One year after the
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which, overturning over 100 years of precedent, opened a floodgate of corporate money into election campaigns, Virginia Lyons (D-VT), has introduced
legislation (full text of bill not yet available, articles
here and
here) in the Vermont State Senate to amend the United States Constitution to explicitly state that corporations are
not persons.
This would overturn the controversial notion of
corporate personhood which was established in the 1800s. Controversial not only for the unequal distribution of rights and responsibilities among humans and corporations, some, like
Thom Hartmann (
previously), have claimed that the notion of corporate personhood was established as an
intentional misinterpretation of the decision as recorded by court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis, former president of the Newburgh & New York Railway Co.
[more inside]
posted by laminarial
on Jan 24, 2011 -
102 comments
"It had a sign outside it saying Museum of the Americas, but no one ever visited it. Anyway, so he opened this door, turned on the lights one by one, and
the sight that met my eyes is something I shall never, ever forget because instead of a congregation of people in this disused church,
it was a congregation of portraits."
Philip Mould, an art expert and a host of the British version of Antiques Roadshow, describes an early business trip where he met
Earle Newton. Newton's home grown Museum of the Americas,
a collection of over 300 rare 17th- and 18th-century English and American portraits, was housed in a nondescript church on the side of a road in rural Vermont. The collection, later valued at over nine million dollars, became the
Earle W. Newton Center for British and American Studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design upon Newton's death.
[via]
posted by jessamyn
on Nov 9, 2010 -
14 comments
First, there was the
Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. Now, everyone's favorite super-premium conglomerate-owned sticking-to-its-righteous-roots ice cream company
has transformed "Chubby Hubby" into Hubby Hubby (only in VT, only for September), in support of same sex marriage, which is legal in Vermont as of this month. No word yet whether Iowa-based Winnebago will follow suit with a specially-named RV.
posted by ericbop
on Sep 3, 2009 -
46 comments
American Elf is a daily diary comic by James Kochalka. The latest strip is always free but the archives are subscription only. He also a musician, his most famous song being
Hockey Monkey, and he has number of songs up for free on his site.
[via Eddie Campbell who says: "Beginning in 1998 Kochalka took the form of daily strip and imbued it with a life that has been missing from it for a long time. Since then he has made sure his daily round is not finished until a strip is done. Another thing I like about it is the way he carefully avoids any taint of 'continuity'. There is no story here, just the eternal incidentalness of life as it is lived."]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 29, 2007 -
21 comments
"All Creeds. All Breeds. No Dogmas Allowed." Whether you are a dog person or not, you have probably seen Stephen Huneck's
woodcut illustrations,
sculptures,
furniture or
children's books. The man clearly likes his canines. About eight years ago, a
wild idea came to him shortly after he returned home with his wife and three dogs following a near-fatal illness that left him in a coma for two months. He was inspired to build a non-denominational chapel on his 400-acre mountain-top farm in St. Johnsbury (named "Dog Mountain," naturally), and to style it in the manner of a small village church built in Vermont around 1820. He then opened
Dog Chapel to the public.
"I look at this chapel as the largest artwork of my life, and my most personal." he says.
It looks cool. Woof.
posted by miss lynnster
on May 29, 2007 -
16 comments
Interactive Toxic Town from Natl Library Medicine This NLM link shows relatively small everyday sources of toxics around town. Most worry over envirodisasters like
Love Canal and
Libby Montana but toxics in homes, schools, and small biz can add up to a bigger dose for most of us. The toxic town thread from June 2nd shows the incredible scale of industrial negligance at the nasty sites. Time capsules are neat when you stumble into something gramps left in the attic to remember his hey day. But hazwaste sites are time capsules of a different sort, left behind by industries escaping their environmental liabilities. These sites tell the story of utter disregard for the environment and community as hazwaste was poured down floor drains, dumped into soil and unlined lagoons, or directed into nearby streams. Most of us live far enough away from these chemical bullseyes to not be directly affected. But even more unbelieveably, sometimes the industry was able to pawn off its waste as "clean fill", getting rid of the stuff and spreading it all over town. Prime examples:
Grand Junction CO and
Stratford CT. But you don't need that for your street to harbor toxic waste - there are thousands of small waste sites in various stages of discovery or cleanup embedded in every state, rural/suburban/urban towns alike. Leaking tanks beneath gas pumps, dry cleaners, small industry, farms, nurseries,and even some homes can be toxics hot spots.
Vermont's statewide hazwaste site list broken down by town is an example - it would be smart to find the list for your town.
posted by whatstoxic
on Oct 11, 2006 -
12 comments
Senator James
Jeffords (I-VT) has decided not to run for re-election in 2006 and Bernie Sanders will run for the Senate seat. Major General
Martha Rainville (adjutant general of the Vermont Army National Guard) is thinking of making a run as a Republican.
posted by C17H19NO3
on May 9, 2005 -
19 comments
An announcement from Trey: "So Coventry will be the final Phish show...For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey."
posted by methree
on May 25, 2004 -
20 comments
6000 breathtaking aerial photos of American towns and other sites, with particularly good coverage of towns in New England (
MA,
VT,
CT,
NH,
RI,
ME). All of this by one photographer, Joseph Melanson, whose mission in life is "to show you facets of your environment that you never realized no matter how long you lived there."
posted by dougb
on Aug 6, 2003 -
23 comments
Howard Dean Get to know that name because you will likely be hearing it often in the coming months. The Governor of Vermont is currently the only Democratic presidential contender who has officially declared his candidacy. He is gaining press nationally and internationally as a potential breath of fresh air on the American political landscape. An interesting mix of liberal populism and traditional conservative fiscal responsibility, he is known to rub colleges from both sides of the ideological spectrum the wrong way. Regardless of your opinion on his politics, do you think this man have a shot? Do the proverbial square pegs in the Democratic and GOP round holes ever stand a chance? Will the Bush and Gore juggernauts forever push differing ideas into the realm of third parties or is there room for descent from within?
posted by EmoChild
on Aug 27, 2002 -
41 comments
The Strolling of the Heifers. It's not exactly the
running of the bulls, but Brattleboro, Vermont's "three-day festival about cows, small towns, small farms and the myriad things that make rural life special" hopes to support the local farming community, which has been
badly squeezed since the expiration of the Northeast Dairy Compact. It features (among other things) a
milking contest between U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senator James Jeffords, and U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders.
posted by mattpfeff
on May 13, 2002 -
7 comments
The new
weblog/site: take back vermont covers the the recent gay marriage ruling in Vermont and the flap it has caused for some of the more kooky right wing citizens. Many citizens have go so far as to openly display their bigotry by
posting signs in their yards. The best part about the site? Putting it at the domain of the people that oppose gay marriage, and asking people to deface the signs by
adding a ".COM" to them so they can see a site that asks folks to support the law and all the reasons why it should stand. Simply ingenious.
posted by mathowie
on Jul 30, 2000 -
6 comments
The same-sex domestic partnerships bill in Vermont has
been approved by the state's lawmakers. "
The continued denial of these legal protections, benefits and responsibilities to a small but vulnerable class of Vermont's citizens diminishes their humanity, dignity, freedom and independence." It's about damn time, hopefully other states will soon follow suit. Oh, and if you have a problem with this,
listen to this and let me know why you continue to have problems with it.
posted by mathowie
on Apr 25, 2000 -
12 comments
