Posted to Burlington Free Press: burlingtonfreepress/comments/article/20140304/NEWS02/303040058/Mackenzie-Emery-win-South-Burlington-council-seats Pam Mackenzie failed to win a majority. A majority of the voters of South Burlington rejected this incumbent. She won only because of our first past the post election scheme. She would likely lose were a runoff held, just as Simoneau lost. The vote shows Mackenzie lost the confidence of a majority of South Burlington voters. Mackenzie and Simoneau won only minority of the votes despite the massive amount of money they poured into their election campaigns. Simoneaus $10,000 loan to himself plus thousands more from undisclosed sources failed to win a majority for either of them. Mackenzie is under investigation as a serial law breaker. The two boards she chairs, Vermont Public Television and the South Burlington City Council both violated open meeting laws. The VPT internal investigation acknowledged that the board under her leadership violated the federal law 26 times. They just could not determine whether her violation of the federal open meeting law was intentional or negligent. The election demonstrated no majority support for Mackenzie and Simoneaus sickening support for F-35 basing. A majority of South Burlington voters did not agree with their support for a stealth bomber whose prime function is aggressive war. Nor for an F-35 program that transfers $1.5 trillion of our tax dollars to the likes of Lockheed-Martin. Nor for trading health care, pensions, salaries, and jobs for our soldiers and airmen to help pay for this flawed hardware. Nor for trading the education for our students, health care, and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure for the chance to spend even more during the endless foreign wars these planes will facilitate. Nor for each F-35 plane burning 1000 to 2000 gallons of fuel per hour--the F-35 is completely useless for defending our country and humanity from global warming. The fact that Mackenzie and Simoneau got only a minority of the votes demonstrates that a majority of the people of South Burlington do not support F-35 basing. The reelection of Mackenzie is likely to please certain commercial real estate developers who are in the midst of implementing a scheme in which they used F-16 noise to get federal funds to buy up and demolish affordable homes near the airport entrance. The next phase of the scheme is to replace those homes with hotels and other commercial property. Now that we are clear that a majority of South Burlington citizens oppose Mackenzie, a mobilization of the entire community is needed to oppose the rezoning of that neighborhood and to demand an end to further demolitions if the block of three on the Council that she heads dares to bring a rezoning proposal before the City Council.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 07:43:47 +0000
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