| Will Martha Rainville (R), go the Swift Boat Route on Peter Welch (D)? Will Welch cross the line in challenging Rainville?
Return to this site over the election season as their portraits tell all… |
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(Yes – I photoshopped out – rather sloppily, I might add – Rainville’s uniform trappings from her photo. I don’t want to add to any exploitation of the uniform that’s going on)
| Will Governor Jim Douglas (R), legendary for running nasty campaigns while paradoxically managing to maintain his “nice guy” image, pull out the stops on Scudder Parker (D)? Will Parker’s aggressive criticisms lead to campaign nastiness?
Return to this site over the election season as their portraits tell all… |
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House Speaker Gaye Symington has released the text of a letter sent to Governor Douglas following conversations with Tim Hayward, the Governor’s Chief of Staff. Symington:
I am concerned about the implications of the recent Supreme Court decision that invalidated spending and contribution limits in Vermont’s current campaign finance law.
It is my understanding that the Attorney General and Secretary of State concur that we now revert to prior law with, for example, $1,000 limits on individual contributions to campaigns per election. However, there are sure to be other opinions as to whether this is indeed the case, and that uncertainty could take months to resolve in the courts. This effectively leaves Vermont with no campaign contribution limits in effect for the 2006 election cycle. I believe that is not what any of us would want.
Symington draws hope from what she sees as daylight in the inconsistent opinions expressed by the majority Justices:
The decision clarified that the Supreme Court did not find contribution limits unconstitutional per se. They simply found that the limits, when combined with a lack of inflation adjustment and stringent limits on what a political party can contribute to a candidate, were too restrictive.
I would like to meet with you to explore the possibilities of your calling a special session to establish contribution limits as a stopgap measure.
Although the chances of a special session on the matter are slim, Symington and Welch have already made noises about a special session to deal with agricultural issues. Maybe if either issue alone isn’t sufficient impetus, the combination may gain momentum.
The dependable Vermont Guardian has more on the story broken by Freyne and discussed in this diary about Dan DiPietro, the active duty Guard IT Sprecialist who has been moonlighting for the Rainville campaign since last October. Although there is no more news on the possibility raised by GMD (that DiPietro may be the source of the National Guard phone lists seemingly being used by the Rainville campaign), they have another interesting wrinkle; namely, that DiPietro may be in violation of military regulations:
DiPietro’s employment appears to fall outside what is allowable under both the Army and Air Force regulations that govern Guard members.
Army Regulation 4.14 prohibits certain “types of personal relationships between officers and enlisted personnel … [including] on-going business relationships between officers and enlisted personnel … [such as] borrowing or lending money, commercial solicitation, and any other type of on-going financial or business relationship.”
A similar rule, Air Force Instruction 5.1.5, is even more blunt: “Officers Will Not Engage, on a Personal Basis, in Business Enterprises with Enlisted Members, or Solicit or Make Solicited Sales to Enlisted Members … .”
As the Guard lights a fire under the Corporal to get him to follow the rules and draw a line of seperation between his uniform and his partisan political activities (if that’s even possible), they might want to make sure he follows through:
DiPietro was instructed by Guard officials to take down references to the Vermont National Guard and the web design he does while on duty, said [Guard Spokesman Captain Jeff] Roosevelt.
“From the National Guard standpoint, regardless of who he is doing business with out there, when we saw he was using content of the Vermont National Guard for his business, we said he couldn’t do that,” Roosevelt said.
Although the front end shows materials dutifully removed, a little investigation still reveals lingering images such as this one, and of course, General Martha in uniform.
And after all, a picture says a thousand words…
The national issue for the Republicans has been illegal immigration. In a political environment that has turned sharply against them, the GOP and their allies (witting and unwitting) in the traditional media vaulted the issue from the simmering back burner to the front (and, to an extent, have since lost control of it, given the recent disposition of the matter in Washington).
But it’s an issue that Rainville and Tarrant have not been able to exploit, given the low priority Vermonters place on the matter. Given today’s news, however, they are no doubt taking a second look:
DERBY LINE, Vt. –Two New York men have been charged with smuggling 21 illegal aliens into Vermont from Canada.
Border Patrol agents said they stopped two vans carrying 21 passengers on Sunday. The passengers were from Afghanistan, Guyana, India, Mexico and Pakistan, and did not have the proper documents to enter the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Despite all the concerns (some legitimate, some not) expressed about terrorists sneaking in, much of the illegal immigration debate has always truly been grounded in the xenophobia and prejudice against “browns” that has historically followed the issue (how else to explain the continued obsession with the southern border, despite more practical and historical concerns about terrorists sneaking through from the north?). Expect this latest news to open up a renewed attempt by Tarrant and Rainville to tap into that fear and xenophobia – and in the process exploit the plethora of national GOP talking points and support available on the matter that have been up until this point utterly irrelevant.
Will it pay off for them? We’ll have to wait and see…
The bill went down hard, with only thirteen Senators voting for it.
Hall of fame (Senators who voted with the majority of Americans to move towards an endgame):
Hall of shame: all the rest
Only a few weeks ago, the Vermont one time nonprofit “Food and Water” came up in conversation, and a friend and I wondered aloud “What ever happened to (Food and Water founder and Director) Michael Colby?”
Colby, for those who don’t remember, was a take-no-prisoners radical lefty. From outside Vermont, through his many columns and writings, he seemed almost as though he could fit along the edges of “mainstream” American leftism, but in Vermont most of us knew better. Colby has always been a leftist in the more radical mode, however unlike many others with the same ideological tendencies, Colby is highly knowledgable, keeping his pulse on the institutional ebbs and flows of modern capitalism (as opposed to resorting to cliched rants against a 1950’s era communist’s simplistic impression of it). He is also extraordinarily quick witted, and although he struck me the one time I did meet him as typically holier-than-thou and carrying the usual chip on his shoulder, unlike many others in the radical set, he didn’t allow that chip to dull or soften the focus of his considerable intellect one bit.
Well, Colby is back in the news, having been arrested recently at the Negroponte demonstration in St. Johnsbury. And some younger Vermont leftists may be finding he is not what they expect. For example, one would think an activist with such a profile would be jumping in with both feet onto the Progressive Party bandwagon, right? Well, consider the following exchange of comments from PoliticsVT attached to their coverage of last weeks’ Progressive Party news conference:
At 15 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
This is news? One of the biggest losers in Vermont political history decides he doesn’t want to lose again? It must be a very, very slow news day.And the Abbott candidacy for Auditor is simply a scheme to try and get a mere 5% of the statewide vote so they can keep their “major” party status. She — and everyone else except the lame and complacent Vermont media — knows it’s all just a sham.
Sorry, but it’s nothing but hysterical that this blog and some of the other Vermont media outlets would call any of this “news,” let alone “breaking news. Pollina is batting about 0-for-6 in his electoral career and his advocacy career is not much better (how are those dairy farmers doing that he’s been helping for fifteen years?).
The media ought to be focusing more on his pathetic track record and his lies earlier this year when he declared that he’d run if the legislature didn’t pass “meaningful healthcare reform.”
If this is all the left has to offer, the left is dead in Vermont.
At 15 June, 2006, rocksandwater said…
How many times did Bernie lose before he won?At 15 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
The answer is five. But to compare Bernie with Anthony is like comparing apples to oranges. Whether you agree or not, there’s no question that Bernie can articulate a strong opinion (over and over and over again). Pollina, however, can’t seem to get a complete sentence out without correcting himself, contradicting himself or confusing himself by his own lack of a coherent ideology. Case in point (again): He threw down the gauntlet with regards to the health care issue earlier this year and then did a complete about-face when he realized his own political backside was in jeopardy by following through on his promises.Look at Pollina’s record: Dairy farmers. How are they doing? Campaign finance reform. He was the ONLY one to benefit from it while everyone else ignored it. In fact, he even spoke out against it when it looked like it wasn’t going to favor his last cmapaign. GMOs. His Rural Vermont outfit failed on this issue miserably, even after agreeing to water down the “farmer protection act” to the point of near-irrelevancy. Health care. Oh nevermind, seemed to be his final opinion on this.
It sure seems like everything he touches fails.
At 15 June, 2006, rowvee said…
Everyone else ignored campaign finance money because they don’t believe in it. They can’t give up the money. I’m sorry Pollina won’t be running. It seems the only statewide vote I’ll cast this year is for Auditor of Accounts.At 19 June, 2006, GiveTexasBack said…
Holy cow, Michael Colby! Did you run out of ritalin?Not only are you clueless about what constitutes “news” and what doesn’t, but your fanatic nature makes you about as credible as a Fox News reporter.
By the way, what have the Dems and Repub’s done to help VT dairy farmers? Pollina has almost single-handedly organized and raised enough money to help them own and run their own milk processing plant… no thanks to the corporate processors who refused such a “loser” concept.
Once that launches, the only name you’ll be calling Pollina is “governor”.
At 20 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
Holy cow, “givetexasback”! Come out from behind your fake name and then we’ll have a discussion. In other words, I don’t respond to cowards.
Surprise!
Or not.
At the risk of speaking for someone I don’t know, I guess I’ll…well…speak for someone I don’t know (realizing full well it may in fact summon him here to likewise beat up on GMD readers…but hey! Who doesn’t love a good debate (well, some don’t I guess…))
Understand: to someone like Colby, there is no difference between the Democrats and the Progressives, and if anything, I’d wager that the Progressives tend to irk him more because of what is, in his eyes, the pretense of greater enlightenment. Ironically, this is exactly the perspective many Progressives have of Democrats and Republicans.
But Colby has a stronger point than they do. When you factor out a subsection of each group: from the Dems, that subset of moderates who really do like things just they way they are, as opposed to those who see fundamental, systemic inequities in the world that need to be addressed – and from the Progs, that subset that is motivated exclusively by their personal distaste for, or alienation from, people in the Democratic Party, then you’re left with two Parties with one major element in common: they are both looking to make the world a better place based on their subjective judgements of what is possible.
Although I’ve complained about politicians who make that judgement in legislative policy decisions, I (and most people I know) still make that institutional calculus against an impression of the greater culture or the overall political system. Lefties like me who are every bit as “out there” as any Progressive Party stalwart but don’t participate in the third-party-thing see the building of another Party institution within a system truly structured to exclude it as a false solution; like saying 2+2=fish – and we see such attempts as not only doomed to failure, but causing destruction in the process. Others who see the system in a different light see such an approach as possible, even necessary.
But at the end of the day, we’re still making our choices based on our judgement of what is possible, and that’s the commonality that to a Michael Colby makes Ds and Ps indistinguishable. To him, political action should not be chosen by such a calculus. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he may believe that such a judgement is not even realistic, awash as we are in cultural hegemony. To a Colby, the only question is; “what’s broken?” Once that assessment is made, no quarter can be given in making it right.
There is courage to this approach, and an elegance to its purity. A none-too-small part of me wishes that that part of my intellect which sees such an approach as ultimately doomed to failure would just shut up and let me join in. In my more radical days, I’ve been known to speak from my inner social ecologist and make the claim that I only play a Democrat when I’m “in the matrix” (and by “my more radical days” I mean last Saturday…ask me again how I feel tomorrow and you might get something completely different…I wonder if they have medication for this…?). Some days, it would be nice to pretend there was no matrix.
But those of us who are committed to making the world better in the here and now for as many as we can are intellectual slaved to the game of dealing with the cards we are dealt, as opposed to the game of acceptable casualties in a test of absolute leftist purity.
Still, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days that I didn’t look at the Michael Colbys of the world and wish that I too were capable of tossing my cards away and kicking the deck from the dealer’s hand…
Consider the folowing from Freyne yesterday:
Mistakenly, the “Rainville criticizes Late-Night Congressional Pay Increases” release contained a notation at the top indicating that, in addition to the Vermont press, it was sent to “dan” at “dipietrodesign.com.”
A couple more clicks led one to Dan DiPietro’s photo and personal bio.
“From 11/05 to 2/06 I created the Martha Rainville for Congress identity, stationery, print collateral and website. Under strict deadlines I worked closely with the campaign manager and was able to develop a theme and visual identity strategy for the project.”
Since last October, writes DiPietro, he has worked at the Vermont Army National Guard as an “IT Specialist (INET) Webmaster.”
Contacted by “Inside Track” on Monday, DiPietro informed us he is an “E-4 corporal” on “full-time active duty.”
You wouldn’t know it from the press (besides Freyne and the Vermont Guardian), but this fits into the long pattern of Rainville exploiting the National Guard for her personal political ambitions. Notice also that DiPietro has been working on the campaign since October, when Rainville claimed she hadn’t decided on running.
Of course during the months before she “decided”, she also raised an excess of money for her election in violation of the law, as well as had her Reporter-in-residence (now Press Secretary) at the Rutland Herald, Brendan McKenna, writing fluff pieces for her for distribution by the RH.
But take a look at that Freyne quote above again. DiPietro is an IT specialist for the VT National Guard. This news again comes at a time when the Rainville campaign has, according to several tips, been apparently using National Guard lists for campaign phone calls just this week.
So given that such lists could never legally or ethically be made available to a partisan political campaign, if the tips are true (and I have no reason to believe they aren’t) it begs the question: is the Rainville campaign either stealing, or knowingly using property stolen from the Guard to advance her election?
This is no small deal. According to sources, Guard homes’ phones have been ringing this week from the Rainville campaign – including Guard family members who have insisted they aren’t on any political lists, but strangely get these calls anyway.
There have been reports of this for some time, but it’s a difficult thing to confirm. Still, the reports have been piling up for months.
As Rainville herself said:
“It is very important for everyone to realize that support for Guard families is nonpartisan,” Rainville said then. “Anything that would connect the Guard family to politics, even by perception, could be damaging to the families.”
But the fact is that this, if true, goes way beyond appearences. It is hard to conceive of any way the Rainville campaign could be using the personal data of Guard families on the up-and-up.
We also know the press couldn’t care less about this, or any other dirty tricks the Republicans do so gleefully over Vermonters’ telephone lines. Why is hard to say. Adam Quinn pointed out Rainville campaign illegality on Darren Allen’s Hall Monitor “blog” and received no response. Is this laziness? The general contempt traditional media professionals show towards bloggers? The impact of Rainville partisan McKenna on the Herald staff?
Who knows, but the fact is that this smells pretty bad. In fact it stinks. It doesn’t take much to add 2 and 2 in this equation, and given that, it becomes incumbent on the Rainville campaign to explain why things aren’t as bad as they look, if in fact there’s a more benign explanation than the obvious.
In any event, if I were a member of a Guard family receiving these calls, I’d be getting my friends together and demanding an answer – possibly in court.
I assume most GMD readers (well, the in-state ones, at least) also check out PoliticsVT on their regular blog-sweep. If you don’t already, now would be a good week to start. Currently on tap o’er yonder:
All important pieces. PoliticsVT has a tendency to reprint stuff from other sources in toto instead of adding its own commentary and analysis a bit too often for my taste, but frankly who cares? They’ve been highlighting these critical issues this week for Vermont blog-surfers, which is more than GMD’s been doing. Great job folks. See you at the picnic.
From The Addison Independent, the race to fill the vacuum created by the departure of Republican State Representative Connie Houston has turned into one of the most interesting House contests yet:
Republican Kitty Oxholm, who served as the Little City’s [Vergennes’] mayor for four years until March 2005, confirmed on Thursday that she will run for one of two House seats representing the Addison-3 communities of Vergennes, Ferrisburgh, Panton, Addison and Waltham.
Oxholm enters a race that already includes the current mayor of Vergennes, Progressive April Jin; incumbent Rep. Greg Clark, R-Vergennes; Ferrisburgh Democrat Liz Markowski; and Vergennes Democrat Diane Lanpher.
Of course, current Mayor’s April Jin’s candidacy has already stirred the pot based on her recent leading of the strident opposition to a mental health facility in Vergennes. Jack McCullough had strong words in this take-no-prisoners (and hotly debated) diary from last week:
I’ve never met April Jin. I don’t know anything more about her than what I’ve read. What I do know is that when the time came for her to stand up to bigotry she failed that test, and stood with the bigots.
In Addison-3, despite two strong Dems in the race, you’d have to give the advantage to Republicans Clark and Oxholm, all things being equal. But, geez… things couldn’t get much farther from equal in this race at this point. Jin is a unique candidate and will not simply split the left vote, as Progressive candidates are usually presumed to do. So really, who the hell knows how it’s going to play out?
GMD will certainly be keeping an eye on this one…
