A nice friendly feminine voice in a taped message just asked me if I am voting in the upcoming November election.  I pressed 1 for yes.

The nice recorded lady then asked me if I was voting for 1. Jim Douglas, 2-Gaye Symington, 3-Anthony Pollina — I pushed 2 and was immediately transferred to a new question.  

The new question asked by the friendly recorded feminine voice was who would I vote for for representative.  She did not say state rep or congressional rep, just representative.  I listened and heard two names I did not know.  I waited.  I asked the recorded woman a question.  No response, so I voted for the Democrat, once again #2.

Finally the recorded woman’s voice asked me if I would support a tax on gas to improve Vermont’s roads and bridges vote 1 or against it vote 2.  

That’s a no-brainer for me.  I lived in Connecticut when the Mianus Bridge collapsed and people died.  Luckily it was at 1:30 a.m., so only a few people died rather than the hundreds that would have died during rush-hour.  All because of inadequate maintenance and lack of inspection.  Yeah, I’ll pay a little more in gas money any time to make our bridges safe for everyone.

I pushed 1, and the nice lady on electronic push poll hung up on me without even saying goodbye and thank you.

Got some of the basic data, and its worth a second look. It was indeed Research 2000 (which has recently hit the big time by being tapped to provide the Daily Kos daily tracking poll…. congrats guys!). Again, a 400 person sample, meaning an unfortunately high 5% margin of error (and no, Pollina fans, that doesn't mean the poll is no good, it just means it has a big whopping 5% margin of error).

The poll was taken between September 11th and September 14th, meaning Pollina's AFL and NEA endorsements will not have factored into it, but the VSEA  endorsement did to some extent. Again, in the last decade, I haven't seen a noticable, verifiable labor endorsement bump, but anything's possible. Of course, its also possible that any poll bump might be offset by a dropcaused by such a poor showing in this poll. It'spossible that liberal supporters will start defecting if they no longer see him as viable, given the 7% showing.

So the poll is still better for Symington than Pollina (duh), and she has some other good news as well – despite the pronouncement of the living embodiment of Vermont conventional wisdom – the oft quoted Eric Davis of Middlebury College – that a 15% spread between the candidates would not be enough to trigger national Democratic support, the Democratic Governor's Association has reacted favorably and is forming a PAC to assist in Symington's effort. Whether that just means a contribution under the generally-agreed to limits ($1000 for the general election) or a full blown independent expenditure is not clear.

But back to the numbers:
 

Not a lot of trends that jump out at you in the Governor's race. Symington has stronger support among women than men, and vice versa for Douglas – although Douglas still leads overall among women – and across every demo, in fact. There's a breadth to Douglas's support across gender and location that probably offsets some of the lack of depth we're seeing. As we work down to that core mass of Republican/Douglas support, its easy to see that is a spread-out base.

Pollina runs twice as strong in the south as the north, which is largely a function of Windham County, no doubt. Symington's popularity among the left is clearly lowest there, but apparently not nearly as low as many were expecting, as she too performs better in the south (although not by a statistically significant margin). More undecided women is probably good news for Symington, as they look to be more likely to break her way, while more undecideds in the north may favor Douglas – although, again, in both instances, the distintion is within the margin of error.

And nearly 1 in 10 likely voters has “no opinion” of Jim Douglas. A high-profile, multi-term incumbent. Fascinating. Add that to the 43% unfavorable, and I think this baby may be headed for the legislature….

(Because it’s so much fun to live this close to a ticking time bomb. – promoted by JulieWaters)

At some point they really better give up on this excuse that these leaks are not uncommon.The point and the problem is exactly that are common

 

September 17, 2008 Vermont Yankee is at 55 percent power this morning for repair of a packing leak in an expansion joint in a pipe that carries river water in the east cooling tower, Entergy officials said today.

It appears that the leak of about 60 gpm is related to the packing in an expansion joint and not related to structural issues as had been the cause of previous river water leaks in the cooling tower.

While packing leaks are not uncommon, plant management took the conservative action to reduce power and remove the cooling tower from service to allow an inspection of adjacent pipe joint packing, officials said.

The west tower remains in service and plant operators expect the repairs and power reduction to be of short duration.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

The Sarah Palin stuff is annoying but this one should grant an exception.

Raw Story is reporting that Republican veep nominee Sarah Palin credits her electoral success on a preacher who claims he can successfully hunt down witches. Raw Story’s John Byrne writes the following.

“In 1988, Pastor Muthee and his wife traveled to Kenya after being “called by God.” Setting up shop in the basement of a grocery store, they claim to have brought 200 people “to God” and away from the town’s “spiritual oppression.”

The source of the oppression? Witchcraft, Muthee says. When researching the community, they found that a woman named “Mama Jane” ran a divination clinic that drew a large following in the town.

“We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place,” Pastor Muthee said.

Muthee made his experiences into a video called Transformations, which documents his “spiritual warfare” against demons and occult practices. Spiritual warfare is more common in Latin America and Africa, where the concept of day-to-day demons has a stronger hold. The video’s trailer is available here.

Here’s the video of Palin crediting the pastor.

So much more. Read the rest of the story here.

From Green Mountain Daily

At 7:30 this evening the Fed delivered an emergency plan to rescue AIG because, simply put, they have to.  Without stepping in, the global market could crumble in either days, weeks or just a couple of months

Conservatives wail and moan as if the heavens are falling when the topic of single payer health insurance comes up.

“Socialized Medicine!” they cry out.  Doom, despair!  It's the end of capitalism as we know it!

Well, look at what's getting “socialized” now. 

Here's the Fed's emergency plan:

the Fed will make a two-year loan to A.I.G. of up to $85 billion and, in return, will receive warrants that can be converted into common stock giving the government nearly 80 percent ownership of the insurer.

The US Government will own 80% of the largest insurance company in the world.  

Financial “conservatives” will be quick to argue that the Fed's 80% takeover of AIG is necessary — which is absolutely correct.  But that doesn't make it any less than 80% government owned.  In fact, it's about 8 steps out of 10 in the direction of what we can call “Socialized Insurance.”

Ok, so I'm having a little fun with this.  As of tomorrow the US won't actually “own” AIG; it will own warrants which can be converted to common stock.  But still, that's a pretty tight leash.  

But in the face of financial disaster, you gotta keep your humor, right?

So here's what I'm thinking:  as long as we're socializing finance by purchasing the world's largest insurance company…

…maybe we can put “US/AIG” to work by directing it to offer single payer health care.

Now there's a thought….

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post this, because I really do think this is a big deal.

The Vermont State Democratic Committee met Saturday mainly to adopt its platform. One of the other items on the agenda, though, was to choose our electors for the presidential election. These are the people who, if Barack Obama wins in Vermont in November, will actually cast Vermont’s three votes for Obama.

And guess what: longtime GMD front pager and current poster Euan Bear (NanuqFC) was chosen as one of our electors. Euan’s also the chair of the Franklin County Democrats and a tireless worker. For many years the way the electors were chosen was that the inner circle would nominate a slate of candidates and that slate would be voted up or down, essentially ratifying the choice of the insiders. As a grassroots leader, Euan worked on the Rules Committee to make sure that this year, for the first time, there would be an open vote.

The fact that she got the nod from her fellow State Committee members is a testament to the high regard in which her hard work and dedication are held.

Congratulations, Euan!

(crossposted on Five Before Chaos.)

I just have to chime in on this “McCain invented the Blackberry” nonsense that’s making its way around the liberal blogosphere. Now, yeah, I get it, it’s funny because it’s the same contextual bullshit as that “Al Gore invented the internet” nonsense back in 2000. And I guess on one level I can appreciate the fact that the Dems are finally figuring out that stupidity works better than just about anything else when reaching the American voter.

Sure, point out how McCain hasn’t been at the forefront of supporting groundbreaking technologies and hasn’t authored any law on expanding wireless technologies. I’m all for embracing their tactics, as I’ve said before, with one exception: don’t make stuff up. Am I remiss here?

Finally. A poll!!! Man, I feel so much better now. And waddayaknow… all those people telling me I was mistaken for referring to Anthony Pollina as “Mr. 8%” were right after all. Just not in the way they meant.

Let’s look at the basics as reported by WCAX. (We’ll work on getting the crosstabs and mining a little deeper ASAP)

With the election less than two months away, a Channel 3 News Poll shows Republican Jim Douglas has 48 percent of the vote, Democrat Gaye Symington at 33 percent and Independent Anthony Pollina with 7 percent. 12 percent are undecided.

No surprises, unfortunately. For a while on this blog and off, we’ve been saying the first poll would likely be around 50-35-10-5. I just wish I’d been wrong about that.

All three candidates are a bit lower than I would’ve expected, and the undecideds are higher, which is the big story here. the WCAX report doesn’t give details, but their usual go-to polling firm is Maryland’s Research 2000. Last time, they used a sample size of 400, which was an extremely low sample size. Usually, 600 is considered minimum – with only 400, you’re looking at a whopping 5% margin of error. Short of having the data to look at (when I get it I’ll post something new), let’s just work through the WCAX report…

(UVM Political Scientist Garrison) Nelson says Pollina’s single digit number could be moving up; the poll was done before several endorsements, including one by the teachers’ union this week.

It’d be nice to think so, but we’re looking at four consecutive cycles of gubernatorial races where the recipient of union endorsements – in both two and three person races – seemed to receive no bump from such endorsements. If they had, we’d probably be looking at a different Governor by now. As such, I’d say looking for a bump is wishful thinking.

The incumbent has a 48 percent favorable rating, 43 percent unfavorable.

This is significant, and by all rights should be scary for Douglas. It continues a trend we saw vividly laid out in last year’s poll, and suggests that trend is accelerating. AT that earlier poll, Douglas’s re-elect numbers were in the low 40’s, but his positives were still in the 60’s. That right there represented a significant drop off from previous years, but now we see that the positives are giving way to inevitability and moving to match his re-elect numbers, rather than the other way around. Bad, bad news for Jim Douglas’s political future, at least in the long term.

Unfortunately, that erosion isn’t translating to approval for his opponents. Instead, its translating to the undecided column. SO where will those undecideds break? For that, we look to the favorable/unfavorables of his opponents:

Gaye Symington has a 37 percent favorable rating, 15 percent unfavorable, and 48 percent have no opinion.

Anthony Pollina has 41 percent favorability, with 33 percent unfavorable, and 26 percent had no opinion.

Symington and Pollina both have comparable approval numbers. Pollina’s are higher, but (presumably) within the margin of error. But his unfavorables are double Symington’s, and his “no opinion” is 22% lower. This tells us a couple things: one, that Symington’s name recognition is still lagging Pollina’s, and two that voters are more inclined to dislike him than Symington by a significant amount. Remember – if that discrepancy were only due to Pollina’s advantage in name recognition, you’d expect the favorables to show a similar spread, but their favorables are equal even given the recognition gap.

And this is the best news for Symington. It means that people likely aren’t feeling as negatively toward the legislature (and by extension Symington) as both the Douglas and Pollina camps keep insisting. It also means that if she can boost her name recognition, more of those undecideds will break her way than Pollina’s.

And Douglas needs to worry about something else – namely, breaking that 50% limit and keeping this out of the legislature, where long-frustrated Dems might well hand the election to their Speaker. All things being equal, one would expect many – probably most – of those undecideds to break Douglas’s way. But looking at this poll combined with the previous one suggests downward momentum for Douglas, which makes those undecideds a very shaky bet for him.

More as I get data…

It was relatively quiet at the Vermont Democratic Party Platform Convention (you can read the amended and passed document here). In contrast to other years, the hostility level from the floor was waaaay down, although one gentleman tried to add a section condemning the “government corruption” in drug interdiction and treatment agencies. Most others present agreed that the statement didn’t fit — and Chair Ian Carleton was mightily offended at the impugning of the sincerity and righteousness of people he meets every day in the courtroom as a litigator.

But two interesting things happened, both of which trend toward more openness and transparency in the VDP: the Presidential Electors were nominated from the floor; and their election was accomplished through (a slightly odd version of) IRV.

Some recent history and context after the jump.

The Presidential Electors are the people from each state whose votes actually elect the President. They are, collectively, the Electoral College, which was the Founders’ last-ditch protection against rule by the rabble.

When we vote for, say, Barack H. Obama in November, if we read the ballot carefully, we see that we are actually voting for “Electors for [or pledged to] Barack H. Obama.” The total of Electors for the US is 538. Vermont has 3. Alaska (which has nearly the same population as Vermont and waaaay more earmarks) also has 3, as do Delaware, Montana, each of the Dakotas, and Wyoming.

Traditionally, the Electors for the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates have been presented as a slate of three names which was then simply ratified at the Platform Convention. It was never anyone I’d ever heard of, and I had no clue as to how they were chosen. Some Democrats with longer experience suggest that the office was primarily honorary.

VDP Chair Ian Carleton neglected to appoint a “Credentials, Rules and Procedures” Committee o run the nuts and bolts of the Platform Convention. The committee working on writing the Platform met throughout the spring and summer and actually posted a couple of different drafts on the VDP website several weeks ahead of the event — thanks in large part to VDP Vice Chair Judy Bevans’ competence, determination, hard work, and great good humor.

Two weeks before the convention, the Platform (writing) Committee was suddenly informed that it was up to them to oversee everything. So, essentially, they did. Building on the 2006 rules, with some additions and interpretations by State Committee Treasurer Michael Inners, and consultation with the 2006 Rules Committee, and their own persistent questions about how the slate of Electors was chosen, they came up with rules that pretty much make sense. And they were able to include the procedure for open elections of Electors.

Attendance was down, and the VDP knew somehow that it would be: staff set up maybe 50 chairs in Barre’s Old Labor Hall. It begs the question: was it because we know in our hearts that the Democrats must and will win in November, and that the national Platform will “rule” the next four years? The fire of opposition to a corrupt regime has been banked in a soothing ash blanket of “Hope”?

The draft VDP Platform focused on Vermont issues (economy, energy, healthcare, environment) and did not mention the Iraq War or impeaching G.W. Bush or R.B. Cheney. An amendment was offered and passed enumerating the reasons to support “prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq” and to oppose “permanent military bases” there, as well as “military incursions into Iran and Pakistan.”

I worry that the low attendance was abetted by deliberate inaction by the VDP staff. And that it’s one more nail in the coffin of a dying process. Nearly everyone agrees that no one reads the document. Two years ago, constituents like the VSEA and other labor groups raised objections and insisted on changes. This year? Nothing. Maybe that has as much to do with  labor’s leap to Independent Pollina (who doesn’t have a party and thus is not required to have a platform).

(Here’s a recap of last night’s PSB hearing. Thanks for putting this together Ed! – promoted by Christian Avard)

Susan Smallheer wrote it best. From the Rutland Herald:

http://rutlandherald.com/apps/…

Opponents of nuclear power pointed to the turmoil on Wall Street on Monday as proof the state needed more guarantees from Entergy Nuclear that money would be there in the future to dismantle and clean up the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

More than 250 people turned out Monday night to urge the Vermont Public Service Board to either deny the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant a 20-year extension on its state permit, or to keep the plant running to save jobs and relatively low electric rates.

More below the fold.

Entergy Nuclear needs approval from both the Public Service Board and the Vermont Legislature, as well as federal regulators, if it wants to continue operating beyond 2012, when its original 40-year license expires.

During the first 90 minutes of the PSB hearing, sentiment was running 2-1 against nuclear power, saying that the state had a great opportunity to turn Vermont into a Mecca of alternative energy: wind, solar and hydro.

Opponents of nuclear power argued that Vermont Yankee only provides 2 percent of all the power needs in New England, and that New England would be better off without the safety threat the 36-year-old reactor poses, they said.

And they noted that only 170 of Entergy Nuclear’s 600 employees actually live in Vermont, with the balance in New Hampshire or Massachusetts. The reactor is located about 5 miles from Massachusetts, and just across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire.

Supporters of Vermont Yankee, who were mostly Entergy Nuclear employees, asserted that the plant was well-run and like its advertisements say: “clean, safe and reliable.”