitled 'Palestinian-American behind 'socialist-joker' Obama poster'. The perp is quoted to have said, '"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," he told the Los Angeles Times. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."'

Thanks to Pamela Polston at Seven Days for this thoughtful tribute to a dear friend and inspirational colleague, 100-year-old Marion Leonard of Rochester, Vermont, who died today.

We will miss her good will and boundless energy, as well as her indefatigable spirit.

Marion Leonard.

Travel safely, Marion.