Democrats and Progressives Push US War Machine in Vermont
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
01 February 18
Donald Trump loves the F-35 and so does Burlington City Council - that is
the real state of the union
This is a story primarily about corrupt practices by the Burlington City
Council, in its headlong determination to force a neighboring city to be the
base for a weapon of mass destruction, the nuclear capable F-35
fighter-bomber (in development since 1992, first flown in 2000, still not
reliably deployable in 2018, at a cost of $400 billion and counting). Yes,
the premise itself is corrupt: Burlington owns the airport in South
Burlington, so South Burlington has no effective say in how many housing
units Burlington destroys in South Burlington to meet environmental
standards for imposing the quiet-shattering F-35 jet on a community that
doesn't want it and won't benefit from it. The entire "leadership" of the
state of Vermont, mostly Democrats, has spent more than a decade making this
atrocity happen, with widespread media complicity. And you wonder how we got
Trump as President.
Opposition to basing the F-35 in a residential neighborhood is at least as
old as the mindless official support, and the opposition has been much more
articulate, thoughtful, and detailed. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat and
Burlington native, has been enthusiastic about militarizing his hometown
from the start, treating it as if it should be seen as an honorable piece of
pork from the military-industrial complex. Independent senator Bernie
Sanders, like Democratic congressman Peter Welch, has hedged slightly in his
support, but neither has come close to a cogently articulated position, much
less opposition. Governors of both parties have been cheerleaders,
especially Peter Shumlin, who took a junket to Florida to listen to an F-35
and decided it wasn't all that loud (which was shortly before he decided
universal healthcare wasn't all that necessary). Democratic mayor Miro
Weinberger, a self-described person-who-builds-things, capsulizes the
ostrich view of the F-35, saying, "I think this decision was made a long
time ago, and I have not heard a compelling reason to reopen it." He's like
everyone else in Vermont leadership who has chosen to challenge the
Pentagon's Big Muddy argument ("the big fool said to press on"), regardless
of how bogus Pentagon claims have become and despite their lack of
compelling reasons to base the F-35 in Vermont.
After decades of falling behind schedule, the Air Force still doesn't have
an F-35 ready to deploy in Vermont before September 2019, if then. With this
in mind, F-35 opponents at SAVE OUR SKIES FROM THE F-35s decided to try to
get the F-35 question on the ballot for the Burlington town meeting on March
6, 2018.
After drafting the petition, the SOS organizers presented it for approval as
to form by the Burlington City Attorney Eileen Blackwood. Blackwood approved
it. Volunteers gathered almost 3000 signatures in support of the petition,
as approved by Blackwood. In the ordinary course of event, an approved
petition with sufficient signatures goes on the ballot as presented.
That's true even for petitions like the one from the Burlington Anti-War
Coalition in 2005 calling for Vermont to bring US forces home from Iraq:
Full Resolution: "Shall the voters of the City of Burlington advise the
President and Congress that Burlington and its citizens strongly support the
men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces in Iraq and believe
that the best way to support them is to bring them home now?"
The city council supported this resolution, it passed in every ward in the
city (as well as in 46 other Vermont towns), and it had 65.2% voter support
in Burlington. That was easy in 2005, but thirteen years later, with a city
council dominated by people calling themselves Progressives and Democrats,
the idea of resisting the war machine became, somehow, troubling to at least
three city councilors: Republican Kurt Wright, up for re-election,
Independent David Hartnett, and council president Jane Knodell, a
Progressive whose re-election to the council in 2013 was based in part on
opposition to the F-35. She later voted against Progressive proposals to bar
the F-35 from Burlington International Airport or to delay any basing
decision. A tenured professor of economics at the University of Vermont,
Knodell is considered by one fellow councilor "probably the smartest person
at the table." She has acknowledged a desire to be mayor.
Confronted with a resolution that they opposed, Wright, Hartnett, and the
"smartest person at the table" decided to abort the democratic process, and
to do it dishonestly. They decided, without getting a single citizen's
signature, to put their own petition to the voters, with diametrically
opposed effect. They made the city attorney wobbly. The process could hardly
have been more corrupt in its intent. None of the three councilors responded
to an email inquiry asking, "What are you thinking?"
The SOS petition endorsed by almost 3000 voters is simple and direct:
"Shall we, the voters of the City of Burlington, as part of our strong
support for the men and women of the Vermont National guard, and especially
their mission to 'protect the citizens of Vermont,' advise the City Council
to:
1) request the cancellation of the planned basing of the F-35 at Burlington
International Airport, and
2) request instead low-noise-level equipment with a proven high safety
record appropriate for a densely populated area?"
The SOS website offers 20 support notes and eight citations supporting the
rationale of the petition. The Vermont National Guard mission - "protect the
citizens of Vermont" - comes from the Guard's website. SOS argues that
"citizens of Vermont" includes the people, mostly poor and/or immigrant,
whose houses are being destroyed and lives disrupted for the convenience of
a warplane with no relevant mission in the region.
Knodell, Wright, and Hartnett started their hatchet job by chopping out the
clause about the Guard's mission protecting Vermonters. They didn't say why,
just let the collateral damage lie there. They lied by adding a clause at
the end, "recognizing there may not be alternate equivalent equipment," a
lie of intent saved from being bold-faced by the inclusion of "may." This is
the Pentagon's position, that there is no Plan B, but that's absolutely
dishonest. The only reason there's no Plan B is because the Pentagon has
stalled on the issue for years. They could make a Plan B tomorrow if they so
chose. The Knodell amendment looks like a deliberate poison pill added in
perfect bad faith. That impression is reinforced when you get to the
preambulatory "whereas-es" the Knodell team put before the resolution to
weaken it further, but enough already.
The Knodell team didn't just run afoul of honest behavior and reasonable
democratic practice. Their plan to put their own resolution in place of a
properly prepared one looked to be illegal as well as unconstitutional.
This set up a confrontation for the city council meeting of January 29, at
which F-35 opponents were prepared to object to Knodell chicanery loudly and
strongly. The outcome was an anticlimax. The council voted 10-2 (Knodell for
it) to accept the SOS resolution as presented. Only Wright and Hartnett
dissented. Media coverage of the triumph of reasonable due process varied
from straightforward to vaguely mocking to somewhat peevish to rather
trivializing. None of the coverage talked about the attempted corruption
procedure leading up to the vote, much less the corrupt cultural morass that
the F-35 successfully masks with its stealth capability. As currently
assessed by the Pentagon, the F-35 can't shoot straight and has more than
200 other deficiencies, but Australia is going ahead buying 100 of them. An
Australian military strategic thinker observed dryly: "It's disappointing
that there's still deficiencies turning up fairly regularly in an aircraft
that we're already going to get about ten years later than we originally
thought."
The March 6 vote on the resolution is only advisory, so even if there is
overwhelming support for an alternative to the F-35, what are the odds of
such a democratic choice prevailing? This is the Trump era. He's asking for
the next budget to have $716 billion in military spending, and Vermont seems
to think getting some of that money is more important than anything else.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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