The Deeper Dig is a weekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
[I]n recent years, Vermont author Stephen Kiernan has been best known for novels like The Baker’s Secret and The Hummingbird. But his latest work takes an unusual format: it’s an 8,000 word manifesto about how Vermont should act more independently from the federal government.
In “Vermont to the Tenth Power,” Kiernan argues that the solutions to the state’s biggest problems — the demographic decline, the climate crisis, underfunding of social programs, and more — need to come from within.
“I looked at things that Vermont had done in the past that we really prided ourselves on,” Kiernan says. “What they had in common was that we were stepping away from the federal model.”
The document centers on the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants states any powers not delegated to the federal government. Legal experts have argued that the 10th Amendment doesn’t provide much cover for an activist state government. But Kiernan says it’s useful “as a philosophy.”
In his research, the author cataloged examples of how broad social change originated with states. He believes that a more engaged public, along with a bolstered state government, could bring a new wave of action.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to shame other states into providing access to health care to people who need it and don’t have money,” he said by way of example. “But I think if we come up with a way that works here, and that can be replicated and can be scaled to other places, that will be progress.”
Backing Kiernan on the manifesto are dozens of other Vermont writers, philanthropists and public figures, who he says support “consideration of the general issues it raises and welcome the conversation that results.”
“I signed on to it right away,” says Melinda Moulton, the CEO of Main Street Landing. Moulton says she was feeling frustrated by federal inaction, and the essay gave her a more optimistic outlook.
“We’re moving in a really good place in Vermont, but we’ve got to speed it up,” Moulton said. “We’ve got to keep moving forward. And that’s what this vision is.”
On this week’s podcast, Kiernan and Moulton talk about how they feel Vermont can lead for itself.
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”Read full transcript” less_text=”Hide full transcript” hidden=”yes”]
Stephen Kiernan: I looked at things that Vermont had done in the past that we really prided ourselves on. What they had in common was that we were stepping away from the federal model. And if you look at the chaos that Washington is now, you know, it made me think maybe we ought to adopt this as a philosophy. Maybe it shouldn’t be episodic. Maybe it should be a way of thinking.
Stephen Kiernan is an author and a journalist. He used to be the editorial page editor at the Burlington Free Press, and more recently he’s written novels like The Hummingbird. But his latest work takes an unusual format: it’s an 8,000 word manifesto called Vermont to the Tenth Power. It talks about the 10th amendment of the US constitution, which grants broad legal power to the states. Kiernan says Vermont should use that power to act more independently from the federal government. I sat down with him to talk about why.
I’m curious about the format of this. I mean, we don’t see a lot of manifestos. How did these ideas that were kind of coalescing for you come into this form here?
Stephen Kiernan: It started with me being on a couple of different boards here and realizing that all of them had the same problem. Which was reduced federal allocation for this need, reduced state funds available for this need, and reduced philanthropy from Vermonters that were available to it — that the Vermonters that have been the most generous historically are now aging out or are going to their reward. And the next generation of philanthropists hasn’t come forward. I started there.
It used to be 25 years ago, if the government said, here’s a new transportation idea I have, for example, the next day, the Free Press would have two editorials about it. There’d be letters, there would be an op-ed in The Herald, you know, with a Pulitzer-winning editorialist would comment, The Valley News, with a Pulitzer-winning editorialist, would comment, Dickie Drysdale in Randolph would comment, Peter Freyne would comment in Seven Days. And hundreds and hundreds of Vermonters would write letters with their name and their town, backing up their ideas. There was a whole discourse so that if an idea came out, it got really chewed over by the public in a way that largely does not exist anymore.
It’s interesting to hear you say that, because I feel like what you’re describing is the role of the papers, the role of the press, the role of journalism. And that’s not really discussed very much in this document. You do talk about this kind of “convening authority” to talk about issues, but there’s not a lot of talk about journalism, which we know has been in decline. I’m curious why that didn’t land in here.
Stephen Kiernan: It’s certainly something that I thought about the whole time that I was working on this. This feels like a lot of the work that I did for 20 years. I was one small part of that whole conversation, and I was often wrong. But there was so much conversation going on that often the right thing would happen. It felt a lot like democracy.
Mid-market newspapers that are shareholder owned, whether they are here, or in Binghamton, or in Reno or in Poughkeepsie, are dying, because paying that dividend to their shareholders means bleeding the local newspaper down to nothing. And it’s tragic. It’s a huge loss for our democracy. And so, my choices are, I’m a guy who thinks about things and reads and interviews and listens and learns and then writes. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve done in my career. So I could do all of that, and then not write. Or I could be like a citizen.
Isn’t it interesting now that it’s unusual for someone to be an engaged citizen? And 25 years ago, it was normal. So maybe we need more manifestos, not less. I’d love if this led to a flood of manifestos. Of people thinking hard about issues and trying to come up with some answers.
One way Kiernan hopes to engage people is by getting them to co-sign this document. By the time it was released, a few dozen prominent Vermonters had already endorsed Kiernan’s argument.
Melinda Moulton: It came to me in an email: ‘Hi, Melinda. I’ve created this. I’d love you to read it. Give me your feedback. Give me your input. What do you think?’ And I signed on to it right away.
One of these co-signers is Melinda Moulton. She’s the CEO of Main Street Landing and a well-known philanthropist. She said she was deeply moved by Stephen’s work.
Melinda Moulton: It gave me another direction to think, rather than thinking, oh my god, look what’s happening? And getting distracted by all the things that were coming at me every day. It was like, now there’s something I can focus on.
So what was your input? Did you have areas of this where you said, maybe this is not quite the way I see things?
Melinda Moulton: No, I mean, I really believe that Stephen’s hit it on the head. One area that I would — I think I might have mentioned this to you — is the disability community.
What about it?
Melinda Moulton: Well, I just feel like as a as a state, as the federal fundings are being taken away for our citizens with intellectual and physical disabilities, that this manifesto and the state’s direction needs to ensure we keep protecting our most disadvantaged in the state.
Stephen Kiernan: One of the wisest pieces of feedback I’ve had was from somebody who said that rather than simply saying we should be a sanctuary state, we should broaden the definition of sanctuary. That we should talk about the disability community, that we should talk a lot more about people in Vermont who are living in poverty. The idea of Vermont as a sanctuary, I love the sound of that. And because there was so much that I was learning and struggling to understand and express about governance, there were definitely some holes like that, that given another six months, I might have gotten to. Or maybe in the next document, right.
You said this came about through your work on boards and looking at the state of philanthropy. How did you arrive at this position as being some steps to resolving those issues that you see?
Stephen Kiernan: I looked at things that Vermont had done in the past that we really prided ourselves on. Whether it was saying no to the money for a federal highway on the spine of the Green Mountains, when some southern states were delighted to take that money and the jobs that would create. Or saying no to billboards. Or being the second state to have a bottle bill. Or same sex marriage. So many things where, what they had in common was that we were stepping away from the federal model. And if you look at the chaos that Washington is now, the mess and disappointment that it is, the frustration that Melinda was talking about, you know, it made me think maybe we ought to adopt this as a philosophy. Maybe it shouldn’t be episodic. Maybe it should be a way of thinking.
Melinda Moulton: George Aiken, back in the day when he refused to privatize the electric grid. I mean, Burlington Telecom. Look at under Bernie Sanders, you know, the development of Burlington. The progressive model of stepping up and leaning in and making things better for our citizens. And not waiting for Washington to come in and make things better, which we know isn’t going to happen under this administration.
Stephen Kiernan: Right, and even if they wanted to they don’t have any money.
So then I started looking at what other states have done. I felt the same kind of feeling of pride when I found out the governor of New Mexico pulled the National Guard back from the border. I thought, oh, I kind of like the feel of that. That feels very Vermont. So then I started looking at things that other states were doing. Some of them — very conservative states are saying, you know, Tennessee, a very conservative state — is saying, we need to have free college education because you have too many jobs without skilled workers to take those jobs. And we need to connect those dots. It was actually a Republican economic development effort that said, we’re going to have free college education.
Look at what New York State did last week in its climate change legislation. Holy cow, Vermont would be so proud of itself, and rightly, if we did something like that. And that is really saying, we’re not going to follow the federal model, where they can’t even have a hearing on this stuff. They can even bring Bill McKibben into the room. And we love Bill McKibben, you know? So can we not exercise some of that?
I think the feeling of pride and excitement that happens when — I feel it when I talk about those things — I think is a really, really good way to feel, as opposed to frustrated and outraged and struggling to even comprehend.
Melinda Moulton: Look at look at H.57, right? I mean, all over the country, women are losing their access to abortion and reproductive health care. And we pass a bill. It gets through the House and the Senate. We present it to our governor. And our Republican governor signs it, which means that abortion — you have a right to an abortion at any time, for whatever reason, for a woman in Vermont. And that totally goes against the grain of where this country is moving. And our Republican governor signed it into law. We have the power to change our world and Vermont, despite what’s happening in Washington. And now’s the time to step up.
You say that some of these things are happening already. I’m curious as to, what is the difference between tackling these things issue by issue, and tackling them in this kind of broad strategic way that you lay out here? What’s the difference there?
Melinda Moulton: I think it’s just a different way of looking at it, of making change.
Stephen Kiernan: Yes, I think that’s it. That’s right. It’s: we’re not helpless. And we can do more than stamp our feet and say no, not that. We can say, not here. This state outlawed fracking way before anyone proposed it. Because we just said that we’re not going that way, you know? That the age of oil will end because there’s a finite amount in the ground no matter what you do. So we’re just going to say at the outset that we’re not going to go that path.
Melinda Moulton: We outlawed toxins because the firefighters stood up and said, hey, when we put retardants on furniture, and in children’s clothing, if there’s a fire, we get sick from it. And we did that, what, five or six years ago? And so we’re doing things that other states need to step up and do, and we’re setting the stage for change.
Stephen Kiernan: One of the fun things about the research I did for this — the reporting, you know — I talked to over 100 people, and one was I talked to a very smart lawyer who knew a lot about the 10th amendment. He directed me to a study about things that had changed at a federal level that started at the state level. It was really, really exciting to see that when Wyoming became a state, as a territory, it had already allowed women to vote. So that was first. And as other territories came in, they also had allowed women to vote. And suddenly, when like a third of the states were allowing women to vote, somebody fought that, took it to the Supreme Court. And now we have suffrage in America. And there were so many things like that where we found out states lead.
In fact, about two days after this document came out, I was an event where Congressman Peter Welch was. And he came over and shook my hand. I said, you know, what do you think? He said, You’re right — states rule! And this is a man that works in Congress.
There is so much that states can do. You know, I don’t think we’re going to be able to shame other states into providing access to health care to people who need it and don’t have money. But I think if we come up with a way that works here, and that can be replicated and can be scaled to other places, that will be progress. Like if we really get our house in the best possible order, which we can control, then maybe it’ll be good news to the nation.
Melinda Moulton: And you know, this is an economic development document. Because right now we’re losing young people. If we give them minimum wage, paid leave universal health care, supportive daycare, affordable housing, young people will come to Vermont. So this is actually in many ways an economic development document to that’s going to inspire people to come here.
You talked about getting our house in order and that potentially inspiring other states. It does seem easier said than done, given a lot of the partisanship — that you even lay out at the beginning of this document — that’s happening. And I feel like abortion rights is a great example, where we are putting into law these protections, while a lot of other states are putting into law these restrictions. We’re not going to convince Alabama, for example, to do what we did, just because we did. So how, in some of these issues where there’s this real bifurcation, some states moving in one direction, some states moving way in the other direction, how can we count on just what we do inspiring action?
Melinda Moulton: I don’t think that that needs to be the focus. I think it’ll be sort of the residual of what we do. I think what we need to do is focus on Vermont and make sure that we do the right thing for our citizens. And I think other states will take notice. But I don’t know if it’s I think it’s more of a residual than actually the, ‘This is why this is here is to convince other states.’ But maybe I’m wrong.
Stephen Kiernan: I think you’re right on. I don’t mean to sound airy about it, but there’s a line in the Tao that says, ‘Controlling others requires force. Controlling yourself requires strength.’ We have the strength to control ourselves. We can say you can’t run for president in Vermont if you don’t show five years of tax returns. A number of states have done that. We can we can say that. We don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Just like our Secretary of State said, ‘No, Federal Working Group on Election Reform, you can’t have our voter rolls. No.’ we actually have control over those things. If we control ourselves, that is our strength. And rather than trying to force others, we can do our part. And I think If Vermonters knew that anyone running for president had to release their tax returns, they’d feel pretty good about it. And they ought to. They can say, ‘For us to choose a candidate, we need to know that information.’
Melinda Moulton: There are states now that are requiring the vote to be popular vote and not electoral vote, that are actually saying we’re going to we’re going to base our voting on popular vote. Majority rules.
Stephen Kiernan: The state of South Carolina has a paid holiday that is Confederate Independence Day. That’s how they mark it every year. It is a paid holiday. Can we not have a paid holiday that is Election Day? I understand there’s lots of implications to that. But if we make that commitment, will other states do it? There are cities that are doing it around the country. And if one state does it and then 15 states do it, then history shows the nation will do it. And suddenly a lot of these efforts that I think are completely corrupt to prevent people from from voting will be defeated.
The last presidential election, 36% of eligible voters turned out. All you have to do is get it to 40, and that would be a transformed nation. I think Vermont, again, coming from a place of strength, would feel pretty good about that.
It sounds like what you’re both saying is that, given what Vermont has done in the past, we’re on the right track. We’ve done certain examples of this in the past. We just need to do more, and need to do it with sort of a strategic vision. Is that fair?
Stephen Kiernan: Let me give a really specific example, if I could, about how it’s not just point of view. It is point of view, but it’s more than that.
So when the Supreme Court in the Brigham case in Vermont said, every student is entitled to equal educational opportunity, and the Legislature’s got two years to come up with a plan. There was an afternoon that I was sitting in the Senate Finance Committee while they were trying to develop what became Act 60. And the legislators were really working diligently. They knew the court deadline was on them, as well as all the political pressure and everything else.
They had these spreadsheets that were like if we do this, what are the implications? If we do that, what are the implications? For 251 towns. And at one point Cheryl Rivers, who I believe was chairing that committee — very bright senator — if she wasn’t chair she had some kind of ranking role. She said, we’re making progress here. But these papers are too vast and the spreadsheets are too hard to follow across multiple pages. Can we just get it broken out by county? Can we just look at the 14 counties? Can we just look at that?
And Steve Klein, who heads the Joint Fiscal Office, which does that kind of research for the Legislature, he said, senator, I’d love to be able to provide it to you. But you asked us to build this database with three hours notice, and we didn’t put it together by county. We can’t give it to you by county. And she said, okay, we’ll proceed. And they went ahead and they created Act 60. Without that piece of information. They did not have the horsepower to do the best job that they wanted to do.
So some of what this document argues is that we need to spend some money. We need to bring back the policy office in the governor’s office. We need more resources in the attorney general’s office. Likewise, the Legislature needs more support resources. And in addition, the public has a role in getting more involved in this stuff. Fraternal organizations, the rotaries and so on, Lions Clubs, those clubs that do a lot of good deeds in the community, can think about from a 10th amendment standpoint, lots of ways that we can bring the resources to bear. So that when someone has a 10th amendment idea, we’re not just guessing. We’re not just throwing stuff into the wind, but there’s real substance behind it. And that’s going to take some investment.
Melinda Moulton: I served on the Vermont Commission for Women. And we wanted to analyze and understand where women’s economic — where they stood in Vermont. And we went to the Labor Department and the governor, the Vermont government, and said, where are these statistics? They didn’t have the statistics. So we set up the Change the Story group, which was funding from three nonprofits, to come up with the money to hire the staff to go out and put together these reports. And there’s four of them that identify all these different areas where women are disenfranchised, where they’re rising, where they’re not rising. It’s an extraordinary study that they did, but we did it privately because our government was not capable of coming up with those statistics.
When we then talk about philanthropy — you just gave this example of something that you expected to happen in state government then being shifted to the nonprofit sector. And you talked a lot about nonprofits in the document, and said that was kind of the genesis of this for you. What do you see as the outlook for philanthropy, and what needs to be done to shore that up based on what’s here?
Stephen Kiernan: I think it’s dire. We have what is considered a robust nonprofit economy: 6,200 nonprofits in the state, with about $6 billion in annual revenues. But if you take out the hospitals and the colleges and the half dozen top philanthropies, you see a lot of folks with good intentions who are paid low wages. And they are going campaign to campaign trying to stay alive. My prediction in this document is that in the next 20 years, the number of nonprofits in Vermont will fall by half. Because the federal money’s going away. The state money is harder to come by. And the next generation of givers has not come forward.
Millionaires of 20 years ago gave away piles. Millionaires of last year gave away nothing. In this state, look at — the United Way campaign used to climb every year, the amount that they were collecting. Not anymore. The next generation doesn’t give, not at all in the same way. It’s going to be a big shift in our economy.
Right now, it’s also a way for people to express their activism by supporting nonprofits. And if those organizations go away, then there’s going to be more frustration there. That’s why now is the time for this. Now is a good time to be thinking about these ideas.
Melinda Moulton: And there’s the financial movement to eliminate or reduce people’s ability to take a deduction on nonprofits that went through the Legislature a couple years ago. We all came out and fought it. That all of a sudden your deduction for giving to a nonprofit would go away. That’s frightening, because people are going to stop giving to nonprofits if they can’t deduct it.
Stephen Kiernan: One of the really interesting things about American culture is how much we give away every year. I used to know that number, and I’ve forgotten, but it’s in the range of, I think, about $4 billion, as a nation, we give away every year. I remember when the tsunami hit Thailand, that the amount of money that Americans gave out of their own pockets was more than the American government gave. It’s actually part of how we tick as a culture. That is fantastic. And when I think about that being diminished, either through tax policy, or just so many choices, and people not stepping forward, I think that could make us a lesser people.
Do you see this as an optimistic document or a pessimistic document?
Melinda Moulton: Oh, I saw it as optimistic. For heaven’s sake. I mean, it’s hopeful. It gives us — we need something to do. This gives us something to do. It’s a template of, hey, let’s get active. Let’s make stuff happen. So for me, it’s optimistic because it gives you something to chew on.
Stephen Kiernan: What she said.
Melinda Moulton: Really, it’s not — there’s nothing pessimistic. It sets out where we are, and it’s like, okay, let’s all — This is what Vermonters do. I mean, when we had Irene — when anything happens, we all come together. This is a come together moment. So I see it as extremely positive.
It’s just, you lay out some really dire circumstances in it, the first several pages talking about the state of things federally, and then even once you come down to the state level, talking about some of those issues. Like you said, you see things in a lot of ways as pretty dire unless there are certain changes made.
Stephen Kiernan: What’s the old expression? ‘If you’re at the bottom of a big hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.’ The fact is that most Vermont institutions are human scale. And so if we set our minds to things, we can make a difference.
Here in Burlington, unlike the rest of Vermont, last year, we had a 50% reduction in opiate deaths in one year. 50% in one town, one city. And that says, we can do something, we don’t have to invent it. We have a place where it’s working. We just need to spread the word about that in a way that is helpful to people, not scolding, but encourages them and gives them tools to succeed. And so, am I optimistic or pessimistic about the opiate addiction issues? I think some people way smarter than me have got some answers on it. Let’s trumpet that and help other people know about it.
In this plucky state, all I have to do is go around on Town Meeting Day and look at the items that are on the ballot where they’re telling the federal government, we want this to happen. We don’t want that to happen. I think Vermonters are scrappy as can be. It’s one of the things I love about them. I lived in Iowa for a couple years, and they’re really polite there, and they’re really nice people, but they don’t get scrappy like Vermonters do. I think that there could be enormous pride in getting some of this stuff done. And I’m very optimistic about that.
Melinda Moulton: This is an opportunity. I really see this as an opportunity just waiting to happen. I see the whole — everything that’s going on in our country as an opportunity. You’re seeing people rise up and changes happen. This is a transition for this country. And Vermont can lead the way.
Stephen Kiernan: And our alternative is to sit back and complain. We can do that 140 characters at a time, all day long, and we will get sadder and angrier and more polarized and more frustrated. Or we can get active.
The metaphor I like to use is driving over the Mad River gap in a snowstorm. If you’re going over that gap, and you’re driving, you got your hands on the wheels, do a little skid here, you know, you got the wipers going, you’re keeping things clean, you got to feel like oh, I’m doing okay, I’m okay. You’re the passenger, you are holding on to the handles for dear life. Because you have no agency, and what’s happening — you just hope the driver’s going to do a good job. We can be a passenger state, or we can be a driver’s seat state. Everything that I know about Vermont says we have the capacity and the will and the energy to be a driver’s seat state.
Melinda Moulton: And when you’re going up the gap, the driver better keep his or her foot on the gas. We’ve gotta keep moving. We’re moving in a really good place in Vermont, but we’ve got to speed it up. And we’ve got to keep moving forward. And that’s what this vision is.
Thank you so much.
Melinda Moulton: Thank you.
[/showhide]
Subscribe to the Deeper Dig on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
