Sen. Bill Doyle

Thanks to all those from Berlin who filled out the Town Meeting questionnaire. It was the highest number ever. Below are some comments.

"Please do not raise Vermont's capital gains tax. That is our retirement you would be messing with!"

"Vermont's economic well-being should be the highest priority for everyone - individuals and orgainizations. Under that should include health care, hunger, taxes, environment and education."

"I am a disabled vet. Cost of living in Vermont, property taxes, are being eroded by many Vermont agencies. Within two years, my wife and I will have to move to a less expensive state to live in. I love Vermont."

"Better long-range planning when improvement of highways started, the plans should have been implemented. Projections of the increase in population and traffic should have been included."

"Cell phones are different from water cups, et cetera, because they occupy a driver's mind."

"Legislators need to stop voting along party lines and work together for Vermont. Stop bundling within proposed bills. Keep them simple to facilitate clear understanding."

Sen. Doyle can be reached at 186 Murray Road, Montpelier, VT 05602; fax: 802-828-2424; e-mail: wodoyle@adelphia.net.

Max's View

Why I Love The McLaughlin Group

I don"t like the way the conventional media covers politics.

The networks and the news channels are obsessed with scandal and take pleasure in character assassination. Even worse, they present every issue as if there are only two sides " the left and the right. Anyone who proposes a third way is labeled an extremist kook or ignored completely.

Well, there is one extremist kook out there who will not be ignored. And he has hosted the smartest, funniest political program on television for a quarter century.

John McLaughlin is nothing like the average talking head. In his younger years, McLaughlin was a Jesuit priest, which means he is very knowledgeable about history, philosophy, and theology. In his 40s, McLaughlin's passion led him away from the Church and into government. He worked for the Nixon administration, a breeding ground for right-wing intellectuals.

Despite his background, nobody would mistake John McLaughlin for a right-winger these days. He definitely has his own independent, ever-evolving agenda.

He will argue that the federal government needs to spend $500 billion to strengthen the country's infrastructure in one segment and propose that we decriminalize all drugs in the next.

McLaughlin is great at finding a balance between covering the hot political story of the day, like the Democratic primary, and making time for offbeat topics that no one in the mainstream media would think to discuss.

The last 10 minutes of every episode are devoted to frank discourse about questions as varied as: what moral responsibility do we have to prevent cruelty to animals? Why does only one Congressman out of 535 admit to being an atheist? Why do they really forbid us from using cell phones on airplanes?

While other political debate shows actually encourage arguments and rancor, McLaughlin enforces a code of civility on his program. For example: during a discussion about Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, regular panelist Lawrence O"Donnell made a loud, angry speech condemning the candidate for his religious background. McLaughlin ignored the inappropriate tirade and has never invited O"Donnell back on the show.

Another thing that makes The McLaughlin Group valuable is that there are always four panelists. We always hear five different points of view on every subject instead of the usual left vs. right duality.

The McLaughlin Group panel is generally a witty, well-informed bunch. The most distinguished member of the group is Pat Buchanan.

Now I know that he has a bad reputation in some circles. But Buchanan is actually not such an arch-conservative after all. Did you know that he adamantly opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning? Or that he joins most Democrats in calling for the immediate repeal of NAFTA?

Buchanan is hardly a standard Republican towing the party line. In fact, he's an experienced political warrior who has worked for three different Presidents and has run for President representing two different parties.

His unparalleled knowledge of international affairs and ideological commitment to isolationism makes him a fascinating anomaly. I never get tired of hearing his unique perspective on world events.

I can"t stomach five minutes of CNN or Fox News. Yet I can"t get enough of The McLaughlin Group. It's the best political program on television. Catch it every Sunday morning on PBS (check your local listings).

DEVELOPMENTS IN VERMONT LAW

By Kimberly B. Cheney

If Your Ex Grabs Your Dog, Can You Hit Her to Get it Back?

Mary and Earl, like many separated lovers, argued about ownership of the property they had acquired while together. Who owned the horse? Earl invited Mary over to dinner, to see the horse, and perhaps resolve the dispute. Good intentions gave way to bad feelings. An argument ensued. Mary grabbed Earl's dog and ran to her car with it. Earl ran to Mary's car, pulled her hair and elbowed her in the neck in the process of retrieving his dog. Mary obtained a Relief From Abuse Order from the Family Court against Earl. He argued that she caused the problem, and anyhow he had the right to retake his property by using reasonable force."

The argument didn"t end there. It wound up in the Supreme Court. In a 3 to 2 decision, Justices Johnson, Reiber and Dooley, sided with Mary. They upheld the abuse order. Justices Burgess and Skoglund defended Earl. They accused the majority justices of bleating sheep who came to an absurd result.

Justice Johnson, writing for the majority, decided the Relief from Abuse law was enacted to protect people from harm, not to impose penalties on abusers. It was designed to overrule old common law principles that allowed a husband to use physical force "to the extent necessary to command a wife's obedience and chastise her for "misbehavior." The law, they wrote, forbids use of force in domestic relationships and grants protection rather than punishment.

Justice Burgess was incensed that a disgruntled lover could come into your home, grab your property, and run off with it, and you had no right to use reasonable force to keep it. It is punishment to be labeled an "abuser," especially when Mary started the fight. The common law, he argued, has long permitted a person to use reasonable force to retain their property. That is the principle that should have defeated the abuse order in a case which had nothing to do with the usual domestic violence situation.

Apart from making the reader wonder whether the justices enjoy an occasional dinner together, the opinion is a cameo example of how the law is what the judges say it is. Can a law enacted to abolish "male privilege" established only by superior physical strength be used to interfere with rights to property going back to Blackstone's time? One of my favorite professors in law school taught: "If you want to predict a case outcome, don"t read law, read biography." Mary Raynes v. Earl Rogers 2008 Vt. 52.

Tom Evslin: Fractals of Change

Vermont Files in Support of Using White Spaces for Mobile Broadband Access

What happens to so-called "TV White Spaces" turns out to be very important for the future of mobile and even some fixed voice and data communication in Vermont. That's why the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) and the Public Service Department (PSD) have taken a position on that issue with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

A short primer:

Each radio and television station is assigned a frequency on which it broadcasts; in the United States these frequency allocations are done by the Federal Communications Commission. The straightforward reason for assigning frequencies is so that broadcasters won"t interfere with each other and so listeners will know where to tune their receivers in order to receive the content they want.

Cellphones and walkie-talkies and WiFi cards are also radios and also operate in assigned frequencies. But there isn"t enough radio spectrum (the spectrum is the full range of frequencies usable with today's technologies) for each cell phone and walkie-talkie and WiFi card to have its own private frequency; and so frequencies are assigned either to network operators (in the case of cellphones) or to types of devices (walkie-talkies and WiFi cards and cordless phones and microwave ovens and many other things). In one way or another, the devices contend for and share the spectrum that's been allocated.

Radio spectrum is considered a public resource; that's why the FCC gets to dole it out. Sometimes it's been awarded by lottery; sometimes by political influence; sometimes, as in the recent 700Mhz auction, it goes to the highest bidder with proceeds to the government. This resource has gotten increasingly valuable as radio is used more and more often for two way and data communication and not just for broadcast or by specialized communities like public safety and pilots.

An even shorter history:

Back in the heyday of the growth of over-the-air television, the FCC decided to set aside enough spectrum for fifty channels everywhere in the United States. Stations were awarded licenses as they established themselves (and undertook various public service obligations) and these licenses entitle a particular station to use a particular frequency (slice of spectrum) for its broadcasts. However, now that there is cable and the Internet, over-the-air television is a shrinking part of how we get entertainment and information. New over-the-air stations are not being formed even though new cable channels and Internet sites with video are proliferating. In some urban areas there are many stations; in rural areas like Vermont there are very few. The frequencies which were set aside for television and are not used are called "TV whitespaces"; but this is a misnomer: no broadcaster has actually paid for any of the spectrum at issue; no one is using it; in short; it's wasted. The spectrum is idle even though there is a crying need for frequencies for more (and cheaper) over-the-air voice (cellphones) and data communication (WiFi, EVDO, HSPDA, WiMax and many other technologies). The FCC has been considering what to do about this problem (opportunity) for quite a while.

The filing:

The VTA and the PSD have joined in an ex parte filing at the Federal Communications Commission, urging that the Commission "move expeditiously to adopt the necessary technical parameters " and help make this promising technology [use of the so-called "TV whitespaces"] a reality." Given that the docket has been open since May of 2004, a little expeditiousness is certainly in order.

The filing explains the many reasons why this spectrum is ideally suited to meeting the needs of rural America for much better broadband and cellular coverage:

"First, rural areas like Vermont have relatively fewer TV broadcasters and therefore more unused "white spaces." Moreover, rural communities also have the largest geographic areas without access to wireless services. Second, the ability of TV frequencies to propagate over great distances and difficult terrain provides an opportunity to reach locations too economically challenging for existing wireless services. Third, the use of TV "white space" for the provision of rural broadband is an alternative means of accomplishing the Commission's universal service goal of deploying advanced services to all areas of the nation without requiring additional funding mechanisms. In fact, the use of TV "white space" could actually decrease the demand for universal service funding at a time when the level of funding is facing heightened scrutiny."

The filing makes clear that the petitioners do NOT think that this spectrum should be auctioned off at a high price. The greatest public good will come from making these public resources available "at low or no-cost to those entities willing to utilize them for such purpose [broadband and mobile access]."

It will take the concentrated political power of rural America to free up this spectrum to meet the rural need for better communication. But this isn"t urban vs. rural; urban areas also have something to gain from better spectrum availability and nothing to lose.

Not to over-dramatize, but I see this as the public interest vs. entrenched communications interests. The TV industry would like to sit on this spectrum without paying for it "just in case"; they also may be worried about Internet use of the spectrum becoming a competing "channel" for delivering entertainment. Traditional communications carriers benefit from LACK of competition in the US broadband market; they have no reason to want to see competition growing like weeds (or, more accurately, like WiFi) in fields of open spectrum.

Google and other "Internet" companies do have an interest in keeping their paths to the consumer unblocked; competition would be good for that. So the Silicon Valley companies are lobbying in favor of open access to this spectrum. Perhaps they"ll be able to counteract the lobbying of old media companies.

Disclosure: My wife, Mary Evslin, is Chair of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

Tom Evslin is a resident of Stowe. He is a novelist, serial startup guy and CEO (retired). His novel hackoff.com: an historical murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble is available online at www.hackoff.com and his blog is at blog.tomevslin.com.

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