UPDATE: H. 97 passes House.

I’ve seen updates from inside the State House that H. 97 has passed the House. Don’t know any details, so this can stand until Julie or another FPer can fill us in.

Jack

I’ll keep this short:

There’s a bill up for a vote in the House right now, H.97, which would allow child care providers in Vermont the right to form a union.  This doesn’t force them to form a union, put them in a union or otherwise make them do anything they don’t wish to do.  It just gives them the option to choose to do so, if they so desire.

So I have an extremely simple question:

why hasn’t this passed yet?  

It’s not something that should be even remotely controversial.  It’s simple, obvious, and clear: while other states are attempting to dismantle collective bargaining, why isn’t Vermont jumping at the chance to show how different we are?

To be clear: I expect Republicans to vote against this.  But in a state with Republicans in a fairly extreme minority, why is this not something that just breezed through the House and Senate without a notice?  Between Progressives and Democrats, this should have already passed the Senate.  As it stands, it’s ready for a vote in the House this week, but won’t even make it to the Senate until next session.

Have Republicans successfully shifted the debate to the point where we’re suddenly scared of the right to form a union?  Are child care providers somehow threatening to us?  Do legislators picture small children luring  people into a back alley where women wait to whack them in the knees with roller pins if they don’t pay protection money?  

I even had one legislator e-mail me about this who complained that someone affiliated with the union drive was pissing people off, which is why it became less likely to pass.  Seriously?  Is that what we’re dealing with?  Egos so fragile that they are incapable of supporting child care providers because they think someone was mean to them?  

This is absurd.  I get that out of state groups are spending a considerable amount of money to fight this thing, but when have we, as a state, ever cared what out of state groups are doing or let them influence our policy decisions?

This should be a no-brainer.  But clearly, even that’s too much for some.

I used to love it in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy melted the witch.  Everybody sang and danced and then Dorothy was returned to a world of comfortable normalcy; but even as a child I had a nagging feeling that her problems weren’t entirely over.  After all, her family was still so dirt poor they couldn’t even afford color TV; and then there was that small matter of the bounty on Toto for biting Miss Gulch.

We’re kind of in the songy-dancey stage of the War on Terror at the moment, and it’s amazing to see how much joyful significance people read into the surgical elimination of Osama Bin Laden.  I’d have been more in the mood had it happened ten years ago before we leveled Iraq and tens-of-thousands of people became collateral victims of the “hunt for Bin Laden.”

Like Dorothy’s return to Kansas, our black-and-white reality check will come with news of the very next casualty in our branded “War on Terror.”

I know.  It isn’t called that anymore; but you can’t unring a bell, as the saying goes.

Unfortunately, we must accept the fact that, even though Bin Laden is dead, he probably accomplished his goals well-beyond his wildest imaginings.  Consider what might be the Al Quaida “checklist,” if theirs was a somewhat more sophisticated organization:

 1) Cause many thousands of Americans to die needlessly           check!

check and double-check!

True, we haven’t yet removed ourselves from their holy regions (which was, after all, what started the whole mess in the first place); but it’s purely a matter of time before the simple economics of the thing finally force us to withdraw.  Remember the Soviet Union in Afghanistan?  Remember what happened to the Soviet Union in the economic collapse and social discord that followed that fool-hearty adventure?

Worst of all, we gave Bin Laden and his pals these victories, one by one, of our own free will; because all were the collateral impacts of allowing the Bush White House to work on our emotions in order to aggrandize what were abhorrent criminal assaults on the 9/11 targets.  Simply by calling them “acts of war,” Bush at once dignified the perpetrators into nationhood, and set in motion a chain of events that lead inexorably to undermining the foundations of our own liberties and values.

I will not do the partisan thing and say he did so cynically or as part of any conspiracy.  I’ll leave that to other, less cool heads.  There has been too much of that heat developing over the past ten years; so much so that it is now rebounding on itself into a massive delusional distraction, shaped by all sides.  Rather, I will assume that Bush did so naively but in good faith; and the people followed like sheep.

Like Dorothy, I wish we could just click our heels and put things back to the way they were.  

“There’s no place like home!”

It’s a question I hear asked more and more often from those who remember how the genesis of the Progressive Party had a lot to do with liberal frustration with the centrist administration of Democratic former Governor Howard Dean in the 90s. At the time, Dean had no interest in accommodating the left, and was even known to openly mock liberals who seemed politically stuck with him. The combination of ideological frustration and personal pique went a long way towards evolving Burlington’s “progressive coalition” into a full-blown Progressive Party.

So when Governor Shumlin digs in, particularly on his views on taxation and his seeming deference on many public policies to the very wealthy in the state, the question inevitably gets asked as to whether history will repeat itself, and whether Shumlin’s trickle-down intransigence won’t lead to a resurgent third-party movement (either a reinvigorated Prog operation or something new) and a new era of structural advantage to Republicans in major elections.

Given the history and dynamics of the state, I think the answer is “yes,” but not right away. The political/ideological construct Shumlin has very deliberately built to protect him from such challenges from the left (as well as from the right) will do it’s job for a while, but will prove unsustainable very soon. The question is – will it matter?

First of all, let’s say what everyone assumes, but often doesn’t want to say: Peter Shumlin’s agenda is built to get him re-elected, first and foremost. Sure, that sounds tacky and seems disappointing, but it is what it is. That’s not to say that it isn’t built on genuine opinions and ideology, but the key is that it’s “based on” them. Not as far off as, say, “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” was “based on” real events, but neither is it as close as, say “In the Name of the Father.”

Shumlin’s generally liberal-based calculus is also far superior to President Obama’s, which has failed miserably. The problem with “political triangulation” is that, when it goes wrong, everybody gets pissed off off at you, rather than being on your side. Obama has gambled on an owning of the mushy middle. Shumlin has taken a far wiser track.

There’s mumbling around the Statehouse that the only issues Shumlin cares about are pre-K, Vermont Yankee, and Health Care. I think you add ways and means (tax policy) to that, and you have a complete list. That’s because these issues are the ingredients to the Governor’s recipe for success. In fact, he has seemed concerned about other issues getting in the way of that calculus, reportedly showing anger to some insiders within the activist community who have created waves on social service issues during the session, for example.

Here’s the idea: Vermont Yankee demonstrates that he is a man of conviction who fights for what he thinks is right and can stand up to bullies. Health care shows him as a forward looking visionary. Pre-K shows that he is compassionate, family-focused and engaged with issues traditionally considered in the “women’s” sphere. Tax policy shows the rich Republican set that they have nothing to fear from him, and that he’s part of the club. Add to that marriage equality where he shows he’s a social live-and-let-live-er, and you’ve got the whole picture.

The fact that these things may not seem to be traditionally politically compatible (government run health care and tax cuts for millionaires?), just makes it better – that’s mavericky. The difference between being a political maverick and a political schizophrenic is whether or not your differing views fit together with themselves, or if they’re just a flailing, random assortment. With Shumlin, each paints a part of the picture, so they fit together nicely. Hence, Shumlin is already creating a powerful legacy of his identity as a chief executive which will serve him well in the history books, or in any further political ambitions.

This is why we on the left are wasting our time trying to appeal to Governor Shumlin on rational grounds to reconsider his approach to taxing the rich, or to dial back his decidedly Reaganesque rhetoric on state revenues and the need to protect our handful of millionaires from having to pay more in taxes than they feel like. We may have a strong intellectual argument, based on studies, letters signed by Vermont rich folk, records showing the real immigration patterns of the wealthy, etc – but the fact is that Shumlin’s view is not based on intellect at all. It is, in the end, a vital piece to the political narrative he has built for himself, and he is ready to deny the reality on the ground unto eternity to continue cementing that identity.

He’s also got his political base structurally tamed. The progressive left is often depicted as a disjointed collection of single issue causes, but the fact is there’s a hierarchy to that cause spectrum – and universal health care sits squarely on top. So long as that is in the balance (and so long as the left feels Shumlin is genuinely working towards it – which he clearly is), there will be no challenge from the left. There may be talk based on tax policy, or other issues, but it will not gel into an actual challenge.

So in the short term, Shumlin is secure from a ballot-splitting renewed Progressive Party, or Green Party, or whatever. His first – and most critical – reelection effort (2012) will be a clean D vs R, as Health Care will still be unfolding.

But that won’t last. This is where the partial shelf life of Shumlin’s carefully built political identity kicks in. Shumlin can’t drag out the health care implementation because the left will smell a rat. Dragging it out will also threaten his “gets things done” bragging rights.

And again, Shumlin is no political sociopath. His political identity-construction, as I said, is based on real beliefs, and he does genuinely feel that health reform is critical for the state – particularly for the state’s business climate. He wants to get this done.

But once it is done, many on the non-Democratic left will give freer rein to their anti-Dem feelings and will find enough simmering frustration on the tax issue – as well as the numerous, cumulative cuts in social services necessitated by Shumlin’s stubborn refusal to progressively raise state revenues, that they will finally begin to coalesce around alternatives.

The Shumlin folks will be shocked, horrified, angry. How could the left turn on the guy who brought them universal health care, they will ask? In asking they will make the classic Democratic political mistake of focusing exclusively on how they feel groups of human beings should behave, rather than how they actually do behave. That’s when they will start to feed the process by scolding the malcontents for acting the way humans always act, much like scolding a fish for swimming. Those malcontents will not like being scolded for behaving in ways that feel natural (because they are natural), so they’ll get madder and pull a few more people to their side – and the whole cycle of trying unsuccessfully to shoehorn a third party into a hardwired two-party system goes around again (sometimes I think all Democratic Party strategists – particularly the self-appointed ones – should be forced to get social psychology degrees).

And the time will come when we all will wish that the momentum to IRV hadn’t been so thoroughly crushed by the god-awful Kiss administration in Burlington. Of all their sins, knocking election reform back 30 years is, IMO, by far the greatest…

But I digress.

So that’s when the third party comes back. Will it be the Progs? Frankly, the Progs may well not exist by then at the rate they’ve been imploding. The Progressive Party is not on the favorable end of the bell curve of mortality.

But it will be many of the same faces, simply rebranded. And it will again never attain more than 10-12% of any statewide vote. It will ignore the lessons of the recent Pollina elections that running as an independent or a Dem would get them far more of the vote. The pointless demonizing of the Democratic Party (which is no more or less inherently problematic than any other political institution) and the human urge to make clubs will drive these folks to form the next sometimes-major party.

But here’s the thing: it won’t happen until after Shumlin has won re-election the first time, and in the process marked the Governorship as his for as long as he wants it, due to Vermonters’ particularly pronounced deference to incumbency. It will impact other races, sure, but SHumlin will be secure.

Three steps forward, two steps back, as we creep into the future. Thus has it always been, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing – it’s just a thing thing.

Still, wouldn’t it be nice if Governor Shumlin dropped the calculus and just lead, without political consideration? Sure, the stakes would be higher – he may lose some control of his legacy, and his future value as a candidate would be less certain – but he (and the state) could score big.

If he did, he could be the Governor who broke this goofy kabuki dance on the left, rather than simply leading us into the next pass through the same cycle. And that would be a cool legacy from where I’m sitting.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance.

It must be pleasant to be a conservative. Never let the facts confuse you, never worry about what to do when your precious ideology crashes into reality–just ignore the facts!

So tonight, in honor of the death of Osama bin Laden, we present to youa list of things that Conservatives know Bush had nothing to do with.

1. Failing to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks. Bush had nothing to do with it. And he especially never told the guy who briefed him, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

2. Letting Osama bin Laden escape from the mountains of Tora Bora.

He was strong on defense, a decisive leader. He would never do anything like this:

In retrospect, it becomes clear that the battle’s underlying story is of how scant intelligence, poorly chosen allies, and dubious military tactics fumbled a golden opportunity to capture bin Laden as well as many senior Al Qaeda commanders.

3. Abu Ghraib torture. He was the Commander in Chief, but conservatives know for sure that he had nothing to do with this. We should ignore the fact that he was President: after all, he wasn’t down there applying the electrodes himself, was he?

4. Lying about yellowcake from Niger. Sure it was in a speech that Bush gave, and his own people tried to take it out, but he had nothing to do with it. It came from the English or somebody. Definitely not Bush’s fault.

5. Blowing Valerie Plame’s cover when Joe Wilson exposed Bush’s lies. Definitely not Bush’s fault. Nothing to do with it. There is no way you can hold the guy at the top for every little thing that happens on his watch.

6. Deficit spending. Get this straight. Republicans are fiscally responsible, Democrats are spendthrifts. That’s the way it is. Just ask any conservative.

So if there were deficits that just happened to be during Bush’s term in office, he had nothing to do with them, and they were good for the economy anyway.

7. Failing to respond to Hurricane Katrina. Bush has a special affinity for the common man. Just look at all that time he spends in his pickup or on his Segway. Only a regular guy would do that. So you can be sure he did everything humanly possible to prevent any harm to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. Because that’s what conservatives do. And we know that Brownie did a heckuva a job, and since he was working for Bush, that means Bush did a heckuva a job too, right?

And I guess that’s about it . . .

No, wait, they’re telling me I have time for one more.

Here’s one thing that conservatives are absolutely positive Barack Obama had nothing to do with:

Finding and capturing Osama bin Laden.

This is also a moment to salute George W. Bush.

This is what you’re hearing conservatives say a lot,

Posted by a friend on Facebook:

OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden. An American soldier, who Obama just a few weeks ago was debating on whether or not to PAY, did. Obama just happened to be the one in office when our soldiers finally found OBL and took him out.

A sampling of conservatives on a discussion board I frequent:

Sorry but thanks to the MILITARY.

President Obama deserves no credit.

Obama hasn’t done sh*t. Bush started this War.

I am not a Bush fan but Obama deserves no credit.

God bless David Petreus Although the big earred dope will take credit for it

So Obama got him personally?

Wow that is amazing.

So if you’re keeping score at home:

Anything bad that happened while Bush was president? Nothing to do with Bush.

Anything good that happened while Obama was President? Nothing to do with Obama.

The conservative brain at work.

(Our own Maggie Gundersen is featured on this video clip.   – promoted by Sue Prent)

Latest addition to the series of continuing updates of the Fukushima disaster graciously provided by Arnie & Maggie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates. Maggie has a guest, Marco Kaltofen, expert in radiation chemistry & monitoring. He is a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, as well as an environmental scientist & professional engineer.

They discuss the spreading nuclear fallout. This closer look examines the effects & hazards of the nano-scale particles of fallout when tracking at greater distances, as opposed to the methodology of using a Geiger counter to measure the more localized background levels.

Where is all that Fukushima radiation going, and why does it matter? from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Okay, let me preface this with the following: I love politics. I love elections. With Canada just to the north of us, and the unique, enigma that is Quebec our most influential trading partner, I’ve always wondered one thing…

While politics can stretch across state lines (i.e. the mythos that all of New England is a liberal sanctuary, or the common knowledge of the leanings of the Pacific Coast states, etc), why is it, with such ties across the country, why does a small, formerly unimportant border cause politics in Stanstead, QC to elect social democrats like the Bloc Quebecois and now the NDP candidate who swept the riding yet politics in Essex County (and the Northeast Kingdom on the whole) to trend centre to centre-right?

I <3 musings.

Also, the NDP nationally did amazingly well. The Bloc is basically gone, the Greens may finally have a seat in Parliament, the Liberals have their lowest share in history, and the Conservatives have their first majority government. Man, this is so cool to watch.

(I wouldn’t normally promote something about a specific business like this, but Langdon Street Cafe is kind of special.  I totally get the decision to close, but it’s always been one of my favorite place to eat, drink coffee, and websurf in between other events in our capital city.   – promoted by JulieWaters)

…so says the Burlington Free Press. The Cafe will shut its doors at the end of the month. It’s a significant loss for the central Vermont cultural scene; throughout its seven years of existence, the Cafe had maintained a ridiculously ambitious concert schedule. And while it attracted good crowds, it was never profitable. Freeps:

“The under-story is we never made money,” said Ben T. Matchstick, the cafe’s impresario whose partner, Meg Hammond, is the owner of the business. He and Hammond have an 18-month-old son and Matchstick said they can’t afford to go further into debt.

Perfectly understandable, and still sad. Best wishes to Ben and Meg; they’d done yeoman’s work on the Cafe, and I hope their next venture will be both creative and lucrative.  

(Because Caoimhin’s comment deserves to be fleshed out a bit… crossposted at Huffington Post)

It’s good to see that Osama bin Laden has been neutralized as a political force. Who would argue that that merits a celebration? Bringing Bin Laden to justice would also be worth celebrating, but it’s not clear to me that that’s what happened.

Maybe he went down shooting as we’re told, in which case there was no other way this could play out (don’t get me wrong – I’m not the conspiracy-theorist sort at all, just a bit…. jaded, I suppose). And certainly, a full-on trial would’ve been the security nightmare for the ages (although it’s hard to imagine that it ever would have come to that, given the Obama’s administration’s complete abdication of a constitutional criminal justice regime and his embrace of the Bush ends-driven military model).

But it’s also clear beyond question that a world without Osama bin Laden is a far better place under any metric than a world with him. So let’s go with that. And during this day of celebration, I think it’s time for a pop quiz on what we’ve learned:

Question 1. As it turns out, Osama bin laden was living in a:

A. Secret cave on the Afghan-Pakistini frontier.

B. Terrorist training camp.

C. Constantaly on the move under cover of darkness among sympathetic tribes.

D. His 1 million dollar home in the Islamabad suburbs.

Question 2. The country that bin Laden was found to be residing in was:

A. Iraq (where a war with a pricetag approaching $1 trillion dollars was undertaken to attack al qaida).

B. Afghanistan (where a war, with a pricetag slated to reach nearly $500 million by year end, was undertaken to attack al qaida).

C. Pakistan.

Question 3. The military force that took down Osama bin Laden was:

A. As many as (approximately) 188,000 international troops at any given time, deployed in a regime-changing landwar over 8 years, resulting in nearly 4800 coalition casualties with far more wounded.

B. As many as (approximately) 120,000 international troops at any given time, deployed in a regime-changing landwar over 10 years, resulting in approximately 2200 casualties with far more wounded.

C. A surgical strike by a small special ops team with minimal casualties over a 45 minute operation.

Bonus “Christian nation” question. Which of the following is not a real Bible verse?

A. “If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!” Psalm 139:19

B. “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” Ezekiel 33:11

C. “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles.” Proverbs 24:17

D. “Hey John, after you take revenge on that Pontius Pilate guy for nailing me to this thing, make sure you get the boys together for a serious street party.” John 19:25

UPDATE–Bin Laden death photo.

A photo has been circulating that purports to be a picture of bin Laden after he was killed.

MSNBC is saying, based both on photo analysis and on statements from government officials, that they think it’s a fake.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com…

This is, among other things, a reminder of the importance of actual journalists and reporting to help us understand what’s going on. Not everything can be resolved by people with opinions sitting at their keyboards.

UPDATE

Just a reminder that today is the anniversary of the day that Bush got dressed up in his pilot outfit to do his “Mission Accomplished” dance on the deck of the aircraft carrier.

Now we have the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed by CIA and military forces outside of Islamabad, Pakistan.

What are the implications, including for Obama’s reelection prospects and the mission in Afghanistan?

Feel free to post your thoughts.

Obama has just come on.

It’s known that Vermont is a dairy state, and it’s widely understood that many of our farm workers are undocumented.  Some even pay taxes.  

Despite being a fairly crucial aspect of our own industry, and despite the current existence of federal laws which restrict access to undocumented workers, our own senate has supported a “kick ’em while they’re down” amendment.  One of my own Senators, Jeanette White, did the right thing here:

Through a late amendment, the bill also would exclude undocumented workers, which Windham County Sen. Jeanette White said was unnecessary.

“There was an amendment that was put on that says that Green Mountain Care can’t be provided to undocumented workers. And in my mind, it was unnecessary to put that in there because federal law already says you can’t use federal money for undocumented foreigners,” said White, a Democrat. “It was put in at the last minute and I don’t think it does anything.”

You’d think in such a liberal area of one of the most liberal states in the country, you’d have both the state senators on board with White’s statement.  But, in fact, Peter Galbraith, new in the VT state senate after running on a platform of “hey, I’ve been on TV!” voted to support this do-nothing-but-bash-immigrants-anyway piece of dreck.

For those of you unfamiliar with Galbraith, while he does live in Vermont, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in Vermont.  His campaign itself was a series of public appearances in which me said vaguely leftish things that sounded nice, few of which had anything to do with Vermont itself, and when pressed on issues about Vermont specifically, showed little to no interest in discussing the topic.  

But this is what happens when a well-known leftist runs for a local office in a community which is known for not only being leftist, but leftist to the point where even I think they’ve gone over the deep end too many times.

TO be clear: this isn’t the sort of amendment you support to change policy.  This is the sort of amendment you support in order so that, down the line, when running for higher office, you can say “I’ve been tough on immigrants.”  It’s not about clarity.  It’s political gamesmanship, the sort we see too often.

Galbraith’s a politician, and probably a good one.  After all, he managed to get elected to a political office without actually promoting much in the way of genuine policy initiative.

It’s not that he doesn’t have goals.  It’s just that those goals do not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with Vermont, its people, or even its migrant workers.