( – promoted by odum)

Well, it took long enough, but many months after Bernie Sanders introduced the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act and Peter Welch co-sponsored the House version, HR1207, Patrick Leahy has declared that he will be the 26th co-sponsor of the bill.  Alan Grayson (D-FL) also announced early this week that there will be a hearing on HR1207 (now at 290 co-sponsors) later this month.  Below is Leahy’s letter:

Dear Mr. Hirsch:

Over the past several months, many Vermonters like you have contacted me about S. 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act.  In light of the overwhelming interest in this issue, I have decided to become a cosponsor of the bill.  

I understand the concerns of some that disclosure of lending information could be a disincentive for banks to borrow from the Federal Reserve because it publicizes their need for an emergency loan.  Still, I believe the American people deserve to know the full extent of the government’s lending programs.  

In addition, a Federal District Court ruled last month that the Federal Reserve must disclose documents detailing the identities of borrowers and the amounts of loans or the assets put up as collateral under 11 relief programs.  I am hopeful that the Federal Reserve will comply with this court order in a timely manner.  

Thank you again for contacting me about this bill.  Please keep in touch.

1 Deth Panel

2 No Public Option

3 Soshalism

4 Youth in Asia

5 Edukated Elite

6 Birf Certifikate

7 Fashist

8 Were # 37!

9 Proud Amerikan

10 Cause Rush told me!

Though the health care reform movement down in DC seems all but in a coma now or dead, as our representatives seem to beholden to the campaign cash from the health insurance companies, “the best democracy that money can buy,” the movement for single-payer health care reform in Vermont still has plenty of fire left. The Vermont Worker’s Center in Burlington is hosting a series of forums on health care around the state.  They are called the “People’s Forums on Healthcare,” and are public forums with members of the Vermont legislative delegation from each of the counties where the forums will be held invited to attend.   The first one is on Tuesday, September 22, at the Montpelier High School Cafeteria, from 6:30-9:00.  The others are listed below.  

People’s Forums on Healthcare: The County Organizing Committees of the Healthcare Is A Human Right are beginning to hold public forums with local legislators about developing policy in Vermont to make healthcare a public good for all. Please join us for these events to hear how in Vermont we can win legislation that makes healthcare a basic right.

Washington County

7pm, Tuesday, September 22

Montpelier High School Cafeteria

Bennington County

7pm, Thursday, September 24

Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church

200 Pleasant Street, Bennington

Windham County

7pm, Tuesday, September 29

Brattleboro Union High School, Multi-purpose Room

Chittenden County

7pm, Thursday, October 1

Imani Community & Youth Center

294 N. Winooski Ave, Burlington

Rutland County

6:30 pm, Tuesday, October 6

Rutland Free Library, Nella Grimm Fox Room

10 Court Street, Rutland

To learn more about these forums or about how you can help start a local Organizing Committee on this campaign, please email james@workerscenter.org

Father Roy Bourgeois,

Founder of the School of the Americas Watch,

September 17, 7pm

First Unitarian Universalist Society

at the top of Church St. in Burlington

In 1990, Fr. Roy founded the School of the Americas Watch, an office that does research on the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Each year the school trains hundred of soldiers from Latin America in combat skills – all paid for by U.S. by US taxpayers. Union and worker activists have been particular targets of the SOA tactics.

Father Roy has also spent time recently in Honduras, where labor and other social movements have been struggling for more than two months against a military coup. The Workers’ Center released a statement condemning the coup in July.

CBS and Bloomberg Polls Show Obama’s Health-Care Speech Halted Weeks-Long Slide in His Job-Approval Ratings, With Most Americans Praising President’s Handling of Issue, But Remaining Sharply Divided on Whether His Plans Will Succeed; Gallup Poll Finds Sharp Disapproval of Wilson’s ‘You Lie!’ Outburst — Even Among Republicans — But the Race Issue Won’t Go Away

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Thursday, September 17, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

President Obama’s attempt to explain his plans for health care reform to the American public in an address before a joint session of Congress last week appears to have paid off – with some unexpected help by the conservative Republican congressman who heckled him during his speech.

Two new polls released this week — one by CBS News and the other by the business-oriented Bloomberg News — show that Americans now give the president the “thumbs-up” for his handling of the health care issue, halting a weeks-long slide in Obama’s overall job-approval ratings. But the public remains sharply divided over whether the president clearly explained his plan and whether it would succeed.

Meanwhile, a third poll released by the Gallup Organization showed strong disapproval of Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst during the president’s address, with a solid two-thirds majority opposing the South Carolina Republican’s actions.

The Gallup Poll results came on the eve of the House vote Tuesday to rebuke Wilson for his heckling of the president, an incident unprecedented by a sitting member of Congress. The House voted 240-179 in favor of a “resolution of disapproval” — the least severe form of disciplinary action against one of its members.

OBAMA’S POLL NUMBERS STOP FALLING, BUT DOUBTS ABOUT PLAN’S COST REMAIN

Before his address, the president’s handling of the health-care reform issue was more negative than positive, with a CBS News poll taken from August 27 to August 31 showing 47 percent disapproved while only 40 percent approved. In a Gallup survey taken August 6 to August 9, 49 percent disapproved of Obama’s handling of the health-care issue, while only 43 percent approved.

Obama’s speech appears to have stopped his slide particularly with independent voters in the CBS poll, with his approval rating among this important voting bloc having risen as a result. But they remain sharply divided. Among Democrats, the president’s support solidified at 85 percent. Even among Republicans, Obama’s approval ratings rose slightly after his speech, but only 17 percent of Republicans back his health-care proposals.

Respondents in the Bloomberg survey, conducted Thursday through Monday, were slightly more approving of the president’s efforts after the speech as well, with 48 percent of respondents in  favor and 42 percent opposed.

Nonetheless, at least half of respondents expressed doubts that Obama can fulfill his promises to veto legislation that adds to the federal budget deficit; to preserve the Medicare trust fund,  particularly as the eldest of the 76 million Baby Boomers — those born in 1946 — approach their 65th birthdays in 2011; and to produce savings to help pay for prescriptions for Medicare patients.

“The debate seems to be about money, not about the need for reform,” Bloomberg News quoted Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Company, as saying. “When you look at specific planks, respondents like all of them.”

Selzer & Company, based in Des Moines, Iowa, conducted the poll for Bloomberg.

“I do think everyone should have health care, somehow,” said Judy Shaffer, a Bloomberg poll respondent in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, “[But] the deficit is going to go up so much higher. I think it’s really bad where it’s at right now.”

The 63-year-old Shaffer said the president’s address failed to allay her concerns about the impact that his plan will have on the deficit, and thus she remains opposed to it.

NO DOUBTS ABOUT WILSON’S OUTBURST: SOLID MAJORITY SAYS IT WAS WRONG

But while Americans remain divided over the success or failure of the president’s health-care reform plan, there is one thing they do agree on: That Wilson’s outburst against Obama during the president’s address was out of line, according to Gallup.

A greater-than-two-thirds majority of 68 percent disapproved of Wilson’s actions — with 23 percent expressing outrage at the South Carolina Republican calling Obama a liar after the president himself denounced as “false” accusations that his health-care plan would cover illegal immigrants.

Even a majority of Republicans — 52 percent — opposed Wilson’s outburst, while 39 percent of Republicans supported him, the Gallup survey found.  Not surprisingly, an overwhelming 86 percent of Democrats disapproved of what Wilson did, while only three percent supported his actions. Among independents, a near-two-thirds majority of 64 percent disapproved, while 17 percent approved.

There was no demographic breakdown in the Gallup survey on Wilson’s conduct, but it did note that 45 percent of Democrats expressed deep outrage at Wilson, perhaps reflecting the views of many Democrats who see a racial element not only in Wilson’s actions, but in the venomous sentiment expressed by many of the president’s opponents — particularly the so-called “birthers” who steadfastly claim that Obama is a foreigner constitutionally ineligible to be president, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

WILSON REPRIMAND POURS MORE FUEL ON PARTISAN DIVIDE

The House resolution rebuking Wilson only added more fuel to the already bitter partisan divide in Congress.

Democrats insisted that “This is not about partisan politics or inappropriate comments,” in the words of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-South Carolina), who introduced it. “To the contrary, this is about the rules of this House and reprehensible conduct.” While some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), would have preferred that the matter be laid to rest, Clyburn, declaring that “Silence gives consent,” insisted, “We cannot be silent because we cannot consent to this conduct.”

Republicans, while shying away from defending Wilson’s outburst, nonetheless insisted that the vote to rebuke him was a distraction. “Our economy is struggling, our families are hurting, and Congress is poised to demand an apology from a man who has already apologized,” said Representative Mike Pence (R-Indiana), chairman of the Republican Conference. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the resolution a “partisan stunt.”

Wilson did apologize to the president for calling him a liar, but he’s refused to bow to majority Democrats’ demands that he issue a public apology on the House floor to his colleagues for breaching the chamber’s decorum.

On Tuesday, Wilson again refused to apologize to his colleagues in the debate leading to the vote on the resolution. “I think it is clear there are far more important issues than what we are doing right now,” he said. “It is time we move on.”

MUCH TO OBAMA’S CHAGRIN, RACE ISSUE COMES FRONT AND CENTER

House Democrats, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, felt compelled to act as the issue of racial bias against the president suddenly surged front and center in the past week, partly due to revelations that Wilson is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans — a 113-year-old “Southern heritage” group that, according to an anti-racism watchdog, has been taken over in the past decade by avowed white supremacists — and partly due to remarks made by former President Jimmy Carter.

The SCV, according to a 2006 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had undergone a purge of its longtime moderate members — including several present and former U.S. senators — who were replaced by “racial extremists.” That, in turn, led to a bitter severing of relations between the SCV and other Southern heritage groups, including the Military Order of Stars & Bars and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The report noted that some 300 moderate SCV members were expelled, accused by the radical racialists of disloyalty for criticizing racism in the organization.

And in a 2008 expose, The St. Petersburg Times revealed that since the 1990s, clusters of SCV members “have aligned themselves with ‘heritage groups’ like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens” — both considered racist hate groups by the SPLC, with the CCC essentially a revival of the white citizens’ councils that sprung up in the 1950s and 1960s to resist the civil rights movement.

Carter, in an interview Tuesday with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams and in remarks Wednesday during a town hall meeting in Atlanta, said that Wilson’s outburst was an act “based on racism” and rooted in fears of a black president.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American,” the former president said.

But one of Wilson’s sons disputed that.

“There is not a racist bone in my dad’s body,” said Alan Wilson, an Iraq War veteran who is seeking the GOP nomination for state attorney general in South Carolina. “He doesn’t even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won’t comment on former President Carter, because I don’t know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it’s just not in him.”

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele also denied race being a factor in the opposition to Obama’s domestic agenda, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that Carter was “dead wrong” and “out of line.”

But when confronted by TV images during the president’s address showing Republican members of Congress almost exclusively white males and Democratic members of Congress a very diverse group in terms of race and gender, Steele admitted that the Republican Party needed to take a new line to connect with nonwhite voters. “Our party has for over a generation employed a strategy that right now many of us wish we never had,” he said.

EVEN OBAMA DENIES RACE A FACTOR — BUT ISSUE WON’T GO AWAY

Even the White House disagreed with Carter’s assessment on Wednesday, with press secretary Robert Gibbs telling reporters that Obama “does not believe” that criticism of his policies is “based on the color of his skin.”

Gibbs said the president understands that “people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we’ve made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by this administration and previous administration to stabilize our financial system, to ensure viability of our domestic auto industry.

“[But] the president does not believe that it’s based on the color of his skin,” he continued.

Asked why this is not a “teachable moment” on race similar to the one that the president seized upon after the racially-charged arrest of Dr. Louis Gates, a prominent African-American scholar by police at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home, Gibbs replied, “Obviously, the president has, and has always had, great concerns about race relations in this country.

“He’s talked about them in speeches. He’s talked about them throughout his career in politics; he believes we’ve made great strides, and obviously we’ve got work to do. But I’m not sure I see this — this large national conversation going on right now.”

The president has gone to great lengths to avoid making race an issue. But given the  involvement of white supremacists in the “birther” movement to remove Obama from office; warnings of neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists girding for a campaign of domestic terrorism and the unprecedented spike in death threats against him — all of it exposed by The ‘Skeeter Bites Report and elsewhere over the past eight months — it is an issue that will not likely go away any time soon.

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

By now, you probably have read that last week the Winooski school district’s thought-police enforced their their own democracy-repression agenda on taxpayer’s schoolchildren. Pretty shitty behavior for bureaucrats under any circumstances. This turns out to be worse.  The Board Members kicked the children’s President out of the classroom until those same Board Members could determine whether the President supported the Board Members’ subjective, individual political agendas. That crosses the line to subversive.

From Board correspondence, it looks like the flat-earthers running the Winooski School Board are a more unhinged, more inherently anti-democracy then first reported.

Out of step.  The Winooski School Board, as far as we know, is the ONLY school board in the State of Vermont to order its school superintendent to enforce total censorship of a speech by a sitting U.S. President.

Paranoid.  According to public documents circulated by School Board members and released to GMD, the Winooski School Board is just plain paranoid as well as unpatriotic. Through its Chief Politburo henchman, James Ticehurst, the School Board last week told schools that the President’s address to American students may not be seen by “the students until it should first be reviewed by the board for content.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one.) By the high command of the school board, no teacher may “air the President’s speech to the students on Tuesday.”

Ticehurst also wrote that no student may see his or her President’s speech, directed to America’s students, unless he and other Board Members reviewed the content of President Obama’s speech and “approved it for distribution to the student population.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one, or MORE!)

James Ticehurst thinks that Barack Obama needs to go through him first, for his “approval,” before Winooski students can have their President available for discussion, leadership, inspiration or uncensored.   What a paranoid asshole.

According to this story from NPR 73% of doctors surveyed want a public health insurance option. (Survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

So what did the US House waste time on yesterday? Why the “censure” of Republican Representative Joe Wilson!

Every minute blown off on telling someone not to interrupt the president’s speech could have been used to hammer home these twin realities: the public overwhelmingly supports a government run, public health insurance option (77% felt the public option was important or very important in this survey); and doctors overwhelmingly support a government run, public health insurance option.

But what the fuck does the public in general or doctors specifically know? None of us are insurance industry lobbiests.

Actually I think it all just goes to prove a point I’ve made on a reasonably regular basis: the DC Democrats and their “leadership” really don’t disagree with the Republicans on very much … and nothing of game changing import.

They would much rather tend to big money’s interests with distracting moans about Obama being called a liar then they would tend to the people’s business.

Here’s a developing story that’s percolating around the Intertubes.

The Timesonline reports that U.N. ambassador to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith has been removed from his position by his supervisor Kai Eide, of Norway.  James Bone in New York, Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Tom Coghlan report.

America’s top diplomat at the United Nations mission in Afghanistan has been ordered out of the country after a row with his boss over how to respond to last month’s fraud-riddled presidential elections, it has been alleged.

The alleged quarrel is threatening to spark a mutiny within the UN mission. At least a dozen senior staff are backing the American, Peter Galbraith, in the dispute with his Norwegian superior, Kai Eide.

Mr Galbraith, a close friend of the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, left for Boston on Sunday after a heated meeting with Afghan election officials. His “pointed” questions to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) were evidence of a much tougher line towards the Afghan authorities than the “softly-softly” approach of Mr Eide, who heads the UN mission to Kabul.

“The relationship between Kai and Peter has completely broken down,” said a diplomat in Kabul. “Peter has left the country. The official line is that he’s on a three-week mission to New York. But Kai just turned round to Peter and said, ‘I want you out’.”

To read more click here.

Galbraith, a resident of Townshend, is a former ambassador to Croatia and played a significant role in the 1995 Erdut agreement, ending the war between Serbia and Croatia.  

Crossposted at Huffington Post.

How progressive is Barack Obama?  It’s a question pundits, bloggers, and journalists have trouble grappling with.  But one individual goes beyond the Obama phenomenon and investigates who Obama is and what he’s all about.  In Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics,  author Paul Street cuts to the chase and takes a closer look at the man who became the 44th president of the United States. What Street uncovers is a man crafted by campaign consultants with political beliefs consistent with elite party interests.  

Street is an independent journalist, policy adviser, and historian.  He is a former vice-president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League, and author of Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era.

I caught up with Street to discuss his new book by Paradigm Publishers.  

You paint a portrait of Obama that shows he’s a centrist and not inclined to support progressive causes and ideas.  What has shaped Obama’s views on politics and how has he been shaped to representing elite interests?

Street: Trying to figure out who Obama is, is like trying to nail down a blob of mercury.  It’s very difficult.  Is he progressive or not may in a certain sense be somewhat besides the point.  It’s one thing to be a progressive as the head of a Urban League affiliate or a union Local or something, but Obama is in the top executive position, the apex of an empire as far as I’m concerned.  That’s the world you enter once you decide it’s really about getting into the political system and rising to the top.  

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was asked to run for president in 1967 and of course it would’ve been just a protest candidacy.  Dr. King turned it down.  He said something like ‘it’s not my role as a organizer or a social justice activist.’  So whatever Obama’s values may truly be, once you enter into that ‘I’m going to the prince or king and I’m going to rise to the top’ it really may not matter all that much.  Then you’re in a whole other ball game where you’re talking about money, concentrated wealth, and a disproportionate influence that is exercised in this dollar democracy we have.  I think Obama’s calculus was that he wanted to win.  

He was a progressive community organizer for years.  But what nobody seems to know was that Obama hated it.  Ryan Lizza wrote about it The New Yorker.  Obama told his mentor in community organizing that “there’s nothing for me to continue on this path.”  So he went into politics.  When that takes over and you’re working for David Axelrod and Richard Daley, etc., a lot of those principles that you may or may not have are going to go by the wayside.  

Supporters of Obama claim he’s a president who believes in the idea of pragmatism and consensus building.  Is it consensus building or conciliation?

I remember John Edwards saying in Iowa that you don’t cut deals with big business. I remember Edwards called out Hillary Clinton and Obama on the “complete fantasy” that meaningful progressive from could be attained by “sitting down at a negotiating table” with the big insurance and oil and drug companies. Whatever his motives, Edwards accurately said that “only an epic fight” with concentrated economic and political power could achieve big progressive change.  In Iowa, Edwards would quote FDR on how the “economic royalists hate me” and “I welcome their hatred.” Obama’s response to Edwards’ “big table fantasy” line at one of the Iowa debates was what the prolific left author Mike Davis calls “typical eloquent evasion”; “we don’t need more heat, we need more light.”  Well, shoot, crazy John Edwards was right!  We need more heat from the bottom up and on the left-progressive side.

I’ve often heard the argument that a majority of Americans don’t buy into party purity ideals of the likes of Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, or Mike Gravel. Some Democrats believe if we elect leaders like that, we’ll only lost more elections.  Is that true?

They can’t get elected because they can’t be taken serious by the media. I saw Edwards destroy the opposition at a campaigner. Then I went to see Clinton and she was incredibly boring.  After that, it was really transparent that Edwards wasn’t being taken seriously.  Kucinich was also treated as a gadfly.  It just doesn’t make any sense for NBC, owned by General Electric, ABC, which is Disney, or Fox, which is Rupert Murdoch, to really give a lot of favorable coverage to someone they can’t trust to handle their corporate interests.  If that log jam could be broken, the two things I would emphasize that need to be changed are the money primaries, the need for money or access to people who have it, and the media filters.  If you can get past those, you’ll see there’s a lot of good progressive opinion data on issues.  If you can get the focus away from the marketing of politics (i.e. personalities, what they look like, what they’re name sounds like, whether we want to have a beer with them, etc.), then that could help the likes of Kucinich, Edwards, etc.  

You write a chapter called “How Black is Obama?”  What does he represent as an African-American leader and what does he represent in terms of change related to racism?

I remember Obama as a state Senator and I worked in black communities in the Urban League.  You’d be amazed how unpopular Obama was initially.  You didn’t hear people say Obama was “too white.”  Instead, he’s “too bourgeois.”  I heard that a lot. He got killed by Bobby Rush in a U.S. congressional primary in 2000.  Rush said again and again, Obama went to Harvard, he lived over in Hyde Park, etc.  As Obama’s star was rising, you heard a lot of “he didn’t really come from the community,” or “he didn’t rise from the community.”  Obama was handed to black America rather more than he arose from black America.  Obama was more African plus American than he was African-American.

If you track Obama’s positions on race, you can find a lot of traditional black-bourgeoisie, personal responsibility lectures to blacks, like his recent NAACP address.  He’s similar to Henry Louis Gates who has centrist-culturalist explanations of why black people are disproportionately poor.  Obama also said some things about history, that I find very odd.  He once talked about how the GI Bill was this great victory for ordinary working class Americans.  But the GI Bill was deeply discriminatory on race terms.  His Philadelphia speech was eloquent and effective, but if you dig down, there’s a narrative in there that a lot of racial justice advocates are not pleased with.  That narrative is ‘we can understand why Reverend Jeremiah Wright may be angry because of his age, where he comes from, and how he was a product of the Jim Crow era, but there’s a pronounced suggestion that that kind of anger is not appropriate.’  Many people in the general black community take exception to that, especially when 2.3 million people are behind bars and half of them are African-American.  

You also ask “How Anti-war is Obama?” Is he an imperialist just like George W. Bush or a more of a benevolent dictator with the same polices?

Obama has never denounced the war in Iraq as immoral.  Obama’s has been very careful to oppose something that’s not working.  He’s always been very careful to suggest that it is a reflection of benevolent intentions.  Even to the point of campaigning in Wisconsin by telling autoworkers, we’re spending enough money to help the Iraqis, now we need to spend it to help out America.  We’re not helping them and we ought to be.  We owe them big time.

In his career, Obama was much less anti-war in his image.  He did speak out against the Iraqi invasion in Daley Square in October 2002.  But on the day before Obama’s famous keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he told The New York Times, he might have voted for the war had he been in the U.S. Senate at the time and had access to the same information as other senators.  During the convention. Obama also told The Chicago Tribune reporters Jeff Zeleny and David Mendell “that there’s not that much difference between my position [on Iraq] and George Bush’s position at this stage.”  He told the journalists “the difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.”  That’s a remarkable statement to make. Yes, he did speak against the war.  However, he never said it would be immoral, he never said it would’ve been criminal, and he never said anything about Iraqi casualties.  

Rep. David Zuckerman is considering doing what some thought he’d be the last Progressive Party politician to do; follow the example of State Senator Tim Ashe and use the Democratic Party primary as his path to office – in this case, (possibly) the office of Lieutenant Governor. Those of us who are surprised are surprised because, since his most recent re-election effort for State Representative in which he was challenged by Democratic opponents, Zuckerman has been the Progressives’ most strident partisan warrior – relentlessly scornful of the Democratic Party in sweeping, collective terms. He has been crusading against what he repeatedly calls the “myths” in circulation about the Progressive-Democratic conflict, and “myths” apparently refer to any perspectives on the matter that do not match his own.

This is a politician who would seem to face a very difficult time getting self-described Democrats to vote for him. And yet, it may well be important for Vermont that they do just that.

In simplest terms, the functional challenge in our winner-take-all voting system to multiple parties is the disparity created on the General election ballot. If there is one candidate of “the right” on a November ballot and two candidates of “the left,” you have, in effect, two elections happening simulaneously; a General Election for the office, and a Primary election on the left. These two elections are fundamentally incompatible (for obvious reasons) without some form of preference voting system (such as IRV). The push, then, is to try to decouple the left’s primary from the November ballot and – like it or not – for now, the clear path of least resistance and greatest participation for such a process is through the Democratic Party primary election.

These are the unyielding electoral mechanics we have often found ourselves talking about on this site, and it is precisely because of this reality that I was supportive of Tim Ashe’s foray into the Democratic Primary. All the talk at the time of him “hijacking” the Democratic Party process was, in any objective sense, parochial nonsense, as self-selecting Democratic voters were free to make the choice of who they deem to be a legitimate candidate regardless of anybody’s rumpled feathers over the crossing of social and institutional norms. Tim Ashe did precisely what he needed to do, and in doing so increased the Progressive Partiers’ impact on public policy as well as made the Democratic Party that much better, to the benefit of all Vermont.

But Ashe clearly recognized that – to be successful – he would not simply have to break with institutional dogma (and perhaps the first deadly sin of pride) himself, he would have to allow others to do so as well, joining him in the dogma-free niche he was carving out. He did this in a couple key ways.

First, If a self-identified Democrat wanted to support him he would let them support him. He did not demand that accept his worldview, back off from what he perceived as “myths” about Progressives that were actually just different opinions, or accept that by supporting him, they were actually engaging in some sort of process of accepting the Progressive Party on his terms. He would simply allow the voter to support him based on whatever personal, subjective calculus that voter was making about him.

Very simply, he did not demand that each individual voter either meet with his personal approval, or possibly agree to say 3 Hail Marys and an Our Father as penance for being such a meanie Democrat for all these years.

Second, he had to learn to listen, and in listening, accept the diversity of opinions among voters. Sure there are points of fundamental principle that matter. If I were running for something and somebody told me they supported me because they hoped I’d take point in rounding up all the homosexuals into prison camps, I’d set them straight. If they wanted to support me because they thought I was trustworthy, even though they were a lifelong Dem-hating Republican, that’s a disagreement at a different level. I wouldn’t feel the need to browbeat him into accepting my view of partisan institutions. I’d just say thanks.

The fact is that many of us on the left (and the right, for that matter) can’t differentiate between trivial disagreements and significant ones. We feel passionate enough about our opinions that we can’t abide dissenting ones, and we create a dynamic where all points of disagreement are created equal. We scream just as loudly about differing views on the Income Tax as we do about racism.

And that’s neither reasonable, nor sustainable.

A key part of leading successfully is listening to those you want to lead. If all we do is correct and cajole in a rigid, unyielding way – well… let’s just say that fundamentalist preacher might be a better career option than elected official.

Simply put, Ashe understood that he needed the votes. That it was he asking for something of them (voters), and thus, was not in a position to make demands. He was offering himself as an option and working hard with a strong message to persuade. He did not (that I could see from Washington County, at least), simply put up a Dem shingle and then either demand or expect that those whiny Dems would just fall into line the way he thought they should. He asked for their votes, thanked them for their support, and asked for their help in talking to their neighbors. Just what you’re supposed to do.

If David Zuckerman goes this route, it will be very important for the left that he do well and that it be a positive experience – whether or not that means ultimately winning. Many of us will see such a move as a very important one for the health and well-being of Vermont politics. And many of us will probably work hard to support him.

It will be up to Representative Zuckerman to decide whether or not he will actually let us.

(Bumped up, do to some fairly substantive updates below the fold. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Some time ago, I wrote about the fenceline limits at VT Yankee.  Basically, we were looking at two different ways of interpreting the amount of radiation leaked by VT Yankee, one of which tried to look at the amount actually released, the other of which tried to look at how much the human body will absorb.  This allowed Entergy to compare numbers under one formula, and then under another, and say it had only had a small change from one year to the next.  

It’s kind of like saying that someone grew around 61cm in a year, because one year they were measured in inches and the next in cm.  Exact same size, but different measurement standards.  

Now come proposed rules by the Department of Health, which eliminate that conversion factor and goes back to the more strict standards, and Entergy is not amused.  

Per today’s Rutland Herald, once again from Susan Smallheer:

Entergy Nuclear said the new standard would cut radiation limits by 30 percent to 40 percent.

Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the state already had the most stringent radiation standard in the country.

“We have always committed to meet the state’s 20 millirem limit not a 20 milli roentgen,” he wrote in an e-mail, referring to the different measurements for radiation release versus radiation absorption.

See, here’s the thing: the new ruling doesn’t cut radiation limits.  It eliminates a loophole that Entergy used (with the help of the Douglas administration) to bypass radiation limits.  Now that there’s a proposal to remove that loophole, Entergy is whining about it, and talking about their commitment, not to the actual law, but to what they think the law should be.

But the long and short of it is that this is really good news.

UPDATES after the jump.

Two new stories this morning:

First, there’s an environmental lawyer suing over the warm water issue:

David Mears, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School, said that Judge Merideth Wright didn’t follow the law closely enough to protect the habitat of the American shad, applying warm-water fisheries standards to that section of the Connecticut River, which has been designated a cold water fishery.

Entergy wants to discharge the water into the river warm to make money: Company officials on Tuesday estimated that it uses 20 megawatts of power to operate Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers, power that it could be selling on the power market.

Yes.  You read that right.  Entergy is complaining that it’s unfair for them to have to use power that they could be selling in the process of generating a lot more power.  

Second, the state’s radiological health chief is saying that increased radiation is just fine and dandy, but in doing so, makes some fairly obvious admissions:

Irwin answered “yes” when Sen. Mark MacDonald, chairman of the committee, asked if Vermont Yankee could still be within state-mandated radiation limits even while higher doses of radiation were falling on the school across the road from the plant in Vermont’s southeast corner.

Entergy Nuclear, which owns the plant, has been buying property next to the plant and moving its site boundary farther from the reactor. The state monitors radiation using instruments called dosimeters posted at the plant site boundary.

Under the committee’s questioning, Irwin agreed that moving the dosimeters farther from the reactor would make it easier for the plant to stay under the state’s radiation limits, even though radiation emissions had increased since the plant boosted its power output by 20 percent in 2005.

“Does that not allow sources that emit radiation to emit more radiation than they used to and still be in compliance?” MacDonald asked.

“Yes,” Irwin replied.

I actually love the creativity of just buying nearby property and moving the sensors.  It’s very… inventive.  It’s like adjusting the scale so I can convince myself that I’ve lost weight.

Sometimes when I read this, I think, “do they think we are idiots?”

Then I realize that they probably don’t care if we are idiots.  They just care if there are the “right” people in government who will let them get away with this stuff.

And you know what?

There probably are.