It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  At least, more and more business sectors are sending their wish lists to Treasury Secretary Paulsen to get their piece of the bailout package. 

Hmmm….  Are homeowners getting any help here?  Or are we just going to bail out every for-profit company in the country?  

Vt Fuel Dealers Association is making their case when they get their day with Paulsen.  Check out their press release below the fold.

From Vermont Business Magazine:   

November 10, 2008

(Submitted by the VFDA) The Vermont Fuel Dealers Association and eight other trade associations have asked US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen for a meeting to discuss the financial issues faced by heating fuel retailers. Late Friday, we received word that a meeting is in the works. We all took this extraordinary step to ensure that the voice of small businesses, not just Wall Street and multinational corporations, gets heard.

This is what we intend to tell Secretary Paulsen.

The Economic Emergency Stabilization Act isn't supposed to pay for bonuses to executives. The $700 billion appropriated by Congress is supposed to free up lending to small businesses and consumers in order to jumpstart the economy. That isn't happening. Just be patient, some argue, the impact will take time to trickle down. But time is a luxury the heating fuel industry does not have. It is getting colder and peak winter demand is approaching.

Wall Street speculators drove energy prices through the roof this spring and early summer. Consumers came to us in great numbers and demanded protection in the form of fixed price contracts. Our companies had to lock in very expensive wholesale supply contracts in order to meet that consumer demand.

A critic from a Texas based energy consulting firm read our letter to Secretary Paulsen and wrote to VFDA:

“Your customers made an unwise choice. That's not the oil dealer's fault. It was just a dumb decision by the customer. Are you suggesting your dealers give their customers $3 heating oil with no consequences to the customer for being stupid and buying at a higher fixed-price?”

The comment demonstrates the arrogance of speculators who made billions at our expense. Vermonters are decent, hard working and thoughtful people who were simply trying to protect themselves and their families while Wall Street was cheering a bull market in crude oil. This summer heating oil customers were told by everyone, from environmentalists to T. Boone Pickens, that the end of oil was coming. Crude oil had increased by $50 in a matter of months– rising to $147 a barrel in July. During this run-up they were told by Goldman Sachs that $200 a barrel was next. Facing $4.50 a gallon retail heating oil in July, they were told by the best and the brightest on Wall Street and CNBC to expect to pay $7 a gallon by the time the snow flies.

There was a panic. Many consumers locked in a fixed price. And, as required by Vermont law, so did the dealers.

We are the face of Main Street, local business men and women who live in the communities where we work. We are not asking for a bail out or a hand out. We want to borrow money and pay it back. We simply want the system to work as Congress intended, to free up commercial and consumer lending. This is the point of EESA, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. We want the Treasury Secretary to know that for all of the attention to Wall Street, small businesses employee 95% of the nation's workforce. We are the engine that drives the national economy. It is time to put the EESA to work for all Americans.

As a cultural force, inertia is often underestimated. When we think of the social analog to Newton’s Law of Motion, we might be tempted to think of inactivity or inaction. The effect of slack. But as in nature, inertia in culture has its own special strengths, and there are implications to that. The particulars of tradition, for example, are often kept in place by that inertia. Taking off one’s hat when inside, for example, would be a bizarre habit to initiate out of the blue, but since its a tradition, inertia keeps it alive. Eradicating it would take an effort, so why bother? Alternately, the tradition itself has little real world impact precisely because it simply putt-putts along under the power of inertia only.

Other traditions are more complicated. Take the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. The Pledge was originally written by a Christian Socialist Baptist Minister (yes, you read that right – creeping socialism!) in 1892, was quickly introduced to public schools, and was desecularized with the “under God” line officially thrown in by President Eisenhower in the early 50s.

Ever since its imposition on children, the Pledge has stirred controversy. The latest is a few miles to the north of me in Woodbury, where a group of parents suddenly – and angrily – woke up to the fact that kids in the school had not been required to recite the Pledge for years. This group has been agitating and making life difficult for school officials for a while now, and show no signs of letting up until they get exactly what they want – nothing less than a return to the daily, coerced oath of loyalty under god by all the school’s students. From the Times Argus:

School officials have repeatedly sought, without success, to satisfy parents and others who want the pledge to be part of the daily routine.

Although the school board’s latest attempt to address the issue enables students to recite the pledge daily, children are only allowed to do so as part of a voluntary group in the school’s gymnasium.

Ted Tedesco, the parent responsible for forcing the issue in September, said the solution unanimously approved by the board wasn’t what the 300-plus taxpayers who signed his petition had in mind.

I grew up with the Pledge, and when I got older it started to bug me. I was one of those kids who would lean on “loopholes” – mouth the words, tell myself that if there wasn’t actually “liberty and justice for all” in the country, the Pledge was invalidated, etc. It was just the principle of the thing. Being forced to swear my loyalty in a nation that prizes personal freedom.

It’s something I want my own children to understand that they have the freedom not to do to the extent that it comes up in their school (which it does). I would like to see it dropped entirely out of the general principle that we shouldn’t force kids to stand up and pledge themselves in such a way, regardless of what the pledge is or isn’t. Still, you don’t see me leading protests on it. That’s inertia for you.

But in Woodbury, and other schools, the tradition of reciting the pledge has fallen off. That means inertia is now on the side of not reciting the pledge. That also means that its proponents can no longer be considered to be reflexively reflecting cultural inertia and a kneejerk resistance to any change. No, what these parents want to do is step in and make a mandatory change in all childrens’ and teachers’ behavior. They are no longer trying to preserve something that they see as important, but are rather attempting to take new ground in the conservative culture war on the rest of us. If successful, the words of that Pledge will have new meaning, and a precedent will be established granting conservative parents the authority to impose their beliefs directly onto everyone’s children and parents.

It also creates a stark contrast to those selfsame conservatives’ frequent claims about public schools in general. Teaching about other religions, biology (whether it be sex ed or evolution) or controversial literature is not imposing beliefs, it is simply imparting knowledge about the world. Students can do with that knowledge what they want, but it is a school’s responsibility to educate students about the world they live in.

Forcing students to stand up and pledge fealty before a sectarian deity is, obviously, a world different.

The head of the school board in Woodbury is no liberal. She is a solidly conservative parent who is a homeschooling activist (what she is doing as head of the school board if she so rejects the local school system is another question), and her conservatism is clearly of a more libertarian variety, as she says:

According to (Woodbury School Board Chair Retta) Dunlap, a sixth-grader has been assigned to round up willing students each day and escort them to the third-floor gymnasium where, under the supervision of a staff member, they can recite the pledge before returning to their respective classrooms. The board allocated five minutes of “free time” – starting at 7:55 a.m. – to accommodate the daily exercise.

“This leaves it up to the parents, or the children whether they do it (recite the pledge) or not,” she said. “It’s been really difficult to get it to this place.”

Good for her. I hope the district holds firm, and this should serve as an example to us on the left that in the face of the collapse of the Reagan conservative coalition into its constituent parts, there may be more such opportunities for coalition building on specific issues across what we are used to thinking of as ideological chasms.

Following last week’s triumph, there are already rumblings on the left about some of Obama’s initial decisions, such as Rahm Emmanuel to be Chief of Staff.  Certainly, on GMD we have seen some consternation about the possibility of Larry Summers for SecTreas.

I think it is important for all of us to keep some perspective.  If we remember back to the long-gone primary days, Obama was most certainly not the darling of the left.  He, along with HRC, represented the center-left in the primaries with Edwards picking up the left’s support.  Therefore, it is useful to remember that Obama is likely to govern from the center-left and that the left will never be fully satisfied with his decisions.  

That said, it is also useful to remember that we are getting some pretty substantial change right off the bat.  The papers today are full of articles about a series executive orders that the transition team is preparing.  They will among other things:

1) Repeal the global gag order on reproductive health.  Right now, any NGO that even mentions abortion is ineligible for federal funding (even if that funding doesn’t cover that mention).  This repeal will save millions of lives and empower many local NGOs in Africa and Asia to receive USAID and PEPFAR funding.

2) Repeal the ban on stem cell research.

3) Allow CA to classify CO2 as a pollutant. This will allow CA (and by extension the other CA-compliant states) to regulate CO2 emissions from cars.  

These are all things we can be very happy about and the list will grow in the weeks ahead.  It can all be done be executive order.   Not a bad start.

BTW: just for the record: Emmanuel’s selection means that Obama is simply being smart about keeping the House in line with his agenda.  Deft move, IMHO.  On Summers: not thrilled, but kinda wonder if this may be a bone to HRC for her support…  Anyway, the whole Harvard bruh-hah-hah misses the point that Summers did more for girls’ education than anyone in modern times by tying it to economic growth at the WB.  Transformed how most Ministries of Finance look at the issue.  Summers ain’t my first choice, but he ain’t all bad either.  

I expect in the coming year or so, we are going to see a lot of hand-wringing on the left about a lot of Obama decisions.  That said, I hope we will all keep some perspective…

I think we've had some excellent discussions on GMD this week. Set aside the hostility, hurt feelings, and recriminations, and people are genuinely engaged in the real questions, including how we get more liberal candidates elected to office in Vermont. I'm starting up a new thread to try to move the discussion along.

A couple of initial thoughts.

First, I know that calling someone a “spoiler” hurts some people's feelings. You might think that this alone means we shouldn't use it, but I disagree. I think there are definitely occasions where it is appropriate and meaningful (anyone here remember Ralph Nader in 2000, or Paul Poirier in 1988?).  The fact that I'm calling someone a spoiler doesn't mean I'm “stealing your vote” either.

Still, it's blindingly obvious that there was no spoiler in this year's gubernatorial election. Any time the winner takes 55% of the votes, neither losing candidate deprived any other losing candidate of enough votes to win.

Second, although the party bosses (see how I was able to type that with a straight face?) don't control everything, I do think David has a point that if the two parties could coordinate our efforts more we could avoid electoral conflicts that harm our common interests. After all, we've been known to be at least a little critical of their decisions to run candidates who turn out to be nothing but spoilers, so they could do the same to us.

The question, then, is how we can move forward on our common goals without asking the members of either party to abandon their identity or just cave on demand, and I have a couple of ideas for that.

When Anthony Pollina was saying he was considering a run for governor, and saying that he wanted the support of the Democratic Party, I suspect I wasn't the only person who pointed out to him that the most straightforward way to do it would be to enter the Democratic primary and win.

He wasn't willing to do this, in part because of 17 V.S.A. § 2353(b). It says, “A person's name shall not be listed as a candidate on the primary ballot of more than one party in the same election.” This means that if he had run in the Democratic primary he would have been prohibited from running in the Progressive primary, and at the time this was not an acceptable choice to him.

If it had been possible this year Pollina could have run in both the D and P primaries, probably won them both, and he would have gotten his wish–a head to head race against Douglas. We could accomplish by repealing this section. It's only been on the books since 1977, and as far as I can tell it's never been cited in any reported decision of the Vermont Supreme Court or any other court. This change also wouldn't take a constitutional amendment, so it should be easier to accomplish than instituting IRV. What it would do, though, is create the conditions for fusion candidates, generally between D's and P's in Vermont, but potentially involving other third parties.

I'd like to see legislators from both the Democratic and Progressive Parties get behind legislation to repeal this section, preferably during the first year of the coming biennium, so that we can get at least the possibility of a head to head race between Douglas and the strongest liberal candidate, whether that's Pollina, Zuckerman, Racine, or somebody else.

Next, I like the idea of moving to a system in which there are no minority winners for statewide elections (and potentially for legislative races as well), whether IRV or some other system. Why are people so heavily invested in IRV? Why not set up a runoff election, the way they do in some states, if no candidate receives a majority?

Although I'm not an expert in voting theory, the reading I have done suggests that IRV might set up some circumstances in which a less popular candidate defeates a more popular one, which we would presumably want to avoid.

As I understand it, the main arguments in favor of IRV instead of a runoff election are cost and the dropoff in turnout that would be expected in a second election. I'm not convinced that either of these is a really good argument against it, though. With regard to cost I would say that getting a democratic outcome is more important than the incremental cost of holding a second-round election.

I'm also probably less concerned about a dropoff in turnout than some people, mainly because I don't care that much about protecting the electoral positions of people who can't be bothered to come out and vote. They're not disenfranchised, just lazy, uninformed, or unconcerned. If they don't vote, they've made the choice to let the rest of us decide who will govern them.

These two changes, eliminating the one-primary rule, and allowing for some kind of runoff, won't fix everything. They won't, for example, guarantee that a single ambitious individual won't run for office even when the party leadership prefers to stay out of a particular race. What they will do, though, is create the possibility for the supporters of a primary loser to line up behind the primary winner, potentially after extracting commitments from the winner, and united to defeat a candidate that the supporters of both chalengers agree is the greater of two evils.

Because really, the clearest thing you can say about two candidates, one of whom got 21.3% and one of whom got 21.7%, is that they both lost.

Once again, David Broder displays his infallible ability to parrot the conventional wisdom while failing to question his conservative interlocutors.

The occasion here is the column today about Republican governors. The headline created for the column by the Free Press was Broder column: Governors like Douglas offer hope. 

There was actually only one paragraph in the column about Douglas, but I guess you can't blame them for emphasizing the local angle. Still, what he says about Douglas embodies the credulity that is one of the hallmarks of Broder's writing:

When I asked Vermont's Douglas how he explained it, he said that his fellow governors “put progress ahead of partisanship, as I've done here. We have generous social programs, but we also have fiscal responsibility. We're the only state without a constitutional requirement to balance our budget, but we don't need it. Our deficit is zero.” 

Now anyone who knows what has happened in Vermont these past six years knows that Douglas's claim to put progress ahead of partisanship is, simply put, a lie, but you would never get any hint from Broder's column that another interpretation of Douglas's administration.

As I say, this is a good example of high Broderism: nothing really changes, the power structure stays in control, and if you want to know what's really happened, just ask The Dean. In this case, disregard the seismic shift in the election: we had slave states voting for a black President! We had the majority of under-30 Cuban-Americans in Florida voting for a Democrat! But, according to the immutable tenets of high Broderism, the controlling center controls, and always will.

Even if it takes an effort worthy of Procrustes to fit the story.

We now have an incoming President who is capable of complex thought and curiosity. There is no question in my mind that Obama is far more intellectually capable than W, the person most knotheads apparently would like to have a beer with.

But along with a high degree of intelligence comes expectations: such as chewing gum and walking at the same time (remember … this is the description the Obama campaign gave to McCain’s frenetic “drop everything and run to DC” response to the Wall Street collapse).

In my opinion a domestic priority that ranks above unions, minimum wage, environmental issuse … hell … anything else … is our democratic process.

The single most important component of democratic actions is the vote: one can call any system a democracy, but unless that democracy includes active protection of the individual’s right to vote and to have that vote counted as the individual intended … well, that “democracy” is in name only.

While our voting process has always had issues, the level of voter suppression, vote denial and vote miscounting has gone well beyond any semblance to reasonableness in the last eight years. Secretaries of State run late stage voter roll purges that catch the legitimate voter more often than not. Grassroots organizations performing valuable voter registration activities are harassed and literally persecuted rather than thanked. Huge numbers of voters are challenged at the polls by partisan trouble makers and forced into casting provisional ballots that are almost never counted. Voting machines flip votes. Vote counting machines cannot recreate the same count with the same ballots.

And it will simply repeat in two years if proactive solutions are not implemented immediately.

When he is inaugurated in January, Obama will owe that day to voter turnout and empowerment more than any other single factor (here’s just a sample of what I mean). The domestic question I will initially be looking to see answered: does Obama dive into a topic that has dirtied both major political parties? Or does he look for the sexy and easy to sell.

Obama is smart enough to do the political gum chew while walking routine. But will that translate into protecting our democratic principles?

(Oh, and can we please get rid of those photos that have us eternally looking up at people in leadership positions? They’re silly, pretentious … and I don’t put anybody like that on any sort of pedestal.)

One of my favorite books is Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather.”

The quick summary: the Hogfather has disappeared on Hogswatch Eve.  As Death (yes, that Death) explains, if the children do not receive their Hogswatch gifts, they will cease to believe in the Hogfather and “The sun will not rise tomorrow.”

So Death takes over for the Hogfather, delivering gifts to all the children, while his granddaughter tries her best to track down the Hogfather and return him to his post.

At one point, she asks Death if it’s true that the sun wouldn’t rise the next day.  He says yes, it’s true.  When she asks what would happen instead, he explains that merely a flaming ball of gas would illuminate the sky.

This is kind of how I feel about Obama’s victory, and I know this is oddly sentimental, especially for me, but there’s something about what happened that was, to me, magical.  I know that logically there was strategy, planning, and an immense amount of hard work, and I don’t mean to discount that.  

But when we went to bed Tuesday night, I turned to Cyndi and said “it’s a whole new world.”  I didn’t mean that literally, but I meant it in the sense that suddenly everything seems really different.  

Racism isn’t over, not by a long shot, and we’re still in a hell of a mess as far as this country goes, and I mean one hell of a mess.  Nothing’s changed, really, except we’ve decided to put someone smart in the white house.

But if things had gone differently, and we’d nominated Edwards (and he hadn’t turned out to be a bit of a horndog) and ended up with a President Edwards, I would have been happy.  I would have been very pleased.  

But I wouldn’t have felt like it was a whole new world.  I would have just seen the next day as another day with a gaseous ball of fire illuminating the sky.  

Now the sun’s rising on a whole new world and I’m looking to the future with real optimism for the first time in quite some time.

I’m updating this to include a video I tracked down today:

It’s the opening monologue from the Daily Show from the first episode after September 11, 2001.  There’s something about this which has been incredibly profound for me ever since I saw it, and it actually touches on a lot of what I’ve been feeling about this.  It’s well worth watching, but it will make you cry.

Then:

A couple (of Republicans) in particular became fixated on the Democrats and Progressives involved in (the Burlington Intervale’s Composting) operation – particularly Democratic Speaker of the House Gaye Symington and Progressive Representative (and organic farmer) David Zuckerman. When it came out that runoff from the composting operation was not up to specs, Governor Jim Douglas and his attack dog, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary George Crombie could hardly maintain their glee. They tied the discharge violation around Zuckerman’s and Symington’s necks as tightly as they could, despite a continuing history of ignoring meaningful permit violations that don’t have high profile Dems and Progs associated with them.

But the problem was that they were dealing with environmentalists, and unlike their GOP business buddies who might mutter and fume about having to cowtow to the tree-huggers, the folks at the Intervale were fully and humbly prepared to comply – providing, in the process, an example to others.

That would never do for Douglas…

…If you’re still entertaining the notion that this wasn’t a political hit job, consider the rumor in circulation that I was able to confirm with a source close enough to know. In a conversation with the Intervale Director, Crombie openly gloated that he had the Intervale “in a noose” and wasn’t about to let go.

That’s right. He actually said “in a noose.”

Now:

George Crombie is leaving the post of secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources after a little less than two years…

…”Secretary Crombie chose to resign and we are grateful for his time in government,” Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said.

Crombie, who worked for two Burlington mayors before moving to Massachusetts, did not return calls left for him Friday.

I’m sure he didn’t. And I’m sure the reporters know not to wait by the phone expecting that return call.

Shay Totten deserves a lot of credit for keeping the pressure on this guy and finally putting his head in the proverbial noose. I’d like to think we had a fair amount of impact at this site as well.

Score one for the good guys.

http://change.gov/

Yeah … go ahead and click on it.