Governor-elect Peter Shumlin has announced that he is appointing Beth Pearce to the position of State Treasurer to fill out Jeb Spaulding’s newly re-elected term. Spaulding is, of course, leaving the position to become the new Secretary of Administration. Pearce is a newcomer to elected office (what an intro, eh?).

Pearce is a strong pick in terms of her qualifications for the position, given that she is Vermont’s current Deputy Treasurer. Before that, she served the same role in the state of Massachusetts.

The huge leg up on influence and future electability for Pearce cannot be overstated. Vermonters are loathe to vote out incumbents, so Pearce will likely own this position for as long as she wants (barring any monumental screwup or a complete bungling of the 2012 election). This also makes Pearce an out-of-nowhere contender for other statewide positions that may come open, from Governor and Lieutenant Governor to US Representative and US Senator.

During the noon press conference, Shumlin also announced the appointment of Michael Clasen (the current Director of Retirement Operations in the Treasurer’s office) to the post of Deputy Administration Secretary. Interestingly, (historically, even) this keeps the gender balance of his overall appointments at 50-50.

During my recent VPR debate on Jim Douglas’s legacy with former Deputy Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources Sabina Haskell, my opponent – in making her point that environmental issues must be balanced with economic ones (and her message that the outgoing Governor had done a good job in this respect) – referenced the Shumlin transition press conference announcing new ANR appointments Deb Markowitz and David Mears as Secretary and Deputy respectively. She indicated that Shumlin and Markowitz used the same rhetoric themselves.

My response was that both Douglas and Shumlin have public records, and based on those records, I can have a lot more confidence that Shumlin will strike a functional balance in that regard, rather than use the rhetoric as cover for dismantling environmental protections. Still, though, I did notice the preponderance of the “customer service” and “jobs” buzzwords during the appointment of the state’s leading environmental stewards. Here’s the YouTube:

And I wasn’t the only one. John Brabant, an ANR compliance officer (as well as being a Vermont State Employee’s Association Shop Steward) has been an outspoken voice in the Agency for years (some might say a gadfly). Brabant was clearly annoyed by the rhetoric and quickly sent out an email to – well, everybody, including a couple names in the media. Brabant minced no words (after the flip):

Does anyone else find the statements by the incoming administration shocking in regards to what they intend to do with the anti-business ANR culture? If you haven’t already, see video at link to hear statements of Governor-elect Shumlin and Secretary to be Markowitz.

I need to practice my lines when I answer the phone, let me see, uh um…”Hi, thank you for calling sir, this is ANR  Environmental Analyst John Brabant, here to help you get your business plan approved without hassle.  I am here to make sure you get your environmental permits in an expedited fashion and not let that old ANR culture of scrutinizing the impacts of your development proposal against regulatory standards get in the way of you making money and providing us unworthy Vermonters jobs.  If there is anyway I step out of line and ask too much of you in terms of your plans to fill a wetland, trash prime ag soils, push sprawl into the hinterlands, discharge to lakes and streams above NPDES standards, violate the federal CWA or VT Air Pollution Control standards or any other unnecessary, anti-business hurdles, please do let me know so that I can correct my inappropriate behavior.”  

Boy, this is gonna take some work, but I think I will get the hang of it if I try real hard. Yessir!

The email has been in circulation, and as a result of the vigorous eyebrow raising, the Shumlin administration did step back from the rhetoric a bit – but not before the Free Press’s Candy Page found a chorus of concern about the rhetoric within the greater Vermont environmental community.

It’s definitely an interesting, illustrative episode, amounting to a fairly direct sign that the advocacy community is not likely to be resting on its laurels with a Dem at the helm. There will be no collective endorphine coma after the pain of Jim Douglas’s regime passes. Activists will clealry give Peter Shumlin the benefit of the doubt – as well they should – but that will not be likely to equate to a blank check.

The U.S. Senate today passed a stand-alone bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the so-called compromise bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1993, and for which Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) voted.

Today, our senior Senator did the right thing (after too long a delay) and voted for S.R. 4023 (with the same language as H.R. 6250, meaning no conference committee is required). From his email release:

The Senate today approved the repeal bill in a vote of 65 to 31.  The final victory came only hours after the Senate invoked cloture on the bill, ending months of delays and filibusters.  The bill has already passed the House and now goes to President Obama’s desk for signing. 

 

I am so proud that the Senate rose to the occasion in this historic vote.  It is a galvanizing victory for individual civil rights in our country, grounded in enduring American values.  Removing a discriminatory barrier for some Americans underscores the rights of all Americans.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of course voted for repeal.

According to several sources, six Republicans initially crossed the aisle to vote for cloture (an indication of the strength of support a bill has): Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Burr (R-NC) and Ensign (R-Nev) joined in voting for repeal.

Yeah, one wonders what drove some of them, but that’s okay, I’ll take it.

Regardless of what you may think about wars and armies, there will likely be people who want to join the military for any or all of the usual reasons. Some of them are gay or lesbian or bisexual (the repeal does not affect current regulations on transgender folks). They should be able to serve without facing daily harassment or discrimination based on who is waiting for them back home.

We’ve still got a ways to go, folks – both on actually implementing repeal (the military is still slow-walking this one) and in getting the other equality obstacle removed – national marriage equality and equal rights and benefits in federal law and regulation.

Lt. Dan Choi is recuperating from the stress of his activism on DADT. He famously came onstage during a Harry Reid meeting and gave Reid his West Point ring to keep for him until DADT was repealed. Looks like he’ll be getting it back.

Avant-garde musician Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) passed away after a long battle with MS. As the article says, his influence far surpassed his popularity, as he’s, shall we say, an acquired taste. I was never much of a fan, but being a hardcore Frank Zappa fan (a close friend and collaborator of CB) I can appreciate him, and the loss.

Consider this an open thread, one that’s as Safe as Milk.

America’s Shrinking Middle Class Cannot Afford to Bear the  Full Burden of Taxation Any Longer and Our Children Cannot Afford to  Bear the Cost of Dealing With the Nation’s Debt Any Longer, Either. If  Congress and the President Won’t Force the Super-Rich to Pay Up, Then  the Courts Must

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! — Middle-class and working-class Americans have unfairly borne the bulk of the nation’s individual income tax burden for far too long as a result of the Bush-era tax cuts. With the Bush and now the Obama administrations having spent billions on two wars without regard to how they would be paid for; with the Bush Administration having created a massive Medicare prescription-drug benefit without regard to how it’s to be paid for; and with the massive $700 billion bailout of Wall Street to prevent a total market collapse — again, without regard as to how it would be paid for — the nation now stands on the precipice of a total fiscal meltdown. Yet instead of doing the right thing by requiring the nation’s super-rich multimillionaires and billionaires to bear more of the burden to close this huge fiscal hole — a burden the super-rich can surely afford to bear — Congress and the White House instead chose to extend the fiscally irresponsible Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, adding yet another $900 billion to the deficit. The time has come for the courts to step in and do what Congress and the White House have refused to do. (Image courtesy ImageShack.us)

(Posted 2:00 p.m. EST Saturday, December 18, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

This is not my usual Tuesday blog commentary (My annual Christmas column will be published this Tuesday, December 21). But I have to ask, in light of President Obama’s signing into law the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans, the following question:

I’m not a lawyer and I’m not going to pretend to be one. And I’ll be the first to concede that what I am calling for may not be legally possible. But for once, I find myself in agreement with the Tea Party movement’s chief complaint that the federal government — both Congress and the White House — is being dangerously derelict in its fiduciary responsibilities and I’ve had enough of it.

The federal budget deficit has grown too large to be closed by spending cuts alone, yet the Republicans refuse to take off their blinders and face up to this reality.

Whether they like it or not (and the Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they don’t), taxes will inevitably have to go up. And they will inevitably have to go up on those who can most afford to bear the burden: The nation’s muiltimillionaires and billionaires who make up only two percent of the nation’s population, but hold more than 70 percent of the nation’s total wealth.  

For the GOP to expect the increased taxes to be borne on the nation’s middle class and working class — whose incomes have been drastically squeezed by the vicious combination of increased unemployment and freezes in wages and salaries while at the same time confronting ever-increasing energy and health-care costs — is not just unconscionable. It is flat-out unrealistic, to say nothing of being grossly unfair.

It is precisely that kind of unfair taxation that led to the American Revolution against the British crown in the late 1770s. It is also what led to the far bloodier French Revolution a decade later (and why, to this day, the French still look down on overtly ostentatious displays of extreme wealth).

Because Congress and the White House have failed to meet their fiduciary  responsibilities by extending the fiscally irresponsible Bush tax cuts onthe nation’s super-rich, the time has come to seriously consider taking legal action to do away with those cuts.

As I mentioned earlier, I am not a lawyer and I’m not going to pretend to be one. But I cannot imagine how there could not be a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of middle-class and working-class taxpayers, who will continue to disproportionately bear the burden of taxation at a time when many simply cannot afford to do so because of unemployment or freezes in their wages.

I also cannot imagine a class-action lawsuit not being filed on behalf of the nation’s young people who will inevitably be forced to deal with the nation’s multi-trillion-dollar federal debt, which has now ballooned by yet another $900 billion as a result of this travesty.

Middle-class and working-class Americans have reached the economic breaking point. Indeed, the middle class is in danger of disappearing altogether — which would create a dangerous situation akin to that which existed in France at the time of the French Revolution — and, I dare say, in Russia at the time of the revolution that overthrew the czars in 1917.  

I say there has to be a shift in the individual income-tax burden to those who can most afford to bear it: The millionaires and billionaires of this country. If Congress and the President won’t do it, then the courts (and ultimately the Supreme Court) must.

If not, this country will face the kind of economic chaos that Greece and Ireland are now going through and that Spain and Portugal are likely to go through next — severe economic austerity imposed upon them by outside economic forces. Remember that many foreigners hold trillions of dollars of our country’s debt. Our largest creditor is China. At any time, our foreign creditors can demand immediate payment on what we owe them; if that happens, then Greece and Ireland will be a walk in the park compared to what we Americans will experience.

What do you think? Should there be legal action to strike down the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy? Let me know by visiting my home site. I’ll publish as many of your comments as I can.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.  

Thanks to Violetta for letting me know about this.  

Cross posted from Rational Resistance.  

WASHINGTON – The House may vote next week on a measure that could damage U.S. relations with critical ally Turkey: a resolution declaring the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.  

We've written about this before, but just to refresh your recollection, the Turks slaughtered a million and a half Armenians around the time of World War I in what is considered the first act of genocide of the Twentieth Century.  

Turkey, of course, doesn't like it when people have the bad taste to remind them of this. Turkey, a NATO ally with a pivotal role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has warned that the resolution's approval could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia. Turkey also currently holds one of the rotating seats in the United Nations' Security Council that will have to approve sanctions against Iran.  

Here's what Barack Obama said about the genocide in 2008:  

I also share with Armenian Americans – so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors – a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey's acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide. Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term "genocide" to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy. As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.  

Since then he has been less forthcoming. For instance, here's what he said earlier this year:  

“On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began,” Mr. Obama said in the statement, which largely echoed the same language he used on this date a year ago. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”  

Still a strong condemnation, but not what he promised, and not what the world knows to be the case.  

The time is long overdue. Call on your representatives in the House and Senate to support the Armenian genocide resolution.

Believe it. If you’ve been thinking there have been an awful lot of women’s names in the coverage of Governor-Elect Shumlin’s appointments, you’re not imagining things.

With only a handful of Executive Branch appointments to go, there have so far been 13 women named to these leadership positions in Vermont state government. That’s 13 out of 26 (50% for those of you with counting issues), which represents a net gain of 8 women.

Now that’s cool.

Interested in renting a house or apartment? Or faced with the need to rent and hoping you'll find a city government that will protect your rights?

If so, you might as well forget about Barre. The mayor there, Tom Lauzon, has made it absolutely clear that he has no use for tenants or tenants' rights, and he doesn't care who knows it.

 By now he's got a history. For instance, earlier this year Lauzon drafted a new proposed housing ordinance to fine tenants when their landlords violate the law by not taking care of their property. Oh yes, and he wants to develop a blacklist for tenants, so landlords can share information about who doesn't pay their rent, who might be a bit too assertive in standing up for their rights. You get the idea.

It's just that when the tenants and their advocates got the chance to address the city council, the proposal kind of . . .  went away.

But that's not all. For instance, Barre has an ordinance that says that if you're a tenant and your landlord doesn't pay the water bill, your water gets cut off. Not the landlord's water, your water.

My colleagues at Legal Aid are suing the city in federal court to get this policy overturned, and they had a big win this week. The case was filed as a class action, and District Judge Christina Reiss has ruled that the case can proceed as a class action. This is a great step in the march to invalidate the water ordinance.

If you were the mayor and you heard about this policy, your first reaction might be, "What? We cut off tenants' water when they don't owe us any money? How is that fair?"

Not Lauzon, though. Barre is apparently going to defend this to the bitter end.

But you haven't heard the worst of it. It's not just tenants he doesn't like. In fact, just in time for the Christmas season he's apparently found a group he dislikes even more than he dislikes tenants.

Wait for it.

It's homeless people and the people who try to help them.

According to the Times Argus:

It was a surreal session.
At the outset Lauzon described the meeting he personally requested with Kim Woolaver, executive director of Good Samaritan Haven, as “an informal, cozy conversation,” repeatedly stressing he “appreciated and admired” the work of the shelter, its staff and volunteers.
However, the meeting quickly morphed into a Lauzon-led interrogation that seemed to catch Woolaver off guard and had at least one member of the City Council squirming in his seat.

‘Tis the season, I guess.

I don’t live in Barre. I don’t get a vote there. I can be pretty sure, though, that if my mayor had declared war on tenants and homeless people in my town, I’d be pretty unhappy about it.

John Boehner just ups and cries lately. Why is he crying, are they just crocodile tears?  Like TPM’s Josh Marshall I am also:”Having a hard time reconciling the teary John Boehner of late with the cold, hard, nicotine-stained pol we've all known for the last 20 years.” No doubt it’s complex.  

Long ago on a flatbed railroad car in New Hampshire what might have been snow flakes but what was believed to be public crying (was he over come with emotion?)rapidly ended the 1972 presidential primary bid of Maine’s Democratic Sen.Ed Muskie.

Times have changed and public displays of emotion are more accepted.

They also help ratings. We all now know that Glenn Beck uses Vick’s Vapo-rub under his eyes to bring on the tears for his followers.  

The American Dream may be the cause.On CBS’s 60 Minutes when asked about his crying he said “Making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream like I did is very important” and choked up and cried. One of Boehner’s fellow congressmen explains that he is "one of the more sensitive people" in Congress and that he often gets touched enough to cry.  

Hunter S. Thompson famously blamed the exotic drug Ibogaine for Ed Muskie’s tears but I wouldn’t go so far in this situation. Maybe the simplest explanation could be true here. Unlikely as it may seem, maybe Boehner is just a sensitive guy.

However the NY Times Opinionator blog’s Timothy Eagan notes the future Speaker of the House’s record, is a genuine crying shame for the middle class.  

But a look at Boehner’s record during his two decades in Congress shows a man who has voted against nearly every boost for the working stiff. There’s no empathy for those with the longest shots at the American Dream in his voting pattern. Instead, we see a politician who is hard-hearted in his legislative treatment of the people now coping with the kind of economic conditions in which the Boehner family grew up.

(Crossposted from Huffington Post)

When is a filibuster not a filibuster?

Bernie Sanders’ widely lauded/mocked/viewed-online “filibuster,” of course, didn’t “bust” anything. The eight-hour marathon speech did not prevent Obama’s tax cut compromise (or capitulation, depending on your viewpoint) from passing the Senate. Indeed, from the overwhelming final vote (81-19), it seems that there was never any force on Earth that could have.

The regressive Bush tax structure is now well on the way to becoming the Obama regressive tax structure, and don’t doubt for a moment that the House — not equipped with the rules enabling determined obstructionism by a minority — will pass it as well, despite the anger coming from its progressive wing.

So what was the point of Sanders’ exercise? It did not effect the passage of the cloture motion — that threshold for the parliamentary filibuster so often used by the GOP. And although it looked and sounded like an old school, stand-up-and-talk-it-to-death filibuster, Bernie spoke even before the cloture motion — days before the actual roll call vote on the bill itself. Given that timing, it was clearly never intended to act as a real filibuster. Nor, as some inferred, was it apparently a shot across the bow, demonstrating that Sanders was ready, willing and able to mount the real thing the day of the final vote.

Given the above, there will be plenty of folks who look at it as a cynical exercise designed by the junior Senator of my home state of Vermont to do nothing more than generate a few hurrahs his way from his significant national following. Hardcore grousers who see Washington as one big faux democratic front hiding a “corporatocracy” may even see it as a grand show to distract and divert the opposition.

As the highest profile grouchy liberal blogger in my state, I’m generally among the first to go with the former interpretation (although I’m not so jaded as to go with the latter). The truth is, though, that there are other, at least as valid ways to answer the question of what the “point” of the speech was, if one expands the context a bit beyond the confines of the Senate floor.

As a now middle-aged veteran of campaigns across the country over my entire adult life, I’m hard pressed to imagine the last time I saw progressive morale at such a low point. And it’s hard to get excited about the occasional defiant press release from one relatively liberal Congressperson or another. After all, it’s just too easy to throw a turn-of-phrase bone to a hungry left and keep them on yur good side (even if President Obama can’t even figure that much out).

But a nine hour speech is not easy — not even if one is a lot younger than Senator Sanders. It’s an effort. And one can look at the fact that the Senate vote was a done deal and choose to be cynical about the speech, sure — but one can look at that same inevitability and ask oneself why Sanders would undertake such a marathon at all? Why not just an especially good soundbite for the YouTube crowd that would have avoided the hoarseness and sleep deprivation?

The fact is that Bernie’s filiwhatever-it-was did energize the base. It did give us all a little boost when we needed it. Could that not be enough of a point, given the timing?

I suppose If I chose to, I could look at it as a crass move to get me applauding, or even as an exercise in futility and impotence, but not today. Not this time. This time, I’m looking at the Bernie Rorschach Speech as a Christmas present from Senator Sanders to this exhausted, frustrated, cynical activist.

Happy holidays back atcha, Bernie.