The Vermont Way: Recent Episodes…

...and more on the way in 2013

The Vermont Way: Restless Spirits and Popular Movements tells the state’s unique story from the time before European settlers to the present day, with a special emphasis on movements and memorable people. It's a popular multi-media history and an exploration of the qualities, contradictions and traditions that have shaped Vermont’s path.

     More than a dozen episodes have been released to date, along with a live presentation that includes rare photos, dramatic stories and new film. The following excerpts are currently available:

The Vermont Way Is Hard to Define 

The Path to Marriage Equality   VTDigger version
How Vermont Was Born

After the Revolution: The Road from Republic to State  VTD

Mormons and the Presidency  (with audio)  VTD

How Vermont Went Republican  VTD

Vermonters Go to the White House  VTD

Out of This World: The Chittenden Mysteries

Burlington: The Public Power Story  VTD

A Progressive Censors Red Emma  VTD

Boom and Bust in the Quarry Towns  VTD

The Parkway That Never Was  VTD  (also see The Vermont Movie)
The Road Not Taken (UVM talk) on Video

Voting Equality and the Hoff Effect  VTD

Local Control, Shorter Terms and Vermont’s Citizen Legislature  VTD

What is the Vermont Way? The term has been used to describe everything from the traditional way to make maple syrup and smart farming in general to a political campaign agenda and the ability to make something out of almost nothing. Sometimes it extends into the phrase “the Vermont way of life.” 

     

When he left the Republican Party Jim Jeffords said, “Independence is the Vermont Way.” In her autobiography Consuelo Northrup Bailey, the first female attorney admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court and the first female lieutenant governor in the nation, said the character of Vermont was defined by “everyday, common, honest people who unknowingly salted down the Vermont way of life with a flavor peculiar only to the Green Mountains.”

     The subtitle refers to the focus on major political, economic and social events, trends and personalities. The Vermont Way describes the state’s delicate dance of sovereignty and solidarity, independence and mutual aid. Covering centuries, this cross-platform production includes unique stories, sketches of dozens of key figures, and original analysis that explains how the Vermont Way has evolved.

     Excerpts from Maverick Chronicles, a Vermont memoir in progress, are also available:

Coming to Vermont 

Bennington Holds a Culture War

Living with Polarities

Bennington Breakdown

The Years of Living Bureaucratically

The Mayor and the Connector

Alternative Voices

In a Time of Democratic Distemper

Teachers and a School Without Walls

Signs of Change (2011)

Democrats Rising, Progressives in Eclipse

A comprehensive print edition is in development, featuring revealing insights about influential Vermonters, including revolutionary era leaders Matthew Lyon and Ethan Allen, Anti-Mason Governor William Palmer and feminist Clarina Nichols; railroad and marble tycoons, anti-slavery activists, major strikes and labor protests; Vermont-born Presidents Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge and progressive politicians James Burke and Ernest Gibson; portraits of Governors Phil Hoff, Tom Salmon, Richard Snelling, and Madeleine Kunin, as well as recent leaders like Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, James Jeffords and Peter Clavelle. Plus, the story of the Vermonter who rescued America from McCarthy.

Subscribe to The Vermont Way for articles and event announcements. 

See excepts at VTDigger.org

Mormons, Presidents and the Bilderberg Way

A Rebel News Round Up Podcast

Rebel News is off the air for a while, but new releases are here. Now available: Big Lies, my new E-book on "How Our Corporate Overlords, Politicians and Media Establishment Warp Reality and Undermine Democracy." Check on the free sample at Amazon, or buy it for download on Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or PC. Look for more details here.

Meanwhile, below in the podcast edition of Rebel News on The Howie Rose Show (WOMM-FM, 105.9), hosted by Phinneus Sonin, I tell a Mormon bedtime story -- Joseph Smith's tragic run for President -- plus the Vermont connection and the implications for today. Joined by FP Cassini, we also discuss the week's hot rumor -- the Bilderbergs want Rick Perry. It's all true, or almost. The segment originally aired on June 24, 2011. Just click and listen.

MAVERICK CHRONICLES, 6/24/2011

Excerpts from Rebel News Round Up, broadcast live on The Howie Rose Show at 11 a.m. Fridays on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington. This week: Exclusive interview with Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen*, patriotism and the first lady’s visit, Bernie Sanders v. the world – Koch Brothers Edition, Greece on the verge, the Afghan transition, and the rumor of the week. Plus, Can a Mormon be President?

Tune in weekly to The Radiator (WOMM-FM/LP)   Follow updates from Greg Guma on Twitter

The Howie Rose Show will be on break next week. We return July 8.

Sanders on the Koch Brothers Echo Chamber

There’s a new video out from Brave New Films, narrated by Bernie Sanders. After last week’s takedown of the NRC, are we seeing Bernie v. the World: And what would that graphic novel look like anyway?



Greece on the Verge of Collapse. Could Europe Follow? Are we all being structurally adjusted?

The Afghanistan Two-Step: Winding down or just transitioning? Obama announced 33,000 troop drawdown. But 100,000 will remain and a long-term presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq is projected.

Question of the Week: Can a Mormon be President?

Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman aren’t the first Mormons to seek the presidency. That honor goes to founder Joseph Smith, a Vermonter by birth who struck out for the west in revival days. Check out the story of Smith’s fateful 1844 run, and some thoughts about how things have changed.

Image Trouble: Complete Essay       Mormons and Vermont History

Rumor of the Week

If true, this one could be heavy. The rumor, being pushed hard by radio/conspiracy mogul Alex Jones, is that Rick Perry, the secession-spouting governor of Texas, is really the Bilderberg group’s pick for president. Jones claims that Perry’s candidacy is more proof that the shady, secretive, undemocratic global elite has plans to hold onto power while Americans are distracted by the delusion that they have a genuine choice.

The evidence? Well, Perry is a protégé of Karl Rove. He acts like a down-home populist, but that’s all it is. He is really George W. Bush 2.0. While mouthing Tea Party rhetoric about secession, shooting coyotes and courting Christian evangelicals, behind closed doors he has been quietly selling out Texas to globalist interests, auctioning off highways to foreign companies to turn them into profit-driven toll roads. The speculation that Perry is the Bilderberg group’s ace in the hole is based largely on the charge that he is a longtime, unwavering supporter of the NAFTA Superhighway and related New World Order infrastructure projects.

So, will it be the Mormons, the Tea Party and the Bilderberg's, all vying for the withering soul of the GOP as we catapult toward judgement day? Is this another new graphic novel, The Chosen Ones, or just one way of seeing the race. Can it happen here? .... Anyway, until next time

CELEBRATE YOUR INDEPENDENCE!

*Howie Rose Show Interview video is being developed

Image Trouble: Can a Mormon Be President?

Of the major religions – other than Muslim – people in the US are least comfortable with the prospect of a Mormon president, says a new Pew Research study. Even evangelical Christians, a core constituency for many a Republican hopeful, tend to see the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) as a secretive, possibly heretical cult. Thus, if Mitt Romney does become the GOP’s nominee in 2012, this could be a tougher obstacle than his association with health care reform or his oft-discussed absence of authenticity.

There are a number of Mormon political heavy-weights, notably US Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Jon Huntsman – as of this week officially another rival for the nomination, and five other senators, including both from Utah, Michael S. Lee and Orrin Hatch, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Tom Udall of New Mexico, and Dean Heller, who replaced John Ensign to join Reid in representing Nevada. Ronald Reagan may be the Church’s leading admirer among the presidents, and his administration reportedly contained more Mormons than any other.

According to Stephen M. Studdert, a Mormon who was Special Assistant to Reagan, he and two other church members were on Reagan’s personal staff and another was his chief strategist. The list also includes Secretary of Education Ted Bell, US Treasurer Angela Buchanan, Solicitor General Rex Lee, Brent Scowcroft, and many more. Several Mormons also served as ambassadors. “LDS senators and representatives were held in special regard, and the Tabernacle Choir was his special inaugural guest," Studdert recalls fondly. Sounds almost like a Golden Age.

Still, no LDS member has risen higher in government so far than Reid, who joined while attending Utah State in 1960. He later converted his Jewish wife. Since the rise of Las Vegas as a gambling Mecca, prominent Mormons have also worked as top executives for legalized gaming and other conglomerates. Former Utah Senator Bob Bennett, for example, was a once the top corporate PR man for Howard Hughes.

Romney’s ties to the Church are among the deepest. A fifth-generation Mormon whose ancestors were involved from the mid-1850s, he is a former lay bishop of Massachusetts' temple. But he isn’t the first Mormon to seek the presidency. That honor goes to founder Joseph Smith, a Vermonter by birth who struck out for the west in revival days.

Part of an evangelical surge known as the Second Great Awakening, many revivals of the early 19th century centered on Christian predictions of impending doom. The prophecies faded but the righteous attitude and enthusiasm gave energy to diverse movements, from abolition to temperance and opposition to the influence of Masons. The basic revival message was the promise of salvation from social and personal dilemmas. Revivals offered a way to stay focused in confusing times, as well as a group of like-minded converts, simple answers to problems, and a sense of purpose in line with a communal form of liberty.

Smith was born in a small Vermont town near the Connecticut River on December 23, 1805 but moved to upstate New York before founding the Church in 1831. He began by announcing that an angel had given him a book of golden plates inscribed with a religious history of ancient peoples. Once “translated” by Smith their contents became The Book of Mormon.

Believers flocked to the new religion, but hostile neighbors forced Smith and his followers to keep moving, first to Ohio and then Missouri and Illinois. In Missouri the tensions broke into outright war. Hostile Missourians thought the Mormons were planning an insurrection and the governor said they should be "exterminated” or driven out.

Smith next led his followers to Illinois, where they built a town on some Mississippi River swampland. There Smith became the mayor of a town he named Nauvoo and commanded an impressive militia.

He announced for President as candidate of the National Reform Party in early 1844. It was a long shot, since former President Andrew Jackson was engineering the nomination of Tennessee farmer, lawyer and political “dark horse” James Polk. The Whigs were backing Henry Clay, and the big issue was expansion – specifically the takeover of Texas and Oregon.

Smith’s Party had emerged from the National Reform Association, a coalition of unionists, locofocos (a radical Democratic faction combining unionists and libertarians) and the Workingman’s Party, united in their concern about depression and “social degradation of the laborer.” What especially attracted Smith, however, was the Party’s policy focus – homesteading rights. National Reformers wanted legislation allowing workers and others to acquire public lands free of charge, state laws exempting farm land from seizure to collect debts, and restrictions on ownership of large swathes by the wealthy. Their slogan was “Vote the Land Free.”

Unfortunately, like many candidates before and since, Smith had some personal baggage. In his case it came in the form of romantic overtures he had made to the wife of a convert, William Law, a Canadian who quit the Church and publicly attacked the Mormon practice of polygamy in a newsletter. “We are earnestly seeking to explode the vicious principles of Joseph Smith, and those who practice the same abominations and whoredoms,” wrote Law. Accompanied by the Nauvoo city marshal, Smith responded by destroying his accuser’s printing press. The Illinois governor charged him with inciting a riot and had him jailed.

On June 27, 1844, while Smith was drinking wine with his brother and some friends in a spacious cell in Carthage, a mob surrounded the building. The prophet had a gun, a six shot “pepper-box” pistol, but a gang with blackened faces charged into his cell and opened fire, immediately killing his brother and the others. Smith almost escaped out the window. With shots coming at him from behind and below he plummeted two stories to the ground and then died.

Five men were tried for his murder. All were acquitted. But the church soon recovered when a new prophet emerged – a 43-year-old former housepainter and carpenter from Vermont named Brigham Young.

Thirty-seven years after Smith’s fateful race Chester Arthur succeeded where he had fallen short, becoming the first president from Vermont upon the assassination of President James Garfield. But Arthur was the Episcopalian son of a Baptist minister, and public attitudes had turned less tolerant in the intervening years. In his first Annual Message to Congress on December 6, 1881, Arthur called Mormon polygamy an “odious crime” and a “barbarous system,” urging legislation to stop its spread. By then Mormons were well established in Utah, Idaho, Arizona and other Western Territories. Still, attacks on polygamy peppered Arthur’s speeches throughout his presidency.

More than a century later, the LDS church has 14 million members and identifies itself with patriotism, monogamy and conservative values. Yet the Pew Research Center has concluded that 25 percent of American would be less likely to vote for a Mormon presidential candidate. The responses from white evangelicals are even less encouraging. More than a third react negatively to the idea of a Mormon in the White House. Among those, 63 percent said there is no way they will go for Romney. A new Gallup Poll says 22 percent of all voters won’t vote for a Mormon. University of Akron political scientist John Green claims that distrust among Christian evangelicals contributed to Romney’s 2008 loss in the Iowa caucuses. Could it be enough to prevent any Mormon from winning the nomination?

Mormon associations with secrecy, polygamy and religiously “subversive” beliefs persist, frequently reinforced by popular media portrayals. In the HBO series Big Love, a modern-day polygamist struggles with the LDS hierarchy, religious fanatics, and federal investigations. Although elected to the Utah legislature, his tenure is cut short by scandal and, in the final episode, he is murdered by a disillusioned neighbor. At the other end of the theatrical spectrum is the irreverent musical satire of The Book of Mormon, an award-winning Broadway hit by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Even straight historical dramas tend to focus on the extremism of early Church leaders. And let’s not linger on the Order, the notorious Utah crime family and polygamist Mormon cult, profiled this week in Rolling Stone and reportedly worth at least $300 million.

During Romney’s 2008 presidential run he tried to defuse the issue and dispel doubts with a speech, a strategy used with success by John F. Kennedy when he spoke publicly about Catholicism and politics during his presidential run. But Romney's "Faith in America" talk in Texas mentioned the name of his faith just once, raising questions about whether he was as comfortable with the issue as he suggested. For some it’s politically the M-word.

This time, Romney moved to preempt attacks by announcing on CNN that he is “not a spokesman” for the Church. It came off as defensive, and ultimately beside the point. "We go to different churches or maybe don't go to church so much," he has said, apparently in the hope of associating himself with tolerance rather than polygamy. Whether this will work remains to be seen. But considering how things went for Smith the Romney and Huntsman campaigns are positively mainstreaming.

So, can a Mormon be president? It does remain exotic or threatening for some. But after the first Black president, and especially what’s been said about him, a Mormon commander-in-chief is getting easier to imagine. We may soon find out whether it can happen here.