Kurt Wright has a serious blind spot and a gross inability to reflect upon the obvious. IRV is the ONLY reason someone like Kurt Wright was taken seriously enough to run for mayor in 2009.

Prior to IRV, a side-show-fringe-appeal player such as Kurt Wright, would be the obvious “spoiler” candidate. Kurt Wright received an inordinately high 32.86% of the first round votes in the 2009 election. The virtually certain historical fact is, however, that in a non-IRV environment we would have seen at least 85%(or more) of the vote going exclusively to the “serious” candidates – Andy Montroll or a 2006/9 Bob Kiss – and a few scraps would fall off the table to Smith, Write-Ins, Wright & Simpson.

Guess what, the days of just table scraps going to “Smith, Write-Ins, Wright & Simpson” are back.  The pre-IRV days will return and political Special Olympians like Kurt Wright can no longer count on the social promotion of IRV to lift their message for one election; or more importantly, to carry their message forward to the next election or into future elections.  The status quo is safe once more. Instead of campaigning on ideas, prepare for hyper-scrutiny of candidates until there are only two establishment anointed “mainstream” acceptable candidates. The yappy spoilers barking on the fringes can make their “we stood on principle” speech to their 9 family members and 4 supporters at a “neighborhood celebration.”



You bet there’s more . . .

Normally, a “Wright type candidate” would be the fringe spoiler that so-called establishment types – who are out of power –  would be calling on to get.out.of.the.way so that someone electable could challenge the Progressive incumbent.  

Questionable, handicapped and otherwise non-credible candidacies, such as the Wright 2009 Mayoral bid, do not win broad based support in a city-wide election. While he held a neighborhood niche following together, he was unelectable in a straight-up election with a credible city-wide candidate. That’s not news, that’s history. Talk to Bernie Sanders who ran, and lost, as the non-IRV candidate in state-wide elections in 1972, 1974, 1976, 1986 and 1988 and finally won in 1990 in a “throw’um all out year” when he was finally seen as a non-spoiler. Kurt Wright is no Bernie Sanders.

However, because of IRV, voters bothered to listen to Wright when he campaigned 2009 and because of IRV Wright has garnered a 15-minutes’ of credibility that a scrutinized candidate in a plurality election could never enjoy. Rather than constantly debating whether Wright was hurting Andy Montroll’s chances to defeat Kiss, in the last Mayoral election, political Special Olympian Wright had an IRV ticket to play Varsity. Wright, again, only because of IRV in 2009, was permitted into a line-up of candidates where he was allowed to keep swinging until the pitcher finally hit his bat. IRV was a refreshing change of pace, the dynamics of which were about twenty feet over Wright’s head.

This is what makes Wright’s latter-day complaints about IRV such a huge joke. He is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of IRV Vermont has seen so far.  In 2009, IRV was the lipstick that hid Wright’s pig-lipped joke of a non-IRV campaign. In fact, IRV remains the reason why someone such as Wright, (extreme views albeit with a modicum of credibility) still has a shot in Burlington. I’d like to give Wright the benefit of the doubt and credit him with being duplicitously cynical and merely disingenuous by criticizing IRV.  Unfortunately, as we approached Town Meeting day, it seems he really is dumb enough not to realize that IRV is the only thing that allowed him look serious for a few months in 2009.

Please, don’t take this the wrong way. IRV is not bad because it elevates someone like Kurt Wright who is functionally dumber than a bucket of hammers. IRV is great BECAUSE it can elevate and give an opportunity to someone, not because they are dumber than a box of hammers, but in spite of the fact that they are dumber than a box of hammers. IRV also opens up the process to many other creative and useful ideas that move our democratic process forward.  The status quo craves the homogenized but stagnant uninspired middle, and plurality voting awards both homogenization and the status quo.

Congratulations Burlington on your, um, victory.

As the issue has been coming up a lot lately (and its never dormant for too long), I figured a reminder of the laws regarding the reprinting of (cutting and pasting) text that is copyright-protected, and this site’s policy in those regards, was in order.

Unless you’re satirizing (making a “transformative” use), it is not considered “fair use” to reprint in toto a news piece, or any other copyright-protected article on the web. It’s a violation of law.

The proper approach if you want to reference a copyright-protected piece is to use an excerpt, cleanly separated and identified as an excerpt, and a link to the original piece. It doesn’t hurt to include one’s own commentary contextualizing the excerpt.

If you don’t know if an article is protected under copyright, assume it is. It probably is, in fact.

Please be aware that diaries or comments that break copyright laws could get GMD into trouble, and are therefore subject to deletion with-or-without notice. Blogs can be – and are – sued for this. We’re not trying to create any hurt feelings, but we really have no wiggle room on this. Violations of copyright law will come down just as soon as one of the front pagers is near an internet-connected computer.

Future deletions will include a link to this diary. For more information on what is considered fair use, click here. For more information on copyright law in general, click here.

( – promoted by odum)

Just got phone-polled by the Len Britton for Senate campaign. Not a big budget operation, just an automated poll with only four questions: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Senator Patrick Leahy? (Fave) Would you vote for him for re-election, no matter who runs against him? (Yep) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Senate Candidate Len Britton? (I pressed “3” for “don’t know the guy”) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the job Congress is doing? (Went with fave, just to throw the numbers off)

That was it. No party identifiers for either guy. The call did prompt me to look up Len’s website. Dang, that’s one scary mugshot they have on the front page!  

 At the Vermont Senate vote on Yankee re-licensing newly appointed Senator Peg Flory proposed an amendment that called for supporting a new reactor be built on the Vermont Yankee site.

I wonder if she realized that rate payers in many states are being asked to pay nuclear plant construction costs in advance.    

The advertised nuclear power rebirth is facing more problems than those generated by Vermont Yankee’s ongoing tritium leak. Daunting start up construction costs scare private investors away. New plants can cost a quarter to one hundred percent of an entire utilities market capitalization.  

Federal backed loans guarantees and local rate payers will be footing major portions of the bill if utilities have their way. In states with nuclear power projects, utilities have lobbied for the ability to charge rate payers while construction is in progress. Residents of Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Missouri may all be required to cover the advance costs of new nuclear power construction.  

Financing has always been one of the biggest obstacles to a renaissance of nuclear power. The plants are expensive, and construction tends to run late and over budget. …

So utilities have turned to state legislators and regulators to help contain capital costs. In states such as Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, utilities have won permission to charge customers for some of the cost of new reactors while construction is still in progress — a financing technique that would save utilities a couple of billion dollars for each reactor. Previously, utilities had to wait until power plants were in operation before raising rates, as they still do in most states.Washington Post

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Richard Haigh runs Enaleni Farm outside Durban, South Africa, raising endangered Zulu sheep, Nguni cattle (a breed indigenous to South Africa that is very resistant to pests), and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Check out this video from my conversation with Richard about his sheep, his garden, and the meaning behind the name of his farm:

Here are links to the diaries that contain the responses to the GMD issue questionnaire sent to the five candidates for the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial primary in 2010.

All five candidates (Senator Susan Bartlett, Matt Dunne, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, Senator Doug Racine and Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin) answered the extensive questionnaire in full.

• Part 1 (Energy, Jobs & Economy)
• Part 2 (Permitting, Agriculture, Health Care, Education)
• Part 3 (Social Services, Responsible Government/Miscellaneous)
• Part 4 (2010 election process/dynamics)

I debated writing this post separately or including it in the open thread which already has some IRV comments here http://greenmountaindaily.com/…

I find IRV to be a confusing and debatable issue with adamant people on both sides of the issue. No matter what questions I’ve asked no one has clearly articulated exactly how it works, that is until I read Sunday’s Burlington Free Press My Turn by Burlington High School math teacher Andrew Mack.

I am not a candidate nor an office holder. I am simply your neighbor. One of the subjects I teach covers various nonweighted (each votes counts the same) voting methods: plurality, plurality with elimination (aka instant runoff, or IRV), Borda Count (used for the Heisman Trophy, among other applications), Condorcet (aka pairwise) and variations on these. The overall conclusion of this examination is represented by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, which states that no voting system satisfies all fairness criteria. For fun and by way of demonstration, our textbook has a sample election with preferential ballots formulated so that each of these methods produces a different winner.

Andrew has a well-written explanation that walks the reader through the election process step-by-step.  Read it here.  After a lengthy description, which one should read, Andrew says

…detailed study finds IRV to be the more fair method. The candidate with a majority of voter approval wins. More civil and intelligent debate informs the campaign. The “instant” feature ensures that the highest number of voters will decide the election. So why do some hold IRV in disfavor? Because IRV favors that ideological position which is in the majority. Those who object generally hold the less favorable view.

Today WDEV radio host Mark Johnson and Seven Days Columnist Shay Totten had an interesting discussion regarding IRV on Mark’s morning show.  You may want to listen to the podcast as a follow-up to insight regarding Burlington politics.  It will be interesting to see how today’s votes split.

More from Andrew – read his whole My Turn here.

So it is left to decide which system works best for the election being held. For elections to office, the two main contenders are plurality (most votes wins) and plurality with elimination (IRV). Our text states, “In spite of its frequent usage, the plurality method has several flaws and is generally considered a very poor method of choosing the winner of an election among several candidates.”

(UPDATE: IRV repealed in Burlington)

Let us know what’s happening in your town in the comments!

with apologies to weasels other than our own federal representative welch.

You remember peter welch right? He’s the “liberal” rep who couldn’t wait for a chance to join his radical right wing compatriots in bashing ACORN – a national group dedicated to empowering those who have been economically and politically disempowered.

On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees. The three had been secretly videotaped by two people posing as a pimp and prostitute, who came to ACORN’S Brooklyn office, seeking advice about how to purchase a house with money generated by their ‘business.’ The ‘couple’ later made the recording public. That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.

(ACORN cleared in Brooklyn: ‘No criminality’, Politico.com, 03/01/10)

Thanks to The Brad Blog which has been doing a yeoman’s job of uncovering the abject dishonesty that our weasel the welch has helped perpetrate on the American people.

Hey, did I say “Thanks, peter” yet? No?

I’m not talking about the math being taught in our local schools (although that’s an issue too); I’m talking about the math public figures use to advance one educational agenda or another.

The primary local culprit has been the Douglas/Vilaseca team. Douglas, for example, used his final state of our state speech to tell us

Employers of all sizes, in all sectors, have made clear what they need to restart the engine of our prosperity: lower taxes; universal broadband and wireless; reliable, affordable energy; a well-trained workforce; and an education system that is top-notch without being top-dollar.

(State of state, 1/7/10)

After telling us about the need for a “top-notch” educational system, Douglas used his follow up comments to talk about defunding the system by way of reducing our tax supports.

Vilaseca? Runs around the state with alacrity parroting Douglas.

Et tu Obama? Of course! (You don’t think it’s coincidental that our right wing guv get’s his mug next to Obama, do you?)

Mr. Obama said he was particularly troubled by the dropout rate. He said 1.2 million students left school each year before graduating from high school, at a cost to the nation of $319 billion annually in potential earning losses.

(Obama Backs Rewarding Districts That Police Failing Schools, NY Times, 03/01/10)

There are a lot issues I have with that comment of which only one is really germane to this post.

Speaking as a three time high school drop out who has successfully self educated in multiple fields, I really don’t see drop outs as being a problem. You’ll find plenty of them who went on to be the happily self-employed. Far from being a drag on the nation’s coffers, this three time high school drop out has been a tax paying citizen since the age of 13.

And “potential earning losses”???????? What the fuck is that?

I would suggest before we bust balls on the schools over standardized math test scores, we bust balls on the likes of Obama, Douglas and Vilaseca for their lack of any realistic numbers and math in their part of the education discussion.

PS. If this sounds like the anti-IRV repeat parrots who keep assuring us if folks had voted other than how they did, the outcome would have been different … well it is. It’s the same concept: baffle ’em with enough bullshit, and the public will sit down in front of the tellie to watch sitcoms.