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Vermont has a lot to say for itself when it comes to building a sustainable future. The facts speak for themselves: We rank second in the nation for clean energy momentum and are near the top of the heap when it comes to the growth of clean energy jobs. It is clear that were on our way to creating an energy independent Vermont and even meeting our ambitious goal of generating 90 percent of our energy from renewable sources by 2050.

However, the time has arrived when we need to bring more Vermonters to the table we need to come up with solutions that meet our renewable energy goals, the needs of our communities and our planet. We must work to truly empower citizens to make decisions about energy sources and how the benefits are distributed. This isnt a call to allow towns veto power over specific projects; this is a call to fundamentally change our energy system and forge ahead with an approach that breaks us out of our polarized camps that focus solely on siting or technology when it comes to any project or policy.

So how can we do this?

Currently, Rights & Democracy is launching a campaign calling for a new energy system, one that will disrupt the status quo of how we produce, own, and use energy by putting the power in the hands of the people. We believe its time for Vermont to move towards energy democracy an open, democratic approach to determining our future and creating sustainable, livable communities that empower people to have a stake in their energy.

So what is energy democracy? What does it look like? What are its goals?

Put simply: Its an energy system that is low carbon and local as well as ecological and equitable, and abides by some straightforward principles:

Allow for diverse voices to make key decisions for Vermonts renewable energy future, not just utilities, lobbyists, and regulators.

Improve access not only to renewable power, but also to the ability to own it, with a goal of 75 percent of energy used in the state being owned locally and/or by communities or cooperatives.

No renewable energy source should be off the table for a community to evaluate.

Lower the financial barriers to participating in renewable energy investments and ownership so that all Vermonters, regardless of income or property ownership status, have a stake in the transition. Keep the benefits of renewable energy generation local, including renewable energy credits.

Guarantee that no family has to spend more than 5 percent of its income paying for energy.

Based on my experience, I feel that not only is it possible for Vermont to adopt these principles, it may very well be necessary. In 2015, I was working as an organizer for the Energy Independent Vermont campaign to put a price on carbon pollution. I spent my days meeting with activists from the Northeast Kingdom to Windham County to discuss our transition away from fossil fuels and towards energy independence.

In these face-to-face conversations with these folks, I quickly learned that although most Vermonters support transitioning away from fossil fuels, there is a large spectrum of opinions on how we get there. And these opinions when fanned are dividing communities, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and at times slowing down or halting renewable energy projects.

More than that, during the 2016 campaign, disagreements over how our transition to renewable energy is happening led some longtime environmental activists and progressives to support Republican Gov. Phil Scott. This may come as a shock, since Governor Scott is clearly no champion for environmental, economic or social justice issues and could seriously undermine years of momentum to transition to a clean future in Vermont.

Instead, we have seen organizations and activists who should be united under the common goal effectively turn on each other, when there are much larger and systemic issues of climate change to be working on.

I know beyond a doubt that we need to take bold action to ditch fossil fuels and generate our power from clean, renewable and sustainable sources, and we need to act in unity to ensure those benefits are felt by all Vermonters.

Vermont deserves energy policies that put the future of Vermonts power in the hands of the people, not politicians and corporations, whose interests arent rooted in freeing our communities from the grip of out-of-state, multinational power companies..

Its time to bring the power to the people, and keep it there.

Laura Mistretta of Burlington is a member of Rights & Democracy.

Read more:
Creating an energy democracy | | Rutland Herald - Rutland Herald

STLtoday.com

Democracy is just fine Miami Herald The May 10 editorial, Democracy is officially in crisis mode, attributes this to FBI Director James Comey's firing. What utter and farcical nonsense. Not surprising though, given your newspaper's anti-Trump partisan agenda. We just heard, once again ... If Trump erodes democracy, stocks will sufferSTLtoday.com all 5 news articles »

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Democracy is just fine - Miami Herald

NONFICTION

Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom

By Condoleezza Rice

TwelveBooks

496 page, $35

In an engaging Prologue to her new book, Democracy, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bushs Secretary of State, and now a professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, recaps a long governmental career of nurturing democracy around the world.

In my view, her record for encouraging democracy if one could make such an assessment would be an A plus for having the right goals, and probably a C plus at best for its achievement.

Why such a grade? Because estimating individual efforts while representing ones government on the world stage has its limits. In a complicated mix of policy, ambition, cynicism, lack of transparency and outright criminality, grading individual effort among nations is a mugs game.

Nevertheless, her story itself is impressive. She begins her account in Moscow, 1979, as a young woman with friends in a communist country and afraid. Later she carries on with a description in July 1989 in Poland while working for President George H.W. Bush.

There, she indicates that Mikhail Gorbachev was rewriting the rule book for Eastern Europe, loosening the constraints of Moscows power. While in Warsaw, guests of a dying Communist party, she reports, watched the lights go out during the state dinner - a perfect metaphor for the regimes coming demise.

Rices uplifting message in this book is about what she hopes will be the survival of human rights. Her view isthat democracy can be revived where it is suffering. She draws from her experience in government, academe, and, as a private person, to show how it might be done.

I have watched, she writes, as people in Africa, Asia and Latin America have insisted on freedom. As a child, I was a part of another great awakening: the second founding of America, as the civil rights movement unfolded in my hometown of Birmingham, Ala., and finally expanded the meaning of We the people to encompass people like me. There is no more thrilling moment than when people finally seize their rights and their liberty.

Rice tells us that the climb toward freedom in the broader Middle East and North Africa have been a far rockier story. From Afghanistan and Iraq, to Syria, to Egypt, to Turkey, freedom is in flux amidst civil wars, military coups and instability. The region is a maelstrom. There, the decline of human rights is frightening despite America and its allies efforts.

In the long run, her view of democracys agenda is encouraging. But its a far distance from President Trumps "America First" ideas that seem to change daily.

Instead she writes that expanding the meaning of We the People to encompass people like me, has encouraged her to push for what she considers justice for all. Translated, it means that there is the inevitable movement of freedom (not necessarily via democracy) for others in countries across the world.

Our author knows from hard experience that getting tothat goal will be terrifying and disruptive and chaotic," she writes. "And what follows," she continues, "is hard really, really hard.

Why do it if its so difficult, the laconic reader may ask, sitting on a couch?

This isa query for all Americans to ask themselves. The answer is that it is a question of making an imperfect society better; never perfect, better. Does it look as if America is moving in that direction? Its every citizens responsibility to give a hand.

And this is Rices point in Stories from the Long Road to Freedom.

Rice is one keeper of democracys flame. There should be many more guardians. This book is a wake-up call.

America's torch needs the oxygen of its citizens. One hopes it doesnt expire.

Michael D. Langan a long time Buffalo News book reviewer. Heworked for Democrats and Republicans for twenty years in Washington, D. C.

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'Democracy' as Condoleezza Rice sees it - Buffalo News

Last week, as I travelled through West Africa, I was seized with trying to make sense of the countervailing winds competing to claim the future of the African continent.

Its quite the puzzle, attempting to reconcile the retrenchment of good governance in South Africa and throughout Central Africa, where leaders who have failed their people refuse to relinquish power, with the recent democratic coup in The Gambia, the historic defeat of an incumbent president in Ghana, and the consolidation of democracy throughout West Africa.

What were the forces at work? How could we influence them? Would Africas authoritarian leaders take comfort in President Trumps embrace of less-than-democratic leaders elsewhere in the world in Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines and in Russia? How could we tip the balance?

Born on Oct. 2, 1953, Gyimah is a man on a mission, advocating with cap-in-hand for support to strengthen Africas nascent democratic institutions. He is a regular in Washington, D.C. at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI).

We met up on May Day, at HSI Orient Center for Health and Wellness on the outskirts of the city. Gyimah has large, deep-set, sauce-pan brown eyes, and a bald head that is always perspiring. He smiles with eyes-wide-open.

Our CEO @RivaLevinson on The opportunity of #Africa for a #Trump administration. @thehill https://t.co/wYy6g0Mn6x

I love this place! says Gyimah. But I dislike the chairs, they rest too low to the ground.

Thats not a complaint, but a practical observation for the 63-year-old Gyimah, whose lower limbs were weakened by polio as a toddler, and further strained by injury as he managed a childhood where handicapped children were granted no special accommodations. He navigates life with a cane and a crutch, and immense upper body strength. Gyimah possesses a complete absence of self-pity, he sees his handicap as a daily companion. The word burden is not in his vocabulary.

Growing up, Gyimah first wanted to become a preacher, then a lawyer. Inevitably, a curious child, coming of age just after Ghana received its independence from Britain in 1957, political science became his obsession, and then his calling. Since young adulthood, Gyimah has been involved in every major political milestone of the country, including its 2016 presidential and legislative elections which brought in the fifth president of Ghanas Fourth Republic.

I coordinate with the waitress to add another cushion to Gyimahs lawn chair before he takes a seat. I fix my chair the same way. Over way too-sweet iced green tea, along with spicy seafood salad, chicken and cashews, and mixed vegetables, we catch up.

I explain to Gyimah that I fear that my optimism about the future of democracy in Africa was coming across as nave, and share with him one of the many comments I received on my recent column, this one from a journalist based in Senegal from a prominent news daily in the UK.

She writes to me, Sadly I don't think I can agree with you. While The Gambia was positive in the end, at a similar time, terrible things were happening in Gabon and the DRC, South Africa is becoming more undemocratic by the day. I just don't think tiny, unimportant Gambia translates into anything wider.

Africa's example: How democracy begets democracy https://t.co/94mLbpYtAc

Gyimah shakes his head, knowingly. Then he offers, neither one of you is wrong, Riva.

You need to think of democracy as a commodity. How much is available? What is the quality of the product? What do people want? What are they willing to pay for it to do for it, clarifies Gyimah.

The journalist sees small ruling cliques still clinging to power. And to her, their grip feels like it is getting stronger. She is pessimistic. You are speaking of the free will of the African people, and their readiness to hold leaders accountable, and for you, their voices are getting louder. You are an optimist, he continues.

Gyimah explains to me that this debate goes to the very heart of Africa today, and that he sees the continent at a tipping point.

Will democracy be supply-constrained, or demand-driven? Will leaders be forced to make way for the next generation, or will frustration with the governing authorities diminish the belief of the African people in democratic institutions, opening the door for a return to authoritarianism?

Afrobarometer has measured this phenomena. Its latest polling released in November 2016 found that 7 in 10 Africans believe democracy is preferable to all forms of government. And at the same time, more than half of the respondents surveyed are dissatisfied with the quality of their democracy.

The Afrobarometer report concludes that there is a democratic deficit where demand for democracy exceeds supply, and because of this, the continent is likely to experience popular pressure for democratization, with the danger that unmet democratic demands may contribute to social unrest.

Gyimah notes that if you look at polling in the rest of the world, Africa is an outlier in its unwavering belief in democracy. Recent research in the Journal of Democracy shows that North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand have all become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, and, overall, less hopeful that anything they do might influence actual public policy.

Trump and America can win by doing more business with Africa - The Hill (blog) https://t.co/5b1emMerpb

There are no assurances that Africa will continue to be an outlier. There is no guarantee that democracy will ultimately prevail, Gyimah concludes.

Thats why democracy assistance from multilateral, bilateral and individual donors is vital at this time. As domestic pro-democracy groups in Africa labor to reclaim lost ground on democratic governance and to protect and deepen democratization in their countries, they benefit greatly from solidarity on the part of the international community, he exclaims.

After vigorous notetaking, which included opening the links with my iPhone to Afrobarometers graphs and data sets, I return the conversation back to the comment that prompted Gyimahs political science lesson and ask if I am wrong to be optimistic?

Says Gyimah, No Riva, you are not. I too am a believer that the continents future will be demand-driven, and that a young generation, empowered through education, social media and new technologies, will claim their right to be heard.

Gyimah says that contributing to his sense of hope are the actions of the U.S. Congress last week, which prevented President Trump from making unprecedented cuts to the U.S. foreign assistance budget, indicating, he believes, that the consensus built in pursuit of democracy-building over decades in America is stronger than any one White House occupant.

And then Gyimah adds, I have always held that the right leader can lift a nation, and the emergence of an anchor democracy, can lift the entire continent. And here I am hopeful, because I believe we are going to see this phenomena in Ghana in the coming years.

And with that comment, some two hours later, Gyimah asks for the check and we pack up 75 percent of the food we ordered, as neither of us found the time to eat. But we did manage to finish our too-sweet iced green tea, only after it was thrice diluted.

K. Riva Levinson is President and CEO of KRL International LLC a D.C.-based consultancy that works in the worlds emerging markets, and author of "Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa's First Woman President" (Kiwai Media, June 2016), Silver Medal winner Independent Book Publishers Award, Finalist, Foreword ReviewsINDIES Book of the Year Awards. Follow her on Twitter @RivaLevinson.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

Originally posted here:
Democracy's supply and demand in Africa at a tipping point - The Hill (blog)

Not even the president is above the law.

This seems like such an ironclad principle, one upon which both Democrats and Republicans would readily agree, regardless of which party holds the Oval Office. But that principle is being tested in a way that we have rarely experienced in our nations history. President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey and the patently transparent ruse that the action was in response to the Hillary Clinton email investigation shocked many across the political spectrum. Not since the days of Watergate have we experienced such corruption at the highest levels of government, and I am profoundly concerned for the future of our democracy.

This is far from the first instance of President Trump considering himself exempt from the law. Since his inauguration, the president and his Republican enablers have ignored the fact that he stands in violation of the Constitutions Emoluments Clause, intended by the framers to prevent foreign influence of our elected officials. This is, of course, the very charge that has ensnared the presidents former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and threatens still others within his inner circle. Lets also not forget the presidents firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to implement his illegal Muslim ban, even though Yates decision was entirely within her authority and subsequently reaffirmed by federal courts.

The presidents pattern is clear: When provoked, he lashes out.

During a congressional hearing March 20, Comey directly contradicted the presidents wild and irresponsible tweets about wiretapping. So the president responded by manipulating Chairman Devin Nunes into spreading baseless propaganda that supposedly supported the presidents claims. This time, the FBI issued subpoenas to associates of Flynn and requested a significant increase in resources for the Russia investigation. So the president responded by unceremoniously firing the head of the investigation that was following a trail of evidence to the Oval Office.

Make no mistake: Many Democrats, including myself, disagreed with Comeys handling of the investigation into Clintons private email server. But its utterly ridiculous to think that the president and the attorney general would suddenly, in May 2017, lose confidence in Comey for his actions taken in July 2016.

As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I have had several opportunities to hear from and question Comey on the progress of his Russia investigation. Though a smoking gun has yet to be discovered, the director left me with no doubt that he was leading the investigation with the utmost seriousness, and would direct the FBI to go wherever the evidence led them.

This, of course, is what most terrified the president.

I am deeply skeptical that the president will nominate an impartial and independent FBI director who would charge ahead from where Comeys Russia investigation left off. The attorney general and his deputy are also tainted with this farce of a dismissal. The appointment of an independent special counsel is the only clear way to ensure a comprehensive investigation that the American people expect and deserve.

Those in public service, including elected officials, swear an oath upon assuming the responsibilities of office to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. Our allegiance is not to any individual, but to the founding principles of our nation and the laws that safeguard them. The Constitution is under siege, and all who love it Democrats and Republicans alike must join forces to defend it.

Jackie Speier represents the 14th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She serves on the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence and is ranking member of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee.

Excerpt from:
Moment of peril for democracy - San Francisco Chronicle