Continuing our three days of job assessments of our elected leaders, today focusing on our Washington delegation…

Brand, spankin’ new US Representative Peter Welch has been a busy guy. He’s been pushing climate change issues, as well as making a concerted effort to take up the mantle of Defender of Veterans that his predecessor Bernie wore for so long. On the other hand, being in the House has brought the issue of funding the war directly to him, and although he’s signed on to the more aggressive bills on the floor, many activists have criticized him for supporting the Iraq supplemental. There’s also the inescapable fact that the guy just seems to rub some people the wrong way.

What do you think? Comments and poll beneath the fold (remember, you need to register as a user to vote, if you haven’t already):

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Continuing our three days of job assessments of our elected leaders, today focusing on our Washington delegation…

New US Senator Bernie Sanders has entered the hallowed halls of the Senate as an environmental crusader of late, pushing climate change and energy issues in particular. Being the new guy in the Senate has minimized his profile a bit, but many of his supporters have asked why he hasn’t been more visible on the War.

What do you think? Comments and poll beneath the fold (remember, you need to register as a user to vote, if you haven’t already):

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[Quick preface/sidenote: I’m front paging again, but its gone so well without me, I intend to remain a reduced presence… – odum]

For the next three days, we’re going to borrow another page from Kos and take a few diaries to open up the floor for job assessments of our elected leaders. Today we’ll focus on our Washington delegation and tomorrow we’ll move in-state. GMD has the advantage of being sort of a “convention floor” as well as having a regular community with widely varying opinions, so I’m hoping we can get a lot of viewpoints. If you regulars can think of any one else who might get into this, by all means send ’em an email and invite ’em in.

Let’s start with our Senior Senator, Patrick Leahy. Leahy has been in the news a lot lately as the face of the legislative effort to hold Bush accountable for many of his illegal activities. On the other hand, some activists would like to see him even more aggressive on the war, even as he has signed on to the most aggressive legislation in the Senate. What do you think? Comments and poll beneath the fold (remember, you need to register as a user to vote, if you haven’t already):

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Just as the frustration with the Vermont legislature among many activists seems to be peaking, GMD has learned that the House and Senate leadership are poised to make a historic announcement; an agreement on single-payer healthcare for Vermont.

Negotiations have apparently be going on with the Governor’s office behind the scenes for some time, but the potential pitfalls had seemed unsurmountable. Under the new agreement, starting one year from today, Vermont will scrap its multi-payer system based on a patchwork of insurance companies and a profit motive and replace it with a “Vermont-style” system with a single payer, increasing efficiency, removing a major expense from business and local municipal budgets, and covering everybody.

According the the proposed legislation, the single-payer has been identified as farmer Uriah Cobleigh of Enosburgh Falls. Cobleigh was contacted by the AP for his reaction to the decision that all medical bills in the state will be sent his way:

“Hm. Ah, well… this is the first I’d heard of it. I don’t know, I want to do my part, but things are kind of tight around here these days.

I suppose I could sell a few cows… I suppose. Don’t really know.

A press conference has been called for tomorrow, and the mood is expected to be celebratory. The details of the plan are the brainchild of policy consultant April Sciocco, who was also the brains behind last years ill-fated Catamount Health Committment Plan, which died in committee after early enthusiasm.

Sciocco says she expects the Vermont single-payer plan to become a model for other states, due to its guaranteed, almost unanimous support among any electorate.

( – promoted by gnome)

It’s become political hegemony that the reason for George W Bush’s ascendence is the unparalleled genius of Karl Rove. That Rove is so good at what he does that liberals of all stripes have found themselves perplexed and outmanuevered at every turn going all the way back to Bush’s defeat of the much beloved Ann Richards for the Texas governorship. That Rove is the sort of master gamesman Democrats wish they had on their team. Here’s an example, clipped via Steve, who has an interesting Rove thread going:

(Clip from July 12, 2005)

(Chris) MATTHEWS: Do you think the Democrats wish they had a guy as good as Rove?

Senator JOE BIDEN: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But I hopefully, yeah, yeah.

Steve is using the clip to bounce off of Glenn Greenwald, and two are making the point that the pundit class simply can’t bear to have a conversation about the merits of any scandals consuming the White House without changing the subject. That they must always demonstrate their imagined superior insight by crudely attempting to repackage such discussions in such a way that they fit into their simplistic notions of amoral Washington gamesmanship. In the process, of course, they come off as idiots.

But what Steve and Greenwald are breezing over is that the fundamental thesis to this particular narrative – that Rove is a political mastermind – is just as much bunk as every other piece of their argument. Unfortunately, it’s bunk that has crept through over the last six years, enough so that most political observers accept it as fact.

Let’s debunk after the fold (and yes, there is a Vermont corollary…)

Any arborist will tell you that a monocultural stand of trees is vulnerable. As tall and robust as they may seem, without some sort of agricultural diversity, the entire population could be wiped out by a single, otherwise passing blight that it’s limited genetics happen to be susceptible to.

That’s not to say that the blight is a genius. That its assessed the situation and made a masterful strategy. The blight is just doing what it does – and it happens to be in the right place at the right time.

That’s what we’re looking at with the Rove phenomenon. The Washington political culture has, over the last few generations, become a sort of monoculture that is uniquely susceptable to the blight that is Karl Rove and George Bush – and not because they’re smart. They’re not – and in fact, if Rove was nearly as smart as everyone likes to think of him as, his brains probably would’ve tripped him up.

The fact is that Rove is so crude, so relentlessly politically sociopathic and so bereft of any concept of going too far that he caught the greater political establishment completely off guard. Time after time, Rove’s shameless audacity astounded the political class, and time after time that same audacity paid off with success because the insiders couldn’t believe he was doing what he was doing and were incapable of facing it, let alone defending against it.

And yet when you look at what Rove has been doing or saying, its as simple as it could possibly be – be as slimy as possible from every possible direction at every possible moment. It doesn’t matter what your strengths and weaknesses are, or what your opponents’ are. Just throw everything at the wall, regardless of whether or not it is “fair game.” It’s pure bull-in-the-china-shop.

What the insiders really notice is what, to them, looks like jiujitsu of the most audacious kind; specifically, going after the president’s opponents on the terms of what, at first glance would be their strengths and Bush’s weaknesses. But the truth is that this is almost incidental – Rove goes after everyone on anything and everything. It’s just the unconventional attacks that seem so… well, unconventional.

And that’s why they’ve been so effective. Not because he’s so smart by a long shot.

Imagine Being There if Chance the Gardener were a troglodyte.

And what we’re finally seeing is this blight running its course. Eventually, the fact that Rove is actually a twit was going to get him into trouble. The bull-in-the-china-shop schtick is, after all, all the guy’s got. Seriously – the GOP has lost both houses of congress, Bush is still in the doghouse, and the scandals that are front and center at present date from actions the administration has taken since the election – not 2-4 years ago. Does this sound smart?

Now that we’re all finally developing some meaningful – if tenuous – defense against this approach, all that remains is Rove the bumbler. Rove the fool. Rove the incompetent.

Which was all he ever really was to begin with.

In Vermont, former Chair Jim Barnett played much the same role to similar results. Barnett was focused on the top of the ticket, of course, and was a great fit with the Governor’s tendencies to play nasty. Barnett has also enjoyed the strange status of “genius” bestoyed on him by the media, despite the fact that his approach has left the state GOP in shambles.

But Barnett is a lot smarter than Rove. He saw an out with the McCain campaign and took it (and just before the auditor recount).

Slick. And slickness will get you far in this business.

The Rove phenomenon proves that smarts, on the other hand, are simply optional.

( – promoted by JDRyan)

I’ve had enough of people (who purport to be liberal) who can look at an amazing, spontaneous, truly grassroots statewide movement that brings together Dems, Progs, Independents and even the more radical left, and only roll their eyes and see a pain in their ass that will complicate their schedules.

I’ve had enough of waiting for some real leaders who can take this energy and pull us together – even over disagreements – rather than ignore, scold or berate folks for not shutting up and letting them drive.

I’ve had enough of people whose support for any officeholder rises and falls on a single issue, or on whether or not that officeholder does things exactly the way you demand they should.

I’ve had enough of people who are more interested in sticking it to politicians they don’t like than to support them in helping people who need it.

I’ve had enough of attacking the wrong people (especially when those leading the attack, as it were, are merely using the opportunity to promote their own rumored political ambitions, such as this one and this one)

I’ve had enough of being told I just don’t understand why my concerns are irrelevant.

I’ve had enough of political leaders who are more concerned about placating a tiny percentage of the religious right than the majority of their own constituents.

I’ve had enough of dance halls. I’ve had enough of pills. I’ve had enough of street fights. I’ve seen my share… oh wait. Sorry. I got off track.

I hope everyone has been taking notes over the last few months. Next biennium we could all stand to make a better show of ourselves.

( – promoted by JDRyan)

[UPDATE: The bill passed, 218-212. Interestingly, Woolsey and Waters both ended up voting “no” after all. Good for them. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong and more good than harm will come from this vote. We’ll see…]

For the record, I’d vote against it. I’m in the “not one more dime” camp, and yes I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easier to be an ideological purist from out here. On the one hand, the bill that grants the President continued funding for his war with a 2008 deadline (a deadline with no teeth) feels like a slap in the face. On the other, conservative Dems simply weren’t going to budge any further and if the bill is defeated, it will be seen as a victory for Bush. A hobson’s choice, to be sure – and Rep. Peter Welch has decided to stick with the Party leadership.

And at the end of the day, the support for the bill (if tepid) does give me pause. Unlike Colby-Boy, I can abide other people of good will having different opinions than I do. It’s a principle I’m committed to. And there are many people I’ve come to believe are of good will that disagree with me on this – enough that it’s given me pause. People like Maxine Waters, David Sirota (although he’s been irking me more and more lately), Lynn Woolsey, Chris Bowers. Do their opinions matter? Maybe not if you think the universe begins and ends with you, but for the rest of us trying to build a better world together, they should.

I stand by my opinion (I suspect I don’t have to explain why to GMD readers… but here’s a good start), but what’s yours? MoveOn.org had their poll, here’s another…

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( – promoted by JDRyan)

Sometimes Vermont’s press corps just confuses me. Take yesterday’s Free Press article from Remsen and Hallenbeck that was lauded by Freyne:

Douglas speaks a special language when he talks about his political vision; he has names for everything. Jason Gibbs, his spokesman, said the terms often develop spontaneously during policy discussions. Gibbs described several “ah-ha” moments when a group of words suddenly became a useful way to describe a policy.

Sort of paints a picture of a political master with an inherent genius for rhetoric that speaks to the people, eh?

What I read things like this, I just scratch my head and wonder if reporters ever spend much time on google. Douglas is a political master all right, not because he’s always inventing the wheel, but because he knows when not to waste his time re-inventing it. Let’s look a little closer at the “glossary” of legendary Douglasisms provided by Remsen and Hallenbeck…

Agenda of Affordability: According to the Freeps, this one first popped up in Vermont at Douglas’s 2006 State of the State Address. What they don’t mention is that the term is hardly a Douglas original. The first instance I can find is Jon Corzine of New Jersey’s “affordability agenda” back in 2005. It’s been picked up in other places, for example at the same time Douglas was unveiling the shingle in Vermont, Wisconsin Democratic Governor Jim Doyle presented his own “affordability agenda” in his State of the State address.

More on the flip…

Promise Scholarships: Check out www.promisescholarships.org and you’ll find that this one been in circulation for a while, too, as West Virginia has been at something with the same name since well before its Freeps-presented 2006 State of the State genesis. They have a nifty acronym for it too: Providing Real Opportunities for Maximizing In-state Student Excellence. Idaho’s had something by that name for a while, as well as other states.

Plan for Prosperity: The Freeps identifies this as the name Douglas bestowed on his 2002 agenda, but if you google a bit, you’ll see that everybody’s got one of ’em – and many predate the Governor’s, running as far and wide as Washington DC to  Jordan.

New Neighborhoods Initiative: Here’s a New Neighborhoods Program proposed in California in 2001. Nebraska has launched its own New Neighborhoods Initiative. The Freeps again tags its genesis in 2006.

Third Way – Vermont Way: Oh come on, I can’t believe they even listed this…

My point is kinda twofold; first, that the real story is not the idea that Douglas is a brilliant, original pitchman that has invented his own political lexicon. He’s not, and the article’s thesis is misleading in that way. The point is that Douglas has his radar out and his finger to the air enough to know that he doesn’t have to come up with clever names and notions when there is plenty of unused, agenda-driving, market-proven rhetoric sitting around.

It’s also the case that Vermont Dems are often convinced that the Green Mountain state is somehow so completely different from everywhere and everyone else that they spend a lot of time either re-inventing the wheel or turning their nose up at communications strategies and approaches that – like it or not – work on people. And by people, yes I mean Vermonters too. We aren’t some seperate species.

Douglas keeps his eyes open, and when there’s something he can use, he picks it up and puts it into the media. Once again, Dems would be well advised to learn from his example.

( – promoted by JDRyan)

Former Reagan Justice official and GOP beltway powerhouse lawyer Victoria Toensing has been hitting the circuit hard of late, and some speculate she may be auditioning (or being auditioned?) for Alberto Gonzales’ job, should he get the boot (which I still doubt, but I’m cynical that way). Somehow or other, Toensing has been tagged as the point person on defense during the Democrat-initiated resurrection of the Valerie Plame affair in the US House. Toensing popped up with a widely circulated WaPo piece which was easily debunkable GOP rhetori-babble, but got real appreciation from the left when she appeared in front of Rep. Waxman’s committee this week and did exactly what lefties hoped she would do; regurgitate long-refuted, defensive, snarling GOP nonsense in the face of all reality and objective facts with an almost stereotypically shifty, smarmy and nasty style that will make for excellent blogosphere distribution.

In other words, she aced the Team Bush audition.

But GMD visitors who were here last election season will remember another Toensing from the Washington family firm who has also made the rounds on the talk circuit as part of the National GOP attack machine – Charlotte Zoning Board of Adjustment Chair (and Brian Dubie’s schedule-vetter and problem-solver), attorney Brady Toensing, former staffer for Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH).

Son Brady is every bit the attack-dog that his mom is, and an Attorney General Toensing (either one, frankly) would fit right into the Bush way of government.

Of the many examples (such as Victoria pushing the Lewinsky scandal, or Brady supporting Bush’s “enemy combatant” designation), there was one that struck me as having an interesting symmetry with current events. During the 90’s, former DNC Chair Donald Fowler was getting well-deserved grief for selling access to President Clinton for campaign contributions. Fowler was sleazy and caught hell (for, of course, pulling the same crap that the GOP did), but The Toensings weren’t going to let the opportunity go by without maximum exploitation.

In a strange case of historical themes echoing themselves, the Toensings were actively working with an anonymous CIA staffer to promote a book capitalizing on the scandal and promoting allegations that Fowler had attempted to get individuals in the CIA to help a major donor (the same matter that tanked Anthony Lake’s bid to become CIA chief). The Toensings were, of course, determined to get all the political mileage they could regardless of concerns over CIA classified information. From the NYT:

The C.I.A. has blocked publication of the manuscript, arguing that it contains too much classified material about agency operations. Since the author submitted the manuscript to be cleared in December, the agency’s publications review board has repeatedly demanded numerous changes, despite a requirement that the review process be completed in 30 days. Current and former C.I.A. officials are required by law to seek agency clearance for books or articles they publish to ensure that they don’t divulge classified information.

[The author] said he now believes that the agency’s demands have been so excessive that the manuscript can’t be published in its current form.

The author and his Washington lawyer, Victoria Toensing, have appealed the decisions of the review board to the agency’s executive director. In the meantime, Harper Collins, the New York publisher, has canceled its contract to publish the manuscript, a spokeswoman for the publisher said.

Disputes between the agency and [the Author] and his attorney over the manuscript have intensified in recent days, after security personnel demanded to retrieve copies of a letter Ms. Toensing had written to the agency’s executive director relating to the manuscript. An agency spokesman said the incident was prompted by the fact that the C.I.A. believed the letter contained classified information, and Ms. Toensing had sent the letter to the agency over an unclassified fax machine.

However, Ms. Toensing said in an interview today that she had been using the same fax to communicate with the agency on matters related to the manuscript for months.

A C.I.A. security official called Ms. Toensing’s office and talked to her son, Brady Toensing, who is also a lawyer, since Ms. Toensing was traveling at the time. The security officer said she wanted to search the law office’s files and computer hard drives for classified information, according to Mr. Toensing. He said he denied the request.

Looking at this history, I suppose the Toensings perspective on the outing of CIA agent Plame has relevence after all…

( – promoted by JDRyan)

The freedom to end one’s life with the help of a physician in the face of painful or degenerative illness is not an issue I’ve been active in either personally or professionally over the years. Few have, in my experience. Despite this, opinion polls virtually anywhere show strong support for such options, particularly in Vermont where a February Zogby poll showed a whopping 82% in favor of the concept.

And yet the bill currently under consideration, which until recently most people considered a slamdunk, is now threatened, and it’s future looks dicey. In recent weeks, opponents have mobilized. Mirroring the debate in Oregon in the early nineties (and giving me a serious case of deja vu, as I was living there at the time), religious congregations – Catholics in particular – are being politically activated. As in Oregon, there are numerous reports across Vermont of priests delivering fiery political language from the pulpit, casting this singular political debate in a context with abortion and gay marriage as an organized assault on Christianity, and tarring proponents with pejoritives. Reportedly, inflammatory materials are being distributed.

As a result, lawmakers have become skittish over the Town Meeting break. With the bill in the House Judiciary Committee this week, it behooves supporters to make their opinions known (here is a link to the Judiciary Committee roster).

It’s important to remember that the churches are probably not breaking any laws. It’s a myth that their tax status precludes *any* political activity. What it precludes are candidate endorsements, while demanding that this sort of political activity be kept to a small percentage of their resources (which, these churches likely have done). Still, why is it that a teensy, vocal minority stands to quash such an overwhelming popular mandate?

Why, it’s the “passion gap,” and the way it feeds into that pesky social manifestation of Newton’s Second Law of Motion. (Explanation on the flip)

Backing up a bit – When listening to Rep. Michael Fisher (R-Lincoln) and Rep. Anne Donahue (R-Northfield) debate the matter on last night’s Switchboard, I was struck at how apples vs oranges the conversation was. Fisher, like most of the 82% from the poll approached the issue from a bottom-up moral construction. He clearly has a moral perspective from which he’s built an ethic, and that ethic requires that he support this sort of legislation. Donahue approaches the argument in a completely inverted way. She is a strict enough religious practitioner that she starts from the moral conclusions dictated by her faith and works backwards into the general ethic and moral construction that Fisher and others start from. This is the basic difference on these issues between the strict religionists and those for whom religious upbringing is only one piece of a greater environmental soup from whence they build their morality. This is why so many debates on such matters seem ultimately pointless.

Of course if we broach this topic in this manner, we are often accused of being anti-religion, even while we are relentlessly admonished to include religion in public discourse. In truth what those who disseminate that line (yes, I’m looking at you, Barack) really mean is that we should all be speaking religiously, while actually speaking about religion is still politically hyper-incorrect.

But I digress as usual. The point is that those who support the death with dignity movement and those that oppose it are coming from completely dissimilar places. As far as the opponents go, the matter is a dictate from god almighty, and they interpret any effort to legislate the majority opinion on the matter as not simply tantamount to a “culture war” designed to destroy them, it quite literally is. Passion, committment and activism therefore runs very high.

On the majority side, the truth is that the issue is about twenty-third on most of our lists. Seriously, how impassioned are most of us likely to feel about fighting for the right to take a lethal dose if we dont have a direct family stake in the matter?

So there you have it – a passion gap.

And the passion gap matters. I’ve blogged before on how I believe Newton’s Laws of Motion make for useful social metaphors, and in this case I’ll cite the second one; the law of acceleration. This is f=ma, which tells us that the force of an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration. With this issue, 82% is a pretty healthy mass, which gives us a pretty healthy force, one would think. But if proponents just sit still, their collective force isn’t gonna come to much in the end.

Opponents on the other hand may start from a small mass, but “with god on their side,” they are all about acceleration, and in the last two weeks they’ve seriously hit the gas, making for a pretty formidable force that has lawmakers noticing.

If proponents want to save this legislation, they better start looking at both variables in that equation fast…