UPDATE: Hamsher reports, based on feedback from Paul Martin of Peace Action who is lobbying on this, that Welch is leaning in the direction of abandoning his position and supporting the war funding supplemental without a timetable for withdrawal. A lot of us stuck up for him when he was getting beat up on his handling of this stuff, so I can say with certainty that he’s gonna catch hell if he does flip. I haven’t been able to get anything definitive from his office myself, so I’ll keep trying. Folks should definitely be calling (numbers below). Don’t let us down, Peter.

Peter Welch is getting a lot of positive attention on health care reform, but an all-too familiar issue may be on the horizon for the coming week

On health care, while battle lines are being drawn over the so-called “public option” in any reform legislation, Welch is already aggressively moving to introduce legislation to guarantee its inclusion. In a nutshell, reform legislation will present taxpayers with a menu of mostly commercial insurer options to buy into, which will be subsidized for low income earners. A “public option” would be a government payer (a la medicare or medicaid) as one of the menu choices. Obviously this makes subsidizing easier on the one hand, but also allows the feds more control over the types of coverage. Private insurers are afraid any public option would be too appealing and affordable and draw away business – and both opponents and proponents of a single payer system see this as a way to potentially facilitate a transition to such a model. Welch put himself in front of the argument two days ago (along with Reps. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bruce Braley (D-Iowa)) by introducing H.R. 2668, the Choice in Health Options Insures Care for Everyone (CHOICE) Act, which doesn’t wait for a megabill and would mandate a public option be included and paid for by premiums.

So big good on Peter on the one hand, yes?

…but behind door two…

Fast approaching (next Thursday, probably) is a vote on yet another supplemental to Iraq War funding. Welch is among those who vowed not to approve any more such funds unless they included a timetable for withdrawal – and he has held to that vow in the past. But there’s a new Sheriff in town in the form of a Democratic President, and some Representatives who made such vows are showing signs of wavering – and, according to Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake, one of them is Mr. Welch:

I get emails:

Some folks in a position to have an informed opinion think that Peter Welch is going to go with Barney Frank and vote in favor of the war supplemental.

I thought Vermont had a peace movement.

Comes from a friend who’s been up on the Hill lobbying.

I guess some people think this one is going to fall down the memory hole.  Don’t think so.

While Representatives such as Frank and Jackson-Lee have indicated they will weenie out on this, we trust that Rep. Welch will join fellow progressives like Baldwin, Conyers and Woolsey and stick to his guns (so to speak). You can encourage him with a phone call at (202) 225-4115 or (202) 225-4115, or use the Whip tool at fdl here. Word is that the pressure is turned up to 11 on this bill (which includes the controversial IMF bailout language), with Rahm Emanuel working legislators relentlessly and Nancy Pelosi herself playing whip, so counter pressure is definitely called for. According to Hamsher, “Members are being bribed, bullied and cajoled into abandoning their commitment to vote against any war funding that doesn’t include a time table to bring the troops home.”

We’ll keep you informed on both these issues as things develop.

{First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru.}

While 2010 will be chock-full of exciting races at all levels of government.  In 2009, though, there will be two marquee races across the country: the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.  Republicans are favored in both races, but both races should come down to the wire, and Democrats can hold both seats – with your help.

In Virginia, Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds won an impressive, come-from-behind victory for the nomination this past Tuesday, demonstrating a strong ground game.  The Republican nominee will be far-right-winger Bob McDonnell.  The best description for McDonnell’s brand of Republicanism is that he is a Pat Robertson disciple.  You can learn more about McDonnell at TheRealBobMcDonnell.com.  Deeds and McDonnell have tangled before, in the 2005 Virginia Attorney General race, where McDonnell barely edged Deeds by 323 votes (yes, just 323 votes – that’s not a typo with zeroes missing) out of over 1.94 million votes counted.  This race will be exceptionally close, so every single dollar contributed and every single hour spent volunteering will make a real difference.  A bit of good news is that the first poll taken after Tuesday’s primary, by Rasmussen Reports, shows Deeds with a 47-41 lead over McDonnell, but this could just be due to a primary bump.  Rasmussen’s last poll showed McDonnell leading Deeds 45-30.  Your support will help Deeds sustain his new lead.

In New Jersey, Democratic incumbent Governor Jon Corzine will square off against Republican former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.  Christie is very much at home in the Republican Culture of Corruption.  Republican Christie has faced scandals involving no-bid contracts, abuse of the state pension system, pay-to-play, and even allegedly cutting a deal to get his younger brother’s sentence reduced after being implicated for fraudulent trading practices on Wall Street.  Despite Christie’s mountain of scandal, New Jersey’s lagging economy has hurt Governor Corzine’s poll numbers.  Recent polling gives Christie a 7 to 13 point lead over Corzine.  Research 2000, May 25-27: Christie 46, Corzine 39; Rasmussen Reports, June 4: Christie 51, Corzine 38; and, Quinnipiac, June 10: Christie 50, Corzine 40.  In other words, Christie has an edge, but the fundamentals of the race moving forward favor Governor Corzine.  As the economy gradually picks up over the coming months and voters learn more about Christie’s corrupt background, New Jersey’s blue state status will shine through and Governor Corzine should tighten the race back up.  Your support will help Governor Corzine tighten the race up even faster.

Below are the links to how you can connect with the gubernatorial campaigns (and – please – contribute anything you can to these campaigns, and spread the word!).  Republicans are expecting (and expected) to win both of these races.  However, after being upset in the NY-20 special U.S. House election and losing a U.S. Senator to a Party switch, the GOP is reeling.  Losing either (or both!) VA-Gov or/and NJ-Gov would be a major body blow and simply crush Republicans heading into the 2010 calendar year.  If Democrats across the country are able to support these Democratic campaigns, we can flush the conventional wisdom down the toilet and deliver two more embarrassments to the Rush-Newt-Cheney Republican Party and two more losses to the Michael Steele RNC.

Here’s a jobs program from a different culture for you. Perhaps it can be retrofitted for Vermont.

Meaningless background: When I was about thirteen, my family moved into a house we’d built a couple miles out of town, which technically made us citizens of Paint Lick, Kentucky. Much as its fun to drop that name as my hometown to yankees, my hometown was really Berea (which I wouldn’t exactly call a groovy place, but it did have a lot of uniquely positive and negative qualities, all of which were tied up around Berea College, a Christian college founded way back when as an abolitionist school servicing poor appalachian mountain youth).

Anyway. History lesson over, as it really has nothing to do with the one-liner I wanted to share. I went to high school about 12 miles away, and there were only a few other Bereans in my 9th grade citizenship class. One was a guy named Charles – a rather intimidatingly large fellow (tall, broad shouldered, round), real working class Kentucky stock with the dry wit and innate sense of comic timing typical to a lot of folks like him back home.

One day, the teacher posed a question to the class: “What’s somebody supposed to do if they lose their job and they have no education, no real professional skills, no money, no family resources to fall back on, and no prospects?”

Charles, with that comic timing gene fully engaged, took a breath during the all-too-typical silence in the class and responded into the vacuum; “in Berea, he opens up a church.”

I dunno. Maybe you had to be there, or maybe you have to be a southerner, but I swear to god I’m still laughing at that.

Man, lots of nastiness flying around yesterday. Jim Douglas doing his pouty pushback after quietly signing the budget supplemental, accusing the legislature of “the sloppiest lawmaking I can recall” (what does that even mean, exactly? – certainly not caucus-control, that’s for sure, although I’m sure he wishes they were still so sloppy at that). Meanwhile, another Democratic lawmaker has accused Douglas of lying, and this one on the record – Senator Shumlin. From VTBuzz:

(Douglas) charged that legislative leaders walked away from the negotiating table – three times….

…”Nobody ever walked away,” Shumlin said. “I don’t know what motivates the governor at this time to say something that is untrue.”

The second time in recent weeks this has happened. So weird that its just treated as background noise by the media. In any other state, it’d be headline news. Bizarre. And why isn’t Douglas jumping up to defend his honor, or make a political stink about it (could it be he doesn’t want any more attention paid to the charges)?

Over on the third dimension, after the legislative Dems owned up to majorly screwing up on the wording of the language demanding Douglas seek their approval for large layoffs (it doesn’t take effect until July, so Douglas is just making sure the layoffs get under the deadline) Rep. Zuckerman (who, more than any other Prog, rarely misses an opportunity to poke Dems, but often tosses in a token compliment to offset the attacks, I guess) wants to be absolutely sure that organized labor understands that the Dems really are their enemies:

“Had this been a bigger priority for the whole session, then I don’t think these kinds of mistakes would have happened,” Zuckerman said. “All session long, it certainly appeared as though leadership in the House and maybe Senate was not really standing up for our state workforce and the services they provide.”

Okay. Whatever. Maybe everybody should acquaint themselves the bill before they vote on it, no? If the Dem leadership is so bad, why wouldn’t you read what they spoonfeed you?

On the other hand, maybe this all adds up to that sloppiness we were hearing about. Perhaps Douglas should be celebrating it, rather than criticizing it.

Lets see… Rs grousing at Ds, Ds grousing at Rs, Ps grousing at Ds. What about Ds grousing at Ps? Ah, well, Burlington never lets us down. Per Shay:

The city’s Dems are positioning themselves to block Larry Kupferman’s reappointment as head of the city’s Community and Economic Development Office. Ditto (Progressive Mayor Bob) Kiss’ efforts to replace Parks & Recreation Director Wayne Gross.

Look, I’m not gonna wade into the vendetta politics that characterize Burlington right now (maybe later), except to say that, fine, I understand that the Dems historically feel ganged up on and bullied by Ps and Rs, fairly or unfairly. All I’m gonna say is you might wanna pick your battles more discriminatingly rather than pick all of them, nomesayin?

But on the lighter side of yesterday, here are the greatest hits from the Montpelier police log!

A North Street resident called, asking for help catching her indoor cat that got out.

An area organization reported they find musicians on State Street irritating.

Police received a report of a female who is on the run again.

Police received a report that a male jumped on traffic signal and it fell over.

A concerned citizen reported the travel lanes through construction zone on River Street are confusing.

A Loomis Street resident called, worried neighbor’s music will cause seizure.

Ah, Vermont living…

Yesterday in Southern Vermont the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency and Vermont officials conducted a drill required to be done every other year to determine readiness for a nuclear emergency. The task of the radio active plume team in an actual emergency would be to sample air and take radio active samples to determine if when and where people would be evacuated.

Here are some key parts from the TA article that may give the feel of this learning exercise.I am not certain how the official quoted here comes the conclusion that “It was great from our end “.

• ..they couldn’t pull down a strong cell phone signal to relay information back to headquarters …….

• …resort to contacting people on their private cell phones at the center in Brattleboro to find out what was wrong…

• …resorting to the phone of an official observer of the drill…

• …They were directed to a road off Route 142, which none of them could find on a map…………..

• …faulty digital interface from One Communication of Hartford, Conn……….

• …The radio had been tested repeatedly at their staging area in Dummerston, but now it failed to work………

• ….At Route 5, again there was no radio and no cell phone service.

• …told them to drive around until they found better reception.

Barbara Farr, Vermont’s director of emergency management, said after the daylong exercise that alternative routes of communication were established, using radios and the town’s fax machine.

“The good thing is we always have built-in redundancy,” she said. “It went great from our end,” she said, a view echoed by Entergy

http://www.timesargus.com/arti…

Yes, it's time once again to cast your vote in the Seven Daysies competition.

 As you know, the Daysies are the reader's choice competition for the best of Vermont, conducted by our friends at Seven Days, where, in all seriousness, you can read some of the best political and cultural reporting in Vermont. GMD has been honored with the second-place rating in each of the last two (or is it three?) years, and we're in the running once again in the category of Best Political Blog.

Naturally, we think we are the best political blog in Vermont. We're also pathetic enough to really want to win, so if you're inclined to do so, we'd appreciate your vote.

For your vote to count you need to vote in least 25% (24) of the categories, but there are plenty of categories and businesses that are worthy of your vote.

The deadline's June 26, but why wait?

How does the old saying go? “When other people lose their jobs, it’s a recession; when you lose yours, it’s a depression.”  Things just got depressing in our household. Our sole breadwinner just joined the newly unemployed. His company has been seeking funding for months (a startup), but hasn’t secured what they need. In order to remain viable while continuing the funding search, they’ve had to cut pretty deeply.

Folks who’ve seen my comments and diaries over the years know that we had a long, nasty patch of dual-unemployment, large COBRA payments, and two kids to feed a few years ago. It left us in a deep debt hole, which we have largely failed to climb out of, but slow, halting, painful progress was being made.

Since every 401k penny was drained last time, and paying down high interest debt takes precedence over investing, we don’t have to worry about losing our 401K to COBRA this time out, so that won’t be quite as much of a drag… heh.

So we’re back to about 50 places behind the starting line. With no health insurance. And 2 growing kids. We have no mortgage (no house either), but we have significant credit card debt, and our only car’s not paid off.

I’ve been looking for a while now, and have noticed that one does not even get auto-replies when you send in resumes. Most companies aren’t quite tech-savvy enough to have their mail server set up to automatically respond with boiler-plate indicating your resume has been received, and others are so inundated with applicants, they couldn’t possibly reply.  I talked to one company a while back (to find out if they’d received my resume, because their submission form glitched), they’d received 4000 resumes within 2 days of posting the job on CraigsList. It took a while to find mine in the mass of responses.

Oddly, I’m feeling pretty calm about it. I mean, we’ve been through this. It sucks, but at least we have a place to stay … we just won’t have health coverage and we may lose the car. If it lasts more than a month or two, we’ll have to file bankruptcy, ‘cuz the credit card bills are more than we can afford on unemployment. Oh, and we had a flexible spending account, which we used to pay for our son’s braces, but since it’s only 1/2 way though the year, we haven’t actually contributed the whole amount into the account, so we’re going to have to pay back about half of it.

The evil lilac season this year has made my asthma return with a vengeance, and the new version of the inhaler that keeps me alive is EXPENSIVE, and hubby was recently diagnosed with high cholesterol, so he’s got his new meds.

OK, I probably won’t be so calm in a few days.

I sure wish we had a national health plan right about now.

Dear Congress, Hint, hint…

I don’t really have anything profound to say. We’ve been standing on the razor’s edge for quite a while, and now we’re in free-fall. I’m not quite sure what the landing is going to look like, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be pretty.

Job leads appreciated (electro-optics, web-dev management, tech writing).

I’ve been working with Kristin Sohlstrom (barrecityteaparty@gmail.com) to organize an Independence Day Tea Party in Barre City. This is her first time organizing something like this and up until recently has not been very politically active. She is an independent, unaffiliated with a party, and wants this tea party to be be as inclusive as possible.

I realize that this isn’t necessarily a sympathetic venue, but we’re extending a hand.

From Kristin:

There is a revolution brewing in this state the likes of which haven’t been seen before.  It’s the direct result of a national NONPARTISAN grassroots movement (not “paid volunteers”) to make the government at all levels accountable to their constituents and to stop the excessive taxation and spending.

I am the organizer of the Barre City Tea Party to be held July 4th at the City Hall Park in Barre from 11:00-12:00.  You are all invited to attend and to bring as many people and signs as you can muster.

I am a very disgruntled taxpayer who isn’t at all buying the rhetoric from Montpelier that all parties did everything they could to reduce the highest tax burden in the country.  What those of us who are watching know is that both budgets did nothing more than maintain the status quo in spending and to provide funding for increased government.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “A wise and prudent government does not take bread from the mouth of labor.”

There have been many misconceptions about who the Tea Party participants are.  Please feel free to ask me any questions about who we are.  This is my first time doing anything like this and I’m not the only first-time organizer.  This is overwhelming and a bit intimidating, but the importance of this movement overshadows all of that because at the end of the day, the sovereignty and liberty of the individual in this country and in the State of Vermont is at stake.

I used to look for this stuff all the time, but I’ve slacked in recent months. Here is some interesting website domain registration info. Note the following doesn’t constitute a campaign announcement, as it may be about keeping options open – but at the very least, it shows how seriously such options may be being taken:

Registrant:

Peter Shumlin

345 Hickory Ridge Rd.

Putney, Vermont 05346

United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)

Domain Name: SHUMLINFORGOVERNOR.COM

Created on: 27-Feb-09

Expires on: 27-Feb-11

Last Updated on: 27-Feb-09

This is interesting too:

Domain Name: briandubie.com

Created on ………….Tue Mar 15 23:59:59 2005

Expires on ………….Fri Mar 26 23:59:59 2010

Record last updated on .Thu Feb 26 05:13:31 2009,

Note it was renewed in February – but only for a year, and will expire again early in the election year. Hmmm.

On an unrelated note: I was asked to mention that there’s a fundraiser for Tom Salmon Thursday, June 11, from 5:30-7:00 at the St. John’s Club in Burlington (9 Central Ave.) – questions can go to (802) 233-1207. Suggested contributions start at $25, but there is no minimum.

In case you missed it Sunday, NPR ran a story about the national battle over bribes payments by drug companies, and the legislation proposed to control them. As part of the story they interviewed Peter Shumlin , President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate and potential gubernatorial candidate, about the legislation just passed by the Vermont Legislature.

 The Vermont Legislature recently passed the strictest bill to date, and it is expected to become law next month. Vermont state Sen. Peter Shumlin, who sponsored the bill, says the state is trying to take a leadership role in what he calls a national problem.

 Longtime observers of the Vermont scene are well aware of Shumlin's ability to score headlines around here. It's great to see him, and Vermont, getting national coverage for being out ahead of the rest of the country. We covered this bill back at the beginning of the session, so it's good to see that they got this one passed.