A decision made public by Representative Francis Brooks may open up an opportunity for local Democrats seeking to represent the capital city in the state Legislature.
December 9, 2006
By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau
“I very much enjoy working at the Statehouse and with the various folks that come there,” said Brooks, a Democrat who is chairman of the House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee. “I think I have the personality to deal with people.”
Retired General Anthony Zinni spoke to an audience of 250 people at Montpelier’s Unitarian-Universalist Church Wednesday night. While he has been in the news in recent years for his criticism of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, his discussion Wednesday ranged far beyond the war, and was primarily concerned with how the United States can exist and be effective in the world as it now exists.
Zinni’s thesis was that we are living with the results of the third great global transformation of the Twentieth Century. The first was after World War I, the second was after World War II, and the third was at the end of the Cold War. As Zinni put it, “The world did not change on 9/11, it changed in 1989-90 when the Soviet Union dissolved.”
General Zinni was first commissioned as a brigadier general at the time the Berlin Wall fell, and he recalled travelling to Berlin for his orientation, a process as disorienting for the trainers as for the trainees. Zinni and the other new general officers were taken on an unauthorized tour of East Berlin by a lieutenant who drove right through Checkpoint Charlie, now unmanned, and around the streets of the Potemkin village that was East Berlin, before returning with a sledge hammer to break off pieces of the Wall as souvenirs. What Zinni learned in that process, and the years that followed, was that, “We are living in a changed world that we don’t understand, and which we are ill-equipped to deal with.”
He also learned that Bush 41’s New World Order did not bring the stability that was anticipated and promised, due to forces as diverse as globalization, revolutions in technology and communications, and the rise of regional hegemonies, and the conclusion he draws is that “Instability is the primary enemy.”
The audience included Adjutant General Michael Dubie and defeated Congressional candidate Martha Rainville. While Zinni’s subject was broader than the war in Iraq, he received questions on the war, and on the Military Commissions Act.
“What went wrong in Iraq?”
A couple of things. First, we went off track in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, which made the problem worse. By invading Iraq we got involved in the “wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Second, the war was not conducted right. Third, to put it charitably, the administration abused the intelligence. Finally, “we made the same mistake as in Vietnam: if you have a strategic vision, don’t hide it from the public. Once you lose the credibility of your rationale it’s very hard to recover from it.”
What do we do about Iraq now? Admitting that is answer is unlikely to be popular with a Montpelier audience, Zinni echoed Colin Powell’s so-called Pottery Barn rule: “We broke it, now we own it.” He said that one option is to get out, but that we’ll be back in in three to four months, once it turns into Afghanistan. The answer, in Zinni’s view, is not to get out or to keep doing what hasn’t been working. The answer is an integrated government that can implement military and political measures and provide social services.
When asked about the Military Commissions Act, Zinni’s answer was straightforward: “If you don’t want it done to your sons or daughters, you don’t do it to anyone else.”
In answer to the question of what we, as individuals can do, Zinni offered a three-ooint prescription;
First, “Do not reward politics as usual.”
“Why,” he asked, “Do we accept a political system that brushes aside competence?” refering to the decisions by Mark Warner and Colin Powell not to seek the presidency.
Second, “Inform yourselves.”
Third, “Don’t underestimate your own power.”
Cross-posted from Rational Resistance:
This is just a post to introduce you to the new link I found recently: the Global Rich List. Give it a try and see how your income compares to the rest of the world.
Most of my friends cancelled their memberships in the AARP back when the AARP greased the skids for passage of Medicare Part D, which, as you know, has turned out to be a disaster. (Yes, my friends. Like me, described by my friend Rebecca as “older than dirt”, most of them are geezers.) I didn’t cancel my membership, which means I keep getting the magazine that used to be called “Modern Maturity”, but is now called something creative like “the AARP magazine”.
Anyway, I was reading the AARP magazine the other day (by the way, it has more blow-ins and bound-in commercial offers than any magazine I’ve seen) when what should I find but a full-page tribute to our own Governor Scissorhands for “ris[ing] above politics” and giving us this great new health care plan. I kid you not.
This is the guy who blocked any chance of real health care reform with his veto threat, and here he is getting an award from the AARP.
Don’t get me wrong. The Vermont AARP is a good organization. Right now they’re taking the lead on the effort to create a low-income electric bill payment program, one area in which we’re way behind most of the rest of the country.
So I don’t really have an answer, just a question: What the hell is wrong with the AARP?
Thanks to Philip Baruth I found a new Yahoo group found to support the possible presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. It’s been organized by Zephyr Teachout and our own Neil Jensen and although things have been relatively quiet so far, I suspect things will get more active this winter. I’ve joined because I think he is a strong prospect, although I’m not ready to get married, or even engaged, quite yet. If someone organizes a John Edwards group I’ll probably sign up for that one, too.
I posted a message to the Obama group about our discussion, so maybe we’ll get some visitors.
Similarly, any other readers who form groups for the other candidates or potential candidates should let us know and we’ll help get the word out.
Cross posted from Rational Resistance:
How many times have you heard it from administration apologists? “I’m not a terrorist, I’m not talking to Osama bin Laden on the phone, so I don’t care if they listen to my conversations. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m innocent.”
Well, here’s a good example. You remember the lawyer from Oregon the feds scooped up and threw in jail a couple of years ago? Sure you do, they had him dead to rights. They even found his fingerprint on a supermarket bag full of detonator caps at the scene of the train bombings in Madrid. Plus, he represented a terrorist in a custody case. Definitely a bad guy, no questions asked. Naturally, our so-called allies in Europe were cautious, said to go slow, they weren’t so sure. You knew they were soft on terrorism, didn’t you?
“The horrific pain, torture and humiliation that this has caused myself and my family is hard to put into words,” said Mr. Mayfield, an American-born convert to Islam and a former lieutenant in the Army.
“The days, weeks and months following my arrest,” he said, “were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.”
Oops. It turns out they made a mistake. They didn’t have the right guy. Had nothing to do with it, so they eventually just let him go.
So he did what comes natural to a lawyer: he sued them, and this week he settled the case for two million dollars. That’s right, two mill to him from the federal government–I mean, two mill from our tax dollars because of what our employees, the feds, did to him.
And that’s not all. They had to apologize to him. That never happens. Almost literally never. I’ve been suing the government and private parties–bad actors, like slumlords and people like that–for more than twenty years, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an apology as part of a settlement, but they apologized in this case. “The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused” by his mistaken arrest, the government’s apology began.
And that’s still not all. In addition to the apology, and the two million, he gets to keep the part of his case in which he was challenging the constitutionality of the so-called Patriot Act going. He didn’t have to give up the legal challenge to the law to force the settlement out of the government. He’ll get to continue with that case, and, hopefully, get a judgment invalidating the statute.
This is really important, but not just because of what the individual plaintiff got. One of the things we civil libertarians are saying all the time is that we have to protect the rights of everyone, even the guilty, because if we don’t then the rights of the innocent are worthless. This is a guy who was innocent. Totally innocent. Not in the “innocent until proven guilty”, presumption of innocence sense. He had absolutely nothing to do with it, and he was spied on, locked up, strip searched, and terrorized by our government. You’re goddam right they owed him an apology.
And you also have to ask: who’s the next innocent person they will do this to, and will there be anyone to stand up for that person?
Justin Rood has a nice profile of Pat Leahy over at TPMmuckraker tonight.
My favorite line: Remember, he’s the only senator who has earned the distinction of having Dick Cheney tell him publicly to go fuck himself.
PRESS RELEASE
Speaker Gaye Symington
Office of the Speaker
115 State Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05633
802-828-2245
December 1, 2006
Statement from the Speaker: Resignation of John Tracy from Vermont Legislature
It is with great regret that I accept the formal resignation of John Patrick Tracy from the Vermont House of Representatives. John has been an outstanding representative for Vermonters, and he will be sorely missed as a legislator. John has served his district in the North End of Burlington for ten years. He has been a caucus leader and a committee chair. He is a colleague and a close friend.
Most recently, John ably chaired the House Health Care Committee, which in close consultation with their Senate counterparts, developed the Health Care Affordability Act, Vermont’s groundbreaking health care reform legislation. John has also co-chaired, with Senator Jim Leddy, the Health Care Reform Commission, set up by the Legislature and the Governor to oversee the implementation of Catamount Health.
John’s irrepressible optimism, his delight in working with all kinds of people, and his fine leadership abilities not only make him a joy to work with, but have been essential in creating and passing such challenging legislation.
John is moving on to work with Senator Patrick Leahy, as a Vermont Field Representative. He will focus in-state on issues of veterans’ affairs, health care, human services, and education, among others.
John often speaks of the honor of serving his state as a member of this citizen legislature. Our loss in the Statehouse is Senator Leahy’s gain. But I am pleased that John will continue to serve all of us in Vermont, even if in a different capacity.
To finish John’s terms on two key commissions, I have appointed Representative Michael Fisher of Lincoln as an interim member of the Health Access Oversight Committee, and Representative Harry Chen of Mendon as an interim member of the Health Care Reform Commission.
I and my colleagues in the Statehouse will miss John, and I wish him well in his new endeavors.
# # #
Contact:
Loring Starr
There is new thinking (well, new for Vermont, anyway) from Bobby Sand about the so-called War on Drugs.
“It’s hard for me to see the vast resources expended on drug cases,” said Sand.
Sand has gone public with what many of us have been saying for years: it’s the illegality of drugs that is causing crime and the risk to public safety: “Drug transactions cause the most serious crimes,” he said.
“That’s the violence of drugs,” he said “We don’t see crazed crack heads or someone on crystal” methamphetamines committing violent crimes.
The statistics document the ridiculous cost of drug prohibition.
and
It will be very interesting to see if this very public comment and proposal gets much traction in the Legislature, or whether policy makers will once again prove that drugs cause insanity: they make the government do crazy things.
Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolution
November 28, 2006
TOPEKA, KS-In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.