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Vermont CommonsV O I C E S O F I N D E P E N D E N C E

Number 18 |Spring 2007www.vtcommons.org

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Vermont Commons is a print and online forum for exploring theidea of Vermont independence—political, economic, social, andspiritual. We are unaffiliated with any other organization or media,and interested in all points of view. We welcome your letters,thoughts, and participation.

I N T H I S I S S U E

1 The Great Hydropower Heist, by Richard Foley1 A Word to our Readers, by Ian Baldwin2 Reclaiming Our Commons, Editorial3 Letters to the Editor4 ‘Going Slow’: Rethinking Education in the

Green Mountains, by Susan Ohanian5 Educational Agriculture, by Eliot Coleman6 Vermont Vox Populi: A Conversation With

‘No-Grain’ Farmer Abe Collins10 Beyond the Bottom Line; Vermont Businesses

and Social Responsibility, by Don Mayer12 Free Vermont Media, by Tim Matson14 Notes from the Middlebury Institute,

by Kirkpatrick Sale22 Bush’s Reign of Terror, by Thomas Naylor24 The Decentralist Movement: A Third Way, by

Kirkpatrick Sale

S P R I N G O N T H E W E B

• Bob Costanza on Peter Barnes’ Capitalism 3.0• Anais Mitchell’s “The Brightness”: CD Review• Jim Hogue on “Corporate HQ, of Thee I Sing”• Ron Krupp on “How Agriculture Lost Its Soul”• Rob Williams on Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy• Your letters to Vermont Commons• Listen to 30-second www.vtimpeach.com mp3s

Join the Conversation: www.vtcommons.orgto subscribe to our FREE VERMONT monthly electronic

newsletter, contact [email protected]

H BEST NEW PUBLICATION H

FINAL NOMINEE

UTNE READER2005 Independent Press Award Reclaiming Our Commons

The Price of Energy Dependence

From its founding as a republic in 1771 until the early1900s, Vermont proved far more energy independent

than it is now. The old-timers traveled and transportedgoods with an efficient blend of the original horse powerand coal-fired steam trains. They heated largely with woodand built hundreds of small hydropower facilities – initially,mechanized mills that utilized raw waterwheel power andwere later retrofitted with electric generators and comple-mentary coal-fired steam-powered systems. Hence, theclaim: “Hydro – the power that built Vermont.”

Now Vermonters spend roughly $2 billion every year onout-of-state fuels for transportation, heating, industrialapplications, and electricity. More than $1 billion pays forimported oil and gas alone. Brattleboro exports $30 mil-lion every year in return for just residential and commer-cial heating fuel.

Where do Americans get their oil? More than 50 percentis imported. With less than 5 percent of the world’s popu-lation, we Americans consume 25 percent of the world’snatural resources, including oil and natural gas. But now,countries like China and India demand a greater share tofeed their exploding economies. The vast majority of theworld’s remaining oil comes from the most unstable coun-

tries in the world. A barrel of crude oil today costs six timesas much as it did in the late 1990s — it jumped from $10 to$60 per barrel. Vermonters get the message at the gaspump and when paying their heating bills.

continued on page 2

The Great Hydropower Heist How Corporations Colonized Our Watershed Commons

The Historical Context for Understanding Vermont’s Electric Power IndustryPart One of a Two-Part Story

By Dr. Richard Foley with assistance from Hervey Scudder,

President of NorthEast Center for Social Issues Studies

The Vernon hydroelectric station spans the Connecticut River betweenVernon, Vermont, and Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Yet its potential 44 MWof power benefits eastern Massachusetts. (PHOTO COURTESY OF BRATTLEBORO HIS-

TORICAL SOCIETY)

A Word to Our New ReadersBy Ian Baldwin, Publisher

We launched Vermont Commons: Voices of Indepen-dence two years ago as a monthly journal of opin-

ion considerably briefer than it is now. The journal youhold in your hands reaches thousands of readers fourtimes a year. Many of you are new to us.

Who are we? For the most part we are volunteers com-mitted to starting a discussion of what it means to be inde-

pendent and self-sustaining here in Vermont. By “inde-pendent” we do not mean isolated or disconnected fromthe world, but self-reliant and sustainable. So that, lookingto both the present and the future, we are able to call our-selves, once again, a free people. Not everyone who con-tributes to these pages is a committed secessionist, or even

continued on page 16

2 V E R M O N T C O M M O N S SPRING 2007

In his new book Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming OurCommons, author and entrepreneur Peter Barnes defines

the “Commons” as any society’s “set of assets that havetwo characteristics: they’re all gifts, and they’re all shared.”

As with any other society, Barnes suggests, our 21st cen-tury “commons” here in Vermont consists of three mainforks: our natural world (our air and our water, our fieldsand our forests); our communal resources (our streets,town greens and libraries, to name but three); and ourcollective culture ( Joseph Bentley’s science, John Dewey’sphilosophy, Robert Frost’s poetry, and Grace Potter’smusic all come to mind).

Vermont Commons newspaper turns two years old withthis Spring 2007 issue, and we took our name from our abid-ing interest in the “Commons” here in the Green MountainState. When we began publishing two Aprils ago, wedecided to focus our efforts on answering a two-part ques-tion: how can Vermonters work together to make our littlestate more sustainable and more sovereign in a 21st-centuryworld shaping up to look very little like the 20th?

As the Green Mountains shed their snow and all of usemerge from winter hibernation, we continue with oursustainability/sovereignty focus in this new issue. Long-time energy activist Rick Foley’s in-depth study of theConnecticut River hydro-power situation (our cover storythis issue) provides a historical look at Vermont’s ongoingenergy debates, highlighting the consequences of our col-lective decisions about Vermont’s energy “commons” andpointing a way forward. Educational researcher andauthor Susan Ohanian asks some hard questions aboutour state’s relationship with the federal No Child Left

Behind (NCLB) program. Vermont Businesses for SocialResponsibility (VBSR) president and Small Dog Electron-ics owner Don Mayer provides a window into how VBSRmember businesses are moving beyond an exclusive focuson the bottom line to help preserve and protect ourshared natural and social capital. In the first installment ofa three-part essay, Don Livingston traces New Englan-ders’ abiding interest in secession, providing some usefulhistorical context for our political conversations. And AbeCollins details how many Vermont farmers are embrac-ing innovative commons-centered ideas to help solvepressing climate change and global peak oil dilemmas.

Vermont Commons newspaper is also proud to be co-sponsoring the first of what we hope will be an annual“Commons Conference” at the Big Picture Theater in cen-tral Vermont’s Mad River Valley. The goal is to bringtogether central Vermont’s citizens, businesses, and non-profits to spend a day “celebrating our commons” and“imagining our future,” with a three-part conversationalfocus on land, food, and energy sustainability for this newcentury. The event, scheduled for Saturday, May 12, will befree and open to the public, with panel discussions, food,music and fun for all. We’ll even have child care for theyoung ones. For more information, contact the Big Picturetheater at 802.496.8994 or www.bigpicturetheater.info.

Come join us and help celebrate Vermont’s commonsthis spring!

Rob WilliamsEditor

Contributors

Ian Baldwin is cofounder of Chelsea Green Publishing and is publisher of Vermont Commons.

Eliot Coleman runs a commercial vegetable farm in Maine with his wife, Barbara. He is the author of The NewOrganic Grower (Chelsea Green).

Richard Foley is a Keene State College professor and a longtime resident of Brattleboro, Vermont, who has stud-ied national energy policy for more than 20 years.

John Ford lives in Stowe and has interests in food, farming and alternative energy.

Sarah Grillo is a cartoonist and Burlington College student.

Jim Hogue is an actor, small farmer, writer, and radio host living in Calais.

Donald Livingston is professor of philosophy at Emory University, whose latest book is Philosophical Melancholyand Delirium, Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy (University of Chicago Press). He is currently writing a book onthe moral, legal, and philosophical meaning of secession.

Tim Matson is a writer and pond designer living in Strafford. Contact him at earthponds.com.

Don Mayer is the CEO of Small Dog Electronics and serves as Chair of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Thomas Naylor, economist, businessman, and author, is co-founder of the Second Vermont Republic.

Susan Ohanian, is a teacher, and a fellow at the Vermont Society for the Study of Education (VSSE) and at theEducational Policy Research Unit, Arizona State University (EPRU). She maintains a website of resistance tofederal invasion of public schools at www.susanohanian.org.

Kirkpatrick Sale, author of a dozen books, is the director of the Middlebury Institute (MiddleburyInstitute.net).His latest is After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination, published by Duke University Press.

Rob Williams is a teacher, historian, writer, and musician, and is associate publisher and (web)editor of VermontCommons.

Reclaiming Our CommonsEditorial

Baldwin, continued from page 1a Vermonter, though many of us are. But everyone whowrites for this journal is concerned about the meaning ofindependence, sustainability, and self-reliance in our times.

In the course of publishing this journal for two years,we have realized we have a few overriding convictionsthat every piece of writing we publish should help ourreaders— you—examine, mull over, and discuss. Callthese our meta-themes. They are:

1. An empire is not a democracy. An empire can pretendto be a democracy, fooling many, but in the enddemocracy and empire are like oil and water: theydon’t mix.

2. Vermonters have the individual, social, and technicalresources to be a self-reliant, independent, diverse and tol-erant people, able to govern themselves. Vermonterswere once described as such a mere half century orso ago. Using contemporary means, they can be soagain, in new ways, a unique polity unto them-selves, fully and peaceably related to the rest of thewide world.

3. Without the inherent Right of Secession we are not free.We are but prisoners in an enforced and thus illegiti-mate “union.” Secession is not a racist plot,although a small number of critics perceive racistintentions in some secessionist movements and haveimputed them to us. Racism has no place in ourfuture. The Right of Secession was understood toinhere in every state by all the founding members ofthe United States, most notably by the authors ofthe Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Con-stitution. It was repressed as a result of Lincoln’sbrutal Civil War. As a basic right the Right to Secedeawaits resuscitation.

4. Global warming and peak oil are planetary forces set irre-versibly loose upon the world. They will challenge cen-turies-old habits of centralization and power-mon-gering, and in due course alter present unjust pat-terns of globalization in favor of interconnected butautonomous local economies.

Enjoy our Spring issue!

There’s “macro independence” – secession from the U.S. – and “microindependence.” These solar collectors provide their owner a degree ofpersonal energy-independence. PHOTO CREDIT: ROB WILLIAMS

SPRING 2007 V E R M O N T C O M M O N S 3

SVR, Secession, and the South

To the Editor:Why might the Second Vermont Republic wish to dia-logue with southern racists, fundamentalists, free marketideologues and militarists?

Let’s see…

1. Racism:The Vermont Constitution banned slavery from thebeginning. During the period of slavery in the south, wein Vermont had to use our root cellars on the Under-ground Railroad to hide escaping slaves making their wayto Canada and other destinations in the North. We couldhave used the space for potatoes.

During the Civil War, Vermonters were fooled intothinking that the war was to free the slaves, even thoughGOP co-founder Abraham Lincoln was widely quoted assaying that he would keep the Union together at all costs,whether that involved freeing the slaves or not. IdealisticVermonters signed up in large numbers, and more Ver-monters per capita were killed than in any other state.Thanks a lot, Lincoln. You should have let them secedethe first time.

2. Fundamentalism:The South has always been a Christian place, often knownas the Bible Belt. Many southerners want to impose fun-damentalist Christian values on government and in theschools. I vaguely recall secession from a country that hada government church called “The Church of England.”It was such a monumentally bad idea that the founders ofthe sovereign United States established separation ofchurch and state as a basic constitutional law. I can seewhy they would want a theocracy now after seeing howgreat it works in Iran and Afghanistan. Go for it!

3. Free market dogma:The “free market” doesn’t function without government-provided frameworks such as political stability, enforce-ment of property rights and contracts, and an unbiasedjudiciary. (Read George Will, Hernando DeSoto, or see“shock therapy” in Russia for reference.)

The “free market” also doesn’t provide public goodslike clean air, clean water, public parks, water treatmentsystems, universal education, etc. Try doing withoutmunicipal sewage treatment. It might be exciting.

In the good old laissez-faire days of capitalism there

were no children’s rights, workers rights, or environmen-tal regulations. Children over the age of 10 went to workin “satanic mills,” the workweek was 12 hours, six orseven days a week, and companies could dump sewageand toxic waste anywhere they wanted to. These guys inthe South want to bring back the good old days. Whocould be against that!

Vermont realized long ago to balance our ideologueson the left and right. Some people just learn the hard way,I guess.

4. Federal funding:Thirty-one states get more from the federal governmentthan they pay in taxes, based on an average of 1994 and2004 figures. Nineteen states pay more. Nine of the 11former Confederate states get more, two pay more. Trypaying your own way, you leeches!

5. War:The Confederate state of Texas provided us with Presi-dents Johnson and George W. Bush. Johnson gave us theVietnam escalation, and Bush gave us Iraq. Vermont hasmore dead National Guard per capita in Iraq than anyother state. We’re tired of your megalomaniacs sendingour boys to die, Texas. Start a war with Mexico or some-thing and leave us out of it.

I hope the above list has provided just a few of the rea-sons why the Second Vermont Republic is chatting withthe League of the South. The sooner we can help themsecede, the sooner we will get to stop dealing with theirproblems.

Gary FlomenhoftBurlington

EDITOR'S NOTE: Through the Middlebury Institute, the Second Ver-mont Republic maintains a conversation with more than 30 separatesecession groups around the world. For a complete list, see pages12-13.

Letter to the Editor

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VERMONT COMMONS

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“Education in Vermont, if it is to move forward, musthave a goal toward which to move, a basic philosophywhich combines the best which is known about learn-ing, children, development, and human relations withthe unique and general needs and desires of Vermontcommunities.”

Vermont Department of Education, 1968

Reading, Writing and Federalizing “Science”

When federal functionaries sermonize on the “science”of a matter, whether it’s stem cell research, global

warming, or how to teach reading, we know we’re in trou-ble. Although the phrase “scientifically based research”appeared more than 100 times in the No Child Left Behindlaw (NCLB) enacted in 2001 and now up for reauthoriza-tion, recent revelations from the U. S. Education Depart-ment’s own Inspector General confirm what plenty of edu-cators have known all along: Federal reading policy hasmore to do with friends in high places (corporate textbookand standard test publishers) than with actual science (thecentury-long legacy of a teaching/learning research).

Take the emphasis on DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators ofBasic Early Literacy Skills), which is forced on schoolsreceiving money from the part of NCLB known as Read-ing First. According to Vermont DOE estimates, ReadingFirst will cost Vermonters $700 to $800 per child, moneythat goes for mandated curriculum and the requiredpaperwork and bean counting required by Washington.i

For this investment, DIBELS mania transfers child-friendly Vermont kindergartens into high-pressure skillzones, asking: How many nonsense words like these cana five-year-old can read in one minute?

y i z w a n z o c f u l m i k z u m n u f k u n r u v f o d

v e p i j op j u j s u g

Speed rules. The child who stops to ponder a weird let-ter combination will fail. Of course, young children whostart kindergarten unable to read on the first day are frus-trated, but children who enjoy reading in K-3 are alsostumped. They wonder why the teacher gives themwords that make no sense; they wonder why speed is soimportant. With this emphasis on delivering responses ata breakneck pace, children who are careful and deliberatein their work are at a severe disadvantage. P. David Pear-son, dean of the College of Education, University of Cal-

ifornia, Berkeley, states unequivocally, “DIBELS is theworst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since thedevelopment of flash cards.” As Ken Goodman observesin Examining DIBELS: What it is and What it does, a land-mark publication of the Vermont Society for the Study ofEducation, “DIBELS is not just an early literacy test. . .Teachers are required to group learners and build instruc-tion around the scores.”

In September 2006, a scathing report from the U. S.Inspector General (which can be found at the website for

the OIG – Office of the Inspector General) revealed justhow corrupt this federal science is. Here’s part of a memofrom the Reading First chief describing his agency’s “scien-tific review” of competing, established reading programs:

“Beat the (expletive deleted) out of them in a way thatwill stand up to any level of legal and whole languageapologist scrutiny. Hit them over and over with defin-itive evidence that they are not SBRR [the Fed’s ver-sion of the science of teaching reading], never havebeen, and never will be. They are trying to crash ourparty and we need to beat the (expletive deleted) outof them in front of all the other would-be party crash-ers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to seehow we welcome these dirtbags.”

McFaculty Perfecting the Passive Worker In our “fast food” nation, NCLB pushes a Fast Skills Cur-riculum. Pre-schoolers are now given skill workups sothey’ll be ready for the rigors of kindergarten. Children ingrades K-3 who fail the speed tests are pulled out of theclassroom—away from real literature and language expe-riences – for DIBELS “interventions,” skill drills to boosttheir scores on future DIBELS assessments. This assaulton childhood occurs at schools with a high percentage ofchildren receiving subsidized lunches. Children in moreaffluent schools, untouched by NCLB, still listen to storiesread aloud, sing songs, and paint pictures. Children inNCLB schools get DIBELs homework.

Worse, NCLB destroys something fundamental aboutchildhood, which should be a time of curiosity, discovery,and optimism, joy, and grace. Under NCLB, childrenbecome products to be tested, managed, and sorted—likeslabs of meat. Under NCLB, answers are much moreimportant than questions. Under NCLB, in the name ofrigor and raising the bar, young children are made to feelinadequate. Telling primary graders that they’re failing,that they’re not good enough, is part of the corporate-politico plan to create a scared and compliant workforcefor the Global Economy. Tell kids often enough that it’s adog-eat-dog world out there and that they don’t measureup, and they will start to believe it. Pound this messagehome and our children will grow up to be adults whonever knew about education for the common good, edu-cation for democracy. Such institutional abuse casts along, dark shadow over a child’s lifetime.

NCLB propagandists such as the Business Roundtablesay the skills bar must be raised so children of poverty canbe workers in the Global Economy, able to compete forhigh-paying jobs. This lie blames schools for somethingbeyond their control. Moreover, the high-paying jobsaren’t there. Take a look at job projections over the next10 years: the mass of new jobs will be in the service indus-try, where lots of obedient bodies are needed to work forminimum wage. The shame here is not that people workin the service industry. The shame is that these jobs don’t

pay a living wage. The shame is that corporate chiefsreceiving obscenely fat paychecks would rather make jobsmore productive (read “robotic”) or outsource old, less-efficient jobs than create new ones. And then they shiftthe blame to the schools.

At the same time the federal government boasts ofmaking sure all teachers are highly qualified, itMcDonaldizes the profession, reducing teachers to assem-bly line readers of scripts shipped in from corporate con-glomerates. When U. S. Secretary of Education MargaretSpellings proclaims that “The No Child Left Behind Acthas brought out the best in our teachers,” we can onlyremember the old Arab curse, “May the fleas of 1000camels infest your armpits.”

The Feds’ Friends and Foes in Vermont Despite the fact that Vermont’s three elected Congres-sional representatives voted against NCLB in 2001, thelaw passed, and in April 2003 the Vermont Department ofEducation applied for federal dollars to spread ReadingFirst across the state. The defining commitment of Ver-mont’s 195-page grant application appears in the secondparagraph: “Only programs fully aligned with scientifi-cally based reading research (SBRR) will be eligible forfunding through” Reading First.

With that, Vermont joined subservient states in parrot-ing the language, methods, and procedures demanded bythe U. S. Department of Education.

Meanwhile, teacher unions and many professionalorganizations remain strangely silent on the NCLB two-pronged assault on teacher professionalism and on child-hood. The National Education Association, for one,insists that, with more money, NCLB can be fixed. Rep.George Miller, chair of the House Committee on Educa-tion and Labor, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, chair of theSenate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, echothis view. Both joined hands with George Bush to passNCLB; both are committed to renewing it. NCLB showsus that when Republicans and Democrats agree, childrenwill be hurt. And teacher professionalism destroyed.

In contrast, at the national forefront in fighting unilat-eral imposition of DIBELS assessments, the VermontSociety for the Study of Education (VSSE) has establishedan Internet national clearinghouse on DIBELS, offeringresearch, case studies, parent and teacher anecdotes.VSSE takes the position that pouring more money into alaw that harms teachers and children is worse than fool-ish; it’s wrong. No amount of money can fix NCLB.

In January 2007, VSSE affiliated with Educator Round-table, whose petition to dismantle NCLB refutes themoney argument and offers instead a 16-point rationalefor ending a bad law. (www/educatorroundtable.org)

A Truly Vermont PlanWith a state education budget of $1.3 billion (for 93,000students attending 311 schools), one might wonder whywe’re worrying about $800/child for NCLB, but the ques-tion is critical. In an independent Vermont, local commu-nities, not Washington politicos, would choose how tospend such money. They might opt for an increase in

A Call for Slow Schools: Rethinking Education in the Green MountainsBy Susan Ohanian

Under NCLB, children become products to be tested, managed, and sorted, like slabs of meat.



“Soil is the tablecloth under the banquet of civilization.”

Steven Stoll

Someday in the future, when advances in understand-ing have made small-scale agriculture truly financially

viable, I want to recreate that famous scene in The Gradu-ate. I want to walk up to some well-educated young per-son and tell them I have only one word to say – farming.But I am afraid that the ability to make a good living fromfarming will not be a sufficient inducement. There isanother barrier. Today it is considered somehow unwor-thy of educated people to involve themselves in food pro-duction – to work with their hands in the soil like lessermortals.

Modern education has been too easily swayed by thespectacular and the industrial while ignoring the funda-mental and the biological. Schools and colleges spend mil-lions to familiarize students with Internet systems in theether above their heads, while nothing is spent to intro-duce them to the vital systems in the earth beneath theirfeet. We impress students with the spectacle of millions ofstars in the heavens, but neglect to awe them with the

miracle of millions of living organisms in a single tea-spoon of fertile soil. We introduce them to the chemicaltable of elements but leave them unaware of the suscep-tibility of the creatures in that teaspoon to the daily chem-ical residues of our industrial production. How can wehope to train students to care for the planet when they areunfamiliar with the irreplaceable role of the skin of thatplanet in the miracle of their life?

Our educators are doing a reasonable job at explainingthe intricacies of human society to students in lab andclassroom, but they are neglecting to make them aware ofthe web of life in field and garden. If we wish to teach rev-erence for the earth, we need to insist that practical timespent on the soils of a farm is just as valuable in trainingcitizens for an informed life in the 21st century as timespent studying chalk-filled blackboards in the academy’slecture halls.

Education’s dismissal of agriculture’s ability to teach usabout life has historical background. For much of thepast, for many people, farming was devoid of anythingbut incessant toil and illiterate neighbors. That impres-sion of farming has persisted to the present day. Butadvances in biology since the 1850s (which unfortunatelyin the public mind have been overshadowed by the prop-aganda of the chemical bandwagon) have unlocked mys-teries that make today’s organic farming as intellectuallystimulating as any other profession. The interrelatedactivities described by soil microbiology, nitrogen fixa-tion, symbiotic relationships, mychorrizal associations,

allelopathy, weed ecology, and systemic acquired resist-ance have helped contemporary farmers appreciate theintuitive brilliance of age-old practices like crop rotations,green manures, mixed stocking, and compost making.

When food production is considered a lowly activity,something for the unschooled, the result is forfeit for all –the forfeit of humanity’s essential connection to thesource of life. By choosing not to educate our childrenabout soil and agriculture and food, our society in gen-eral, and more important, our institutions of higherlearning, deprive today’s young people of a truly valuableeducation. The generations to come will remain ignorantof that thin layer of fertile soil upon which their survivaldepends.

What better medium than a compost heap for studentsto come face-to-face with life, death, and the processesthat keep our planet alive? If we expect today’s students tofind solutions to ensure the future of their world, whichthey will need to do, what could be better than the directknowledge that compost – the world’s best fertilizer,made for free in your back yard from kitchen and farmanimal waste products – is a model for other simple and

inexpensive solutions? We have a belief on our farm thatif what we are doing is in any way complicated it is prob-ably wrong, and we modify our practices accordingly. Bio-logically based agriculture is not only a subject. It is ateacher.

In 1800, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfa-ther, wrote that although chemistry and physics could beconsidered as having achieved the status of sciences, agri-culture remained an art. I think that is still true today. Thisart involves subtleties and judgment calls such as addingjust enough limestone but not too much (and whethercalcitic or dolomitic), finding the proper depth of tillage(if you till at all), figuring out the ideal balance of ingredi-ents (fungal or bacterial) in the compost, knowing theoptimum humification of compost for each use, manag-ing green manures as either surface or incorporatedamendments, maximizing the use of “inputs” that springfrom natural processes on the farm itself, involving one’smind in all aspects of the biological world of the soil.

None of the above is dull or unskilled. Balancing thesefactors is fascinating, challenging, and inspiring, since skillgrows with practice.

The results of an intimate, caring, and alert involve-ment with soil and food-growing are vigorous, healthyplants and animals, a clean environment, and the inwardsatisfaction of participating in a truly sustainable agricul-ture that can feed the human population in perpetuity.

Such work cannot continue to be considered beneaththe dignity of the educated. •

Educational AgricultureBy Eliot Coleman

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John Ford and Jim Hogue interviewed Abe Collins on Jim’s radioprogram on WGDR radio in Plainfield.

Tell us about your farm operation in St. Albans.I farm with my family here in St. Albans. We share-milkon Teddy Yandow’s farm. We are an all-grass, organicdairy – one of a growing handful of dairies in the UnitedStates doing no-grain dairying. We have created a newcompany, Carbon Farmers of America, to advance theidea that soil building can reverse climate change, and thatthe planned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslandsis the single most effective way to rapidly create new top-soil. On our dairy farm, we are using a number of meth-ods in addition to planned grazing that allow us to buildtopsoil even faster by pulling carbon dioxide out of theatmosphere and putting it back into the soil as variousforms of organic matter.

How does this connect to global warming?The quickest way to explain what we are proposing is this:If society chooses to pay farmers $25 dollars per ton ofcarbon dioxide transformed into soil organic matter, thenwe humans can reduce atmospheric concentrations ofgreenhouse gases to pre-industrial levels within a decade.We will also eliminate most water-quality problems andbiosecurity issues, we will restore economic prosperity toour rural communities, and we will not have a farm- via-bility crisis on our hands any more.

Since Al Gore’s film has come out, the literacy rate onclimate change has gone up a few clicks. We have toomuch carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the number-one greenhouse gas. People tend to assume that the prob-lem of global warming began when we started burningfossil fuels, and there is no doubt that the burning of fos-silized carbon and putting it into the atmosphere is atremendous contributor to increasing the greenhouseeffect to dangerous levels.

In addition, we have to remember that photosynthesis byplants and the decay of biomass into soil organic matter isthe primary link in the functioning of the global carboncycle. To the extent that land is desertified, or agriculturallands have bare soil not covered by living and decayingplants, then the carbon cycle is broken, and annual emis-sions of carbon dioxide from decaying biomass and burn-ing of fossil fuels can’t help but be in excess of the normalfixing of carbon in soils through photosynthesis and decay.

So climate change must be understood primarily as asymptom of biodiversity loss and desertification – the car-bon cycle is broken, and climate change can’t be trulyaddressed until we cover bare ground with plants and“fix” the carbon cycle. Again, the planned grazing of live-stock on grasslands is the single most effective way to dothis, and without the massive inputs of machinery, fuels,and chemicals.

The carbon cycle, which is really the cycle of life,describes the conversion of carbon dioxide through photo-synthesis into plants and then on through the food web,into the soil or geological storage, and back into the atmos-phere. The question that comes up is: had the carbon cyclebeen disrupted even before the industrial revolution?

If we look at the work of Allan Savory, the African sci-

entist who developed Holistic Management, he hasshown very clearly that the carbon cycle was disruptedmany thousands of years ago when the large herds ofhoofed animals that roamed the world’s grasslands werekilled off or reduced, and their role in cycling carbon wasreplaced by burning. These large herds of animals playeda crucial role in maintaining the carbon cycle throughthese grasslands, which comprise about two-thirds of theearth’s land area. At that point, the carbon cycle ceased tofunction and global warming began.

In sum, the problem of Global Warming needs to belooked at in a larger ecological context. That bigger pic-ture relates to what is going on with the carbon cycle andthe ecological cycles and flows of energy on earth. Andthese are all tied together: The water cycle, and the min-eral cycle which includes the carbon cycle, biologicalcommunity dynamics, and the flow of sunlight andenergy through photosynthesis into the rest of the foodchain. In a nutshell, climate change, biodiversity loss anddesertification are all one issue, and need to be addressedas such to realize success in any area. The planned graz-ing of livestock on perennial grasslands is the single mostpowerful tool we have to restore ecosystem health andfunctioning to our agricultural lands.

So you are talking about this idea of Gaia and this very complex webof life and the relationships that compose this bigger picture.

I am a big fan of James Lovelock’s work and the Gaia the-ory that says the earth is a single homeostatic self-regulat-ing organism where life essentially manufactures, on adaily basis, the atmosphere….the marriage of earth andsky. Interestingly, Lovelock doesn’t seem to understand

yet this critical issue of soil building. There is this prevail-ing idea that soil can only form very slowly, taking a thou-sand years to build an inch of topsoil. Through Keylinesoil building, developed by P.A. Yeomans in Australia, andother methods that we are currently using, we can buildtopsoil very quickly. And soil fertility is the key to every-thing. Essentially, human agriculture has destroyed anenormous quantity of organic matter over the last thou-sands of years and especially industrialized agriculture inthe last 50 years at an accelerated rate. The soil organicmatter lost and its conversion into carbon dioxide is per-haps an equal contributor to the burning of fossil fuels toclimate change.

What can the average citizen do to effect the kind of soil buildingthat you are talking about?

Everyday people can have can have a tremendous impacton carbon emissions and carbon sequestration in soil. Thekey to doing this on any sort of meaningful scale is theplanned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslands. Sothe first thing that we can do is to start eating the foodgrown by grass farmers. We can support these farmers bybuying their products, which in turn stimulates the localeconomies. We can support them through our purchaseof “Carbon Sinks,” the Carbon Farmers of America-ver-sion of carbon credits, to offset our personal, family, orbusiness carbon dioxide emissions.

Your organization is also developing a new food label to certifyfoods produced by Carbon Farmers of America.

We are offering our farmers an opportunity to markettheir product through the Carbon Farmers of Americawebsite and in our publications. When people buy a foodproduct that is affixed with a label indicating CarbonFarmers of America Certified, this ensures people thatthe food they are eating is not only perfectly nutritious,but is also reversing global warming by fixing carbondioxide in stable soil organic matter.

Tell us about carbon offsets and Carbon Sinks and how what youare proposing to do is different from what people may haveheard about these.

The global carbon trading market and carbon creditsbegan with the Kyoto treaty. The U.S. and Australia arethe only large rich countries that are not signatories. Sowhen that treaty was signed a number of countriesagreed to start imposing regulations that would incre-mentally cap carbon emissions at lower and lower levels.And if a certain company emits more than that, they areforced to buy carbon credits from another entity that hasemitted less than the new cap – that, or they purchase off-sets from a renewable energy project, or some form ofland management that captures carbon in biomass.

The challenge with carbon credits, as they stand now isthat the caps set under the Kyoto treaty bear little rele-vance in terms of the ecological imperatives in front ofus. Right now we are at 390 parts per million of carbondioxide in the atmosphere. We really should be at around275 ppm to be safe. Under Kyoto, aiming for reductions inemissions of 10 percent below 1990 levels and variations

Vermont Vox Populi A Conversation With Farmer Abe Collins

continued on following page

Abe Collins and daughter Margot, turning soil at their St. Albans farm.PHOTO COURTESY OF ABE COLLINS


on that, has nothing to do with real ecology. So in a sense,polluting entities are given a very slight disincentive, orare financially rewarded for polluting slightly less. Thisamounts to a permit to pollute.

It is likely that carbon tax schemes will be much moreeffective than carbon credits. That is, all fossil fuels, indus-trial emissions and land management that results in emis-sions of greenhouse gases are taxed. These taxes woulddisincentivize fossil fuel use. The revenue stream wouldbe used to replace taxes on selected income, property andsales taxes, and also to reward land management that cap-tures carbon in topsoil and biomass.

A “Carbon Sink” is our version of a carbon offset thatrepresents one ton of carbon dioxide that has been con-verted into just over half a ton of organic matter in thesoil by a farmer. What we are talking about with CarbonSinks is that we need to look at the whole picture. Whatwould be the best fulcrum we could choose that will havethe largest effect, not just in terms of climate, but in termsof the overall health of the earth and ecological cycles?Well, that is topsoil. And topsoil is defined by organicmatter. Sub soil is pretty much biologically inert mineralmatter. As soon as you add life and resulting organic mat-ter to subsoil, then subsoil becomes topsoil and every-thing falls into place. Your water cycle starts functioningbecause organic matter, and especially humus in the soil,cleans and purifies the water where it falls, and holds it.So the water cycle falls into place. Food security falls intoplace because humus-rich soil produces incredibly nutri-tious food with all the micronutrients available. And eco-nomic prosperity falls into place because economics hasto be understood, in my view, as entirely based on photo-synthesis. Photosynthesis is where all the energy comesfrom that fuels everything.

Creating new topsoil means that where there used to bebare land, eroding farmland or deserts, now there is top-soil, and green grass grows, streams and rivers flow, andbiodiversity in general is doing its work of cycling miner-als and water and harvesting solar energy. I believe thatbiodiversity is the foundation for prosperity and securityin human society. When we talk about biodiversity, we aretalking about diversity between species, within species, inage structure, and total biomass present. That biodiversity isreally what captures sunlight and puts it into the foodchain. We are talking about creating true biological capi-tal here. The Carbon Sinks that we are marketing repre-sent not just offsetting carbon emissions, but realigningour lives, our agriculture and our economics in a holisticway that fits into the economy of nature.

When someone goes to your web site and they purchase soil car-bon futures, tell us where the money from that purchase is going.

We are marketing Carbon Sinks to businesses and to thepublic, priced at $25 per ton. For every ton of carbondioxide that a farmer transforms into just over half a tonof organic matter, which can be measured accurately intheir fields, the farmer will be paid $19. One dollar isgoing to go for administration for the company. Theother $5 will go toward equipping and training new car-bon farmers. A priority for us is to create what in effect

will be both a training program and a bank for newyoung grass farmers to get started. We want to build anarmy of young graziers who are going to create this top-soil we need so desperately. This will give an enormousopportunity for young people to get into a really mean-ingful livelihood and do a lot of good, and be able tomake money doing it.

We are offering soil carbon future packages, the size ofwhich will depend on the amount of carbon dioxide emis-sions from an individual or a company. The averageAmerican is responsible every year for almost 24 tons ofcarbon dioxide emission. Your car can emit from three to10 tons, and even more from an SUV.

So any environmentally awake person or business canlook at their greenhouse gas emissions, figure out how toabsolutely minimize those emissions through conserva-

tion and so on, and offset the balance by paying CarbonFarmers to build new topsoil.

We have to remove the extra carbon dioxide we havealready loaded into the atmosphere, and topsoil forma-tion represents the only viable, fast way to do that.

We think of soil-building as the ultimate environmen-talism. Purchasing carbon sinks ties you into our com-pany, and keep you updated on our work and accomplish-ments. If you are a business, you will be able to point outto your customers that you are acting to reverse globalwarming by investing in soil-building Carbon Farmers.However, purchasing carbon sink is not going to actuallyput a few tons of topsoil in the bed of your pickup truck.Instead, it represents an investment in the topsoil which isthe source of all human wealth, as well long-term cli-matic stability.

We will also be doing research that has not been doneby the universities, because most university soil scientistsare operating from outdated assumptions. Most (not all!)researchers at land grant universities will tell you it takes500 or 1,000 years to build an inch of top soil. We are say-ing that the holistic planned grazing of livestock onperennial grasslands is enabling ranchers and farmers toturn deserts and degraded land into very healthy land.Keyline is an incredible innovation that allows us to buildtopsoil very quickly by aerating grasslands and systemat-ically designing farm landscapes according to the watershapes of the land.

So this is a research project. We will be compiling all thedata from all the farmers gathered each year and publish-ing the research and results of our work, which we feelwill result in some of the most important research in theworld… how everyday farmers, everywhere, can rapidlyrecreate the soil fertility humanity has been destroying forthousands of years.

You have spoken before about making farms the center of our com-munities again. Is part of the idea to get people out on the farms?

If we start thinking about food as sort of a doorway backto living in a more cooperative way on earth, we need tothink about getting involved with our food and knowingwhere it came from – probably even helping out on thefarms every now and then that we are buying our foodfrom. Another example of people getting involved is theraw milk movement. Food buying clubs are another waythat people in towns and cities organize themselves into10 or 20 or more families, and make very large purchasesfrom farms. It frees the farmers up from doing so muchmarketing and really builds on this relationship. That cantie people back to the food and the land and give farmersa sense of community and self-worth, which is prettyimportant these days when they are such a small and evenforgotten portion of the population. For the most part,farmers tend to be not very well off these days. It can belonely too, because there is not a lot of gratitude for farm-ers because people think the economy floats on air, anddot.com bubbles are what make the world go round.

So I think there are a lot of positive developments inthese areas that are happening to make a sane and securefood system. Carbon Farming opens a door to environ-mental and climatic renewal, where every meal becomesa sacrament and our primary environmental activism.•

For further information go to our web site: www.carbonfarmerso-famerica.com. Or call CFA at 802- 524-0707.

Vox Populi continued from previous page

Visit www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com to read more about how Vermont's family farms can combat climate change and become more productive. CREDIT: RICHARD FOLEY

We have to remove the extra carbon dioxide

we have loaded into the atmosphere, and

topsoil formation represents the only viable,

fast way to do that.


The Vermont independence effort is guided by a peace-ful group of thoughtful citizens who believe that Ver-

mont would be better off as a small independent countrylike Iceland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Luxembourg, orSwitzerland than to remain under the domination of anoverly centralized and increasingly out-of-control centralfederal government. To some, the idea of an independentVermont is preposterous but harmless, more theater thanserious policy. To others it smacks of treason. Did not theCivil War settle forever the question of whether a statewithin the United States can secede?

It did not. Timeless moral and constitutional questionscannot be settled by the contingencies of war.

That secession is a policy option available to any statewithin the United States today is admittedly unfashionable,but it is neither silly nor treasonous. It is an option rootedin the origin and foundations of the U.S. political tradition.George Washington and John Adams proved secessionists.The 1776 Declaration of Independence is a legal brief ininternational law justifying the secession of 13 self-pro-claimed states from the British Empire. Vermont was notone of these states, but seceded from Britain on her own in1777, and remained an independent republic before joiningthe Union in 1791. Vermont and Texas came into theUnion as independent states from prior secessions.

Secession is an ever-present possibility in any large politi-cal union created out of formerly independent politicalsocieties such as the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union,the European Union, or the United States. Since each polit-ical society pre-existed the union, the political society is pri-mary (an end in itself ), while the union is secondary (aninstrument). When an instrument (like the union) no longerserves its purpose, it should be discarded for a better one.

Of course, every large scale union will try to make itselfthe end, and the political units that are its constituent partsthe means. Great Britain did this during its imperialperiod. But a recent poll shows that 52 percent of Scotswant to secede and restore their own country, and 58 per-cent of the English approve of their leaving! The SovietUnion claimed to be a revolutionary end in itself, and therepublics instruments for a global Marxist revolution. Butthis most centralized Union in history dissolved after only70 years when 15 states peacefully seceded.

To view the notion of an independent Vermont repub-lic in the proper light, we need to keep in mind the greatpolitical changes that have occurred internationally sinceWorld War II. For 350 years, the disposition of Europeanstates (and those created by their empires, including theUnited States) has been centralization of power. Thou-sands of independent and quasi-independent political soci-eties were crushed into larger and fewer states throughwars of unification and nation-building. Eighteenth cen-tury absolute Monarchists, 19th century Liberals andSocialists, 20th century Communists, Nazis, and Fascistsall agreed at least on one thing: smaller polities had to giveway to vast, centralized, modern states ruling over mil-lions. It was thought that prosperity and moral progress(however defined), depended on such Leviathans.

But experience has shown this to be an illusion. Fromthe French Revolution of 1789 through the Napoleonicwars, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War, the massive

power concentrated in modern states has issued in warsof unprecedented scale and intensity. And wars have notbeen the worst. R. J. Rummel in Death by Government hasargued that modern states have killed nearly four times asmany of their own people as have been killed in all thewars, foreign and domestic, fought around the globe inthe 20th century. The modern unitary state has provenitself to be a weapon of mass destruction. What prosper-ity and progress we have appears to have gone on in spiteof the Leviathan, and not because of it.

Historical tensionSmallness is no barrier to prosperity. Most of the 10 statesin the world having the highest per-capita income aresmall. One of them, Iceland, has a population under300,000. More than half the countries in the world todayare under 5 million, and the number is growing. Ver-mont’s population is around 600,000. If it were independ-ent, it would join 66 other countries with populations of600,000 or less.

Everywhere the vast nation-states created since theFrench Revolution are fracturing. Allegiances are shiftingto supranational or sub-national organizations. An inde-

pendent Vermont republic is possible because we live ininteresting times. George Kennan, one of the 20th cen-tury’s great geopolitical strategists and architect of theUnited States’ Cold War containment policy, argued in hisautobiography, Around the Cragged Hill, that the public cor-poration known as the United States has become simplytoo large for the purposes of self government. When anycorporation becomes so large that it is on the verge of col-lapsing under its own unwieldy bulk, the only remedy,Kennan concluded, is to downsize it. And he suggested thatwe begin a public debate on how to divide the U.S. empireinto a number of independent unions of states associatedunder a commonwealth model. George Kennan, whoended his career at Princeton’s Institute for AdvancedStudies, endorsed the idea of an independent Vermontrepublic a few years before his death as a worthy effort tobegin a debate about how such division should proceed.

Yet for many, secession still appears alien – outside theboundaries of the U.S. political tradition. But this viewsprings from attending to only one part of our politicaltradition. From the formation of the United States, withthe Articles of Confederation, on down to 1860, secessionproved a policy option considered in every section of thefederation by major political leaders. It was only after the

so-called “Civil War” that Americans began to adopt thelanguage of the French Revolution, language thatabsolutely prohibits secession. The French Republic wasthe first to declare itself a republic – one and indivisible –creating the paradigm of all modern states.

But this language of indivisibility was entirely alien tothe republican principles of the American Revolutionunder which the United States created a voluntary feder-ation of states, not an aggregate of individuals ruled fromthe center. It was not until the 1920s (at the high noon ofthe Western obsession with centralization) that the U.S.Congress approved the Pledge of Allegiance, verballytransforming a federation of states into the French Revo-lutionary slogan: “one nation indivisible.”

The result is that Americans have inherited a deeplyfractured political tradition. On one side of the fracture iswhat we may call a Jeffersonian Americanism, beginningwith the Declaration of Independence (a secession docu-ment) and running down to 1860. On the other side is apost-Lincolnian Americanism. The former is rooted instate sovereignty, privileges small polities, and is open tosecession. The latter is rooted in national sovereignty,views the individual states (like Vermont) mainly asadministrative units of the center, and absolutely pro-hibits secession. Every American has inherited both thesecontrary Americanisms, and no citizen who understandsboth can fail to feel the tension they generate.

Yet they are incommensurable. Post-Lincolnian histori-ography has pushed Jeffersonian Americanism to the mar-gin by either ignoring it or by presenting it as an outdatedpolitical engagement. But no part of a tradition is ever lost.Indeed, what we call a reformation or a renaissance is usu-ally a swerving back to recover and make topical again apart of tradition that had been neglected or misunder-stood. At a time when the 350-year adventure of the largeunitary state has turned sour and the resources of post-Lin-colnian centralization seem to be exhausted, it is perhapstime to recover and explore the Jeffersonian inheritance.

A New England traditionThe first thing to appreciate is that it was not until thepost-Lincolnian era that the U.S. Constitution began to beseen as the sacred document of an organic American civilreligion. In the Jeffersonian era, the Constitution wasthought of as a secular compact between sovereign states.It was also a compromise that few were happy with.Alexander Hamilton, who wanted a British style unitarystate, called it a “worthless fabric.”

The region of the United States that first tested theUnion for its viability was New England. Its leaders seri-ously considered secession in 1804 over President Jeffer-son’s Louisiana Purchase; in 1808 over Jefferson’s Embargoof their trade; and most seriously in 1814, over issues sur-rounding “Mr. Madison’s War of 1812.” Secession wasadvocated by New England abolitionists from the 1830s onto 1860; and by John Quincy Adams and other New Eng-land leaders over the Mexican war and the annexation ofTexas. In this essay (and the next installments), an effortwill be made to make this New England secession traditionbetter known and to explore its intimations for our time.

The New England Secession Tradition Part One of a Three-Part Series

By Donald W. Livingston


Since each political society pre-existed the

union, the political society is primary (an

end in itself), while the union is secondary

(an instrument). When an instrument (like

the union) no longer serves its purpose, it

should be discarded for a better one.


The Union created by the Constitution of 1789 washotly debated and passed only by a small margin. As earlyas 1794, Senators Rufus King of New York (formerly fromMassachusetts) and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut toldSenator John Taylor of Virginia that “it was utterly impos-sible for the union to continue,” that North and Southwould never agree on public policy, and that it would bebetter to renegotiate the Union than to have a forced sep-aration later. Both King and Ellsworth were FoundingFathers who had helped draft the U.S. Constitution, andboth were political allies of Federalist leaders who wouldlater lead serious secession movements in New England.

Nothing came of this move. But 10 years later a moreserious effort at secession arose in response to the 1803Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the size ofthe United States. Since the Constitution had no provisionfor acquiring new territory, Jefferson’s acquisition wasthought to be unconstitutional. Moreover, New Englandhad a commercial and maritime economy; consequently,its face was set to the East. The agricultural South mean-while, looked to cultivate land in the West. Acquiring theLouisiana Territory meant more states in the West, greatlyexpanding the power of the Southern agrarian interest atthe expense of New England’s commercial interests.

Further, the new states would contain Spanish andFrench populations that had no feel for the Americaninheritance of British liberty which New Englandersthought was best exemplified in their own region of thenation. As one cleric put it: “we derive all that is valuablein religion and morals, the common law, the habeas cor-pus, the trial by jury, and that spirit and those principles offreedom, which led to . . . our independence. Had webeen the sons of Frenchmen, we could have inheritednone of these blessings.”

These ethnic, cultural, commercial and other disloca-tions anticipated by the Louisiana Purchase gave rise, in1804, to a secession movement led by New England Fed-eralists in Congress of whom Timothy Pickering, UriahTracy, and Roger Griswold were leaders. Their vision wasof “a new confederacy, exempt from the corrupt and cor-rupting influence and oppression of the aristocraticDemocrats of the South.” Its nucleus would be New Eng-land, “to which New York would be added later,” andwith a hand of friendship extended to the Britishprovinces in Canada. Aaron Burr supported the vision,and it was hoped that, upon being elected governor ofNew York, he would lead a secession movement in thatstate. Though secession was considered desirable bymany Federalist leaders in New England, they did notthink there was sufficient popular support to hazard theircareers. Burr’s electoral defeat and the scandal over killingHamilton in a duel ended, for the moment, the project ofa New England federation.

This first secession movement, which counted amongits leaders Founding Fathers who had drafted the U.S.Constitution, may seem surprising only because of thedominance of post-Lincolnian historiography whichviews U.S. history as the story of the inevitable unfoldingof a unitary American State, one and indivisible. But inthe Jeffersonian era, the Union was not consideredorganic and indivisible but an experiment, as Washingtonfamously called it in his 1796 Farewell Address.

An experiment that fails should be called off. And in thecase of a federal union of states, each of which could be

a viable country in the world, that can only mean seces-sion. A distinguished historian of this period writes:“secession, even in 1804 was no new and unheard-of rem-edy for oppressed sectional minorities....most politicalthinkers of the first half-century of constitutional govern-ment had very little faith in the duration of the Union,and the statement that such-and-such a measure would‘inevitably produce a dissolution of the Union’ was afamiliar figure of speech in politics.”

It is not familiar now. But what faith can we rationallyhave in an over-centralized, post-Lincolnian empire thatno longer knows how to stop growing? What faith didGeorge Kennan have in it? Would it really have been so

bad if the New England states had formed a Northeasternfederation with special ties to Canadian Britain?

For more than a century, questions of this sort have notbeen asked. But given the great changes in the worldtoday, they can no longer be suppressed; and indeedappear to us now in a fresh light. The secession move-ment of 1804 – being a top-down affair – was aborted. Butonly four years later, another secession movement in NewEngland would erupt. This time from the bottom up.•

Part Two of Donald W. Livingston’s article on New England’s tradition ofsecession will appear in the Summer 2007 issue of Vermont Commons.

Livingston continued from previous page

For more information about us and our summer schedule, visit us on the web atwww.wholecommunities.orgor call us at 802/496-5690

A p r i l 7 7:30 PM • BIG PICTURE THEATER • $15

Anne & Pete Sibley Benefit Concert M a y 1 1 8:00AM • NO CHARGE

Knoll Farm Bird Walk with the Mad Birders

M a y 1 9 8:30AM–5PM • NO CHARGE

A Day at the Farm: Volunteer Work Day

J u n e 1 6 9:30AM–4PM • $40

Finding & Preparing Wild Spring Edibleswith Jim Merkel

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The Art of Field Sketching & Observationwith Nona Estrin

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Seedsaving Workshop for Kidswith Helen Whybrow

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Dual, triple or multiple bottom lines, Vermont entre-preneurs have long been in the forefront of changing

the way businesses measure their success. More than 16years ago, a small group of these entrepreneurs formedVermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. VBSR isnow the largest SR business group in the United States(not per capita, but with the most member businesses ofany state). VBSR now has more than 670 member busi-nesses that employ about 35,000 Vermonters and accountfor over $4.5 billion in annual revenue in the state.

When Business Ethics magazine ranks the 100 Best Cor-porate Citizens you will find Vermont businesses at thetop of that list. When the Key Bank and Vermont BusinessMagazine select recipients for the 5 X 5 X 5 awards (givento the five companies, in each of five categories, thatdemonstrate the strongest growth over a five-yearperiod), as many as two-thirds of the winners are mem-bers of VBSR. More important, these businesses demon-strate every day that “doing right” and “doing well” gohand in hand.

When a company forms or “incorporates,” it “forms abody” in society. That body has a larger footprint uponour society than any individual. Any company has agreater impact upon the environment, a greater impact

upon people (employees, customers, vendors), and ittakes advantage of our common resources such as natu-ral materials, limited liability, commerce, etc. With thatgreater impact comes a greater responsibility, a greaterobligation.

It really boils down to how you measure commercialsuccess. If you are McDonalds, you might measure suc-cess as the least-expensive hamburger. Unfortunately, youend up with results such as those gruesomely outlined inEric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. If you are Wal-Mart youmeasure success by having the lowest prices, with thenegative impact of low wages, shoddy products, and thetransfer of local production and jobs to foreign markets.When profit and shareholder returns are the only meas-ures of success, then people, the planet and the commongood suffer.

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility differsfrom other similar groups because of the organization’scommitment to foster a business climate that measuressuccess by commitment to, and involvement in, theircommunities, the environment, and their people. VBSRdoes this through education, networking, and public

influence. The latter, public influence, has made VBSR avoice for sane workplace quality, livable jobs, protectionof the environment, health care reform, and a long-termapproach to energy, transportation, and conservation.

A prime example of this influence came two years ago,when the Vermont Legislature passed a comprehensivehealth care reform package. When the legislation waspassed, panicky e-mails and letters were sent out by theVermont Chamber of Commerce and other “traditional”business groups in an attempt to stop this reform. VBSRand our member organizations, on the other hand, stoodwith the legislators, the unions, AARP, VPRIG, and othergroups to praise and support this bill. Unfortunately, thegovernor ultimately vetoed the bill.

One of the things that make VBSR different and soattractive to membership is this front-line commitment tocommunity involvement through public-policy advocacy.While often at odds with “traditional” business voices,VBSR is rapidly becoming a strong and effective voice forbusiness in our state. It is our goal to make the voice ofbusiness a voice that talks effectively about a work envi-ronment and economic climate that will enable everyworker to earn a fair income safely, to contribute his orher labor to a high-quality product or service, and to workand live with dignity and respect.

Social responsibility has gone mainstream and the needto define and re-define corporateresponsibility has never been greater.Wal-Mart runs TV commercials tout-ing its health insurance program foremployees, yet it continues to hirepredominately part-time workers,have the greatest percentage ofworkers on publicly financed healthcare programs and, in the rush todominate the retail market, reducequality, export jobs and make it diffi-cult for local businesses to compete.You probably have seen advertise-ments from oil companies, chemicalcompanies and others attempting toportray themselves as environmen-tally friendly. While we applaud eventhe most minor action to protect theenvironment or improvement inworkplace quality, this “green wash-ing” threatens to reduce the vitalimportance of “social responsibility”to a 30-second sound bite.

Perhaps we should be VermontBusinesses for Social “Obligation,”because a business that does not pro-tect the environment, does not pro-vide livable jobs, and is not a respon-sible member of its community isbasically stealing from us all.

Let me give you an example frommy own business.

When Small Dog Electronics got

started, we would buy large quantities of used computersand refurbish them by taking parts from one and addingthem to another to make a working computer. We wereleft with large quantities of defective parts. We disposedof them at the local landfill from time to time. We laterstarted looking at our “waste stream” and found thatthese materials we were throwing away contained dan-gerous metals and compounds (lead, mercury, cadmium,etc.). Once we discovered this problem, we located acompany called Envirocycle, in Massachusetts, that spe-cializes in environmentally sound electronics recycling.We stopped filling our local landfill, and now pay to haveour waste recycled.

And we too this process further when we launched an“e-waste initiative” that allows anyone to bring us theirold electronic materials; we then take the e-waste andmake sure it is properly recycled. This took us one stepbeyond just dealing responsibly with our waste to provid-ing an easy way for our community to assure that their e-waste was also handled without harm to the environ-ment. It is our “obligation” to prevent our wastes fromentering the landfills; it is our responsibility to go evenfurther.

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility has muchinfluence in Vermont. It is made up of some of the mostsuccessful businesses in our state, some of them large,

Beyond the Bottom LineVermont Businesses Set the Pace for Social Responsibility

By Don Mayer

Any company has a greater impact upon the

environment and upon people, and takes

greater advantage of our common resources.

With that greater impact comes a greater

responsibility, a greater obligation.



L I V E P E R F O R M A N C E

THE GODS OF THE HILLS

Written by Ethan Allen

Adapted and Performed by Jim Hogue

Also availableA two-CD dramatic reading, with forward and glossary, of

A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity

For information about the live performance or the recording, call

Earnest Productions at 802 456 1123.

UUppccoommiinngg aappppeeaarraanncceess::• Langdon Street Cafe in Montpelier, April 21,

7:00 (reservations required at 456 1123);• The Inn at Baldwin Creek in Bristol, April 27

and 28;• Adamant Community Center, May 20.• History Expo, June 23 and 24.

some of them small, some solo practitioners, and manygrowing and employing Vermonters in good-payinghuman-oriented jobs. Our member companies dailydemonstrate that being a good business does not competewith being a profitable business.

We are not fringe businesses; among the VBSR mem-bership are some of the most mainstream businesses inVermont. Businesses like the Chittenden Bank, Ben &

Jerry’s, Green Mountain Power, Green Mountain CoffeeRoasters, NRG Systems, Seventh Generation, and Gar-dener’s Supply are joined by hundreds of businesses thatare quietly fulfilling their obligation to the common goodby recognizing that, while the bottom line of profitableoperations is essential to business, the “other bottomlines” of workplace quality, the natural environment, andthe community are perhaps even more important inmeasuring a company’s success.•

Mayer continued from previous page


General

American Secession ProjectSecessionist.usAmerican Secessionist Blog: Secession.us/sp.htmlActive 2007.“The charter of the American Secession Project is simple. Wedesire to place the concept of secession in the mainstream of polit-ical thought. Our intent is to proclaim that secession is a viable andlegal right and a practical solution to contemporary problems.”

Middlebury InstituteMiddleburyInstitute.org127 E. Mountain Rd. S.Cold Spring, NY [email protected]’d 2004. Active 2007.“In answer to a growing swell of interest in realistic responses tothe excesses of the present American empire, The Middlebury Insti-tute has been launched by a group of activists and professionals topromote the serious study of separatism, secession, self-determina-tion and similar devolutionary trends and developments.”

Secession.NetEst’d 2000. Active 2007.”Promotes radical political decentralization and community-basedsecession. Goals include: Legitimatize Secession of Small PoliticalEntities; Promote Nonviolent, Libertarian and Decentralist Politi-cal Visions; Influence Existing Secessionist Movements; PromoteNew Secession Movements; Network among these Movements.”

Unrepresented Nations and Peoples OrganizationUnpo.orgPariljoensgracht 762512 BR The [email protected]“UNPO is a democratic, international membership organization.Its members are indigenous peoples, occupied nations, minoritiesand independent states or territories…UNPO… assists its membersin effective participation at an international level.”

Alaska

Alaska Independence PartyAkip.orgPOB 58462Fairbanks, AK 99711Est’d 1984. Active 2007.“The Alaskan Independence Party’s goal is the vote we were enti-tled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alterna-tives: 1) Remain a Territory. 2) Become a separate and Indepen-dent Nation. 3) Accept Commonwealth status. 4) Become aState.”

Alberta

Alberta [email protected]

FreeAlberta.com9600 Southland Circle SW #2804Calgary, Alberta [email protected]’d 2001. Active 2006.“FreeAlberta.com is a website whose main purpose is to accu-rately document and measure the costs of Alberta remaining inCanada. We believe that these costs are unacceptable. We demon-strate how peaceful and legal secession can be achieved…..”

California

Republic of CaliforniaIndependentCalifornia.comActive 2007.“An independent California will be a progressive state, which is tosay that we place education and health care above fear and war.We value our environment and consider it our role to preservenature for our children and grandchildren.”

CascadiaCascadia Independence ProjectCascadianow.org4128 Interlake Avenue NWSeattle, WA [email protected]

Republic of Cascadia Zapatopi.net/cascadia/

Hawai’i

Free Hawai’iFreeHawaii.org(Scott Crawford)

Hawaii KingdomHawaiianKingdom.orgPOB 2194Honolulu, HI 96805(David Keanu Sai)

Hawai’i [email protected].(Bumpy Kanahele)

Institute for the Advancement of Hawaiian Affairshttp://www.opihi.com/(Poka Laenui)[email protected]

Ka Lahui Hawai’i http://www.hawaii-nation.org/turningthetide-6-4.html(Haunani-Kay Trask; Mililani Trask)Est’d 1987. “Ka Lahui Hawaii is the evolutionary product of three generationsof Hawaiians who have sought to regain their Native lands and tore-establish themselves as a self-governing people.”

Ka Pakaukau(Richard Kekuni Akana Blaisdell)

The Living [email protected]“We intend to show Hawai’i, the United States and the world thatwe are a living nation indeed and we will accept nothing less thanour full independence returned.”

Maine

The Second Maine MilitiaVermontrepublic.org/the_second_maine_militiaEst’d. 1995. Functioning 2007.Carolyn ChutePOB 99Porter, ME 04068“The militia includes Democrats, Republicans, Greens, lefties, liber-tarians, feminists, patriots and anarchists.”

New Hampshire

Free State ProjectFreestateproject.orgNHliberty.orgNHfree.comaphillips@freestateproject.orgEst’d. 7/2001. Functioning 2006.“The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving peo-ple to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, pro-ductive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, andcolors who agree to the political philosophy…that government existsat most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for peo-ple nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.”

Republic of New HampshireRepublicofNH.orgEst’d 2006. Active 2007.“We thus hereby request that the legislature of New Hampshiremake the following resolution: That the State of New Hampshireis, and of right ought to be, a free and independent state.”

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico Independence PartyIndependencia.net963 Ave. RooseveltSan Juan, PR [email protected]’d. 1946. Active 2007.“The Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) was founded in 1946with the purpose of seeking and obtaining independence by everypacific mean available.”

Quebec

Parti QuebecoisPq.org1200 Av. PapineauMontreal, QuebecH2K4R5

South

Confederate LegionConfederatelegion.com/270-705-6225/ [email protected] 2007.“We propose that every lawful, peaceful and honorable means beused to forge a modern professional Confederate Military Ceremo-nial Honor Guard…. The Confederate Legion would be foreswornto uphold the highest traditions of our history, heritage, culture andnationhood.”

League of the SouthLeagueofthesouth.netPOB 760Killen, AL [email protected]’d 1996. Functioning 2007.Chapters in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia,Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, NorthwestRegion, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.“The League of the South is a Southern Nationalist organizationwhose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic.To reach this goal, we intend to create the climate for a free Southamong our people by 1) de-legitimating the American Empire atevery opportunity; 2) by proving our willingness to be servant-leaders to the Southern people; and 3) by making The League ofthe South a strong, viable organization that will lead us to South-ern independence.”

FROM THE MIDDLEBURY INSTITUTE

REGISTRY OF NORTH AMERICAN SEPARATIST ORGANIZATIONS Compiled by the Middlebury Institute. See MiddleburyInstitute.org.

League of the South Institutehttp://www.lsinstitute.org/146 Bridgewood Dr.Killen, AL 35645

Southern CaucusSoutherncaucus.org/

Southern National Congress Committee Southernnationalcongress.orgC/o Thomas Moore420 N. Washington St.Alexandria, VA [email protected]’d 2005. Active 2007.“The Southern National Congress is designed as a forum in whichSoutherners can come together to raise an authentic voice for thetraditional liberties, culture, and welfare of the Southern people.”

South Carolina

Christian ExodusChristianExodus.orgPOB 1401Valley Springs, CA 95252Cory Burnell, PresidentEst’d. 2003. Active 2007.“ChristianExodus.org is moving thousands of Christians to SouthCarolina to reestablish constitutionally limited governmentfounded upon Christian principles…. The time has come for Chris-tian Constitutionalists to protect our liberties in a State like SouthCarolina by interposing the State’s sovereign authority retainedunder the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

Texas

Republic of TexasPOB 100Overton, [email protected] 2007

United Republic of Texastexas.freecountries.orghttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/UtdRepTex/Est’d 9/2005, 10/2006. Active 2007.“The purpose of the United Republic of Texas (URT) is to deter-mine which factions of the Republic of Texas (RT) movement arelegitimate and working toward true freedom for all Texans whowant it, with no conflicting agendas, and then unite them into astrictly pro-liberty RT…. The New Republic of Texas (NRT) andthe Historical Republic of Texas (HRT) are the first two groups tobe so committed and are the founders of the URT.”

Vermont

Second Vermont RepublicVermontRepublic.orgVtcommons.org202 Stockbridge RoadCharlotte, VT [email protected]’d 10/2003. Active 2007.“The Second Vermont Republic is a peaceful, decentralist, volun-tary association opposed to the tyranny of multinational corpora-tions and the U.S. government, and committed to the return of Ver-mont to its status as an independent republic.”

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In the television series Lost, a motley bunch of air crashsurvivors wash up on a desert island, where they find a

secret underground bunker with a countdown buttonthat a dusty instruction film says must be reset every 108minutes, or else. What “or else” means is not clear, but it’sscary enough to convince them. And so they burrowunderground, betray, and bump each other off so theycan keep pushing the button.

The show plays like an updated old Saturday matineeserial, with cliffhangers at the end of every episode tokeep you – you guessed it – pushing the button for more!I hear there are web sites full of Lost fans all over the Inter-net, exchanging notions of what’s really going on, andeven making script suggestions about where the plotshould go, which the writers sometimes follow.

I’ve been watching the show on delayed DVD to avoidthe commercials, but over in “real TV time” I heard thatone of the characters did in fact quit pushing the button,and coincidentally the ratings themselves crashed. Nowthat is scary, especially for the sponsors. Anyway, as mil-lions of people (including the screenwriters) scratch theirheads trying to guess what’s behind the button, let mesuggest that what we have here is an archetype manifest-ing the meaningless activity of modern man. Wake up,eat, work, buy something, empty the garbage, sleep, pressrestart. Remember your instructions post 9-11: KeepShopping!

Of course there are better ways to keep the faith. Hope-lessness postponed is the feeling I get after reading CurtisWhite’s new book The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting theCharms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Cul-ture of Total Work (Polipoint Press). This is a sophisticatedcultural, political, and spiritual odyssey through the high-ways and byways of social dissent, and in general, a bulls-eye critique of modern capitalist society, and it absolutelyfloored me.

Mixed metaphor there for a mixed-up world, sorry. What’s especially surprising is that with bookstore

shelves spilling over with me-too critiques of Bush andCompany, somebody could articulate something thatfeels so fresh and new about such a sorry-ass old situation.

Like a righteous solicitor building a case against a wilydefendant, White ratchets up his indictment against whatpasses for civilization patiently, with style and depth andhumor, until the devastating conclusion is inescapable:We’re servile suckers. And the reason is simple. ArguesWhite: secular liberal Democrats can’t beat conservativemoney-grubbing Republicans because their ethical foun-dation is based on a “faith” just as spurious as modernChristianity. It’s called reason, or rationalism, or enlight-enment. And there’s no more factual basis for rationalismthan there is for the virgin birth.

So, according to White, reason is a religion, too! Liber-als say we shouldn’t torture and kill our enemies here andabroad because it’s unenlightened, it’s not reasonable.Oh?, says White, well show me the scientific proof thatsays we shouldn’t plunder the world. In the long run, wemight ruin the planet, but so what? Some folks are havinga ball, and will continue to rake it in for as long as theparty lasts. It’s a Mexican standoff, both sides standing inbullshit. Did Jesus really tell everybody to grub for

money? On the other hand, if you forget religion anddecide to play fair and square based on reason, well,where did reason come from? Isn’t reason just another“faith”?

What’s missing on both sides, according to White, isthat conservatives and liberals have totally lost sight ofthe one basic spiritual truth: The Golden Rule. Until bothsides admit that a totally unreasonable and faith-basedbelief in “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”is the only foundation for a sane world, we are doomed.

But this insight is only part of White’s tale. Also woveninto this smart and intriguing book is White’s casting of anew and timely light on two masterworks of disobedi-ence: Hamlet and Walden; his dismantling of clever but

ultimately shallow cultural naughties like Office Space andDan Brown’s DaVinci Code; the suggestion of a surpris-ingly upbeat aesthetic operating behind the film BrokebackMountain; and a renewed appreciation for the “outsider”artistic ethic of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Norman Mailer once said something like, “you used tobe able to live on the shoulder of the road. Today theshoulder’s gone.” White’s book is about finding the shoul-der again.

The problem with books that offer brilliant critiques ofour decadent country is that the reader is often left feelingenlightened but powerless to change things. As Whiteadmits, we are all servile inhabitants of a consumeristhell, stuck with the dead-end alternatives of deluded lib-eralism on one hand and business worship on the other.

What to do? No doubt it would have been a thematic misstep for

White to start talking about secession in a political/cul-tural treatise like this, but, in fact, toward the end of thebook he sure hints at it. “There is not now nor has thereever been anything united about the United States ofAmerica. We are not one. The idea of a unified Americancharacter is not so much a myth as a bad joke that won’tgo away.”

Sound familiar?Like a good Q & A at the end of a talk, the book then

opens up to interviews with cultural critics Michael Abel-man, Jan de Graff, and James Howard Kunstler. (I knowKunstler’s hard-hitting speech at the Vermont secessionconvention in 2005 rubbed some folks the wrong way, butI liked his no-bullshit approach, and for Kunstler fans thisinterview will not disappoint.) The interviews confirmand amplify White’s concerns, and offer possible solutionsin areas such as agriculture, community planning, andbetter use of our personal time. The interviews are socompelling that I gave a copy of the book to my 20-year-

old undergrad daughter, who’s wondering which way tosteer, and I told her to begin with the Q & A’s because oftheir energetic enthusiasm for creating positive alterna-tives to the current culture.

White concludes the book with this advice: “Misbe-have. Make something beautiful. Try to win.” Sounds likea plan.

ScreeningsI thought the highlight of Rob Williams’ January 2007appearance on VPR’s “Switchboard” was his answer to acaller who voiced concern about what would happen toan independent Vermont facing some god-awful naturaldisaster without federal help. “I have a two word answerfor you,” Williams said. “Hurricane Katrina.”

The Feds’ failure to help Gulf Coast residents in thewake of Katrina gets devastating documentary treatmentin Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke. This is a must-seeDVD that you should watch twice: first in the theatricalformat, then once again with the filmmaker’s acid com-mentary. People can argue about whether or not theGreenhouse Effect had anything to do with the storms(don’t forget Rita, which hit soon after), but there’s noquestion about the White House Effect. Don’t forget, inVermont we’ve got a decrepit nuclear power plant run-ning at pedal-to-the-metal levels, but if you think the cav-alry’s coming in case of trouble, remember Katrina.

In the feature film department, check out V for Vendetta,based on the best-selling comic about a near-future anti-Fascist rebellion in Britain. Surprisingly brave stuff for aHollywood release. V for Vermont? Maybe.

And if you haven’t seen Dylan’s Masked and Anonymous,check out this 2003 release. It’s a dystopian vision of thefuture – of is it the now? Amazing cast, including Pene-lope Cruz, Jeff Bridges, and Dylan and his band. Considerthe release date, and tell me that isn’t spookily prophetic.•

Free Vermont Media By Tim Matson

Don’t forget, in Vermont we’ve got a decrepit

nuclear power plant running pedal-to-the-

metal, and if you think the cavalry’s coming

in case of trouble, remember Katrina.

Bush Bashing may be cathartic, but it’s the U.S. Empirethat needs dis-assembling.


library funds or concert tickets; they might put dentalclinics in the schools and eliminate lead dust exposure.They might decide families needed that money to buywinter fuel.

Instead of grinding our very future down into passivesubmission, Vermonters can shun federal money andreturn to our roots. A good place to start is the VermontDesign for Education,2 issued by the Office of the Com-missioner, Department of Education in 1968. Rooted incommunity conversations about local schools, the Design

offers an optimistic, student-centered vision of what edu-cation is and who it’s for: “Education in Vermont, if it isto move forward, must have a goal toward which to move,a basic philosophy which combines the best which isknown about learning, children, development, andhuman relations with the unique and general needs anddesires of Vermont communities.”

Take a look at the contrast in language and expectationbetween a Vermont Department of Education answer-able to the citizens of Vermont, and one following federaldictates (see table).3

After the Vermont Design was made public, 30,000 teach-ers from around the world applied for jobs. In contrast,

when VSSE Senior Fellow Dana Rapp conducted a surveyof Vermont teachers’ attitudes, 83 percent replied thatNCLB has a negative effect on learning.

As recess and naptime in Vermont are consigned to thedustbin so kids will have more time for federalized read-ing, we should consider small, sovereign Finland. TheFinns maintain that young children learn to love learningthrough play. Their children don’t start school until theyare seven, and even then, every 45 minutes of instruc-tional time is followed by 15 minutes of play. The Finnishgovernment imposes no curriculum or methodology onteachers; curriculum and methodology are localized toeach school. The international test is the only standard-ized test Finnish schoolchildren take. The Finnish chil-dren score highest in the world on literacy and sciencetests.

Vermonters have a clear choice. In an independent Ver-mont republic, we can take back our schools, making surethey are rooted in community values and focused on indi-vidual needs, rather than watching our children bedigested by a fast-food uniformity. We can choose to giveour kindergartners time to smell spring flowers andwatch caterpillars.

In his ruling of the 2002 case of Detroit Free Press v.Ashcroft, Judge Damon J. Keth, Senior Judge for theUnited States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, stated,“Democracies die behind closed doors.” It is time to openthe doors on the Vermont Education Department’s deal-ings with the federal government and demand a return tothe heritage we value. Taking back our local schools fromthe federal government is an important first step in creat-ing an independent Vermont Republic.•

Ohannian continued from page 4

1968 Vermont Design for Education 2003 Reading First Application

Combines the best of what is known about learning, citing Requires use of “proven methods” promulgated by educational philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Dewey boosters of “scientifically based reading research”and Piaget

Emphasizes each child’s unique way of learning Emphasizes “required procedures” for “all children”

De-emphasizes rote learning Emphasizes “close monitoring”of “scripted, systematic, explicit instruction”

Emphasizes flexibility Demands “rigorous expectations”

Calls for learning experiences geared to individual needs Insists on “data based decision making”rather than group norms

Involves entire local community Uses “experts” identified in setting standards by the U. S. Department of Education

NCLB shows us that when Republicans and

Democrats agree, children will be hurt, and

teacher professionalism destroyed.

1Research by William Mathis, Superintendent of Schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union Superintendent, VSSE Senior Fellow, andconsultant for the Rural School and Community Trust, shows that school data processing staff has increased 126% since 2003.

2http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.html?id=1633Susan Ohanian. A Roadblock in Vermont’s Design for Education. Vermont Society for the Study of Education. 200


The Bush Administration’s reaction to 9/11 in the formof a more corporate-friendly, business-as-usual NationalEnergy Plan (closed-door consultations chaired by VPCheney) and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan andIraq opened the proverbial “Pandora’s Box” and triggereda strong reaction from Vermont’s culture of active grass-roots organizations.

• In the spring of 2003, 81 of 83 towns passed a“Vermont Energy Independence” resolution urgingour state government and congressional delegationto encourage all sectors of the Vermont economytoward a sustainable energy future

• In 2005, 48 of 53 towns across Vermont voted infavor of resolutions requesting that their state repre-sentatives use their executive and legislative powersto investigate the deployment of the VermontNational Guard to Iraq.

• In 2006, more than a dozen towns passed impeach-ment resolutions to urge formal inquiry into PresidentBush’s promotion of the WMD rationale for invadingIraq, his executive decisions through hundreds of“signing statements,” and his overall leadership of the“War on Terror” – executive decisions permitting sur-veillance and detainment of U.S. citizens, as well astorture and rendition of suspected “terrorists.” Theimpeachment movement sought to add another 30-40towns to the list during the 2007 town meetings.

• On February 13, 2007, the Vermont House andSenate voted to press Congress and the president “tocommence immediately the orderly withdrawal ofAmerican military forces from Iraq.” Another firstfor the Vermont Legislature.

All these resolutions – energy independence, limitingdeployment of the Vermont National Guard, impeach-ment, and bring-the-troops-home – had roots in loosecoalitions of civic-minded individuals and their dozens ofpeace-and-justice, church-affiliated, environmental andrenewable-energy groups. More and more Vermontershave been equating their dependence on imported energywith the U.S. government’s aggressive military policies.

There’s been a buzz – at times some downright tension– in the past few years in our Windham County commu-nities about three intertwined energy issues that reinforcethe worries generated by the soaring prices of gasolineand home heating fuel and the human, moral, and mon-etary costs of the “War on Terror,” especially the invasionand occupation of Iraq. Many of us question:

• the state government’s belated, convoluted responseto the huge question of where Vermonters will gettheir electricity in the near future;

• the state’s recent failure (2002-2004) to purchase thedams on the Connecticut and Deerfield Rivers;

• the successive failures of the state government tocontest the sale of the atomic power plant VermontYankee to an out-of-state energy conglomerate, andthen to confront Entergy’s subsequent strategy tosupercharge the plant, expand the on-site storage ofradioactive waste, and extend the operating licensefrom 2012 to 2032.

Along with this short list, more Vermonters have beengrasping the potentially devastating social and environ-

mental repercussions of Peak Oil and Climate Change.Our preoccupations – with prices at the gas pump, pre-pay versus pay-as-you-go heating oil, our proximity to aradioactive waste dump and prime terrorist target, andquestions about where our electricity will come – havejolted us into outpourings of collective action.

Take the spontaneous outbreak of self-selecting groupsthat are initiating a wide array of direct action on the locallevel. “Down south” we can point to Brattleboro-basedPost-Oil Solutions, Windham Energy Coalition, Wind-ham Environmental Coalition, District Heating Group,Vermonters for a Fair Economy and Environmental Pro-tection, Brattleboro Climate Protection; Putney’s EnergyCommittee; Springfield’s Sustainable Valley Group; Nor-wich’s Sustainable Energy Resource Group. Most ofthese groups have been exploring the relationshipbetween indigenous renewable-energy sources (windpower, small hydropower, wood-chips, “cow power,”basic energy efficiency, biodiesel) and the health of ourlocal economies, especially around locally grown food.

In short, Vermonters are stepping up their collectiveefforts to take responsibility for their dependence on theglobal fossil fuel-driven economy and its enormous envi-ronmental and social costs.

Preface to The Great Hydropower HeistHow did we Vermonters get here? How did we lose ourenergy independence? Why haven’t we converted moreof our potential “Energy Commons” – our sunlight, ourwind, our forests, our rivers, our economy’s waste prod-ucts – into sustainable power sources?

Why are our politicians “courageously” arguing for 20-percent energy independence (electricity only) by 2020 in2007? Especially when Vermont, as New England’s largestexporter of “green power,” has been shipping to its south-ern neighbors the renewable hydroelectric power gener-ated by the dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield riversfor the past half century?

Back in 2002-2004, our Brattleboro-based group NEC-SIS, the NorthEast Center for Social Issues Studies, puttogether a team of professionals who volunteered theirtime and talents to convince the state to purchase these“green” power sources, the dams on the Connecticut andDeerfield rivers — 535 megawatts of combined capacity,or more than 80 percent of what Vermont Yankee sup-plies Vermont. A purchase that in one fell swoop wouldanswer the Pro-Nukes’ perennial rejoinder to the Shut-Down VY crowd: “And how do you propose to replace allthat reliable, low-cost power?”

Simple. With safer, more reliable, lower-cost and infini-tively more green and greenhouse-friendly hydropower.

Our lobbying efforts paid off when the Legislatureinvested $750,000 in an attempt to buy the dams outright.But Governor Douglas sold the deal down the river whilethe Legislature washed its hands of affair and went look-ing for other ways to “diversify the state’s energy portfo-lio.” Bizarre stuff.

Here’s one story that may serve as a lesson, a diagnos-tic template that illuminates the corporatization of ourCommons. Our peek behind the headlines and the politi-cal podiums from a Windham County and Brattleboroperspective travels back more than 100 years. What NEC-SIS discovered in the original “dam deals” was a perspec-tive, grounded in history and re-affirmed by recent events,that illuminates the energy-crises knocking on our doors– from war in Iraq to flipping on the light switch.

It started as a local story that in many ways pitted ourbusiness and farming communities against one another,over the relatively simple issue of how best to use ourCommons – in this case, the rivers and watersheds of theConnecticut and Deerfield Rivers.

It is the old story of corporate bait-and-switch anddivide-and-conquer. Corporate strategic planners, work-ing the halls of power in Montpelier and Washington andthe boardrooms of some of the most powerful financialinstitutions this world has ever seen, exploited the creativetensions among our business leaders, farmers and generalpublic, the loss of local control and the less-than-demo-cratic decision-making processes of our state and federalgovernments.

Our little piece of God’s Country turned into justanother prize – control of the Commons – in that ancientconflict between the rich and the rest of us.

The Commons: Public Use and StewardshipThe concept of “The Commons” goes back to medievalEurope where the law of the realm recognized that cer-tain natural resources or “real estate” belonged to all thepeople, and that its ownership and access resided in thepublic domain for “the public good.” English colonistscarried this concept to the New World and built their vil-lages around the “town commons” where they corralledtheir animals for safe-keeping each night, and aroundwhich they built their meetinghouses, churches, homes,and businesses. The Commons then functioned in colo-nial America both as the physical epicenter and philo-sophical keystone of the “public good.”

The physical Commons has morphed into some “setasides” of natural resources that belong to the public,some more than others, at least theoretically. We’re allfamiliar with state/national parks; internationally recog-nized offshore limits; public access to seashore, lakes,rivers; regulated access to aquifers, mineral rights, airways,and electronic bandwidths. The more prosaic forms of“public good” – like recognizing the value in keeping thevillage green for grazing animals — have evolved into acomplex web of local, state, and federal government spon-sored “public works” or “public services” that range fromtown water-and-sewer to transportation systems, to healthcare, public assistance, and municipal electric utilities.

Stewardship, in this conversation, simply means thepublic’s responsibility to maintain the health of the Com-mons for future generations. And the public’s track recordreflects the full range of the human condition – frominspired care of sacred sites (e.g., declared wildernessareas) to utter neglect and abuse (most rivers in theUnited States at one time or the other).

Vermonters’ care of the Connecticut River watersheddevolved from most respectful to shameful, before earn-ing its current reputation as a “green” or environment-friendly, state. One has only to read Charles Mann’s 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and

Foley continued from page 1


Our little piece of God’s Country (Vermont)

turned into just another prize in that ancient

conflict between the rich and the rest of us.


reflect on the healthy, sustainable lifestyles of the origi-nal stewards of Vermont – Abenaki and other indige-nous tribes – to discredit the victor’s propaganda aboutignorant savages. More recent mining of historical factshas painted another picture: of a healthy, high-mindedand outright handsome indigenous people living in sus-tainable harmony with Mother Nature and their neigh-bors. It was the Indians, according to Mann, whoregarded the European tourists as inferior stock – “phys-ically weak, sexually untrustworthy, atrociously ugly andjust plain smelly.”

But aside from some limited forms of advanced tech-nology (predominantly iron wares and weapons – loud,but inaccurate, muskets), what guaranteed Europeans’supremacy lay in their immune systems. It was only afterEuropean-introduced diseases (starting with viral hepati-tis that erased 90 percent of the tribal populations alongthe New England coastline during a three-year windowfrom 1616 to 1619) had so decimated the indigenoustribes that the beleaguered survivors could be stereo-typed as something akin to the shadows of their formerselves. Colonists then pushed their way inland against theuneven resistance of the survivors, sending new waves ofdisease (measles, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria) ahead likeshock troops. By the mid-1700s the relentless pressure ofcolonization, marked by a dark, slow-motion dance ofpeaceful co-habitation, raids, outright battles and theEuropeans’ innovative, unilateral strategy of massacringentire villages, had worked its way up the Hudson andConnecticut river and down the Champlain Valley andspilled over the spine of the Green Mountains.

In a geological instant, by the mid-1800s the new Ver-monters had over-logged and then over-grazed by sheepfarming the Connecticut watershed to the point wherethe land had lost its natural sponge-like ability to absorbrainfall and release the water over time. As a result,unchecked run-off made the Connecticut River and itstributaries run wild after storms and in the spring, thefloods repeatedly destroying railroad lines and inundatingtowns and farm lands. Damming many of the rivers forhydropower was not an option in the 1800s.

So not until Vermonters reluctantly allowed the wood-lands to grow back and made the transition to dairy farm-ing in the second half of the 1800’s did the watershedrecover its ability to store run-off. Experts agree that 60percent to 70 percent of the Connecticut River’s daily flowcomes from the watershed’s slow release of groundwater.

Indeed, it has been Vermonters’ responsible stewardshipof the watershed –displayed in the popular images of pas-toral Vermont’s rolling mix of woodlands, farms and smallvillages – that produces the “white coal,” the hydropowerpotential of the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers.

Corporations in Check: the Original Charters ofIncorporation Commercial interests also access the Commons to extractnatural resources, be it farming, logging, mining and soon. The inherent questions of extraction versus exploita-tion did not escape the settlers in North America. It canbe argued that the abuses of the English-chartered corpo-rations such as the East India Company and the Hudson’sBay Company triggered the American Revolution. TheAmerican colonists of all socio-economic ranks – fromlaborers, small farmers, traders and artisans, to the landedgentry – opposed these “multi-territorial” corporations

which King George and Parliament used to exploit natu-ral resources and human labor to extend their controlover the British colonies.

The Boston Tea Party, after all, was not a minor act ofcivil disobedience. The activists destroyed $2 millionworth of that precious commodity. They were protestingthe punitive taxes on the colony’s businesses that weredesigned to give the East India Company a monopoly con-trol of trade on tea and other necessities. Here was bornthe rallying cry of “no taxation without representation!”

Having defeated English corporate imperialism, therevolutionaries did not grant executive, judicial, or mili-

tary sectors the authority to charter corporations.Instead, they made certain that their elected representa-tives issued charters, one at a time, for a specific publicpurpose (building a bridge or dam), for a limited span oftime (10-20 years), with the requirement that the projectbe turned over to the state or town at the expiration ofthe charter.

A charter of incorporation was regarded as a privilege– and with that privilege came the corporate obligation toserve the public interest. Vermont, like other states,issued explicit rules governing legal relationships betweenstockholders, managers, and directors, held directors,

managers, and stockholders liable for the harmful reper-cussions of their corporate decisions, and in generaldefined and subordinated the corporate entity.

The bottom line is that for the first half of U.S. historycorporations served the public good at the pleasure of thegranting authority. And so legislatures routinely revokedcorporate charters, or allowed the charter to expire andcorporations to be dissolved – at any time when the pub-lic’s representatives determined that a corporation hadfailed the test of “serving the public good.” Our early Ver-mont history is chock full of experiments in privatelyfunded roads and postal services that ultimately failed tomeet the criteria of the “public good.”

The Corporate Coup and the Emergence of Investor-Owned-UtilitiesWhat happened to this system of state control over cor-porations? In 1886, the federal government recognized“corporate personhood.” Over the next 120 years, Wash-ington coupled these newly acquired corporate-person-hood rights and privileges with federal jurisdiction overinterstate trade to erode state rights and state control overcorporations.

The emergence of large, powerful corporations hasheated up the debates around the Commons versus cor-porations, public versus private, democracy versus devel-opment, socialization versus privatization.

The question of what entity – public or private – woulddo the best job of delivering reliable, affordable electricityto Vermonters lands smack in the middle of this debate.It’s a rhetorical question; the reality is that the private sec-tor has basically controlled Vermont’s electric power sys-tem over the past 100 years.

First, there’s a lesson in looking at who has been mind-ing the store for the past century while Vermont con-sumers deal with some of the nation’s most volatile elec-tric rates. Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) and

Foley continued from previous page


Laborers construct an early wooden “crib”-style dam in southern Vermont. PHOTO COURTESY OF BRATTLEBORO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

As the Vernon dam was being built other con-

struction crews built extensive transmission

lines from Vernon to eastern Massachusetts.

This orientation of infrastructure flipped the

switch; there was no way to direct significant

power flow back to Brattleboro.

Green Mountain Power (GMP) are the big boys. Theyservice six out of seven of our electric customers, residen-tial and industrial, as regulated monopolies owned byshareholders. They’re really IOUs (investor-owned utili-ties). IOUs are large corporations guaranteed a 10-percentor higher return-on-investment for their shareholdersabove and beyond the costs of doing business, within theAmerican corporate culture of generous managementsalaries and perks.

Storming the Commons: The IOU’s Trojan Horse atthe Gate By the turn of the century, Vermont’s Brattleboro andWindham County had achieved a high level of prosper-ity based on the small business model and a balancebetween economic activity – agricultural, transporta-tion, retail services, and manufacturing – and the pru-dent utilization of the Commons – properly stewardedgrazing lands, woodlands, mineral springs, and the twomajor watersheds.

All along the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers’ numer-ous tributaries, several hundred water-powered mills,many with complementary steam plants, employed thou-sands and produced flour, textiles, and hundreds of differ-ent wood products from matches to chairs, as well aspowering metal manufacturing machinery. Mirroring theAge of Water Power in New England, a high point indecentralized, indigenous renewable-energy production,Brattleboro prospered, its practically self-sufficient econ-omy exporting a wide range of manufactured goods to

markets throughout the region. By 1900, Brattleboro wasthe healthy and “happening” gateway to Vermont.

It was natural then for people living along the recentlytamed Connecticut to dream about harnessing its awe-some power. Back in 1883, Governor Fuller had commis-sioned a survey of the feasibility of constructing a damand canals on the Great River itself at Brattleboro to pro-vide waterpower for manufacturing based on the exten-sive, efficient public-utility model down in Holyoke,Massachusetts. This was before the transmission of elec-tricity was practical and the power of falling water had tobe converted to mechanical motion through a complexsystem of rotating shafts, overhead pulleys and belts. Theuncertainty of securing enough industries to use all thismechanical power on a profitable basis short-circuited thegovernor’s initiative.

Twenty years later when the alternating current (AC)technology for transmitting electricity over long distanceshad been developed, several forward-looking local busi-nessmen promoted the idea of a hydroelectric stationdown-river on the Connecticut bounded by Vernon, Ver-mont, and Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In 1902, they circu-lated a subscription paper and raised $1,700 for a prelimi-

nary survey of the river. Practically all of the businessmenin the “village” contributed about $50 apiece.

Next, a citizens meeting was held to choose a commit-tee of incorporators to take charge of the lobbying effort– W.H. Vinton, C.W. Dunham, C.A. Harris , Chas.Crosby, W.H. Backeet, J. Cray Estey, James Conland andC.C. Fitts. Dr. James Conland, Brattleboro’s representa-tive in the state legislature, introduced a bill for the char-ter of the Connecticut River Power Company – CRPC, orwhat we’ll call the “Power Company.” Despite someopposition, provisions were made that satisfied the adver-saries. The Legislature passed the Power Company char-ter in 1902.

To represent the towns across the river, E.C. Roberstonof Hinsdale, Willard Bill, Jr., of Westmoreland, T. NelsonHastings of Walpole, Fred Harris and O.E. Randall ofChesterfield, W. H. Goodnow of Keene, and J.H. Kimballof Marlboro were named as Power Company incorpora-tors. During hearings reflecting Vermont’s experience,this group successfully lobbied for a similar charter. TheNew Hampshire Legislature gave its approval in 1903.

Either knowingly or unknowingly, the 1902 Power Com-pany incorporators had created an IOU Trojan Horse.

Armed with the authority of the two state charters andbacked by out-of-state investors, the Power Companyincorporators, readily acknowledged as “town fathers,”sold the proposed enterprise (a complex and ambitiousenterprise) to the general public. Their promotions for adam and its 12,000-horsepower generating plant pro-claimed theirs a “Great Industrial Development Sure toTake Place in Brattleboro, Hinsdale and Vernon in theNear Future.” The state charters specified that townsadjoining the flowage had the right to take power forstreet lighting and other municipal uses. In fact, 3,000 ofthe 12,000-horsepower total output was to be reservedfor the benefit of existing and future manufacturing inBrattleboro.

According to a March 1907 Vermont Phoenix newspaperarticle, “The Brattleboro men and other local men whohave actively promoted this enterprise have taken everypossible care to protect all local interests, especially thoseof Brattleboro and Hinsdale, with reference to the devel-opment of future industrial undertakings.”

Finally, the incorporators and outside investors them-selves expressed a “wish to dispose of all the power possi-ble in Brattleboro, Hinsdale and Vernon.” No doubt thesekinds of assurances of “public use” ushered the TrojanHorse into the place of public acceptance.

Bait and Switch, Buy-in and Eminent DomainThe “public use” carrot had earlier convinced the state leg-islatures to grant the power of eminent domain to thePower Company. There are always tradeoffs when naturalresources are put to use. Damming a major river is noexception. The Vernon dam would create a lake eight mileslong, flooding hundreds of acres and dislocating homes,roads, railroads and valuable farmland. Initial estimateswere that the project would require an investment of $1million, due in part to high compensation expenses. Therespective state charters empowered the Power Companyin these words: “Said corporation shall be capable of takingand holding any estate, real and personal, necessary for thepurposes of said corporation.” According to a newspaperaccount in the Vermont Phoenix, condemnation – or taking– proceeding were used to secure necessary property.

Since eminent domain is sometimes regarded as a radi-

cal step, even a “despotic power” of government, it hasbeen constrained historically by two factors: an obligationto pay just compensation, and more important, that theproperty is acquired only for “public use.”

Eminent domain is usually thought of as involving thetaking of land and other forms of fixed property for pub-lic use such as the building of highways and railroads.Government is also expected to protect the right to usewater, a resource that for centuries has been considered“the Commons” – common to all and property of none.As explained in Legal Control of Water Resources, “The pub-lic retains an interest in every water right, and all waterrights are defined in terms of the public interest.” ThePower Company charters also specified that, “said corpo-ration shall have the power and authority to . . . developthe water power of the Connecticut river . . . and to useand sell water power therefrom for municipal and manu-facturing purposes.”

In legal terms the right given the Power Company was“a right of use, and that use must be ‘reasonable’ or ‘ben-eficial’ which usually means that the water must be put tosome use that benefits the community as a whole, ratherthan just the owner.”

The Vermont and New Hampshire legislatures, inother words, empowered a private, for-profit companywith powers of eminent domain and rights to water usebecause the legislators expected that the electricity wouldbe distributed for public use and community benefit.

The editors of the Vermont Phoenix had certainly swal-lowed the bait. A March 1907 editorial about the Connecti-cut River Dam posing the question “What Are We Goingto Do About It?” answered with unbridled enthusiasm: “allvalues will inevitably be strengthened, and if we all takehold together on long lines under wise leadership, we shallsee a permanent and substantial growth such as has neverbefore been possible.” It was expected that because theprice of the proposed hydroelectric power was “so muchbelow the actual cost of developing steam power, being nomore than one-half, or even less” that “the local situation[would be] very attractive to manufacturing enterprises. Itis a natural advantage that few towns in central New Eng-land can offer to new industrial movements.”

Finally, the editors concluded that, “The essential fact isthat the industrial development and prosperity of Brattle-boro are assured today as they have never been before inthe history of the town.”

The Switch Slams Shut: Corruption in WindhamCountyIn 1903, our local leaders and state legislators traded awaya magnificent slice of our Commons for a promise. Well,how well did the deal shake out?

While the local Power Company incorporators wereselling the Vernon dam project up here in Vermont, thePower Company’s major players down there – wealthyBoston-based financiers – had recognized a growing powershortage in large industrial cities of eastern Massachusetts.These utility speculators were looking to the relativelyremote and untapped northern New England hydroresources. As the Vernon dam was being built, its outputwas upgraded from 12,000 to 28,000 horsepower, and otherPower Company construction crews built extensive trans-mission lines from Vernon to eastern Massachusetts. Thisorientation of infrastructure flipped the switch. There wasno way to direct significant power flow back to Brattleboro.



Southern Vermonters experienced early on

the “resource curse” that bankrupts develop-

ing countries, when outside interests exploit

local resources to the detriment of the envi-

ronment and indigenous people.



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The Power Company’s next major project, the Deer-field River System, was a monster technically and a mon-ster ethically. The Whitingham dam dwarfed any existingNew England dam. The Power Company drained muchof southeastern Vermont and submerged thousands ofacres of farmland, entire villages and miles of roads andrailways – all of which required expensive relocation. ThePower Company augmented the dam work with addi-tional transmission lines that linked the Deerfield damswith the Vernon dam, to further the goal of exporting thepower south.

One sidebar to the Power Company’s invasion is that

they maximized their initial bait-and-switch scam with anaggressive flurry of another form of white-collar extortion,the IOU special version of the old carrot-and-stick combi-nation. The Power Company promised a stable, affordableelectricity supply while threatening potential customerswith their financial and legal clout – to buy up water rightsand dams from the mills on the Connecticut and Deerfieldtributaries. In a final coup-de-gras to independent powerproducers, the Power Company refused to sign power sup-ply contracts with local mills unless they agreed to signover and/or destroy their dams and hydroelectric genera-tors. Power Company crews went in and destroyed waterwheels and electrics with sledge hammers and crowbars.

The net result was that hundreds of WindhamCounty’s water/steam mills lost access to their own inex-pensive, local power – what we now call decentralized or“distributed” power. Our small businesses and towns fellvictim to the 100-year history of IOU centralized powerand inflated rates. Therefore, in their first interactionswith a major IOU, southern Vermonters learned thatlocal industry declined in the areas of large hydroelectricdevelopment – not to mention their loss of prime riverbottomland and the expense of relocating towns, homes,businesses and roads.




The Blood-Letting ContinuesA hundred years ago, Brattleboro’s industrialdevelopment and prosperity hummed alongthe Whetstone Brook with the sounds ofwaterwheels and steam engines. Back then,local ownership of renewable resources gaveBrattleboro the “comparative economicadvantage” that promised a secure future.

But the Trojan Horse, incorporated as theConnecticut River Power Company, gainedentrance into our thriving community withthe promise of an endless supply of cheaphydropower. The newspapers confidentlyboasted, “Brattleboro’s offering to newindustries . . . is unlimited power at nominalprice.” Today, the relative silence at ourtown’s crown jewels – the Book Press, BoiseCascade, Dunham Shoe Factory, Fullflex –and their prosperous setting – the numeroussmall manufacturing sites along the Whet-stone Brook – have migrated into the RiverGarden, a once-promising glass-roofedarcade billed as the heart of downtown,which lies vacant as the local merchant asso-ciation and select board argue over who’sgoing to pay to keep the pipes from freezing.

Some might argue that Windham Countyand the Deerfield Valley never recoveredfrom the invasion of the Power Company.Southern Vermonters experienced early onthe “resource curse” that currently bank-rupts developing countries that witness out-side interests exploiting their resources tothe detriment of the environment andindigenous people. As some humorists have pointed out,“Vermont is a Third-World country, but the natives don’trealize it.” In any case, the die was cast for a century-longstruggle between Vermonters and IOUs.

What happened to all that cheap hydropower from theVernon and Deerfield river dams? The IOU owners shipthe vast majority of the power down “South” – via thegreater New England grid to our neighbors, especially

Massachusetts and in particular, its eastern cities, home ofthe Power Company’s original investors and pyramids ofownership/management.

Today, TransCanada, a multi-national energy corpora-tion that makes its money largely from American con-sumers paying to have Canadian natural gas pumpedacross the border, and the new owner of the entire Con-necticut/Deerfield hydro power system, is the latest IOUinvestor to milk our Windham County “cash cows.”

To add insult to injury, when Vermonters’ representa-

tives go looking for electrical power sources to replace theprojected losses of Hydro Quebec and Vermont Yankee,the Connecticut/Deerfield system lies outside the imme-diate solution set. TransCanada holds the ownershipcards and the ghosts of Power Company hold the hook-up card. Remember, the original IOU built the transmis-sion system, the high-voltage power lines, expressly forexport. Since the current transmission infrastructure isnot designed to connect the Connecticut/Deerfield damsystems directly to Vermont’s consumers, rerouting thepower will no doubt require negotiations with ISO-NE,the “keepers” of the New England grid.

Take a quick glance at the map of transmission lines. Itclearly shows the six major lines “bleeding” Vermont –like a mad medieval physician “bleeding” the state for itsown good (promise of cheap power, jobs, prosperity) andthen selling the precious fluid to desperate vampires (theNew England grid’s southern mercantile customers).

And it gets worse. For instance, the current power bro-kers – CVPS, VELCO and ISO-NE – have just completed ayear-long process to plan for a $150-$180 million invest-ment in the “Southern Loop” – that section of the gridthat supplies Windham and Bennington counties. Themoney will go primarily to improve the reliability of thecurrent transmission/distribution system that will becalled upon to carry projected increased loads. Some lim-ited funding will also be targeted for load-reduction(energy conservation/efficiency) and power generation,preferably local sites along the Southern Loop.

Meanwhile, TransCanada is currently “uprating” the

Vernon Dam from its 28-MW capacity to somethingcloser to its FERC-licensed 44-MW limit. A prime candi-date for pumping more juice into Vermont’s SouthernLoop, right? Wrong. Although the Vernon Dam lies lessthan 10 miles from Brattleboro, less than five miles fromthe major Southern Loop substation at Vermont Yankee,the transmission line connecting the dam to the NE gridtravels in the opposite direction. South. A classic exampleof “you can’t get there from here.”


89

89

89

91

91

91

89

MASSACHUSETTS

NEW HAMPSHIRE

MooreComerfordMcIndoes

Ryegate

Wilder

Bellows Falls

VernonDeerfield

VERMONT

To add insult to injury, when Vermonters go

looking for electrical power sources to replace

the projected losses of Hydro Quebec and Ver-

mont Yankee, the Connecticut/Deerfield sys-

tem lies outside the immediate solution set.

VE

RMONT SOCIETY

VSSE

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Vermont Societyfor the

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u

Founder of the John Dewey Award for outstanding contributions to the

education of young people in America. Awarded annually at the University of Vermont

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Recalling the past—Interpreting the present—

Anticipating the future

Contact information:VSSEP.O. Box Brandon, VT [email protected]


Looking at a Vermont map, one can see the the great hydropower heist at work, as out-of-state corporate interests colonize Vermont's hydropower/energy commons and bleed it dryto enrich their own private bottom line.


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VERMONT LIBRE Bush’s Reign of Terror By Thomas Naylor

Surely they’ve got to be kidding, if we are supposed tobelieve that on September 11, 2001, nineteen Muslim

fanatics armed only with box cutters pulled off the great-est act of terrorism in history under the command of acharismatic, sinister-looking, wealthy, CIA-trained, Mus-lim fundamentalist Saudi named Osama bin Laden fromhis high-tech cave in the rugged mountains ofAfghanistan. Without one shred of evidence, the U.S.government claims that these Arab terrorists comman-deered four jetliners, brought down the Twin Towers ofthe World Trade Center, severely damaged the Pentagon,and almost succeeded in destroying the White House andthe Capitol. And they did all of this because they “hatedfreedom.”

Anyone questioning the details of this incredible taleis said to be a “conspiracy theorist” and is not be takenseriously.

If 9/11 were the work of Muslim terrorists, how is itpossible that over five years later not a single Muslimsuicide bomber has managed to surface anywhere in theUnited States? If “Islamofascism” is the threat we aretold it is by the federal government, surely a random sui-cide bomber would have found his way into the SuperBowl, Madison Square Garden, or Times Square onNew Year’s Eve and killed a few hundred people. Butthere has been no such event. Absolutely nothing!

Yet within a matter of days after 9/11, Mr. Bushdeclared war on “terrorism” (a euphemism for Islam),and called for the invasion of Afghanistan to take outOsama bin Laden and other key operatives of his AlQaeda network. Then in March 2003, he invaded Iraq,

claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction andthat there was a direct link between Al Qaeda and Iraqileader Saddam Hussein, neither of which happened tobe true. We now know that Team Bush had been plan-ning the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11.

If 9/11 were orchestrated by bin Laden, then whoprovided the intelligence, the logistical support, theorganizational skills, and the financial support toachieve this remarkable feat? Who stood to benefit fromthis act of terror? The Pentagon, the CIA, Israel, theWhite House, defense contractors, security firms, andmultinational oil companies.

Is Osama bin Laden a real person or merely a creationof Bill Clinton and enhanced by George W. Bush? FewAmericans had ever heard of him until President Clintonfirst introduced us to him in the midst of the MonicaLewinsky affair in 1998. Osama took the rap for the bomb-ing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, thus pro-viding the justification for Clinton’s pre-emptive missilestrikes against alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan and aSudanese chemical plant – all of which deflected publicopinion away from Monica. Could it be that Osama ismuch more useful to Team Bush as an elusive demonrather than as a dead martyr like Saddam Hussein?

Is it possible that the real purpose of 9/11 was todemonize Islam so as to justify transforming the UnitedStates into a technofascist state and hegemonizing thesupply of oil in the Middle East to keep the U.S. eco-nomic engine running?

When Vice President Dick Cheney convened a secretmeeting of energy industry executives and government

officials in early 2001, it’s quite likely that the problem ofPeak Oil was at the top of the agenda. To deal with theproblem, he apparently only seriously considered onestrategy – taking control of the Middle Eastern supply ofoil. His challenge lay in finding a politically correct way topresent the idea to the American people and our allies. The9/11 attacks provided the perfect solution. By placing all ofthe blame for 9/11 on Muslim fanatics and trading heavilyon Americans’ fear of terrorism, Team Bush paved the wayfor a global war with Islam – a war against “Islamofascists.”The real target was not Muslims, but rather their oil.

America’s foremost technofascist ally, Israel, couldhardly contain its enthusiasm for the war on terror.With a little luck, America might take out both ofIsrael’s archenemies, Iraq and Iran. Britain’s Tony Blairand Australia’s John Howard were quick to join thetechno-fascist alliance against terror. More recentlyCanada’s Stephen Harper, Germany’s Angela Merkel,and Pope Benedict XVI have signed on as well.

Seen this way, President Bush’s so-called “war on ter-ror” is an insidious campaign to create fear and hatredamong Americans and Europeans toward Muslims, so asto rationalize an imperial foreign policy of full-spectrumdominance aimed at doing whatever is necessary to con-trol their oil in the Middle East. •

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As the second half of the Great Hydropower Heiststory will show, for the balance of the 20th century andinto the 21st, the IOU raiders relentlessly continued theirinvasion of our state and solidified their exploitiveschemes and structures. Turns out that all Vermonters,not just the folks in Windham County, have been solddown any number of “rivers.”

But the final chapter on “The Damn Dam Story ” hasnot yet been written. The Dam Deal is still alive. Nextissue we’ll set the stage for the future. Who will play thevillain? The hero? The Legislature, a governor, municipalutility, reformed IOU, Decommission-VY-Starting–in-2012 coalition, local energy cooperative? Who will playchampion to our watershed Commons?•

Foley continued from page 20


Just a few weeks ago I took seven large boxes of booksfrom my library to give to the E.F. Schumacher Library

just outside of Great Barrington, Massachusetts – booksI’d gathered for years on decentralism, anarchism, com-munity, separatism, and the like – and I was struck onceagain by the depth, tenacity, and importance of the move-ment to which I was contributing.

For the Schumacher Society and its library were estab-lished to provide an intellectual and activist home for whatwe can call, loosely, the decentralist movement. This is theThird Way that has existed for a century or so outside thevarieties of centralists, both conservative and liberal; amovement that has vigorously put forth cogent alterna-tives to the modern capitalist industrial nation-state.

The Schumacher has most of the library and all thepapers, speeches, and articles of Fritz Schumacher, theeconomist and philosopher whose work outlining thedecentralist way went far beyond the notion of “small isbeautiful” – however trenchant that idea may be – toinclude self-managed firms, Buddhist (“right livelihood”)economics, intermediate technology, organic farming,alternative energy and matters of scale in all humanendeavors. But it also has the libraries and papers of anumber of other decentralist figures.

Among them are George Benello, a scholar and activistwhose library emphasized worker ownership, alternativetechnology, and the Yugoslavian decentralized economy;Ralph Borsodi, the founder of the School of Living andkeystone of the homesteading “back-to-the-land” move-ment in the 1930s; Richard Bliss, a teacher whose materialconcentrates on the quasi-anarchistic Catholic Workermovement and the English Distributists (who were alsocalled leaders of “a third way”); Henry Geiger, for fourdecades editor of the decentralist weekly MANAS, whosecopies are available on line from the Library; Robyn vanEn, the creator of the Community Supported Agriculturemovement; and Bob Swann, a co-founder (with JohnMcClaughry, David Ehrenfeld, and me) of the Schu-macher Society in 1980, who for years acted as its presi-dent and guiding light, as well as serving as a leading the-orist of land trust organizations.

That’s an impressive group, and it argues that thedecentralist movement has not only been wide-reachingand comprehensive but durable and impactful. No, it hasnot had the kind of support from the capitalist systemthat has created and sustained the conservative and neo-conservative movements or the various do-gooding lib-eral parties and unions – largely because it generally stoodopposed to large-scale corporate capitalism and the large-scale governments that were its handmaidens. So it hasgone along with small and under-funded organizations,working in different parts of the country on differentparts of the problem, sometimes without even knowingthe others existed. But the point is that it has gone along,for more than eighty years (if we figure its modern begin-nings with the Distributists and Southern Agrarians in the1920s), and it is still to be found everywhere.

Let me see if I can distill the essence of decentralism,and its appeal.

Decentralism is the basic human condition. The com-munity is the oldest human institution, found absolutelyeverywhere throughout the world in all kinds of societies.

As Rene Dubos has pointed out, more than 100 billionhuman beings have lived on earth since the late Paleolithicperiod, and “the immense majority of them have spenttheir entire life as members of very small groups . . . rarelyof more than a few hundred persons.”

Decentralism is the historic norm, the underlying sys-tem by which people live even where there arises, fromtime to time, those centralizing empires that historianslike to focus on and pretend are the principal systems ofhumankind. Empires are infrequent, do not last long, andare sparsely located. Yes, there was a Greek empire, forexample, but it lasted effectively for fewer than 20 years;the real story of Greece is long centuries of decentraliza-tion, each city-republic with its own constitution, its ownsocial life and cultural peculiarities, hundreds of separatecommunities that created the Hellenic civilization that isstill a marvel of the world.

Decentralism is deeply American, from the anti-statePuritans, through the communalistic Quakers and Men-nonites and religious sects, and on to the originalcolonies, independent bodies protective of their specialdifferences and characters. The war that separated usfrom Britain was not a revolutionary war – we desired tohave our own country, not take over Britain’s – but asecessionist war. A unified state did eventually arise afterit, the product of powerful banking and mercantile forcesdesiring centralized authority, but it was not especiallycentralist at that time, and even then contrary forces

proved powerful, too. Emerson and Whitman andThoreau gave voice to the old New England traditions oftown-meeting democracy and parish rule. Utopians andcommunards like Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker,and Josiah Warren gave voice to the yearning for commu-nity control and villages free from outside interference.

In the 20th century, that tradition continued with theCountry Life movement and other communal impulses;with Lewis Mumford and the original Regional PlanAssociation, devoted to a resurgence of regionalism;with the Southern Agrarians, determined separatistsexplicitly – and eloquently – opposed to the nationalgovernment and its economic hegemony. And think ofHenry George and the Georgists, Paul Goodman,Arthur Morgan and his Community Service organiza-tion, Ivan Illich, Gary Snyder, Helen and Scot Nearingand their Good Life Center, Wendell Berry, ThomasBerry, Chellis Glendinning and the neo-Luddites, JerryMander and the anti-globalists – well, the list could goon into the thousands.

Decentralism continues even now, it is alive and well inthis country and around the world. I cannot say it is adominant mode, anywhere, but I can point to all thoseineradicable threads to be seen throughout the Americanscene: the wonderful bioregional movement, for exam-ple; the resurgent Indian tribal societies and organizationsfor tribal culture; the growth of worker-owned firmsfrom 1600 twenty years ago to more than 10,000 today;the phenomenon of cooperative businesses, which as of2005 had revenues of nearly $1trillion; the spread of suchefforts as community currencies, community land trusts(100 of them today, at least ) and community-supportedagriculture (1,140 farms) and local farmers’ markets(4,400 in 2006); the 250,000 private government associa-tions housing more than 50 million people.

All of this is evidence that this great tradition, this basichuman impulse, is still to be found in the United States,no matter how autocratic a power it has become.

And in the rest of the world, as well. Separatism, ofcourse, is a powerful force in almost every land, famouslyin Canada, Spain, Italy, France, and virtually everywhere inAfrica, existing in a hundred splinter movements and“independence” parties and groupings wherever you look.The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia split up. Montenegrobecame an independent state in 2006; Kosovo is becomingone, in its own way. Catalonia gained significantautonomous powers in 2006, as did Aceh in Indonesia.More than 50 percent of the people of Scotland in a recentpoll wanted complete independence from England, andthat seems likely to happen within a couple of years.

There it is: the Third Way. Ever powerful. And we – you– are a part of that great tradition. •

DISPERSIONS The Decentralist Movement: A Third Way By Kirkpatrick Sale

Decentralism is the historic norm, the

underlying system by which people live even

where there arises, from time to time, those

centralizing empires that historians pretend

are the principal systems of humankind.

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