Remember last year? When Climate Change was not just going to be a issue, it was going to be THE issue? Combining economic opportunity with cutting Vermonters’ bills and drafting a narrative of Douglas as some sort of anti-science, GOP ideologue? It was his big vulnerability that could hammer him going into the election.

Ah, those were the days.

What’s the buzz coming out of the session now? Well – its all about an economic stimulus package, meaning – of course – whatever you want it to.

No, that’s not exactly right – it means whatever Jim Douglas wants it to. Douglas did what he always does – waited ’til the waning days of the session, when Democratic leaders have wound down whatever coordinated message assaults they started the session with in the face of the all-consuming slog to adjournment. Then, with days to go, he drops a big bomb into the middle of of the process – designed not to amount to anything in terms of policy – just to completely and utterly take control of the conversation. He did it last year with his “affordability agenda”, and for the first time lost control of the political narrative later that same year over climate change.

But he’s back now, and he’s done it again. And, as usual, he’s taken his lead from the national Republicans who did the same thing; dropped the term stimulus package into the arena, knowing full well that Dem legislators – who have serious issues with creativity, timing, confidence and nerve, would stumble all over themselves in their frantic me-too-ing.

Douglas, who has been phoning it in all year, didn’t even break a sweat over this one. He just copied Bush, tossing out his stimulus package – which seems to be something he cobbled together after the fact, probably over a donut break. Warmed-over old proposals, lots of debt, virtual no “stimulus” but with arbitrary pie-in-the-sky figures attached to it that have every economist in the state scratching their heads. Hell – look around the right wing websites in the state, and you won’t even find them supporting it, as they all know how ridiculous it is. They’re all staying quiet on the subject, hoping nobody will notice, focusing instead on how bad Peter Shumlin is for calling out IBM’s John O’Kane for his brazen misrepresentation of the Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund bill.

But we all fall in line – and its not just Dems. First to jump was Anthony Pollina with his stimulus package. Finally, bringing up the rear comes the Democratic stimulus package. The rhetoric game has been set and the rules laid out entirely by Jim Douglas, and it occurs to no one that that may be a reason in-and-of-itself not to – once again – play along.

Because not only has Douglas completely reset the communications agenda and debate parameters with an afterthought – he’s controlling its particulars as well, as the papers are only reporting on the competing stimili in terms of what part of Douglas’s proposals they leave out. Douglas’s non-ideas are, still, the standard on which all proposals are being judged. And that’s likely to be the narrative going into the campaign season.

Now its impossible not to have some sympathy for Dems. Douglas strikes when they are most vulnerable. Still, being understanding does not mean that we have to just live with it. The House Democratic Caucus pays someone to do communications work, after all – although its unclear to me what he’s doing (I’m not saying he’s not doing anything, I’m just saying its not apparent what he’s doing…). Of course, they had Bill Lofy on staff – a real pro who ran Paul Wellstone’s communications operation. But he’s gone now, and although you can never tell with these things, one wonders if he didn’t leave to go to a job where his expertise might be more heeded and appreciated.

Whatever the particulars, this is consistently Jim Douglas’s biggest advantage, and as superior as this session has been to the last one, its still a crucial advantage that his opponents have allowed him to use to (apparently) maximum effect, both in terms of policy and electioneering. For my part, I hold the unpopular opinion that one of the best things we could do to both improve the governing process, as well as neutralize the skewed balance of power towards the executive branch that so consistently works against the interest of Vermonters (yes, under Dean as well) would be to bite the bullet, cough up an extra $3.5 to $4 million a year, and professionalize the Senate into a full time, year-round job, giving each Senator a staffer. This way, bills and policies could be more fully fleshed out, rather than passed lickety-split and punted to the administration to work out the details. Oversight could actually begin to mean something, and keeping the bigger body (the House) as is would make for an interesting cross-dynamic and greater breadth of perspectives (not to mention keep it affordable).

It’s not gonna happen, but it should.

• First things first – congrats to Dottie Deans and Doug Racine, who were this year’s award recipients. Doug’s focus on poverty was heartfelt and sorely needed, and received kudos from others speaking at the event, in particular Senator Sanders, Vermont’s reigning DI-AB-NO (Democrat in all but name only). Dottie was terrific, highlighting her work on HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C support. It was satisfying to see the two awardees forcefully speaking out on two issues that so make Republicans squirm (and thanks so much to Dottie for inviting me to come along and to sit at your table! Woo-hoo! Front row! It was even worth missing Battlestar Galactica!).
• If you’re curious – yeah, Rep. Gaye Symington gave a solid speech (trust me on this – I’d be the first to say if it sucked). The content was solid, punchy and quippy – maybe even a little too quippy. It was pure political stump speech, no hand-wringing about how mean the Governor has been to her, no rambling or repetition. It wasn’t exactly delivered with 100% confidence (yet), but it was offered to the crowd as though she wanted to be in charge of the room, rather than like a high school science fair oral presentation that she wanted to be finished as soon as possible.

  It was about a 1000% improvement – and it left little doubt that she has chosen to break free of her insistence on doing things the way she’s always done them. She wrote that speech with help, AND she practiced it. That tells me she’s approaching the task of re-introducing herself to voters with open eyes. If you can’t tell from my tone – I was surprised. Pleasantly so. She’s still got work to do (and precious little time to do it, if she’s serious), but the first step is admitting you have a problem, and in terms of communications and presentation, Symington is clearly into step two or three already.

• Yes, Anthony Pollina (who still gives a much better stump speech, there’s no doubt) was there. All I can say is that it must’ve been weird to be him in that room. Republican Senator Vince Illuzzi was also on hand. A shame $60 checks dont have to be itemized on political party contribution reports. That would’ve made for entertaining visuals.

I had a few more eloquent diary titles in mind, but that seemed more appropriate.

So, Obama’s wrapped up his voyage to the darkside, being interviewed on Fox News by Chris Wallace, so he could – as an aide said to reassure the base – “take Fox on…”

Yeah, right.

So was it worth setting back what has been an extraordinarily successful campaign to marginalize Fox news and label them as a GOP mouthpiece? Please. In fact, after weeks of serious backup on the Jeremiah Wright issue and others from the blogosphere, he used the opportunity to lay the groundwork for his inevitable Sister-Souljah-ing of the progressive netroots, just as many of us were figuring he would do from way back, by making a specific point of distancing himself from Daily Kos.

But through this episode, I think I’ve put my finger on what has always been so particularly annoying about Obama. It’s not simply that he doesn’t live up to his own hype – find me a politician that does, after all.

It’s that – as a relatively fresh, youthful face with great oratory skills (if lackluster debating skills), brief flashes of brilliance and a uniquely compelling personal narrative, you get your hopes up. Despite all common sense, he does get you to think that maybe he actually could live up to the hype. It’s all about expectations (and by comparison, I, for one, have little-to-no expectations for Hillary Clinton whatsoever).

But once again, we get shined on with a oh – it’s okay, he’s just going to Fox News to give them what-for! Yeah!, only to be not merely left utterly flat, but to find ourselves disrespected to boot.

Blehch.

So, it seems that Symington has all but announced for Governor, as Friday’s Democratic Party Curtis Awards dinner frequently took on the flavor of a campaign rally (despite Anthony Pollina’s presence, inconveniently seated on the side of the room with the most boisterous Symington-supporter contingent). As for Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who was making the rounds mulling his own gubernatorial run only a couple months ago? From where I was, it looked like he was seated next to Symington, so I guess that makes its own statement.

But that means… who’s gonna be the Speaker next year (assuming the Dems keep the majority – which they will)?

Now lets be clear: its beyond silly to speculate about this stuff now. But I, for one, feel quite comfortable in the land of beyond silly, so anybody who feels like jumping in, have a vote…leave a comment…I’ve included in the poll the names that were most recently whispered to me as possibilities, but that was days ago! A virtual eternity!

Poll after the flip! (remember, you have to be logged in as a registered user to vote)

NOTE: I’m not trying to leave anybody out here – like Majority Leader Carolyn Partridge, for instance, who I think is great. I’m just going up with names I got from a scuttlebutt rumor email last week, rather that making it a horse race poll.

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Aw, geez. Who knows…

But the fact is, I’ve now heard from enough sources that it can’t be ignored – the scuttlebutt is now that Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin will likely not run for Lieutenant Governor after all. I kid you not. Head spinning yet?

The session is likely to end at the end of next week, so we’ll have all our answers shortly thereafter. I’m gonna make it my personal mission in life to find out who the candidate is going to be before then, though… stay tuned.

The latest attempt at campaign finance reform just went down in defeat, after yet another failure to override a gubernatorial veto. The bill may have been destined to run up against the same Supreme Court wall as the last one, given the Bushco court’s arbitrary, subjective gobbledegook about what sort of limits are and aren’t acceptable, but the Legislature decided to be incremental in their accommodations of the unfavorable ruling hoping for maximum benefit, and they had the support of campaign finance activists, so I sez more power to ’em. Douglas, of course, was foursquare against it, as it would’ve turned off the national party mega-spigot that floods in to support his re-election at the end of the campaign season every cycle. No surprise there.

No, the reason Douglas’s veto was upheld was because of one lone defection: Rep. Darryl Pillsbury, Independent of Windham County, who is hoping voters will promote him to Senator this November. Why the change of heart? Was it philosophical? Ethical? Technical?

Hardly:

Pillsbury voted in favor of the override last year.

That was before he announced his campaign to run for senator in the upcoming election.

Pillsbury admits that he is basing his decision on his own need to raise money for his Senate run and he is siding with the governor because he said he cannot support a bill that would put him at a disadvantage during the election.

“I’ve never had to raise money before,” Pillsbury said, adding that he has won his past House races with a $300 budget. “I am being selfish now. For independents, this campaign law stinks.”

There it is: pure self-interest. Dollar signs. Can you think of any statement that should make someone less qualified to be in a position to write our state’s laws? Exactly what is so much better for independents under the current campaign finance regime?

A lot of Windham County voters have been idealizing this guy because of his stance on impeachment (funny, I’ve never heard them comment on his endorsement of the far left’s favorite Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton). But this is the danger of single-issue myopia. Votes like this can’t be ignored. Nor should it be ignored that he continues to find himself AWOL when Vermont Yankee issues come up for a vote.

Windham County can do better than this guy.

A GMD tip of the hat to Lawrence Auclaire, who is retiring and shutting down evacuationplans.org at the end of April. Originally created in 2003 to “improve evacuation plans for senior citizens and the disabled”, the site became a clearinghouse for Vermont Yankee activism. The site will stay up for an indefinite period as an archive.

Curtis Awards tomorrow! Looks like I’ll be going after all. The show is at the Hilton in Burlington at 6:30, and features Chris Dodd as a keynote for the event that will honor Dottie Deans and Doug Racine. If you still want to go, but the $60/head price tag is too steep, check with the VDP to see if there’s still space, as they don’t want to turn anybody away. Just give what you can.

Please join us in some eye-rolling: Jack wrote an annoyed letter to 7 Days, which an unnamed editor couldn’t contain themselves from responding to. Aside from the minor chuckle I got from their reference to an online archive that doesn’t seem to exist, I wasn’t inclined to express any more annoyance than I had already, but in response to our frustration that Shay Totten’s introductory column chose to use the needlessly (and inappropriately) self-aggrandizing phrase “Seven Days has learned” to report a “scoop” that had already been reported at this site two days previously (before their publication deadline) – and one day previously in both the St. Albans Messenger and Vermont Tiger (specifically, Peter Shumlin’s eyeing of the Lieutenant Governor’s race), Seven Days had to add a little more insult to injury:

Shay’s reporting also allowed him to say Shumlin will run for lieutenant governor, as opposed to merely thinking about it, which is what the GMD reported.

LOL! Sorry, there – I guess the GMD headline “Looking like a Symington-Shumlin Ticket for the top two ballot spots” was a little too… uhhhh… non-committal? Heh.

Sorry, folks. Lots of people knew that rumor – which is why the St. Albans Messenger and Vermont Tiger didn’t credit GMD – but the point is, they didn’t try to use language that passed it off as some sort of exclusive, either – especially given that the story had already been put out there by another media outlet (or three). As I said before – tacky, tacky, tacky…. only now it’s spiced with a touch of pathetic as well.  

UPDATE: Bill Passed.

Peter Welch’s brief, but intense 6 week campaign to close a loophole allowing taxpayer fraud committed by overseas contractors to go unreported and unaddressed is about to bear its first fruit (in record time) through the expected passage of H.R. 5712 – the “Close the Contractor Fraud Loophole Act” – by later this afternoon. When it passes, it will place Welch among a very special minority of lawmakers; ones who have actually pushed back against a Bush administration excess and won (in fact, the only comparable unqualified victory I can think of was Senator Leahy’s success in removing legal provisions allowing for the Bush Administration to seize control of State National Guards and deploy them across the country, which makes the case that Vermont is wielding legislative clout beyond its tiny size).

The story is well-covered in the most recent issue of 7 Days, as Ken Picard does his usual thorough job, saving me some writing in the process:

…last November that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed regulations that would require contractors to adopt a code of professional conduct and ethics and implement internal controls to detect and report waste, fraud and abuse.

Two months ago, someone in the executive branch – Welch won’t say who – tipped him off to an overlooked provision in the OMB’s proposed rules: Firms operating overseas were exempt from that requirement. In effect, government contractors working domestically would be held to a higher ethical standard than those working abroad – a curious distinction given the largely lawless and unregulated environments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Welch, who serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, brought the loophole to the attention of committee chair Henry Waxman of California, who demanded in writing that the White House produce all documents related to the loophole by April 4. That deadline came and went. In the meantime, Welch had introduced H.R. 5712 – the “Close the Contractor Fraud Loophole Act.” Within days, Waxman scheduled a hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement for April 15.

The Bush administration claims the loophole was an honest mistake. Welch and Waxman aren’t so sure.

So, why the loophole, which was slipped in quietly and under the radar screen before coming to Welch’s attention? It’s fodder for conspiracy theorists for sure, who may be expecting to find some sort of massive Halliburton fraud feeding into a Dick Cheney offshore account. Most likely, though, is that the contractors have become so wild west with fraud, lack of legal oversight, and full-blown corruption that its a potential can of worms the administration would rather not open. Their quick backpedaling underscores how little they wanted Welch and Waxman to be successful in codifying the involvement of Congress, and good on them for moving forward regardless.

Of course, the devil will be in, not the details, but the implementation of actual fraud reporting requirements.

 The next step – as with any legislative oversight on this president, will be some sort of meaningful enforcement and oversight, which is where Congress has generally come up short. Even with law to back them up, catching fraud in that morass will still depend largely on whistleblowers, and whistleblowing is not a sport for the faint of heart these days:

Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle (on contractors in Iraq), according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.

They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.

So while kudos are in order for Welch, here’s hoping he stays on this, as the story of fraud and abuse among overseas contractors – and its full implications – has barely begun.

And so it drags on… I suppose we're off to Guam.

Like all sane people, I am mightily weary of this primary – but in my case its not so much of the actual campaigning as its unfortunate side-effect, let's call it Internet Derangement Syndrome. It's what happens when you mix candidates that get people very excited (as both Obama and Clinton do), a protracted, expensive, nasty campaign – and a communications medium that allows for huge amounts of information and interpersonal exchanges to be cross-transmitted in the blink of an eye, and all disembodied from actual tactile human contact.

The result is like some ugly virus. Mass media have famously had the effect of turning people into mindless shambling zombies, but this new media seems to have the power to turn them into scary, crazed wild-eyed zombies, like the”Rage” virus in 28 Days Later.

Consider in the buildup to Pennsylvania just how bad it had gotten, not just among the commenters of these sites, but even among the lead bloggers. At Daily Kos, DHinMI penned an anti-Clinton diary that can at best be called gender-baiting, and spent the rest of the day furiously castigating and insulting any who raised objections. And then there is the bizarre and unnerving phenomenon mockingly dubbed “fingergate,” on display at pro-Clinton sites such as MyDD, in which Obama is purported to have given Clinton the finger during a stump speech. In recent days, this on-beyond-ridiculous notion has received as much scrutiny and absolutist pronouncements springled with phrases like “the facts are clear” and “there is no denying” as the Kennedy assassination. It's as though nobody even remembers the issues sometimes, and it would all be laughable if it weren't, at the end of the day, a disturbing glimpse into the anatomy of the mob mentality and the human tendency towards irrational, enraged hysteria.

So I can't wait til this is over, because I think its doing us damage – not because we on the netroots aren't all going to get over it. We will, although not because we'll magically rediscover our better selves. Rather, because the internet allows so much communication so quickly that things simply happen fast. Whole social movements can rise and fall in amonth, where in the past it would have taken a decade. We'll all have made up and had a dozen more fights between now and Election Day.

No, what worries me is how ugly the blogs, citizen journo sites – all the new media sites have become. They're so toxic, I can barely stand to visit them anymore, and I live for this stuff. The influence we've built – and continue to build – depends on having an audience of outside the netroots faithful. We can't influence the traditional media and the political conversation if we make the place so nasty, people stop visiting… and lord knows we're going to need every bit of the influence we've accumulated (and more) come November, and into the next administration, whoever is running it. 

(AM note: I notice in putting the finishing touches on this diary this morning, that Pollina, too has cited the cap gains tax loophole, but as a source for new spending on his own stimulus plan. I’ll have to take a look more closely later, or maybe another front pager will….)

It’s encouraging to hear the “r” word being discussed in the $25 million shortfall scramble in Montpelier of late – revenues. As Julie reported below, the economic downturn and its consequent $25 mill-hole was initially aimed squarely at those for whom it was a matter of life and death, such as Vermonters who are depending on assistance for prescription drugs. The fact is, government is the institution that enacts our teeter-totter of public policy, as vetted by the legislative branch, implemented by the executive and refereed by the judicial – and that teeter totter balances revenues & costs, rights & responsibilities. When the system is out of whack, you have to look at all the knobs & gauges in order to make an informed judgment on an appropriate adjustment. Leaving revenue off the table in deference to political parochialism or laissez-faire idolatry is just plain dumb.

And its these sorts of discussions that bring out the differences between the left and the right. The left sees people as their constituents (or at least they are supposed to…). Keeping our society running by cutting off poor people’s prescriptions (so that wealthy people can keep their tax bills low enough to afford more better ski trips to Europe) is supposed to be antithetical to that principle. The economy is a vehicle – a means to an end of taking care of people. When it isn’t meeting that end, government needs to step in and fill the gaps through public policy and regulation.

The right, on the other hand, sees a single constituent: the economy itself. We talk about corporate personhood, but in a sense what they see is the personhood of the economy itself, and they see themselves as in its service. It’s macro health, massaging and comfort become the only goal. Large institutions like banks become its vital organs. Individual people, on the other hand, are little more than skin cells. That’s why, when Bear Stearns is in danger of going under, they have no qualms about “heroic measures” to save such a vital organ, but scoff at the idea of mortgage bailouts for homeowners under the guise of parochial doubletalk about “personal responsibility” – which has always been little more than a useful canard for keeping voters in line, anyway. The truth is, you usually have to rip up a lot of skin cells to get to an internal organ to apply the heroic measures.

So conservatives aren’t working from a vision of the economy as a means to an end of helping people, to them, its an end in itself. People are an afterthought… and when it works out for them, its a joyful happenstance. When it doesn’t, well, thems the breaks. Sometimes their constituent gets a cold, and some of the individual cells die off. That’s just life.

Struggles like the one over the budget hole get to the heart of the differences over the left and right, and despite decades of hammering lefties into thinking their view on economics is somehow not the “grown up” view (in defiance of years of history, evidence and scholarship to the contrary), Dems need to hold fast. $25 million budget hole? How about instead of killing working people’s jobs in Vermont communities and cutting off prescriptions, try this:

Close the “Capital Gains Tax Loophole”: $23 million

Finally get rid of most of the Douglas administrations army of spin doctors: $.75 million

Cut back on some of the “Next Generation” scholarships (being sure to keep the workforce training intact): $1.25 million (See? Two cuts… just to prove that I’m not too doctrinaire, either 😉 )

That’s off the top of my head…. any other ideas?