Back in 2000, I worked for the Vermont Democratic Party. A handful of weeks before the election, we received word that there was to be a coordinated march on several Democratic Party HQs across the country, protesting – I believe – some oil company holdings of Al Gore's mother.

So we knew they were going to be coming from the Peace & Justice Center, and a meeting was held the day before among the coordinated campaign staff. The ED put the problem to the floor, and to a person, everybody who spoke up wanted to call the police and have them there, on the ready, blocking the entrance.

I dissented. Strenuously. I said that these folks were coming, and it was inconvenient, but that's just the way it goes. I insisted that the way to deal with them was meet them in the office entrance room with donuts and cider. Listen to them. Tell them that there wasn't much pull we had with Al Gore's family, but that we could at least try and pass the message along to the DNC. I told my officemates that some of these folks may be planning on getting arrested, so we should check with the group up front, find out who those folks are, and make the arrest process as painless and orderly as possible, so they can do what they needed to do, we could do what we needed to do, and we could keep it on a human-to-human level, without conflict. Everybody thought I was nuts.

Except my boss, who simply said “I think we'll go with Odum's plan.”

The next day came, the crowd came, my boss and I went out and met and talked with them (and we were joined by Elizabeth Ready, who happened to be in the office that day). Donuts were eaten, cider was imbibed. No one opted to be arrested (which surprised me), but there was a lot of talk – sometimes a little testy on both sides, but persoon-on-person communication won out. I made sure their concerns were sent to Washington.

A note to those at any political office who are inclined to deal inappropriately with protesters; they may be a pain, you may feel like you have better things to do, but dealing with citizens in this way is simply part of the job – and like any other part of the job, should be done with dignity and respect – even if the protesters choose not to reciprocate (and there will likely be a couple that don't, as there were in the experience related above). If you really have a problem with that, it's probably time for another line of work.

Barack Obama and Hiilary Clinton have finally finished consulting with their focus groups and have offered lukewarm support of filibustering FISA if the telco immunity provision stays intact, as Kos is reporting. Clinton hasn't even read the bill yet, but promises to “study it very hard.”

The Obama campaign issued the following statement:

“Senator Obama has serious concerns about many provisions in this bill, especially the provision on giving retroactive immunity to the telephone companies. He is hopeful that this bill can be improved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But if the bill comes to the Senate floor in its current form, he would support a filibuster of it.”

Clinton said:

HRC: I am troubled by the concerns that have been raised by the recent legislation reported out of the Intelligence Committee. I haven't seen it so I can't express an opinion about it. But I don't trust the Bush Administration with our civil rights and liberties. So I'm going to study it very hard. As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently.

Now, of course it's a good thing that they're finally on board and let's give 'em props on that, but more strongly worded statements would certainly inspire more confidence on the actual occurence of some follow through, And the fact remains that as 'front-runners”, they should have been running to the front on this issue instead of following Dodd and (gasp!) Biden.I suspect that if/when the filibuster occurs, they will both offer rather muted support. We shall see.

Tuesday October 23, 2007

Bob Kinzel   (Host) Senator Patrick Leahy says he's not sure if he'll vote for Attorney General nominee, Michael Mukasey.

Leahy, who chairs the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee, says he has some serious concerns that Mukasey doesn't oppose the use of torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

In Bob Kinzel's story on VPR Leahy is heard saying that he's not sure about whether someone who won't say unequivocally that waterboarding is torture should be confirmed.

I don't see why this should even be a question: unless you can answer that question correctly you should never be in a position to advise the federal government on what is legal or illegal.

We still have the chance to contact Leahy on this issue. I won't post his contact information again today, but it's been all over these pages, so give him a call or drop him an e-mail.  

(Oops, I did it again.) 

Dubie not picked for FAA post

October 24, 2007
 

By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau

    MONTPELIER – Vermont Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie will not become the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, a post he had been in the running for.

Acting FAA administrator Bobby Sturgell, a former pilot for United Airlines, will be nominated by President George W. Bush instead, according to Dubie and news reports

Not that we were expecting him to get the job around here, but this means that the Democratic candidate, whoever it winds up being, will be challenging an incumbent, not an open seat. 

I'm listening to the story on VPR right now and Dubie is talking about airport congestion, saying that the free market has not worked.

Maybe we're seeing a clue about why he didn't get the job. 

By all accounts (except for the crude one in the Rutland Herald, written in such a way as to make one wonder if the reporter was even present), the recent McKibben-McLaughry debate on global warming was a one-sided bloodbath, with reports that McKibben not only casually countered every phony, long-obsolete canard offered by McLaughry, he actually had McLaughry beginning to accept reality and discussing solutions.

Well, apparently it didn't take, as the “Ethan Allen Institute” (such as it is) is now sponsoring a Vermont appearence by Dr. Marlo Lewis, Jr. Hardly news, but it's interesting that the Vermont GOP is actively promoting this lecture on their website, lashing themselves haphazardly to the Exxon-Mobil funded Lewis, whose scientific credentials seem to consist of degrees in Government and Political Science, and a career in partisan hackery. Here are some choice comments from Mr Lewis:

26 April, 2006
The main incontrovertible effect of global warming to date is that it has made those severely cold regions slightly less lethal to people and other living things.
Source: www.cei.org/pdf/5288.pdf

1 February, 2007
“The asserted consensus that global warming is a planetary emergency and that all right-thinking people believe we need to limit our energy use has been exposed, once again, as unsubstantiated myth.”
Source: Heartland Institute website 2007

It's continually outrageous that anyone continues to spout this nonsense, and Lewis wavers between outright denial and passing off climate change as a really swell thing for everybody. What's interesting at the local level is that the state GOP is gleefully associating themselves with this sort of rhetoric, when many of their elected politicians are wising up enough to realize what kind of poison such views are to their electability.

Global Warming denial is steadily moving into the realm of evolution-denial. It's flat-Earthism. The new issue for the casually engaged swing voter that defines a candidate as that political nowhere creature (at least in the purple-to-blue states); the Neo-Trogladyte. The Neo-Trog label sticks, and becomes a shorthand measure of a candidate's character to the marginally engaged, who so often turn close elections.

If Roper wants to continue to hang this sort of nonsense around his Party's neck in this state, more power to him.

As folks may have heard by now, yesterday Peter Welch's Burlington office was the sight of a direct action by Vermonters disinterested in Welch's voting record towards war funding and his action/in-action in regards to putting an end to the U.S. war in Iraq.

If you missed it, here, and here is a bit of local coverage.  

There's something a little… off… that's been nagging at my brain lately as I make my daily stop at the VT Dems newsdump site. Something about the image from the fundraiser. I'm a little slow sometimes, so it took me this long to realize what was wrong.

It's the pictures. Bernie, Leahy, Welch, Carleton. They're all men (and straight white men, to boot).

Of all the Dems statewide officeholders, only SoS Markowitz breaks the gender mold. Add in the de facto statewides leading the two Congressional bodies, and she joins only Speaker Symington against a backdrop which includes Shumlin, Spaulding and the Junior Salmon. Even the candidates being bandied about for Governor – Galbraith, Campbell, Dunne and Pollina – are all men.

This is a problem. All things being equal, the laws of statistics would seem to suggest that, over these several years, the numbers should look more even than the 17% women among the names listed above. Instead, that 17% would seem to represent a high mark.

In other words – all things are still not equal.

The reasons for this are a little more complicated than they used to be. At the grassroots level (among the town, county and state committees), you see a good gender mix. But among the true political class (and yes, Vermont – like every other state – has political classes) its a different story. Despite denials to the contrary, statewide faces are often groomed. Party folks do put out their feelers to hear who might be interested, but they still – more often than not – massage people who have that spark of interest into making the statewide plunge (as such folks expect a certain amount of massaging), hoping to turn that spark into a flame. But the folks who get the massaging are the ones that generally come from the subset of people that those on the inside consider viable and credible – and that means people in their circles.

So, a “good ol' boys network” is too strong a turn of phrase, as its nothing so overt or intentional, but it does equate to a tendency towards cliqueishness and staleness – a tendency that lends itself to real diversity even more slowly than the more public institutions at large.

Markowitz and Symington, with the help of people like former Governor Kunin, have been continually working over the years to train, support and encourage women to step into the political process, and those efforts have certainly borne fruit in the legislature. But legislative electoral politics (even in Senate campaigns) are still grassroots in a way that statewide races aren't, and never will be, making the statewide dynamics much more institutionally bound.

But the dynamics are different than they were a generation ago. To the extent that there's a glass ceiling at the top of the political ladder, it's now a very fragile one. As such, the responsibility for bringing it down is more of a shared burden. Party big dogs should be pushed to look outside their usual suspect cliques, but potential women candidates also need to step up to whack at that now-fragile ceiling. The list of potential candidates for Governor may be all men, but there was nothing stopping someone like Markowitz from throwing her hat into the ring, and it could be argued that she has a responsibility to do so. State Senators like Susan Bartlett or Claire Ayer could easily step up and take another whack at the statewide ceiling and easily leave a big piece of it in shards.

It's not enough just to say there's a wall, but it's permeable now. There is a burden of responsibility to actively permeate it.

But in the meantime, lets not advertise the gender gap so gleefully, 'kay? How about a new picture…

For months now, every time I suffer through a Mitt Romney ad on TV, I think to myself, “What is it about this guy that rings a bell?  Who, in the depths of my subconscious, do I associate with this out-of-touch right-wing Reagan era throwback?”

How our Dem or Dem-esque elected officials apply their core beliefs in Congressional action seems to boil down to two relative standards. There's the standard of decision-making that is relative to the US Constitution, and the standard relative to the opposition – sort of a “what's the best we can hope to expect or receive from George Bush and the Republicans” approach. Although there's a time and place for the latter, it's clear that it's not with this president, and not with these republicans.

Thankfully, in regards to the nomination of Mukasey to the AG position (and his discouraging – but hardly unexpected – non-answers in his confirmation hearing), Bernie has chosen the Constitutional standard. From his office today:

President Bush’s choice to head the Justice Department, Sanders said, holds views on the sweeping powers of the presidency that are at odds with what the framers of our Constitution intended.  The nominee also demonstrated at Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings a disregard for civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

“Of course the United States government must do everything that it can to protect the American people from the dangerous threat of terrorism,” Sanders stressed, “but we can do that effectively consistent with the Constitution and the civil liberties it guarantees.

“We need an attorney general who does not believe the president has unlimited power.  We need an attorney general who understands that torture is not what this country is about, and we need an attorney general who clearly understands the separation of powers inherent in our Constitution,” Sanders added. “Unfortunately, it is clear that Mr. Mukasey is not that person”

The message: don't count on shopping our way to environment.