War Contractor Takes Over Vermont Economy

 

Some favours come at too high a price.

You have a right to know the price of Lockheed bailing out the Montpelier government budget. A few more years of a balanced budget, with recovery always ‘just around the corner’.

The price:

• Participation in the ongoing genocide
• Vermont responsible for sharp increase in Global Warming
• Lockheed’s money comes from borrowed cash that WE have to pay back through higher taxes and lower living standards.  Nothing’s for free!
• Vermont becomes a ‘Company Town’ for the Lockheed corporation
• Even our schools have to open to Lockheed
• An end to Vermont as an eco-village, ‘small is beautiful’
• A polluted Vermont in the service of perpetual war

You don’t like the price? Tell your State House Rep and Senators… they DO come home occasionally!

To understand Vermont politics, understand the back-room deals. The deal of the previous decade was giving away Vermont’s dams to the TransCanada corporation, which in turn provides power for Massachusetts instead of Vermont. This action placed Entergy in a majority bargaining position. Vermont is the only state that gives away its natural resources for free: the Legislature must think we have deep pockets. But this is the back-room deal of the current decade:

Montpelier got a budget bailout in 2010 of $400 million from Washington DC.  This allowed them to keep union officials happy, but the Legislature broke the social contract: essential services were slashed to the neediest.  Apologists such as Rep. Willem Jewett (D-Ripton) were tasked with putting a Vermont spin on it, saying that ‘All Pitched In’ to balance the budget.   No, Mr. Jewett, we were pitched in.

An illusion that ‘business as usual’ works, was maintained. Jewett refused to even pretend to listen to his constituents any more, and actively promoted Lockheed’s F-35 deal for Burlington Airport along with Progressive Party sellout Bob Kiss.  Jewett presided over a closed vote to welcome the F-35 (and the economic stimulus attached to it).  Only a Lockheed insider was allowed to testify to the Legislature: all others were locked out.

The Lockheed insider gave false information, such as ‘the F-35 is quieter than the F-16 that it replaces’, that they would be supporting the Vermont National Guard (who would vote against supporting our Green Mountain Boys), and we are at war.  All of which is a lie.  There is no war declared, regardless of whether you’re for or against, whether you think the F-35 does anything to make us more secure, or it’s just a boondoggle.  But the Legislature voted 122 YEA with only five voting against.  I recommend that you give a piece of your mind to your legislator if she or he voted YES…  and say thanks if you’re lucky to have a senator or rep with the presence of mind to question false information, and vote NO.

As a reward for selling out his constituents, Democrat Jewett was rewarded with Party Leadership. Who can say what his real ambitions are?  Recent phot-ops with war-hawk Leahy (has to retire someday) were suggestive.  Jewett trumpets that ‘We are the Freest Country in the World’.  Free to do what?  Satisfy personal ambitions at the expense of your fellow Vermonters?

VPR and others did their part by excluding Independent candidates from media coverage.  We were saying that Vermont gives away our natural resources, the public trust, the Commons, for FREE to corporations.  This give-away is worth $1.2 billion/year, or $7,700 per Vermont family of four.  The Democrats, in good third-world-tinpot-dictator fashion, saw this as a mandate to continue the Party policy of cutting services, raising taxes, and regimenting our daily lives in a most un-Vermont fashion.

Here’s what you can do about it.

There’s a speak-out in Burlington on Monday evening.  If you’re on Facebook, a calendar event has been created.  Jonathan Leavitt is organising this one, here’s what he has to say:

Burlington neighbors are concerned

…at the prospect of Lockheed engineers working with kids inside Burlington schools; at the lack of transparency and public comment with which the Kiss administration brokered this most unlikely of partnerships; at Lockheed’s long reputation for fraud, discrimination, environmental degradation and war profiteering; and at how this could let Lockheed privatize existing climate change efforts.

More background can be found here.

What you can do:

1. Rally your friends and social circles to go to The People of Burlington v. Lockheed: the Big Showdown! At Monday’s City Council there will be a speak out against the Lockheed/Burlington Partnership. This is going to be huge! Help make history! Monday, February 7th 7:00pm City Hall Burlington 149 Church Street (2nd floor Contois Auditorium) http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=190488297635793
2. To help get people there please plug into door to door organizing of our neighbors. We’ll provide you a route and a fistful of fliers. Contact Jonathan: jonathan.c.leavitt@gmail.com
3. Call and email Mayor Kiss expressing your concerns about Burlington partnering with the world’s largest war profiteer: 802-865-7272 (office) mayor@ci.burlington.vt.us
4. Set up a meeting with your City Councilor to discuss your concerns over this secretive deal with the world’s largest war profiteer. Ask City Councilors to pass a resolution asking for transparency and partnering the City with our award winning local climate change non-profits and companies instead of Lockheed. Contact info for all 14 Councilors can be found here.
5. Make and hang art standing up for Burlington and against Lockheed.  Feel free to print and display the attached art by Burlington artist Liza Cowen
6. Have a Letter to the Editor writing party with friends:  http://www.7dvt.com/feedback http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/section/OPINION02/My-Turn
7. The more media activism the better: letters to the editor, op=eds, radio call in shows, social media, etc.
8. Join the Facebook group:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_192503360762465

If we do all of the above well and organize amongst our friends and communities, we will get successive waves of media coverage,and we will build momentum going into the February 7th City Council Meeting and we will win.

More info at StopTheF35.com.