I received quite a gift today when I opened up this morning’s New York Times to see my son Eric Gundersen featured on the front page of the Business section!  While we had heard the story was coming, one is always unsure whether or not a feature story makes it into print, and if it does, is it a news piece that hits the right tone.

Without even notifying friends, colleagues, relatives, and computer techies we know, we have been receiving emails and phone calls about the New York Times story since it first hit online last night.  While the New York Times piece is specifically targeted to open government work Eric has done for the city of Washington, DC, the story is larger in its overall connection to the work his firm is doing nationally and internationally in open government, data mining, and geo-mapping.

And, while the photo features Eric and makes a mother proud, New York Times reporter Claire Cain Miller has done an excellent job capturing the issues confronting governments throughout the US.  Some cities and states are willingly letting information out, others do not want anyone to touch public records except the holders, and how to design software that gives access is where firms like Eric’s come into play.  See the complete story here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12…

Development Seed, the firm Eric founded almost five years ago has grown from a two person web design firm in his basement apartment to a 16 member firm with offices in Washington, DC.

According to Development Seed’s website, Eric is

“President and co-founder of Development Seed. Over the past six years, Eric has developed communications strategies and tools for some of the largest international development organizations operating around the world, in addition to working with national public health and education focused NGOs. Eric is especially interested in improving information flows and efficiency within large organizations, alongside their on the ground operations.”

The New York Times article said,  

The push to publicize government data goes as far back as the 1960s, but technology has made it possible for people to use the data in ways that would not have been possible even a year ago, said Eric Gundersen, president of Development Seed, the Washington company that created Stumble Safely. The company builds data and map applications for international development programs.

   “The timing now with the open data movement is really critical because there are a lot of open-source tools that really make that data usable,” Mr. Gundersen said. These include the mapping tool he used to build Stumble Safely and also a site for the United States Agency for International Development that maps public health clinics.

Green Mountain Daily has been a big advocate of Open Government.  I have written about and been an advocate for open government for decades.  Arnie and I testified in Washington, DC during the 1990s regarding the necessity of supporting whistleblowers who were opening government to public scrutiny and letting sunlight stream into dark places.  Last year, I attended almost every Burlington open government meeting and spoke many times.  And, most of my daily paralegal work for Fairewinds Associates, Inc revolves around making sure that energy companies and utilities who own nuclear power plants are honest with the public and ratepayers about the public health and safety risks as well as the true economic costs of nuclear power.

While the NY Times story about Eric features his local government work regarding StumbleSafely.com, one of the websites Development Seed built last year for the Apps for Democracy contest, they also do amazing work in geo-mapping on the international level.  See here: http://developmentseed.org/blo… for a column by Development Seed Cartographer AJ Ashton, who has done incredible geo-mapping in Afghanistan.  

Eric has traveled to Afghanistan twice this year.  Most recently, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government and chaired by former Ambassador Madeleine Albright, asked Eric to come to Afghanistan to talk about geo-mapping, data management, and communications.  As Development Seed states:  “We focus our work in a few key sectors so we can get the details right. Our core competencies are centered around large data projects and communications software for geographically disperse teams. These projects require rich visualizations available in any language, accessible via any device, and scalable for global use. Niching in these sectors has allowed us to attract a team of experts with unique skill sets who focus full time on solving these problems.”

As an strong advocate of open government, I think that work like this is critical to protecting the public’s right to know, democracy, and free speech.

But, there is another side to the coin, and one I have not yet figured out:  privacy.

My recent cataract surgery has slowed down my reading list, but as soon as my second surgery is over in 2 weeks, and I am back to my normal reading load, American Privacy by Burlington attorney, author, and legal scholar Frederick S. Lane is at the top of my list.  

According to Howard Zinn,

“Is there anything more fundamental to human freedom that the right to privacy, to be able to live your life as you wish without the scrutiny or the interference of bullying authority?  Frederick Lane’s book confronts us with this largely invisible threat, magnified by modern technology, and challenges us to defend our most basic rights.

So here’s my question to GMD readers: Where do we draw the line between open government initiatives like stumble safely, geo-mapping in DC and Afghanistan and cities and countries throughout the world and data mining for the public right to know versus privacy concerns?  When I read Lane’s American Privacy, I’ll let you know what I think about privacy as an open government advocate in the midst of all this new technology.  Are privacy and open government at odds or on the same path?  What’s your take?

There’s a steady drum beat of how we can’t abandon Afghanistan like we did in the late 1980’s. The end result will be, we’re relentlessly informed, a disaster reminiscent of what led to the rise of the Taliban and empowerment of al Qaeda.

I want to set aside historical reality for a bit and engage in a thought experiment.

Let’s pretend we didn’t abandon Afghanistan and our allies there in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Let’s pretend we kept our moral, financial, military and other support of the then still birthing right wing, international, violent movement we’ve all come to know and love as “jihadis”.

Let’s pretend Osama bin Laden continued to receive the unconditional backing of the US government.

Then let us stop pretending and realize that the only thing we could have done was disassociate with Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. We need to understand the bloody civil war fought among various Afghan warlords (including the Taliban) was the only way power structures were going settle on a future even if led by the brutal Taliban as opposed to the equally brutal war lords of the north, south, east and west.

And then allow that light bulb of understanding to brighten.

We need to “abandon” Afghanistan once again because until the Afghan people themselves settle their internal conflicts there will be no solution. We need to get the hell out of the way because our track record there proves we haven’t a clue as to who in the eyes of the Afghan people is good and who is bad.

We need to get out of Afghanistan because to do otherwise would be to accept that Osama bin Laden should today be our good buddy terrorist.

(that and war really doesn’t solve anything anyway … but that’s a different rant)

From a presumably final press release:

Catamount Tavern News, founded over 7 years ago in August of 2002 by the new defunct Green Mountain Collective, is, perhaps, the longest running ‘underground newspaper’ in Vermont history. The publication saw its first print edition of 350 copies in the winter of 2003. The paper initially billed itself as an “anarchist publication”, and was the official Vermont newspaper of the Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists from 2003-2006.  For a time, it was the only statewide newspaper in Vermont. However, over the years, the publication evolved into a broader platform for left wing social and political perspectives, be they anarchist, anti-war, socialist, Progressive Party, or counter culture in nature.

Xavier Massot provides these final credits in an “obituary”:

I guess some names should be mentioned  as notables to the CT News effort, they are (in no particular order): David Van Deusen the monomaniacal editor guy, Jeremy Kaplan who was there in spirit if not occasional form, Jeremy Ripin the good natured photo dude, Lady the original editor and crossword puzzle gal, Sean West for editing for a while, Beth Cate for copy editing, Wes Hamilton for generally making the NEK deliveries (even if he did miss a few), Traven Leyshon for all the articles he was roped into writing, Jonah Banis who wrote the hunting column for a spell and was good to drink beer with,  the three girls who lived in a shack on the compound and managed to neither kill each other nor escape the CT News communal stapling and folding process, and Thor the dog who provided emotional support even while sleeping.

Is this a sign that the era of printing or photocopying, stapling, and setting independently made publications by the doors of friendly institutions is over, replaced instead by a proliferation of websites? Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?

The author of Guns, Germs and Steel, geography professor Jared Diamond has a New York Times op-ed stating his recent softening of attitude toward big business and their role in environmental salvation. He confesses to a former dislike of big business’ environmental destruction and greed but describes his change toward a more “nuanced feeling”. This feeling came about from serving alongside many business executives on the board of the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International. Diamond’s top three corporate picks that have seen the light are Wal-Mart, Chevron and Coca-Cola. These businesses are, he says among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability. He must see them as a sort of positive Guns, Germs and Steel of the enlightened corporate crowd.

I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability. The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

Few would argue that avoiding oil spills isn’t good and lower consumption doesn’t save money but that has long been the case. No nuance here at all, it has gotten so bad that even Wal-Mart, Chevron and Coca-Cola see the writing on the wall.

Look at what Coca-Cola is doing as one of  Diamond’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.  

First off Coca-Cola gave $20 million to the World Wildlife Fund in 2007 and entered into a long-term funding partnership with them in 2008. Diamond notes correctly that Coke’s main ingredient is water.

Global climate change is making water scarcer, especially in the densely populated temperate-zone countries, like the United States, that are Coca-Cola’s main customers. Most competing water use around the world is for agriculture, which presents sustainability problems of its own. Hence Coca-Cola’s survival compels it to be deeply concerned with problems of water scarcity, energy, climate change and agriculture.

Making its plants water use “neutral” by replenishing to the environment water in quantities equal to the amount used to make soda.

About water offsets from Guardian UK. Coke is not promising to be water neutral wherever it operates – which is bad news for the Indian villages that have been complaining that Coca Cola bottling plants are emptying their wells. Instead, it will "replenish" that water somewhere else.

How is not so clear. One route will be by funding WWF to protect watersheds round the globe.

All so they can continue to make and sell sugar water worldwide. Is the continued existence of Coca Cola Corporation so vital to the earth that we need to laud them for stage managing their own survival?  

In Interview With Right-Wing Talk Radio Host, Ex-Governor of Alaska and ’08 GOP Veep Nominee Says She ‘Doesn’t Have a Problem’ With President’s Birthplace Becoming Issue in 2012; Owner of Car Dealership in Colorado Insists Obama Is a Muslim and Accuses Him of Being ‘Anti-Christian’ in Wake of Fort Hood Massacre

Phillip Wolf, who owns a car dealership in a Denver suburb, erected this billboard that challenges President Obama to produce his birth certificate. Wolf — despite his insistence that he’s not a racist — thus becomes one of the newest members of the racially-and-religiously-motivated hate campaign by the so-called “birther” movement to drive the nation’s first black president out of office, fueled by the false belief that Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen and is occupying the White House illegally and/or that he is a Muslim with ties to radical jihadists. And Wolf is not alone: Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has expressed sympathy with the birthers’ hate campaign, telling a right-wing radio talk-show host that she “doesn’t have a problem” with it — and did not rule out bringing it up as an issue if she decides to make a run for the White House in the 2012 campaign. (Photo courtesy KDVR-TV, Denver)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, December 7, 2009)

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A ‘SKEETER BITES REPORT EDITORIAL

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The “birther bigots” — the movement that stubbornly clings to the repeatedly-proven-false belief that President Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen and is illegally holding the presidency — is nothing if not determined in its racially-and-religiously-motivated hate campaign to drive the nation’s first African-American president out of office.

That the “birthers” are motivated by sheer bigotry was made even more evident last week when the owner of an automotive dealership in a Denver suburb erected a billboard displaying a caricature of the president wearing a turban and bearing the words “President or Jihad?”

And now former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has effectively joined the ranks of the “birther bigots” by publicly declaring that she “doesn’t have a problem” with those who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, still stubbornly insist that the president is not a native-born American, but a native of his father’s homeland of Kenya — a belief that the Kenyan government dismissed as “madness” and “a red herring” and even many mainstream conservatives brand “loony.”

PALIN DOESN’T RULE OUT MAKING OBAMA’S BIRTHPLACE AN ISSUE IN 2012 — IF SHE RUNS

During a radio interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries as part of her national tour to promote her book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin, asked if — should she decide to run for the White House in 2012 — she would make Obama’s birthplace an issue, said, “I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that.”

Palin added, “I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers.”

Asked by Humphries if the question of whether the president is a native-born U.S. citizen, as the Constitution requires, is a “fair question,” Palin replied, “I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game.”

Palin sought unsuccessfully to make Obama’s longtime friendship with his former pastor, the now-retired Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an issue in the 2008 campaign. She was repeatedly overruled by John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, on the grounds that to bring up Wright would leave the McCain-Palin campaign vulnerable to accusations of race-baiting.

Palin told Humphries that McCain’s refusal to bring up Reverend Wright showed that “the McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don’t think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we’re seeing manifest in the administration.”

But McCain, to his credit, was determined not to be seen as a bigot — especially after he was forced to confront the birthers’ open hatred of Obama head-on during a town hall-style campaign stop in Minnesota less than a month before the election.

OWNER OF COLORADO CAR DEALERSHIP REVEALS HIS MISPLACED ANTI-MUSLIM BIAS AGAINST OBAMA

At virtually the same time Palin made her comments, the owner of an automotive dealership in a Denver suburb triggered a furor by erecting a billboard that compares the president to a terrorist and demands that the president prove that he is a native-born U.S. citizen by producing his Hawaii birth certificate — in spite of the fact that Obama had done so well over a year ago and that it had been certified by the State of Hawaii.

Phillip Wolf, owner of Wolf Automotive in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, accused the president of lying about where he was born. “This man is not telling the truth,” Wolf said. “He should prove he’s an American.”

Wolf also insisted that Obama is a Muslim — despite all evidence to the contrary that he is a Christian, including the president’s 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in his adopted hometown of Chicago, now headed by the Reverend Otis Moss III.

“Everything I have read about Obama points right to the fact that he is a Muslim,” Wolf told Denver’s KDVR-TV, “And that is the agenda of what Muslim is all about. It’s about anti-American, it’s about anti-Christianity.”

Wolf said he was prompted to put up his billboard by the November 5 massacre at the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, in which Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim suspected of having ties to radical jihadists, went on a shooting rampage on the sprawling base, killing 13 people and injuring over a dozen others before he was himself shot and wounded by a civilian police officer.

Hasan, who’s now at a military hospital in San Antonio, faces 13 counts of murder.

Wolf insisted that he’s not a racist, claiming that his wife is a Latina and that he cast a write-in vote in last year’s presidential election for Alan Keyes, a right-wing African-American commentator who ran unsuccessfully against Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate contest in Illinois.

To which we at The ‘Skeeter Bites Report respond with two words: Prove it.

WHY HAVE WOLF AND PALIN JOINED FORCES WITH ‘BIRTHER BIGOTS?’

If Wolf isn’t a bigot, as he claims he’s not, then why has he — as well as Palin — chosen to join forces with a movement that has been documented again and again over the past year to be motivated by a combination of misplaced Islamophobic bigotry and thinly-disguised racism against this president?

Why have Wolf and Palin chosen to align themselves with a movement that includes many self-avowed white supremacists?

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report has documented the fact that the belief that Obama is a foreigner has become fodder in white-supremacist circles, including Stormfront, the largest and best-known “white-nationalist” site on the Web; and the Council of Conservative Citizens, listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the largest white-nationalist group in America” — essentially a reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils that were formed in the South to resist racial desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily has been — and continues to be — particularly bullheaded in its stubborn insistence that Obama is not a native-born American, despite one claim after another being debunked, even hawking a video that challenges Obama’s citizenship.

WND was founded in 1997 by Joseph Farah, a firebrand social conservative who was editor-in-chief of the now-defunct right-wing California newspaper The Sacramento Union. Farah is a fierce proponent of the “birther” conspiracy theory — and he vows never to let up.

“It’ll plague Obama throughout his presidency,” Farah insists. “It’ll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on Bill Clinton’s presidency. It’s not going to go away, and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public.”

WND’s senior editor is Jerome Corsi, author of the highly controversial and largely discredited book, The Obama Nation, which The ‘Skeeter Bites Report flatly consider libelous — and who has connections with known white supremacists.

Corsi, who dwelled extensively in his book on the two interracial marriages of the president’s white, Kansas-born mother, Stanley Ann Dunham — first to his black father from Kenya, Barack Obama, Sr. and later to his Asian stepfather from Indonesia, Lolo Seotoro — went so far as to promote his book on several white-supremacist Internet media outlets, including Stormfront’s “Political Cesspool” online radio show,according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremist groups.

Then there is Palin — who did nothing to stop an eruption of blatantly racist passions against Obama at her solo campaign appearances during the final weeks before last year’s election — passions that were captured in a shocking report by a correspondent for the English-language channel of al-Jazeera and openly stoked by Palin herself.

That prompted The ‘Skeeter Bites Report to declare in a strongly-worded editorial on October 20, 2008 — which included a video of the al-Jazeera report — that Palin was unfit to serve as the nation’s vice president.

In the wake of her latest comments to Humphries, it’s clear to us that the former Alaska governor is even more unfit to serve as president and that for her own sake, she would be wise not to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 — or make any other run for the White House at any time in the future beyond that.

ADL CONDEMNS WOLF’S BILLBOARD AS ‘HATEFUL’ AND ‘DIVISIVE’

Wolf’s billboard was condemned by the Mountain States chapter of the Anti-Defamation League for exploiting the Fort Hood massacre “in a context replete with bigotry.”

In a statement issued by Bruce DeBoskey, the ADL’s Mountain States director, the anti-hate watchdog branded Wolf’s billboard “divisive and offensive” and that it “perpetuates hateful and harmful stereotypes about Muslims.”

The ADL’s national office noted back in August that since Obama’s election, anger among white supremacists and other right-wing extremists “resulted in an avalanche of vitriolic postings on racist Web sites.”

Meanwhile, a liberal radio talk-show host, David Sirota, said that Wolf’s billboard was an example of right-wing hatred of the president flying “out of control.”

“This brings together all those strands of [hate]: the racism, the anti-Muslim fervor,” Sirota told KDVR-TV. “It’s one thing to criticize the president on health care, or Wall Street reform, or immigration. But this is outrageous. And I think it’s a fair question to ask why these questions about religion and ancestry are being directed so viciously at the first African-American president of the United States.”

A liberal group, Progress Now Colorado, has called for a boycott of Wolf’s dealearship. Bobby Clark, a PNC spokesman, told The Denver Post that “birthers” and “teabaggers” like Wolf have been “emboldened” by right-wing politicians and media pundits.

“When people like Rush Limbaugh . . . Glenn Beck and elected officials like Sarah Palin . . . openly question the president’s citizenship and compare him to terrorists, it gives permission to this kind of speech,” Clark said. “It’s hateful. It’s racist. It’s outrageous.”

Wolf also owns auto delearships in Wyoming and Montana, but it was not clear if they would also be targeted for boycotts.

‘BIRTHER QUEEN’ TAITZ: A RABID ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOT TIED TO KAHANE EXTREMISTS

Then there is Orly Taitz, by far the most notorious of the “birther bigots.” The seemingly inexhaustibly litigious Taitz has seen one lawsuit after another seeking to prove the Obama was born in Kenya thrown out of court as frivolous after one alleged “Kenyan” birth certificate after another filed by Taitz as “evidence” was quickly exposed as forgeries.

Who can forget her highly combative appearance on MSNBC last August? In that interview, Taitz was confronted by anchor David Shuster’s pointing out that announcements of Obama’s birth at a Honolulu hospital on August 4,  1961 were published a week later by both of the city’s two major newspapers, the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin.

The Star-Bulletin even noted in an editorial published last July that the birth announcements published in the two newspapers are available for viewing on microfilm at the main branch of the Hawaii State Library in Honolulu.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report subsequently revealed in a September 7 expose that Taitz — an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Moldova who holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship — is a rabidly anti-Muslim bigot who considers the president a “dangerous threat” to the security of Israel.

We also revealed that Taitz had support from the Jewish Task Force, a radical extremist group whose members, according to its Web site, follow the teachings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League (JDL), who later emigrated to Israel and founded the far-right extremist Kach Party — which was subsequently outlawed as a racist organization by the Israeli government.

The JTF, like Taitz, adamantly insists that President Obama is a Muslim and considers him a traitor to the U.S. and a direct threat to Israel.  “We are opposed to Israel surrendering land for ‘peace,'” the JTF declared on its Web site. “We are also opposed to Islamic terrorism, which we believe is an integral part of Islam.”

A JTF subsidiary, Jews Against Obama, posted a highly inflammatory video on its Web site that claims Obama “wants to destroy Israel.”

IT’S TIME TO CALL THE ‘BIRTHERS’ OUT AS THE BIGOTS THEY REALLY ARE

So it should come as no surprise that the “birther” movement would be riddled with with white supremacists, anti-Muslim bigots and other extremists, persisting in their hate campaign against Obama no matter how thoroughly their “evidence” against the president is debunked again and again and again.

To use Wolf’s own words against him, the time has come to “call a spade a spade” — as he did against the president — and call out the “birthers” as the bigots that they really are. By now, it should be clear to everyone that bigotry is the only reason why the “birthers” continue in their drive to kick the nation’s first black president out of office — no matter how vehemently they deny it.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report has no doubt that this hate campaign would not exist if Obama was a white man — and we defy the “birthers” to try to prove otherwise. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood: Go ahead, “birther” punks — make our day.

Sincerely,

Skeeter Sanders

Editor & Publisher

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

(Promoting, with a reminder to candidates that GMD will front page messages such as this to the community. – promoted by odum)

Thank you to those who responded to my post about health care. Your comments are consistent with what I’m hearing around the state. I think we all share the same goal of health care for all.

I would like to have as many people as possible participate in the process moving forward. It is a great suggestion to take the hearings on the road, and I might try to do that, but there is strong pressure to limit the legislative session length because of budget issues. I will find ways to offer people opportunities to give their input as we move forward.

With regard to the question about how I will respond to a challenge that I am using my position for electioneering, I will say that I have a position of leadership in the legislature, and I want to show Vermonters that from my position of leadership I can get things accomplished. As governor, I will do the same.

Please keep in touch with me. You can visit my website at www.dougracine.com to get the latest information about my campaign.

-Doug Racine

UPDATE: This hubbub sounds likely to amount to wishful thinking on the part of some conservatives, as other insiders say that Mazza would never consider such a run – especially against Republican Senator and Lite Gov candidate Phil Scott, who is one of his best friends in the Senate.

Well-placed rumors have it that there may be some coalescing of conservative Democrats behind a Lieutenant Governor run for Grand Isle Senator Dick Mazza.

The conservative Mazza often runs afoul of the progressive wing of the party, but in recent years has even been known to act as a proxy for Governor Douglas within the caucus, placing himself in opposition even to the more middle-of-the-road Dems. Rumor is that he’s being encouraged to run by conservatives and traditionalists in the party structure who would be loathe to see Progressive David Zuckerman get the party’s official nod in the Democratic Primary.

While Zuckerman was well-received at the Washington County Democratic Committee, his (shall we say) oft-spoken distaste for the Democratic Party as an institution and “the Democrats” as a collective still rings fresh in the minds of many hardcore partisans. If anti-Zuckerman Dems are coalescing, one questions whether they could generate enough pique to scuttle the enthusiasm from those primary voters who see Zuckerman’s primary ambitions as a way to bring the left somewhat closer together.

Such a dynamic would also turn a primary run into even more of a rhetorical tightrope walk for Zuckerman, as Dem opponents will be looking for any turns of phrase that could be read as contemptuous of the very primary voters he would be trying to court.

If the rumors are true, it might also make those other Democrats considering a run – Rep. Steve Howard of Rutland and Tim Palmer of Burlington – feel a little like chopped liver. Howard’s odd history with the Party (presiding as Party Chair over an intra-Party schism in the 90s that seriously damaged the party’s finances) may tend to prevent many of the long-time Dem regulars from quickly moving to back him, although if he mobilizes his support effectively in Rutland County, that history will become moot. Palmer, on the other hand, seems to be doing no more than throwing out the possibility among his circles in Burlington, rather than taking any affirmative steps to create a campaign and work against his significant name recognition deficit. As such, he’s not currently taken seriously as a candidate by anyone I’ve spoken to. He clearly needs to step up right now, if he’s at all serious.

(Quick PS… I, like others, am assuming that Ed Flanagan won’t be running. Totten has reported that Ginny Lyons is considering a run, but I haven’t heard anything more about it.)

[Note: Senator Sanders had to attend via teleconference, due to the Health care vote today in the Senate]



The following is paraphrased. If there are any unclear bits, it’s probably because I couldn’t type as fast as Senator Sanders spoke. I also didn’t catch the first minute or so, so it starts at an awkward point… Items in square brackets [like this] are from me either filling in detail for clarity, or filling in chunks where I couldn’t keep close.

We’re in an unprecedented position. Worse than any time since the Great Depression – not only in terms of the health care system and wars, but an economy in very bad shape. Green house gasses (GHGs) and global warming add a global problem to the mix. As the most powerful country on earth, we have to be the leaders. For many years, the US was not present in the climate discussion and we had a President who barely acknowledged the issue. We must make substantial cuts in GHG emissions. I will fight to make strongest possible bill.

Last year, we spent 350 billion importing oil from S. Arabia, Venezuela, etc. If we invested a fraction of that into sustainable energy and efficiency, we could be the world leader. When you invest in efficiency, renewables, etc. you create millions of new, good paying jobs. When you do that, you reduce GHGs, you reduce dependence on fossil fuels, you create millions of jobs – it’s a win-win-win.  

We’re currently trying to shape national policy. If you have policy ideas speak w/Kelly Lucci (VT office) and Darrin Springer (DC).

2 things:

1) Shape national legislation as best we can. There is enormous opposition from oil, coal, and right wing politicians. The current Senate bill is better than the House bill, but nowhere near strong enough.

I’m also trying to make VT the model for what the rest of the country should look like in terms of GHG emissions and sustainability. We are generally regarded as leaders in US in terms of efficiency. We consume less electricity than we used to consume, which is tremendous.  Despite that, first, as a state, we all know that we can do better. And second, if the rest of the country caught up to VT in terms of efficiency, we are talking prevention of creation of over 300 new coal burning plants.

We are NOT doing as well in implementation of sustainable energy. We have a long way to go. You know the wind controversy. I think there’s great potential, not only in terms of farms, but in terms of small inexpensive turbines all over the state and throughout rural America. We can see a situation where people are producing 40% or more of their electricity from their own location. Solar – in VT we understand it, but others don’t. [Unstated, but implied: you don’t have to be in the desert southwest for solar to be viable.] We are better located than say, Germany for solar power [VT is closer to the equator]. NJ has been very aggressive in terms of solar. We’re trying to bring money into state for more.  Last year, we got funding from DOD (defense dept) to make the VT National Guard base the greenest base in America ($5 mil last year, expect another $5 mil this year). They’re looking at Solar, Geothermal, biomass and efficiency.

For state residents, we got a solar hot water grant for $500k for solar hw systems at large housing developments. Substantial money is coming into state via energy environmental block grants. We’re seeking money for green a jobs training program. We need to train workers to deal with wind and solar. Hope we will see a significant expansion in solar, wind in the state.  There’s an upcoming conference on geothermal in next couple of months. Biomass has huge potential. Middlebury College is heating their campus with biomass (Combined Heat and Electric). We’re seeing district heating projects.  There’s great potential out there.

In many ways, this is the great moral challenge of our moment. The way we will succeed is grassroots mobilization. If we can educate people & help make homes more efficient, expose people to the products that are out there, we can make a difference.

It’s not an accident that DOE is giving $69 mil to promote a smart grid in VT. It’s a direct result of the fact that VT is already moving forward aggressively on these technologies.

Our energy, transit, land use planning  – we are in the moment to make change. We (VT) are positioned to be a world leader in this realm.

Q& A Session:

Question:

Global warming is more important than health care & Afghanistan. How do we move it beyond politics as usual?

Answer:

The real need is to fundamentally change our national priorities. The only way we make things happen is through strong grassroots activism. If millions of people come together and demand government not represent the greedy & powerful lobbyists, we can make the transformation.

I could give a long speech about how every progressive initiative is being met with enormous opposition & huge sums of money. Politics is a 365 day a year effort. We’ve gotta keep pushing. White house needs grassroots support. The fate of the planet depends on reducing GHG emissions. We’ve gotta rally the public, knock on our neighbor’s doors.

Question:

Will you fight to keep nuclear energy out of the national bill?

Answer:

Very few members of the Senate are willing to raise that cry. When you talk about the energy bill & special interests’ power, you’re not just talking about coal and oil. All the right wing politicians say “we need a nuclear renaissance.” They’re talking construction of hundreds of new nuclear plants. It’s not just right wing republicans, but many democrats saying that as well.

I presented a chart at last meeting. When you talk about nuclear power, there are two issues.

I asked “will you please raise your hand if you know which state will accept all nuclear waste.” No one raised their hand. There is no state in the country that wants it. Yucca Mountain was supposed to take the waste from current plants, but not any more. The Senate leader is from Arizona. He doesn’t want the waste in his state.

But the waste is not going to be the major argument: it’s the cost.

We had a chart showing that if you want to generate new energy in America, the cheapest way to go is efficiency. Then wind, then solar, and all alt energy options: all of them are cheaper than nuclear.

We can produce 29% just from solar thermal in US SW. Forget pv, that’s just solar hot water concentrators [to make steam].

It’s not just the waste or the potential danger, it’s the cost that makes nuke a non-starter. Bad news: a lot of republicans and some dems are pushing nuke.

New leg to introduce 10 million rooftops.

Question:

How long do we have to wait for a revenue neutral carbon tax?

Answer:

The idea is out there, but cap & trade is more actively supported (it’s the train that’s moving), and current legislation includes cap & trade, not a carbon tax. Companies are pushing for foreign offsets, so they can get all their offsets in places where the labor is cheap. When Goldman Sachs looks at this, [speculation is a big incentive].

Opposition to having any climate/energy bill at all is fierce.

What you’re [conference attendees] doing is enormously important. If we can knock on every door, give out quality information, and tell people how to make their homes and town buildings more efficient, we can show the country and the world how to transform their energy use.

Question:

What can we do in VT, since our Senators and Rep are on board.

Answer: [Sanders had to go vote, this was answered by Kelley Lucci, state level energy and environment staff]

You are already in the process of addressing that. We’re impressed w/proliferation of the town energy committees around the state. We can be an international leader by our example, having more impact than we realize outside the borders of our state.

From Vermont Digger:

After months of waiting for the axe, Curtis Sinclair was officially laid off today. He ran the Canteen at the Vermont State Hospital and was downsized with five other people who worked at the snack bar in a basement room adjacent to the mental health facility. The Canteen was shuttered on Friday.

Advocates fought the closing of the Canteen because they say the snack bar was the only place for mentally ill patients from the hospital to get a break from the wards. Last month, former patients, VSH workers and activists embarked on a letter-writing campaign and held a press conference at the Statehouse.

 I've spent time in the Canteen, either to pick up a quick lunch or to talk to clients. A longtime state worker commented Friday that he's been having lunch there since the 1970's. To a person, every VSH employee I have talked to has been opposed to the closing of the canteen.

I was there yesterday.  There was free pizza for the patrons, and cake, and all their inventory of drinks was either already gone or on the way out the door. People working in the complex stopped by to wish the staff good luck, or express their appreciation for all they've done over the years, and now the place is closed.

 Since we know the savings claims are bogus, let's hope a way can be found to reopen the Canteen when the Legislature comes back in January.