{"id":550,"date":"2015-03-10T05:12:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T09:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libertyunionparty.org\/?p=550"},"modified":"2015-03-10T05:12:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T09:12:56","slug":"letter-to-seven-days-unpopular-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/?p=550","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Seven Days: Unpopular Position"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sevendaysvt.com\/vermont\/letters-to-the-editor-3-4-15\/Content?oid=2532698\" title=\"Unpopular Position\">Unpopular Position<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a shame that Kathryn Flagg spent so much time making sure that everyone knew James Ehlers isn&#8217;t a member of Vermont&#8217;s power elite [&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sevendaysvt.com\/vermont\/water-warrior-james-ehlers-is-lake-champlains-loudest-and-most-divisive-advocate\/Content?oid=2523993\" title=\"Water Warrior\">Water Warrior<\/a>,&#8221; February 18]. Because it would have been better to hear more about Ehlers&#8217; work to clean up our state&#8217;s waterways rather than to learn (over and over again) that &#8220;the players&#8221; aren&#8217;t comfortable with him.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that Ehlers isn&#8217;t invited to insider events only proves that he&#8217;s doing exactly what he should be doing: making the polluters and their enablers very, very nervous. As they should be, because, with the exception of a steady stream of platitudes, these insiders have been failing miserably when it comes to addressing our critically injured waterways.<\/p>\n<p>Bravo to Ehlers for taking the issue of cleaning up Lake Champlain so seriously that he won&#8217;t tolerate the empty rhetoric, meaningless photo ops, or weak-kneed and off-the-mark &#8220;solutions.&#8221; Gov. Shumlin says Ehlers is off &#8220;the reservation.&#8221; Well, maybe that&#8217;s not such a bad place to be, since those on the reservation have been doing little more than punting on the issue for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of pondering whether Ehlers is liked or popular, how about whether he&#8217;s right or wrong? And, while you&#8217;re at it, why not report on the track records of those who&#8217;ve locked Ehlers out of the popular club? Because it&#8217;s been on their watch that the lake has been poisoned, and it has been their policies that have failed.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Colby<\/p>\n<p>Walden<\/p>\n<p>Colby is the executive director of the nonprofit environmental group Food &#038; Water.  He is also a member of the Liberty Union Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unpopular Position It&#8217;s a shame that Kathryn Flagg spent so much time making sure that everyone knew James Ehlers isn&#8217;t a member of Vermont&#8217;s power elite [&#8220;Water Warrior,&#8221; February 18]. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty-union-party-member-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenmountainpeaceandjusticeparty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}