 Hello everyone, I'm Michael Abadi and welcome to State of the State 2016. This is episode 7 and I'm honored and thrilled to welcome Bill Lee to the studio and the Montpelier and the show and Bill Lee is running for governor under the Liberty Union party ticket and he was he's I gotta say iconic baseball player with the Red Sox and the Expo's career went from 69 to 82 and 73 all-star helped win that AL pennant in 75 and since then has been playing ball right through he's been baseball goodwill ambassador to Cuba you mentioned China Moscow China 75 Moscow and 88 Soviet Union and you played you played in Venezuela as well played in Venezuela for two years and also you gained some union experience as an MLB player you were player rap yes I'm responsible for more millionaires than anybody in the state of Vermont by taking the money from the billionaires and dividing it up amongst all the players because they're all making a million now right and we can we can talk about labor more but you've got that experience and then it's about 25 years you've been in Craftsbury as farming yes I've been the worst farmer in the history of Craftsbury all my turkeys got eaten baby turkeys by a fisher cat while I was on a road trip and my ex-wife was there and I had a trap out there and it got caught one of its paws got caught and it gnawed off two of its talons to escape and she didn't get a shot at it so I was out of the turkey business and then the sheep they got ill and had ducks and porcupines and everything were all I mean at the porcupines most of the raccoons got after the ducks and then my last chicken I remember seeing it dying a pile of feathers and it lost in the third round and it was a barb rock meanest hand that David Reed my farmer he loved that he'd come up on his tractor and that that barb rock and attack him and you know you don't need a handgun in the northeast kingdom you just need a couple of barb rocks and two gray geese uh-huh and they'll protect your whole house now how did how did you um how'd you find that spot I had come down that road after writing the book in 84 the wrong stuff I wrote it up in abacorn madsenville on the Quebec side in a little chalet and then I'd come to get pizza and I'd come in to uh got all the way to Newport and then came up 14 one time and I saw this guy hanging with a scythe it was Robert Anderson he had the biggest farm in Crassbury and the next farm was the Reed farm and went by it saw Crassbury fell in love with it and about two years later the fantasy camp came to me John Savage from the Chittenden Bank here in Stuart Savage Adele Savage they came to New Brunswick asked me if I would come back come back to Vermont and help him with the fantasy camp and they said we'll put you up in in the Demick's house in East Hardwick when uh when he went to Florida and I had all these Red Sox relationships here and uh Ken Squires his father had a cabin up a Middlesex notch stayed there in the fall and that was the fall when we had the 16 inch snowfall on the 12th of October you know which said welcome to Vermont and I learned that Middlesex notch is pretty high up yeah and I learned that and then I came back and then Scott Reed's barn collapsed and he had to sell his cows he was dairyman of the whole Lord northeast kingdom the best lowest lucasite level and he comes there and he introduces himself to me and says I've my father's selling parcels would you like to come live with us and I went up there and I shook hands and he sold me his 14 acres on the top and that was where I've been living ever since and David's still alive he fought on Iwo Jima he's one of the last surviving Marines of Iwo Jima now you did service yourself I read somewhere you six years yeah last Red Sox that was drafted I think there's some stuff I was the last Red Sox that was almost drafted I was I was smart I passed my AFI's physical in Oakland and immediately got on a plane told the Red Sox and they flew me on the Red Eye and I enlisted in the Army Reserve at the Boston Army Base and that kept me precluded me from having to go to Vietnam but they army got mad yeah they were gonna send me to NAMM anyway and then I basically I pitched well enough that if you throw well you know I was worth more with the Red Sox than I was walking point up and you know up on the DMZ but I was lucky a lot of my Red Sox players did go to NAMM Bill Campbell and stuff and and I was cursed by having to process all the dead bodies from New England so I worked the MTS computer that was your gig that was my punishment and wasn't it was it was tough work wow you know and I have to say you can come get whatever's left to your son and an Oakley cluster and a bronze star and I was that'll give you a sense of the consequences of war like nothing else exactly and I became I was a long haired hippie I got busted back to PFC before I even got out because but you know I was in the head I straightened out all the all the papers and publications in my Aguas Puerto Rico when I was stationed at the the base in my Aguas Puerto Rico which is a U.S. protectorate so I did that and then I was chemical rail radiation biological warfare officer for the 1173rd and you know that I had to do atropine injections and nerve gas and it was tough it was I did six years but all the time I got the pitch too which allowed me to pick their time right and they would schedule my weekends around times when I was I'm actually responsible for annual training I changed it from summer camp which the army used to do and we called it annual training because I made my my living in the summer so I did all my military work in the winter okay and so you could shift I could shift it around and I you know the squeaky wheel gets the grease and I was pretty smart and the army agreed with me and and then it affects change yeah and I just I'd go to the rifle range I bring all the brass and ammo back and you know I was I was pretty proficient in the military I was soldier of the cycle at Fort Polk, Louisiana in fact I was the the number one to come out of there and the only one not to go to Vietnam and in fact they gave me a test and I passed it and they wanted me to go to Fort Wachuka become a second Louis and immediately I would have been in the NSA so I could have been Snowden too huh national security national security of talk give back to you know life and growth and farming and your your your time as a farmer is giving you any insights and how this the stake and help out farmers yes I believe in Alan Chadwick in the Indonesian hexagonal double digging technique for planting and allowing your soil to be better organic you have less runoff you have more soil more soil conservation and I believe Pete's greens is using a lot of that not so much row planting that they do nowadays you know I think they were ahead of their time as far as providing food at a smaller like Vermont has not a lot large pastures and stuff but we are a lot like Vietnam we're a lot like the Highlands we're wet we're damp and but we have the seasons and we can grow everything we want bok choy melons we can grow it's this is the perfect place Vermont and I've always been an organic farmer and you know I don't spray my apples I take them the way they come and I press the juice we have presses up there and one day a month Bill Pierce allows people to use his press and we're all kind of in this group together and it's that's what I love about the northeast kingdom and I think all of Vermont should adapt the kingdom philosophy nice now you see the state I don't know providing incentives to farmers to move more in in that direction I do know that there have been farmers terracing for rice you mentioned Vietnam and we're actually as we get warmer and wetter it seems to be the it's going to be the norm yeah you know I I have a southern exposure on the other 42 acres uh that by wine partner I make wine in California I make a petite saura saura cabernet a cote de rome blend and if you take Vermont and go right through it goes right same place in southern France so eventually but they have the way the the currents are and stuff I do not believe I think we'll always have these extreme temperature swings here sure you know and you're gonna get that polar blast because that tongue and the way the shape of the rocky mountains are it comes that's called an Alberta clipper and it flows through but I believe if you have a southern exposure protect your grapes and and and plant them properly and shelter them a little bit you know and maybe you can shelter them with solar panels behind there so you're collecting the southern light and have your wine terraced you know we could have a viable grape culture right sure yeah and you got a lot more of a talking about season extension too and really getting I believe there's going to be a season extension our falls have all gone longer our winters are less harsh uh you know and uh we do not get that uh 15 days in 88 that we got where it's 40 below I haven't seen that since I've been right right that could have been the last gasp of real winter as the polar ice caps melt I mean hell there's tourist ships going all the way around point Barrow all the way through yeah they're becoming shipping the northwest territories and stuff so it's it's a shipping line I propose that the Canadian government that they do away with the the lock system and the great lake system and and go right out of Churchill Falls and run all your produce and everything there run it through Hudson Bay and it's a shorter distance to Europe huh I thought that would be economically viable and then for energy for us I've always proposed to the the premiers I've known all of them in New Brunswick for the last 25 30 years that why don't we harness the the Bay of Fundy title bore with the 45 foot tides in the spring and the fall I mean there is so much energy to be made that way with the transmission line instead of running all this freaking lignite and this heavy fuel oil that blew up in Lake McGon thick that was a terrible tragedy and that was so close to us in Craftsbury you know when that blew up and that was going to the Irving factory over there in St John I'm pretty sure it was maybe a couple years ago you won't believe how many transport trucks from New Hampshire and everything cross Vermont and go into the port of Montreal and get their fuel oil and everything at a lower price because of the dollar up there and then transport it back across the state line in Vermont we're just through and look at all the logging trucks Quebec logging trucks on 91 and 89 and on 12 and 14 and everything that are taking our premium beautiful logs and taking them to the shampoo and milling them up there you know we've got to get more sustainable we could add we could add the value here is what you're saying and that's exactly add the value here do it on a smaller operation do it you know with these beautiful new wood misers these beautiful little saws you know and a lot of people are doing that and do more customized sawing within the area for for our needs right re-adapt so that that's a model where it's not drawing in that one big industry that's going to provide us you know 800 jobs and another that dog don't it's it's sort of a small entrepreneurial economy that's what we're going to be we're going to be that the Vermont brand is golden when you put Vermont on something you can slap a 10 percent more on it just because it's they say it's from Vermont they know it's good they know it's clean means and we've got to do that and maintain that you know that that market by cleaning up our waterways cleaning up our streams getting rid of the big cow farms you know going down using more of their land on their farms for more organic farming and be more diversified that that seems to be the trick of it how do you help them convert we're going to have to help them convert we're going to find a way because it's all about market if they can make more money with us cows senator yeah we got to show them that 2000 cow farm ain't cutting it you're dumping your milk anyway because wisconsin's setting the price of milk you know these guys over there in wisconsin with these cheese heads on playing for the packers you know those guys are telling us what the price scales up yeah they're scaled up in a way we can yeah they're scaled up because they're big they got subsidies those giant farms in Iowa and stuff you know they don't stay in Iowa in the winter so we're looking at really it's I mean we're kind of we're getting there we're out maybe are we a sort of a specialty ag market that serves so we live near massive population centers too we can get our goods to a lot of people if this was the united states right we're that little word right there right that's it we're number 49 yeah 630 000 people in education we're good and and the quality of life we're good everything we're good we're not alabama louisiana or mississippi right so um you're leading me to ask as we are a small state we are population did near double when the interstates were put in and i'm wondering are you someone who sees that we really ought to work on increasing the population here are we going to see climate refugees from the coast i mean are you i see them coming are you seeing a uh i don't know we're like who how many decades out but um i thought they'd be here a long time ago and nothing happened nothing happened but i see the change right now and i see it because finally people are realizing that when the army corps of engineers put six inches on the jetties all around florida georgia and the carolinas they did it 20 years ago they knew something was happening so i think the finally with that flooded louisiana the temperature down there my daughter says is unbearable right now as far as think how warm it is up here and do that on steroids people south of us and never get a break from it they never get a break i think there's going to be more people moving north i think that's the future yeah but it's with air conditioning there was this huge southern migration but yeah that that that was because they go down in the winter i mean you're people up in north throy and stuff and your big farmers they've got their places down in fort meyers they're all redsox fans i know i know all of them down there and they they all get down and the they go down and they sit down there and complain that there's nothing to do i know one farmer it was up here and his wife begged him to go to florida he did not want to go to florida he said okay we retire he goes to florida he was dead within a year don't go to florida it's a trap especially if you're a hard-working farmer and stuff because there is really nothing to do down there so retire here retire lovely quality of life cross snowshoe yeah get a beagle yeah go out and follow some you know hairs around and at least keep your cardiovascular up stay in shape david reads 92 and he's still kicking so most of you old cramudgin farmers don't go to florida it's a trap unless you're playing ball and i still play you go and then you're getting your exercise and we won the vermont state championship uh middle wine burger my catcher that was your last visit to montpellier right last closed last visit i threw 12 innings i got a one out double in the 12th and he drove me in winning run ended the senior year senior league season right is that right here right here at your rec field down there at robin roberts field where he was uh 18 and six in the a league back in the old days and one of the great pitchers that i knew in my life so complete game 12 innings 140 pitch victory congrats yeah bill mac poor guy struck out 22 of us but when he woke up in the morning the times argus had a big l right next complete game lost 12 innings yeah um we're talking retirement how about um pre-retirement people have a working life you've got some experiences as a as a as a union wrap the state's made some movement at a minimum wage talk about sick leave what would you like to see move forward you got a number on minimum wage where would you see that like 15 just like you know and uh you don't be diversified you know uh if you if you need extra work go out because i'm going to raise the price on the bud light cans for the return they're going to go up from 5 to 10 cents because you can make more money picking up bud light cans in the spring after the skidu trails go down i can tell you a place in the northeast kingdom where you can make 200 dollars in an afternoon they are the ones you always see they're the ones you always see that in mcdonald's mcdonald's is going to get tax more uh white flour uh cigarettes alcohol i think i think germany sources trash and charges would charge the equivalent of the mcdonald's for like okay 20 percent of the trash on the roadside is mcdonald's we're gonna and it's not really a tax it's like yeah you know take care of what you put out into the world that's that quarter german of me it's in our dna we think that way you know you know the germans i said one uh a long time ago everybody should drive a Mercedes or a bmw because they're the most engineered cars in the world and my father says you come home with a chap car or a german car i'll shoot you he fought on okinawa and and tinien yeah you know and he had the the silver star with the oak leaf clusters and uh he was tough you know and that's our relatives i'm the first i'm the baby boomer born in 46 right i'm the responsible we were the worst generation they were the best generation we were the worst generation we were worse because they fed us on time they put us on the potty on time and we were all regular and we all i was bubbly fat and uh i'm just the same as i was when i was 18 months old so you you had sort of a classic 50s upbringing and boy didn't i i was leave it the beaver found it found your way i was walley i was los angeles mom smoked cigarettes had the meal on the table yeah you know i am the classic hollywood kid yeah north hollywood well the boomer's got the boomer's got plenty to be proud of i do believe that i don't i don't every time i look in the mirror i see what a squander i am of of you know i i was bought into this thing this world war one was unnecessary that was a bunch of in-laws fighting amongst themselves for the control of some donut shop in berlin it'd be nine be liner and if world war one was not right then hitler wouldn't ever came about so we wouldn't have this world war two if we don't have world war two we don't have the cold war we don't have the cold war we don't have korea we don't have vietnam what would the planet be like if we were a peaceful race yeah and all those resources were spent to exactly a growth rate maybe we would all be like canadians you know well the nicest people on the earth married last two wives are Canadian they're um you actually got to experience their healthcare system i did as an expo but i didn't take advantage of it i paid you know but i would get an x-ray of my arm and i go in and i didn't have their insurance benefits but i would go in actually i didn't pay the expo's paid but after i retired i still go back i get all all my implants so i'm not in past tense actually present tense present tense i get all my implants at half price i get my shoulder surgery i got the big zipper here for my rotator cuff larry coglin for five thousand dollars it would have been 50 75 thousand so what are what are they doing and i got morphine drip every six minutes it was what are they doing right what could we learn from the canadians what could we actually they actually tax their people properly and they get it back and they have all these sin taxes on food and everything and all that goes to their medical and stuff and uh people are healthy people are happy people go out at night and they actually walk around the streets downtown until two thirty three o'clock in the morning and they socialize and then they go home and wake up at 12 o'clock and they don't want uh they don't watch sunday night football because the cfl is on thursday and friday they reserve their weekends they reserve their weekends for themselves and their families and they're not they're not all committed to uh nfl well it seems like with trying to roll out singer paying vermont at what's that point you actually led with the unpopular thing to say they tax their people properly and that seems to be where shumlin walked it back he did nothing was politically viable to sell a payroll tax at well i don't know where it was seven nine percent and you got to pay for it how do you pitch it how do you pitch it you got you just got to get through you get what you pay for if you want security and you want to wake up and you want to like your job and you want to go to the job and know that if you fall down or something you're going to be taken care of that's a good way to live your life go north to canada they're happy they're happy go to switzerland they're happy go to norway they're happy go to sweden they're happy their workforce is happy our workforce isn't happy you know because of a bunch of republicans with a bunch of short arms and long deep pockets they look like tyrannosaurus is rex is and they go they go like this all day we're not going to do it we're not going to pay for it you got to pay for it or eventually there's going to be a revolution and you're seeing with bernie sanders you're seeing it with the black lives matter and eventually these people are going to get upset and they're going to take back their country and the u2 percent are going to have to go to norway or north of norway because that money's it doesn't trickle down reagan was wrong you know thomas malthus was wrong john kenneth galbraith was wrong all of its bait well kenneth galbraith was a canadian he was actually all right he's the only economist i ever really read that i enjoyed and his son's not that bad except he got into the oil patch and that's why sue minters running against him um thank you that was a lot um so in terms of uh this this state now um you mentioned a lot i guess what you just said i think a segment of the population found the sort of kind of wake up call some people heard that as scary and some people heard that as hopeful you know what i mean i know if you're educated it's hopeful if you're uneducated it's scary you know because it's like oh my god they're going to take away and they're going to all of a sudden these muslims and everybody going to come into my trailer park and shoot us up that ain't going to happen in vermont trust me it ain't going to happen you invite people of other face of other religions that's the key to life is get to know different people and embrace that there'll be no radicalism in this state this state you know it's uh it's a great estate and it'll be fine yeah i'm not worried about there's a bedrock stability here huh i think so i think we came here everybody here and the reason they came here was to get away from the madness and uh if we can't survive here where the hell are we going to go from here now um you speaking on canadian health care and learning from canada um they also have a multi-party system and um you are you are creating a multi-party governor's race just by throwing your hat a literal hat into the ring and i just i did you were you paying attention to how that multi-party system works up there oh yes it's i was part of the renaissance i guess what's the benefit of of that you get more voice are we lacking you get more voices you get more uh discourse you don't get this this controlled by the super media fox cnn and everything else they just stored it it's wrong read amy goodwin read the books that are out there that have the truth rumsfeld in 1983 was saddam hussein's buddy buddy they nerve gas the curds they gave him money like that and he goes no that wasn't me and then all of a sudden they showed him a picture of him shaking hands he goes where did you get that picture oh yeah that does look a lot like me yeah rumsfeld liar republican liar it's a it's amazing how the iraq war continues into 2016 to be a central campaign issue i mean that is just it's it's this it's fear multi-decade it is i knew it the day it happened the day i was with uh kin burns i went to kin burns house in uh wall pole and saw the second uh the second tower collapse with kin burns in wall pole and i said this will go on forever this is exactly how the crusades started and how we got our ass kicked by salad in a long long time ago and you just cannot defeat monotheistic behavior like that you've got to be polytheistic we vermoners we worship trees we worship river we worship quail we worship pheasants kind of have an ackee right there we're having an ackee yeah that's nice and you have to have that mentality everything is alive but when you practice in an abraham and everything else everything is dead you know and what do you want you want things alive you want things dead you know and i'm not going back you're sitting with father crow hail and brimstone and me saying you're going to hell because hell is uh mississippi one is 99 degrees and 90 percent you're uh you're yeah you're speaking nicely on um i guess how spirituality informs informs your politics it did um and that night i'm very spiritual i'm very zen buddhist i'm very flexible i do my yoga every day i have full range of motion i concentrate on being able to pitch every sunday and going 12 innings and i'm going to do that till the day i die excellent maybe the governor's race will get in its way but i'm pretty sure you guys are all set you know especially half the people in vermont have already voted because they're leaving for florida election day itself doesn't matter so much anymore it's funny how october is kind of harvest season in baseball where things get serious farming and politics so here we are i imagine you'll be are you're going to do much traveling around the state i know you're not soliciting campaign funds not playing that game are you going to do a i have to be consistent with my values and my values are you shouldn't have to pay for a government you shouldn't have to pay people to uh to get them out there and stuff it's uh one man one vote you know we only have three votes in uh you know for presidency anyway right very very low electoral we're very low so yeah they used to say as main goes so goes the nation and then they said as main goes so goes vermont's right that's right that's because fdr wasn't it um thanks for uh expanding the playing field and uh putting your hand in the ring and getting getting all these uh i want i want the conservative vote because i am more conservative you know than any republican out there and i am a gun toter i go out when i carry a gun i see no grouse when i carry a baseball bat birds fly all around me so i carry a baseball bat because i don't really want to shoot them and eat them anymore we do have time i thank you so much for getting here and enjoy campaign season yeah this is uh this is as good as it gets here right here this is uh you know i've already won in montpellier i would like to win again because i think i'll do the best job for you because uh i'm the only guy that'll have his hands in his own pockets you are yeah you're on a winning streak aren't you yeah all right take care now thanks for getting there thank you very much