(I agree, although I think a lot of the larger, worst players looking at collapse should be absorbed wholesale and broken into constituent parts in the process… – promoted by odum)

As you all know, I have been supportive of a bailout that tried to move the bad mortgage paper out of the system.  I thought it made sense to have the govt buy this for nickels on the dollar and simply purge the system.  If priced right, the lenders will be punished, but can issue new stock and move on. Bank  Shareholders will pay the price for the stupidity of mortgage lending, but will not be totally wiped out.   More importantly, if priced right the ultimate tab to the taxpayer will be minimized as the government can re-sell the paper after it has cleaned it up.

Details are sketchy, but it looks like this bailout may offer to pay book value for these bad loans.  That is absurd. Here is a very good analysis of why:

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot…

As currently proposed, I am opposed to this bailout because it gives the Bush administration WAY too much latitude and does nothing to prevent bade behavior.

Any bailout needs to include a fair price to the taxpayer provision so that the treasury doesn’t simply buy up crap at premium prices.  It also needs to include warrants that will allow the debt to convert to shares to allow the taxpayer to be compensated for any paper that tanks.  

It is an absolute must that any bailout also include re-regulation of Wall Street, so that financial instruments are transparent with harsh criminal penalties.  I want any i-banker to think long and hard about a possible federal prison sentence if s/he knowingly issues bum securities.

I also think there should be a provision to pay for the costs of this bail out through a supplemental professional tax of i-bankers of  their gross income (regardless of the source) for the next 20 years.  

Lastly, there should be simplified provisions for judges to reset mortgage values to get people into homes they can actually afford.

[Cross Posted from DailyKos, with permission. I’m putting this here so, as we head into home heating season and the drumbeats for action increase in both intensity and speed, we’ll all have an understanding of exactly how little offshore drilling will do.

Credit to Get Energy Smart Now ]

During the Republican primaries, John McCain fell in Michigan, in part because he was living in reality when it came to Global Warming rhetoric, a reality uncomfortable for the flat-earth, reality-denying wing of the Republican party. Come this November, McCain doesn’t plan to make the same mistake. The Palin-McCain campaign’s latest ad is, not surprisingly, dishonest on multiple levels and offers ugly prospects for the future. The Palin-McCain Lying Ad is, well, despicable.

This ad is about “jobs” for Michigan, a state under great (and continuing) pressure. The ad deceptively links McCain to Obama theme like “reform” and “change”.

[more below the fold]

Let us take a moment to consider just one sentence:

“Offshore drilling to reduce the price of gas to spur truck sales.”

How many times does it need to be said? Offshore drilling is, at best, a 1 cent, 1 percent solution 20 years off to the question of gasoline prices.  According to Department of Energy analysis, offshore drilling would:

1. Lead to a 1.2 cent reduction in gasoline prices.
2. Provide 1 percent of today’s US oil demand and 0.25 percent of global demand (about 200,000 barrels per day of production compared to 20 million barrels/day of US demand and global demand (over 80 million barrels / day)
3. Do this by 2030 …

Yes, a 1 cent, 1 percent solution, 20 years from now would “spur truck sales”.

How can anyone take the Palin-McCain campaign seriously?

The Sierra Club has weighed in … strongly. This press release merits quotation in full:

“This ad is so full of lies, deceptions, and failed approaches to our energy and economic problems, it’s hard to know where to start.  Michiganders are smart enough to see through the lies and simple-minded pandering in this ad.  They know we need a real plan, real change, and that we need a candidate who understands our energy and economic crises.  This ad is further proof that John McCain just doesn’t get it and doesn’t have the kind of plan that Michigan—and America—needs.  

“The Sierra Club understand that times are tough in Michigan and that the automakers need help.  We support government loans to help the automakers if they are willing to make the kind of real, fleet-wide improvements in fuel economy that will help consumers spend less on gas and help reduce our dangerous dependence on oil.  And what the ad doesn’t tell you is that McCain opposed helping the automakers and only changed his mind once he started to slip in the polls in Michigan.

“John McCain says that the solution to Detroit’s woes is to have lower gas prices so they can sell more trucks.  Unfortunately, McCain’s drilling plan won’t lower prices and selling more trucks won’t help Detroit solve its problems in the long-run—but it will increase our addiction to oil. Michiganders know that relying too heavily on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs is what got the auto industry into this mess in the first place and that’s why they want help building the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles.  This is just one more example of John McCain’s backward-looking, outdated approach to America’s most pressing problems.

“Barack Obama has a real plan to invest $150 billion in the clean energy technologies we need.  That includes giving the auto industry the help they need to double fuel economy and make the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles here in America.  

“Instead of a real plan, John McCain wants to run the economy like a game show full of misguided gimmicks like a $300 million prize for car batteries and the widely denounced gas tax holiday.  

“It’s shameful that the McCain campaign continues to repeat the completely discredited claim that more offshore drilling will lower gas prices.  This is the second ad just this week to do so.  Even the Bush administration admits that drilling won’t lower gas prices. It’s time for McCain and his campaign to start being honest with the American public about his energy plans.”

NOTE:  An excellent graphic from Architecture2030 to illustrate the volume impact. (Note that the total figures here are quite low. Current US consumption is 20 million barrels per day, not 15 …)

This is defined as “US oil consumption” and you will see that we are at about 15 million barrels / day in the chart.  The problem: The United States is using more than 20 million barrels per day.  (According to the Energy Information Administration,   “20,680,000 barrels per day” is their current statement as to US use.) It looks as if Architecture2030 used the 70% of US oil use that is dedicated to transportation rather than the total petroleum product use.  This graphic is, actually, overstating the impact of the 200,000 barrels/day since they are showing current and projected demand about 1/3rd lower than what the Energy Information Administration shows.   Even so, it clearly shows how this is about a 1 percent solution, decades into the future.

Like leftover Thanksgiving turkey, I got to interview bestselling author Vincent Buglosi during the DNC. Hope you enjoy! -Christian

PS: I take it you all know he was in Burlington yesterday.

Crossposted at Docudharma.

Vincent Bugliosi is a renowned prosecutor and respected lawyer. How good is he? Bugliosi successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter. Many consider Helter Skelter to be the best true-crime story ever written. Bugliosi also wrote two others New York Times best sellers: And the Sea Will Tell and Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder.  Other books include No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton: The Supreme Court on Trial, Till Death Do Us Part, The Betrayal of America: How The Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President, and Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Bugliosi’s latest, The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, is an explosive look at the un-reported (or under-reported) crimes committed by the Bush Administration. In The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, Bugliosi skillfully and meticulously sets forth a legal architecture for the case against Bush and unequivocal evidence of his guilt. He also establishes the jurisdiction, on a federal and state level, for close to 1,000 prosecutors throughout the U.S. to prosecute Bush for the crimes of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Bugliosi spoke in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. He didn’t address party stalwarts, delegates, super-delegates, or the party faithful. Bugliosi took it to the people at the Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Denver. Here is what Vincent Bugliosi had to say.

Christian: So where are current efforts right now to bring George W. Bush to justice?

Bugliosi: I’ve already reached out to the 50-state attorney generals. I’ve ordered a copy of the national district attorneys from around the country that are elected and appointed prosecutors, not deputies in their office. Only the DA himself can bring a criminal charge against Bush. There’s probably 2,700 of them right now. We ‘re contacting prosecutors who represent counties of soldiers killed in Iraq. I don’t know what that number would be, so we sent out a letter to all of them. If we send one to a DA in a county that hasn’t lost a soldier, that DA would not have jurisdiction.

So we’re going to reach out to every prosecutor in the country. My belief (although I don’t feel strongly about it) is that there is a substantial likelihood we’re going to get one or more DAs courageous enough to take on George W. Bush. But before they do that, they’re going to have to check every citation of mine to make sure they’re accurate. They will have to assign members of their staff to investigate the case completely because I don’t think there’s any question it will be the biggest murder case in American history. So no prosecutor is going to just jump into this. A lot of research, time, and discussion will go into this so I don’t expect any immediate response. But I already have a state attorney general whose chief of staff wants to talk with me and a DA that wants to talk to me. So that’s a start.

I’ve gotten quite a few letters from people saying they’ve sent a copy of the book to their local DAs, asking them to prosecute. Wherever I speak, including today, people come up to me and say, “Mr. Bugliosi, is there any way I can help?” I tell them if you believe what I say in the book is correct, send a copy to the local DA with a cover letter and maybe 50 signatures from people who feel the same way. There is now a mini-movement, in America, that supports the notion of prosecuting George W. Bush for murder. He may very well end up in a prison cell but don’t forget, there’s no statue of limitations for murder. So when we talk about 2,700 more DAs for the rest of Bush’s life, those numbers multiply to 10-15,000 DA’s. As long as he’s alive, there’s no statue of limitations that someone can go after him. Where is it now? I think (the movement’s) gaining steam. My guess is if it happens at all, it’s going to be at the local level (a local DA) as opposed to a state attorney general or the Attorney General in Washington.

Now you are aware Obama has used the word “immediately” before. He said that if he becomes president, he’s going to “immediately” ask the AG to look at the record and see if there’s evidence of any genuine crime as opposed to terrible policy. Obama also said that no man is above the law. The implication being if he finds a crime, he’s going to look into it.

It’s amazing that with all the new information coming out on George W. Bush (Ron Suskind’s book for example), you would think people would be in the streets with pitchforks and torches demanding he be arrested. How is this information not reaching the masses? If it is, then why is there so much indifference?

My book does something about it. Suskind’s revelations provide nothing at all, even though it’s still good. If there was a prosecution, the people who gave him information for those revelations would be witnesses for the prosecutor. Follow what I’m saying?

I’ve had host of shows tell me, “I hate George W. Bush, All I want is for him to go away.” And I say, “What about justice? What about the fact that there’s at least 100,000 agree with me that this guy needs to be prosecuted?” Then they say, “Well I guess so,” but their first instinct is not justice. It’s just to get rid of him. I just feel like I’m a fish out of the water here because I’m expecting people to outraged. But here’s the point, an extremely important point. If this could be told to the American public and if evidence could be presented, that Bush took this nation to war and committed murder, that could fall into the hands of John McCain.

Look what happened to Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton did nothing at all. The consensus among virtually everyone is that his scandal hurt Al Gore in 2000 election. His scandal cost Gore several points in the 2000 election and it got to the point where Gore didn’t utilize Clinton in his campaign. The sense was even though Gore wasn’t involved, he was still the veep during this scandal. It was nothing it was sublime silliness, but it spilled over. So you can imagine what would happen if the American public were convinced that George W. Bush took this nation to war and committed a crime, that will slide over to John McCain. Particularly since John McCain supported this war. So the discussion should have happened (at the convention) and I wonder why is nobody talking about that. They’re talking about everything but that!

As far as indifference, I say “What’s happened to the soul of the Democratic Party? Why aren’t they talking about this monstrous crime that this guy committed (at the convention)?” Why is that? I don’t know. Peoples’ memories last as long as a breath and they go onto other stuff. I’m not going onto other stuff. I’m not going to let this guy go. I may not succeed but I’m not going to satisfied until I see him in an American court being charged with first degree murder on trial.

It seems that politicians don’t want to think about it at all. Their focus is all about winning the 2008 election. How do you get around that?

You know, a man came up to me today, thanked me and said, “My son died in Iraq and I did not sacrifice my son for George W. Bush.” Then he said “I hope you get him.” I gave him a hug. You know, it’s amazing the survivors of the kids that died over there are not up in arms. Do you know why they’re not? A lot believed they died for America but they didn’t die for America! They died for George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney! What American interests are being served over there? None!

Switching gears now. You said that there’s been a virtual blackout by the traditional media in covering your book. What’s going on?

When all my other true crime books came out, I went to New York City and started out on national television. Every single one. When this book came out, I didn’t go to New York because no network had me on; no cable had me on; and no newspaper reviewed the book. It was a total blackout. The New York Times did an article about the blackout and that opened it up just a tiny little crack. But for the most part, everyone has stayed away from it except progressive Democrats. Without progressive Democrats, this book would never had taken off.

How has citizen journalism, blogs, and other forms of online media helped?

You see, I don’t have a computer. Apparently the book is big on the Internet. I hear that and I also hear a lot of blogs are talking about the book. That certainly has helped. But if you start out on The Today Show, you reach 8 million people. For me to reach 8 million people the way I’m doing it now, I have to give hundreds of interviews. I don’t think there’s too much question that this book would have been number one if I had started out like my other ones on national television. As it is, it got up to #9 on the NYT bestsellers list. This week it’s #10. If you can do #9 or #10 and still be blacked out by the major media, I think you can extrapolate that this book could have been number one.

*** His publicist interrupts and says the book is in its eighth straight week on the New York Times bestsellers list. ***

Switching gears again. One of the things naysayers say about the indictment resolution is that citizens cannot and should not have to the power to arrest a former president and vice-president. They consider indictments by popular vote to be mob justice mentality.

I don’t think it’s mob justice. (What Brattleboro, VT passed) that can’t happen. There’s no criminal indictment that can come from them. It can only come from a grand jury and the grand jury doesn’t take things upon themselves. The DA has to offer evidence to them, or a state attorney general. They lead the efforts.

Thank you very much Mr. Bugliosi!

A longer version of this interview is posted at iBrattleboro.

Vincent Bugliosi & I on the way to Denver International Airport

(Hey, the administration is interested in inspections.  I’m sure the fact that this is an election year is entirely irrelevant. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Is that a real spine or just an election year posture ahead of the curve ?

Better late than never I guess after the last year of downtime,evacuations and leaks.

Could they really be about to stand up for Vermont and against Entergy ?

Douglas administration wants new inspection of Yankee cooling towers

MONTPELIER — The Douglas administration Friday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to come back to Vermont and reinspect the cooling towers at Vermont Yankee, saying the continuing problems at the Vernon plant were “unacceptable.”

In a sharply-worded letter, David O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, asked NRC administrators to do another inspection of the towers and get to the bottom of the continuing problem.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…

 This was Gov.Douglas  then …July 19,2008 —

The state Department of Public Service has declined to let members of a panel created by the Legislature to do a special audit of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant join an inspection of the plant set for Monday, officials confirmed Friday.

The Douglas administration has done a bit of a pivot on this after they blocked the Vermont Oversight Panel access to accompany NRC officials in their tour of the Yankee plant back in July.One wonders what might have been revealed in this July inspection if the Oversight Panel had not been denied access by Gov.Douglas .

Gov.Douglas policy post pivot……after the latest leak in the continuing troubled  cooling towers saga  ….Now

Wark said the state wanted the NRC to determine whether inspectors noted all problems in July.

“Did they miss it? What else did they miss?” he said.

Wark said the idea for a management audit came from Arnie Gundersen and the late Lawrence Hochreiter, two members of the Vermont Oversight Panel.

Gundersen, chairman of the panel, said he and Hochreiter pushed for the management audit before the most recent leaks at Yankee and finally got the support of the Department of Public Service.

“The oversight panel recognized the need for a management audit back in July, and we’ve been working with the department on that issue,” Gundersen said.

“Given the cooling tower problems, the transformer fire and related problems, and given the inspection of Indian Point (nuclear plant,) we thought a broader management review of Entergy and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee would be appropriate,” he said.

Yesterday’s press release from Senator Sanders’ office yesterday called for a “four point plan” to salvage the economy that included a tax on wealthy Americans to pay for the massive corporate bailouts underway, greater regulation, a new economic stimulus package, and this doozy tossed in there like it was an ol’ casual policy notion (emphasis added):

Third, he said giant businesses like Bank of America should be broken up so no company in the future could bring the American economy down with it. Said Sanders, “This country can no longer afford companies that are ‘too big to fail.’ If a company is so large that its failure would cause systemic harm to our economy, if it is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist.”

Bernie doesn’t know how right he is. And from the tone of his press release, I don’t think he realizes just how radical his suggestion is, either. “Too big to fail” is obviously a ticket for disaster, but its not the size per se that’s the issue – its the overall character of the economic system.

All systems need diversity. It is both the means and the end for functional, healthy systems. If you have any doubt, look to nature as the guide. In terms of process, diverse, complex ecosystems weather diseases, disasters and gradual changes, whereas monocultures don’t. And as far as ends go, the very directionality of the natural world is towards complexity and diversity. Socially, its no coincidence that the “melting pot” US jumped to the top of the international heap by so many metrics, and its no coincidence that now that our cultural and economical diversity has been moving towards the simpler and less diverse, that status is plateauing.

Although I used to feel otherwise, I’ve gotten rather blandly analytical in my old age. The fact is that large scale market capitalism is neither inherently “good” nor inherently “evil” as the more parochial on the different ends of the political spectrum would say. Such dogmatic terms only muddy the water. Terms such as “beneficial” or “destructive” are safer, but even those are too reductive. Capitalism is unique in its organic quality that exists largely independently from the more straightforward organic natures of other large institutions, who owe that quality to a reflection of their human components. Large scale capitalism develops its own organics, and those organics are strangely circular. At smaller scales, capitalism encourages diversity and complexity making for a rollicking robust nature.

But as it moves from the micro to the macro (especially when it truly goes global), it wants to consolidate its new, grander-scale functionalities into sets of intermediary institutions that act as organs, and the system takes on a life of its own – a singular life and, as such, one that works against diversity and complexity.

The diversity point is probably self-evident, but so is the complexity when you think about it. The global economy and all its interdependent institutions creating a cross-border capital circulatory system are not really that complicated when you get into it. I think this is even part of the appeal to laissez faire purists. It’s not that hard to “get” at a fundamental level, and I think some people become so entranced (or even proud of themselves) when they do “get it” that they smile, get an endorphine rush, pat themselves on the back and turn off their brains then and there (Jack Kemp waxing aroused over the Laffer-curve comes to mind…). And the more these transnational systems have grown, the less complex they’ve gotten. Now the some of the absurdities have grown (the much discussed practice of short selling is pretty absurd, in a sense), but absurdities are not complexities.

And because the system has coalesced into something new and big, and also simple (simplistic?) and uniform, its easy for boneheads to throw wrenches into the mix, either through their boneheadedness, or through straight up greed (or both). Insuring bonds like you would a car, for example.

Although I don’t think its looked at this way, regulation has traditionally had the effect of building in barriers to some of these forces towards simplicity and uniformity. When misguided doofuses look at the resulting picture, though, all they see is blockages in the wealth circulatory system, so they want to cut them right out, despite the fact that by doing so, they’re allowing a new institutional entity to evolve that has less and less natural resistance to disaster, disease or gradual changes in the environment. It may get very big very fast, but it wont be long before it has a stroke.

But that’s where we are. The body economic is having a stroke. The Treasury Department and Congress are, at least at this point, trying to come up with a life support system.

Bernie’s suggestion, however – whether he realizes it or not – is to forcibly move back across the line we left behind years ago. By eliminating “too big to fail” corporations, he wants to fundamentally change the character of the global economy – in the process creating far more diversity and complexity in the system, and in that process, making it a far more disease and disaster resistant entity.

That’s not to say that Bernie’s proposal will take us back to purely localized economies – far from it. That’s still another institutional manifestation of capitalism entirely. And whether or not we’d want to turn things back that far or not is a great debate, but one that would take a lot more space.

Still, as far as the current Washington policymakers are concerned, I suspect that Bernie might as well have just recommended we move the US Capital to Mars…

The news blackout is now being called a brownout. Some outlets are sort of covering the davastation caused by Ike, but once again, they are focused on Houston and Galveston, and are largely ignoring the places that were actually hit by the brunt of the storm.

Like Chrystal City. The AP got some good shots, like these two:

 

People have been submitting whatever photos they can find to the site http://jakeabby.com. It’s worth a look. If you want to see what people face in these smaller communities in Ike’s wake.

Google Earth turns out to be a powerful tool for determining what these communities look like pre-and post Ike:

Once again, the old media have left actual reporting to the new media. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to find the news in the new media, and the new media isn’t dumped straight into people’s living rooms in full color and surround sound on a near-constant basis.

So people still think Ike wasn’t so bad after all.

But it was. It just wasn’t bad enough in the right places.

The “official” body count is now 22. This is DOWN by 28 from 2 days ago (I guess there’s some pretty powerful mojo down Texas-way if they’re now resurrecting the dead.) Did Sarah Palin get her witch-hunting pastor to do some laying on of the hands to a few corpses, or is someone lying?

We know that tens of thousands of people chose to ride out the storm, since it was “only” a cat 2 hurricane. Unfortunately, it was a cat 2 with a storm surge similar in height, and with greater breadth than the one that hit Sri Lanka a few years ago.

The number of missing persons is astronomical. Once quote I read somewhere (no link, sorry, I don’t remember where I saw it) was from a rescue worker surprised at how few people – living or dead – they found when they first got there.

It’s also a bit disconcerting that a lion was on the loose in all this.



[photo AP]

I’m pretty sure I would not want to find myself sharing open space with a lion under any circumstances. And I hope, deeply, that the occupant of the sleeping bag in the photo was long gone before the lion decided to amble into the church.

( – promoted by JDRyan)

Some consider the fact that we Vermonters repeatedly elect Jim Douglas as well as Bernie Sanders a positive, healthy feature of politics in the Green Mountain State, a sign our democratic process is as healthy as our outdoorsy, covered-bridgey, and still, at times, despite average winter temps increasing four degrees in the past few decades, wonderlandy image.

I beg to differ.

The fact that Vermonters elect Douglas is evidence of the failure of our democracy. Vermont has, in the past, elected Douglas because we are comfortable with him, because he seems like a friendly guy. (Sound familiar?) But he only seems like a friendly guy because he has a master PR organization (funded by our tax money). Douglas has installed PR people in every important state department, and they control public access to information.  Anything positive is trumpeted, anything potentially controversial is buried and all the rest is spun.

Gov. Douglas, you want this year’s election to be about public relations and spin? You got it. Because this time around, you’ve made the largest public relations mistake of your career.

As with all Republican spin, it’s hard to know where to start.

Because Douglas’ PR mistake and serious error in judgment has to do with his dear colleague and friend, Gov. Palin of Alaska, it’s even harder.

First of all, Vermont Public Radio had Douglas on the air right after McCain announced the Palin choice on August 29. Douglas found Palin a very good choice. His reasons:

Palin has brought real leadership to Juneau.

She has brought ethics reform.

She has a strong commitment to combating greenhouse gas emissions.

She has spoken strongly of the need for energy independence and getting away from Big Oil companies.

A little later in the program he even called her an “environmentalist”…

Let’s see:

So, is that what you call an environmentalist?

Gov. Douglas added insult to injury a few days later when he insisted:

I think a lot of Vermonters will identify with her.

Err, no. Quite a few–a majority, I’m willing to bet–of us Vermonters:

are not under investigation for ethics violations;

do not make a habit of lying to the entire American people about our experience and record;

do not believe 20% of the domestic energy supply comes from Alaska (heck, Palin, far from knowing more about energy than anyone else in the US (McCain, incredibly, claimed she did), seems to know less than any Vermonter (except, perhaps Gov. Douglas?);

would not put a mining industry attorney in charge of a Sub-cabinet on climate change;

are very concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, whereas Palin does not “blam[e] the changes in our climate on human activity“;

And while many of us support hunting and are hunters, the whole aerial hunting thing…(see video above)? Wouldn’t go over very well.

I could go on, and I know you could too.

So, while a fair number of Vermonters do self-identify as…well, community organizers with real responsibilities…we’re not all that likely to “identify” with Palin.

But…says Douglas:

She’s bold and at the same time she is very respectful of other people and very polite.

Dear Governor Douglas, that’s not what Vermonters call bold, respectful, or polite.

Then again, Governor Palin did unconstitutionally use her office to support mining interests on a very recent ballot initiative. And I know one Vermonter who can identify with using the governor’s office to support special polluter interests.

But enough about Douglas, what are other friendly neighborhood Republicans saying about Palin?

Planned Parenthood and women everywhere need your help.

On September 25th the 30-day public comment period will end regarding a proposed rule allowing doctors to withhold information from their patients significantly impacting women's right to choose her own health options.

Please send a quick and easy email to oppose this rule by going here:

http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/frcp08_adv1?qp_source=frcp08pporg

From Planned Parenthood today:

The Bush administration recently proposed a radical federal regulation change that would allow doctors to knowingly withhold information from their patients about widely accepted medical treatment options like birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion services. Even worse, this new rule could allow individual health care providers to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control — and then refuse to provide them.

Sometimes we will see political endeavors which either attempt to (1) solve a non-existent problem, (2) attempt to solve a problem through purely rhetorical and non-functional means, or (3) just blame other people for the existence of the problem with no attempt to solve it whatsoever.  Examples of these would include (1) attempting to “fix” social security, (2) the pushing of offshore drilling or (3) claiming that Democrats want us to lose in Iraq.

There are multiple purposes for these approaches: if you frame them properly, you can easily appeal to low information voters in doing so.

The Rockham Selectboard this week actually had the wisdom to avoid all three of these pitfalls, despite pressure to do otherwise.  Per the Rutland Herald:

Rockingham Select Board tabled indefinitely a proposed sex offender ordinance Tuesday night, after the town’s attorney urged them not to adopt it.

Attorney Michael Harty said the proposed ordinance would land the town in court, since a legal challenge is all but guaranteed, and the town had a “one-in-three” chance of being the test case.

[…]

The ordinance would have barred anyone with a sex crime on his or her record from living within 1,000 feet of any school, day-care center or public playground.

Now the thing is, it’s easy to pass this sort of ordinance because, honestly, no one wants sex offenders to live in their neighborhood.  No one likes the idea of it and as soon as we start talking about them living near schools it’s easy to appeal to the fears of people everywhere.

I’ll make this clear: I will admit readily that I personally don’t care too much for the idea of child molesters living near a school.  It’s one of those concepts that creeps me out.

The thing is, that’s not the point.  People who commit sex crimes are not all child molesters.  They’re not all repeat offenders.  They’re not all predators.  

And they do have a right to live in the place of their choosing and they do have the right, once they’ve served their time, to be citizens just like the rest of us.

And the fact of the matter is, this sort of ordinance serves one specific purpose: to allow us to think we’re doing something about child molestation without actually doing anything about it at all.   It gives us a feeling of accomplishment, but does absolutely nothing to protect any child anywhere.

So, good for the Rockingham Select board.  You allowed common sense to override fear and rhetoric.  Too bad Rutland isn’t as sane as you guys.

Some points meriting a mention that have been lost in the news shuffle:

• The Great Email Scramble: I tried to tell folks that the big story from the VSEA email dump following their FOIA request to the Douglas administration, was the fact of the dump itself rather than its content. And sure enough, once that magic line was crossed, the floodgates seem to be opening; Shay Totten of 7 Days has gone for more, Terri Hallenbeck and… Curtis Hier of Vermont Tiger. Hier is targeting legislative emails, natch, making it officially a big free-for-all which must be really scary for everyone in state Government.

  …or not. According to Totten, Hier is getting pushback from the legislature in the form of: 1. a claim of immunity from the FOIA requirement, and 2. the ol’ “sorry, we delete all emails more than 90 days old anyway.” Hier is livid, and is basically responding with: 1. bullshit, and 2. thats government document shredding.

  And you know what? Hier is absolutely right (and yes, I know some places flush their email caches routinely, but 90 days is ridiculous). Sauce for the goose, folks. The email apocalypse has arrived for the executive and legislative branches. Suck it up and play fair.

• Has the rewrite of history already begun on Campaign 2008? Lots of rumors around the idea that there were negotiations between the Dems and Progs to have Pollina run for Lt. Governor after all, and as a ticket with Symington. The rumors run the gamut – VDP Chair Ian Carlton nixed it, Carlton was all for it but Democratic Blue Dogs nixed it, it was Pollina who would have no part of it, it was never going to happen, it was all but a done deal…

  The latest seems to be that it was all but a done deal, but that it was Nate Freeman who queered the deal by deciding to announce he would run as a Dem when the ink was almost dry on an agreement – even though he knew he would wreck the nearly-completed peace & harmony negotiations in the process.

  Hunh. Yeah, right. What I think is that the urban legend machine is kicking in early, fueled by a desire to inoculate Pollina from criticism or blame if Douglas again wins, and it looks as though it was due to the 3 way split. This way – once again – it can still all go down on the true believers’ books as all the big bad Dems fault. Folks – I was talking to Nate at the time of his announcement, and have talked to him since. This rumor is pure fiction.

• Get well soon! Former Republican State Senator and one-term Mayor of Burlington Peter Brownell is having some serious medical challenges. He goes into 7 hours of surgery today to remove a tumor in his spinal cord. The good news is that it appears to be benign, but its still going to be a tough process, with the likelihood of more surgeries to come.

  Peter is a great guy. Wishing him and his family the best. (UPDATE: Peter came through the surgery fine and is in the recovery phase.)