Editor, Vermont Commons:

My name is Robert Wagner and I'm running for the Vermont Senate from Addison County.
    
I've gotten a lot of inspiration from your paper since I discovered it a year ago.  Economic re-localization, transition towns, post-Peak Oil – all necessary fare in a Vermont that is just waking up to some harsh global facts.
    
Here is my platform.  The details I am filling in as I pound the pavements (and the mud) all over Addison County, listening to all of you and taking my notes. I will be bothering as many of you as possible personally over the next weeks and months to sign my petition to represent you in the Vermont Senate as an Independent, and to get your feedback on my platform.

1. NO further Vermont support for war, torture, or deployment of the Vermont National Guard. Order the Guard home now.

2. NOT a dime more for Wall Street. Invest Vermont funds in Vermont small banks and credit unions for lending here at home.

3. Build a GREEN Vermont via serious investments in alternative energy, human-food-agriculture, and all local community efforts toward self-reliance and town/village life. Clean, green, decent, peaceful and fun.

4. Start the discussion with all Vermonters RE returning our state to the status of a free Independent Republic, as we once were, maintaining free trade and good relations with all other nations of the world.

Does No. 4 shock you?  I had a hard time with it as well. Finally I woke up and realized that within the context of an unfixable empire that has lost its moral authority Nos. 1, 2 & 3 are not possible.  With No. 4, we have a chance to survive the coming Collapse, build a new, stronger economy which is both localized and global, though free trade.
    
Besides listening to you, I'll be spending 2010 tending to my small crops, doing the chores, my day job, and hopefully paying the mortgage on time.  I'm well aware of how many of you are challenged by how expensive it is, just to live.  This challenge keeps me up nights as well.  And now, with service cuts all over Vermont, thanks to a legislature that won't go after big corporations for the value that they are extracting from Vermont practically tax-free, the challenge has grown.
    
Leadership is not management; we already have great managers at the town level.  Leadership raises its head and sets course.  Leadership takes the risk of its raised head being cut off, not cultivate a political career and a relationship with corporations that provide low wages and not health coverage, saying as little as possible.  The Senate must provide leadership.  The Senate must do far more than simply decide which programs get stimulus funds, and which will be cut.  That is why we independents are running in 2010 for the Vermont Senate, Governor and Lt. Governor.

Robert Wagner
Ripton