Call me old fashioned, but all the sweeping, absolutist ranting against "earmarks" as "pork" leaves me cold. Sure, we can all agree that gazillion dollar bridges to nowhere are a bad thing, but funding for projects at local universities? Support for renewable energy projects? Public works? Infrastructure projects?
Hell yes I think those are perfectly good uses of federal tax dollars. In fact, I'm of the school that thinks securing such assistance for worthy, meaningful home state projects is a fundamental part of a US Senator's or Representative's job. That's why I appreciated this from the Freeps today:
Vermont does better than any other state when it comes to qualifying for federal money distributed on the basis of census data, a new study has found.
[...] According to the Brookings data, Vermont received almost $1.79 billion in federal money in fiscal 2008 based on Census-related statistics, or $2,873.67 per capita. The per-capita average for the country was $1,469.
Heck, with all the inevitable "earmark" whining that's probably filling up the Freeps comment section by now, allow me to offer a hearty "damn fine job, gentlemen".
Looking forward to the day (not too far off, maybe?) when our senior Senator becomes Chair of Appropriations...
Doris Haddock, aka Granny D, died Tuesday afternoon, March 9, 2010. She had turned 100 years old in late January, and celebrated with a party at the NH State House. When she was 90, she walked across the entire country for campaign finance reform (there's an HBO documentary available free on Hulu, called "Run Granny Run").
In 2004, she ran a very grassroots campaign for Senate against Sen. Judd Gregg. She lost, yes, but not before showing up the GOP for the arrogant, elitist gang it was, and Gregg for the patronizing sexist he is.
There's a website dedicated to her speeches, many of which still pertain to how politics is done in 2010.
We elect our representatives to represent our values and our needs in shaping public policy and allocating community resources. In this work, the regular citizen doesn't stand a chance if elected representatives must first go to wealthy special interests to fund their campaigns. The representation game is over before it begins.
It is nothing particularly new. But in the past, the wealthy lived among us. We shopped in their stores on Main Street and their children went to grade school with ours. We shared the same community interests and values.
We are now talking about inhumane organizations of inhuman scale and international allegiance. They care not if our main streets or our families prosper or if they blow away. We must not have these monsters influencing our community decisions. We must not allow them to provide funds for our candidates, where those funds will deny us proper representation.
Remember back in 2002, the first time Anthony Pollina ran afoul of campaign finance laws (in this case, laws he was involved in passing)? To receive public financing for his Lite Guv run, he had to adhere to strict contribution limits. When it came out that the Progressive Party had polled on his race and shared that information with him, he lost his eligibility, as polling data is generally considered a contribution of significant value. Polls can run candidates $6000-$10,000 after all.
Flash forward to today. There was a Vermont Yankee oriented poll that was in the field several weeks back (a poll I was called for myself). At the time, I thought it may well be a poll by the Shumlin campaign because it included two questions about the Senate President Pro Tem (I called Shumlin at the time and said "hey, I got your poll" and he had no idea what I was even talking about).
According to Shay Totten, the poll was commissioned by VPIRG. Not necessarily a big surprise there, but here's the rub - Totten reports that VPIRG shared most of the data with Shumlin. They state that they did not share the results of the Shumlin questions with Shumlin, however. Why? Because that would have made it a campaign contribution.
I hope that's correct, because their tax status would make such a contribution illegal.
But this is seriously sloppy. Especially when you factor in Shumlin's high profile "goof" of hopping on VPIRG's Vermont Yankee float at the Mardi Gras parade for the cameras.
It's also all astoundingly foolish. Especially when one of the other candidates is the Secretary of State, and another (Dunne) is trying to run on campaign finance reform. Also, don't think it hasn't been noticed by the other side. Right wingers are pavlovian when it comes to VPIRG.
And then there's the comment in Totten's piece from Doug Racine regarding, I imagine, not just the Shumlin questions, but the entire poll's more ambiguous value as message testing:
"I was on record very early on, and they (VPIRG) came to me looking for help on this issue," said Racine. "I would have to pay quite a bit of money to get that information, and they shared it for free with Peter."
That would be code for "I know you're dancing around the illegal campaign contribution line but I'm not saying that directly... yet."
C'mon guys. Our side needs to be smarter (and better) than this.
I like music.
Music makes me happy. It serves a major function in my life.
Music has a number of utilities. It can draw people in, bring them together, break the ice, release tensions, and make us forget about the dreariness of issues and answers for a time.
One thing I particularly enjoy is what some people like to call "guilty pleasures."
Only thing is... never could figure out why I should feel guilty about them.
I mean, it's not like they disable me from participation in a functioning democracy or anything.
Here's one:
...and I'll put a few more for those who enjoy biting tinfoil on the jump.
Add your own if you're so inclined.
Because it is near impossible, during plant operation, to get into the pipe tunnel where a leaking pipe is located, the repairs will have to wait until it is offline for refueling...
But it's all good, because they have a "conceptual plan" to take care of that.
Now, just a bit of history: this leak was discovered in January. Specifically, January 6th. And April is... let's see... too damned many months to be leaking radiation without shutting down the plant for repairs.
A small robot that was exploring the underground pipe tunnel believed to be the source of the radioactive tritium leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor has fallen victim to one of the contributing factors of the leak - radioactive "mud" from deteriorating concrete and radioactive water.
NTodd of Dohiyi Mir is running for the State House as an independent. With Philip Baruth running for Senate, could that make for two bloggers hitting the Statehouse next session? If so, they'll find they aren't the first, as Republican/Vermont Tiger blogger Oliver Olsen beat them there after being appointed by the Governor to the late Rick Hube's seat.
In case you haven't already heard or read, gubernatorial candidate Matt Dunne is about to become a dad again. Congratulations Matt! Pretty challenging timing for campaigning though (kiddo is expected in June). Perhaps any lost time can be offset by the public "awwwwwwwww" factor.
Margolis dissects the gawd-awful House Bill that would allow high donors to the State Colleges or UVM to maintain anonymity, carving out another open records law exemption. What a terrible idea, terrible precedent. Dunno if it passed today.
(Continuing the policy of promoting diaries from officeholders and officeseekers - promoted by odum)
I am excited to tell you about something I've been working on for several weeks. All of us candidates have been saying how essential it is to achieve universal access to affordable health care -- and I've been figuring out how to actually make that happen.
The escalating cost of our current system is crippling our state, our families and our businesses. Health care in Vermont will cost $1 billion more in 2012 than it does today if current trends continue -- this is a crisis, and we cannot let it continue.
That is why today, I introduced a revised version of S.88 -- so that we can design the system that will deliver health care to Vermonters, and answer all of the questions that need to be answered to implement this new system. My bill calls for the state to hire independent advisors, who will be overseen by a panel of Vermonters, to provide the state with a "menu of options." These advisors will design three different health care systems -- fully design them, not just study them -- and deliver back to the legislature a full implementation plan for each of the three possible systems.
This will not be easy. Change comes with uncertainty and risks. But the option of doing nothing is simply not acceptable. We are now paying the price of a broken system, and that price will only go up. The time to move forward is now. Please join me and help me to build the system we need.
There is more information on my website, and when you visit you can sign on as a "citizen co-sponsor" of the bill. I'll also be posting a copy of the bill as introduced on the site very soon. It will change as it moves through the process - probably several times - but I am committed to the goal of access to affordable, quality health care for every Vermonter.
I hope you will read the bill, sign on, and work with me to create the new system that will lead the way to true reform.
...they'll introduce a congressional rebuke of the recent political ad from an organization spearheaded by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol (the "Dept. of Jihad" ad) which suggests that lawyers defending guantanamo inmates are in league with (or at sympathetic to) al qaeda. From Greenwald:
One of the most inane acts undertaken by the Democratic Congress was its formal and highly bipartisan condemnation of MoveOn.org's "Petraeus/Betrayus" ad. Regardless of one's views of that ad, formally opining on the views of private citizens is not the role of Congress. But since they did that, and apparently believe that repugnant political campaigns merit Congressional disapproval, shouldn't there be some form of formal sanction for the far more pernicious and genuinely McCarthyite attacks on DOJ lawyers from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's "Keep America Safe"? So reprehensible was that campaign that numerous right-wing lawyers have vehemenetly condemned it -- including Ken Starr, David Rivkin, Ted Olsen, and even (ironically) former Bush official Cully Stimson -- with most of them signing a letter decrying it as "a shameful series of attacks" that are "destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications."
Last week, Senator Leahy and Representative Welch broke with Senator Sanders and brought several flavors of shame to the liberal community under one, all-encompassing umbrella - the vote to rebuke MoveOn. While first and foremost, I find the vote both bizarre and cowardly (for its myopic waste of time on the one hand, and the pointless "Sister Souljah"-style sacrifice of an ally deemed - apparently - disposable on the other), the fact is that it was also an affront to the tradition of free speech in this country.
Don't get me wrong - I didn't like that vote and I don't like the idea of a new one to rebuke this latest attack (and I differ with Greenwald on that). But it does make for an interesting question, the answer to which will tell us whether or not the MoveOn votes by Mssrs. Leahy and Welch were based on genuinely held principles, or whether they were just afraid of the big bad Republican noise machine. Obviously, one would hope it was the former, even if I disagreed with those principles.
If you haven't yet seen it, the ad in question is below the fold.
Well, I have to say, it's a good thing that 
Oh, and we're not talking early April. We're talking April 24. That's 108 days later. But hey, at least 
