( – promoted by odum)

A few quotes from an excellent editorial in the Times Argus

Economic inequality is growing faster in New England than in any other region of the nation. That’s according to a report by two economists from New Hampshire in a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

…

So it’s true: The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. Economic disparities are so great, according to an article in the The New Republic magazine, the concentration of wealth in America today is comparable to the concentration in the Moghul Empire of India in the 16th century.

…

At the federal level, tax cuts for the very rich have widened inequality on the theory that helping the rich get richer allows them to employ more people to build their mansions and trim their hedges. It is not an accident of nature that our economy has worsened the economic plight of a majority and enriched the very richest. It is how our policymakers have designed the system. The question is how much longer the majority will allow those policies to widen the gap between rich and poor.

I think Jim = McJobs would say, “Mission Accomplished”

This should come as no surprise, but the Governor wasted no time using the desire of many Vermonters for equal rights under the law (and the modest step of having a commission travel the state and take public feedback) to fire up a little resentment and cash. From a fundraising letter a few weeks back:

Again, its hardly a shocker, but it may prove more dangerous than he thinks, given that early signs suggest that Vermonters are more tolerant of the prospect than many suspected. Rather than grabbing the everyman position, Douglas could find himself looking like the candidate of the religious right if he gets too enthusiastic on this – which would have the added effect of bridging the gap for many swing voters between him and the national Republicans. (To see the whole letter, click here)

It's interesting that the only anger I seem to have generated on my admittedly less than enthusiastic endorsement of John Edwards is around this sentence:

the embarassingly entitled “Club Obama” event

It's the part that Baruth highlighted (although I don't think he was mad, just amused), and was a peripheral comment at best. Still, it was not my intention to offend people with the line – which I seem to have done, although in complete earnest-honesty, I don't quite understand why. But given that I did, I thought it best to explain what I was thinking.

A big part of me cringed when I saw the odd way, in the throes of the Dean for President phenomenon, the Governor seemed to start losing control of his actual image. There were the peripheral events like the Lolapalooza-sounding “Sleepless Summer Tour” and all the ways that his name started being used almost as though he were some sort of product, like a hot new car or a brand of beer. “Deaniacs,” “Generation Dean,” “Dean Bran Flakes.”

Okay, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea…

The fact is that the imageering kept from overshadowing the Dean campaign itself because Dean was always saying things of substance – often things that would get him into trouble, in fact, but it helped to insure that content was always at the core of the campaign. Obama's campaign is different. Ask any 10 Dean supporters around primary time what they liked about Dean, and you were likely to hear something about Iraq in very nearly 100% of the replies. Ask Obama supporters what they like about him in 10 words or less and you're likely to hear something along the lines of what Treasurer Jeb Spaulding said in the Herald/Argus:

“I really think he represents the American dream. He has a very culturally diverse background,”

Right off the bat, many Obama supporters start from a place of image, rather than policy. What people see when they look at him. What they read into his background, and what they perceive “the American Dream” to be, from their own ideological vantage. And that makes the commodofication of his candidacy a far more dangerous thing, in my opinion, than it was for Dean, because the imageering already is an overwhelming part of his presentation from the get-go.

Now I'm as big on marketing and branding as the next guy. You want stuff with your candidate on it, and going catchy is a great idea. Heck, just the name “Dean for America” was itself a branding slogan of sorts, and a smart one. But how far is too far? At what point does marketing our candidates cross the line into treating them like a commodity? Like a new soft drink? When that line is crossed, what does it say about us as a culture? What is the public debate path that we're on, and does going too far down it in one campaign perpetuate the problem overall?

I'm not sure exactly where the line is, but I know when it gets crossed you'll find the marketing itself starting to shove out the content – the policies and particularized visioneering that should be – by all rights – what a mature electorate bases their decision on. There just becomes less and less actual time for both, and when that tension squeezes out the content, I think we all lose. It's also an obvious way for a candidate who wants to avoid being pinned down on precisely who and what he or she represents to avoid having to be.

However it happens – either by accident or design – it's something I find at once frightening, disheartening and when it comes from my political “team”, yes – I find it embarassing as well. Maybe it's not happening so much as I'm afraid its happening. The name “club Obama” definitely punched that button with me, but again, I didn't think a public cringe at the title would be so extraordinarily disturbing. My bad.

 What do you all think?

( – promoted by odum)

The BFP is running a piece on Vermont's victory in the lawsuit brought by many of the big automakers regarding the regulation of greenhouse emissions.  I am no lawyer, but the judge's opinion sounds pretty definitive.

The automakers were trying to do an end-run around California by suing us because we can't afford the army of lawyers that California can.  My hope is that this ruling will prompt the automakers to bow to the inevitable and support strong federal controls on automotive GHG emissions. Ok, maybe not…. Still, I think this is a good day for all of us and a step in the right direction.

Whille cleaning out the maze of crap that I have accumulated on my computer I came across the following, which (in a slightly different form was a flier that I had made and posted around during the flurry of activity that was the VT anti-war movement before the war started).  

U.S. war since WWII

Since WWII, here is a partial list of countries that the United States has either waged a bombing campaign or fought an all-out war against. Notably not on this list are proxy campaigns, like fighting the Soviets by arming and funding the Afghans during the 1980's, or the “drug war” in Columbia, etc.

China (1945-46, 1950-53)

Korea (1950-53)

Guatemala (1954, 1967-69)

Indonesia (1958)

Cuba (1959-60)

Belgian Congo ((1964)

Peru (1965)

Vietnam (1961-73)

Laos (1964-73)

Cambodia (1969-70)

Grenada (1983)

Libya (1986)

El Salvador (1980's)

Nicaragua (1980's)

Panama (1989)

Bosnia ((1995)

Afghanistan (1998, 2001-present)

Sudan (1998)

Yugoslavia (1999)

Iraq (1991-present)

Notice that none of these countries are currently being run democratically. There is no reason to believe that the United States has any intention to spread “democracy” to any country, especially ones that we bomb or go to war with. The goal of U.S. military action is always to provide stable markets for capital.

Also, note that the U.S. is the only country in the world to be reprimanded by the United Nations for committing acts of terrorism! Places where the U.S. have used terrorism to overthrow democratically elected governments include Chile, Haiti, and Columbia.

It's the day after Petraeus's first appearance in Congress and all three members of Vermont's congressional delegation have given their reactions. Here's what they say:

Welch:

“The conclusion I reached as a listener is that Gen. Petraeus came in on behalf of the administration requesting a sixth and seventh year of the war,” Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said in an interview. “But the fundamental question that Congress and the American people have to ask is whether a military approach to refereeing a civil war is wise and effective. There has never been a situation where a third party successfully refereed a civil war.”

Welch said the federal government should begin withdrawing U.S. troops immediately.

Sanders:

 “I will continue to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops, a withdrawal which should be completed within the next year,” Sanders said. “Although we must continue to support the Iraqi government and their military so that they can defend themselves, the time to begin bringing home our American troops is now.” 

 

 Leahy:

“Six years ago, our troops had cornered Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan,” Leahy said. “Then the Bush administration diverted our military resources to Iraq, and he slipped away. He remains on the loose today, and terrorism has increased worldwide. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq has lasted longer than World War II, squandering hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars. The president wants to keep the pedal to the floor in this war, dumping the Iraq mess onto the next president's doorstep.”

Keep your eyes on what they do, but Welch isn't acting too conciliatory to the administration at present. 

           Preparatory to General Petraeus’ testimony today, some Congress members, incensed by a Move-On.org full page ad in the NY Times referring to him as General Betray us, lashed out at that organization and the “Left” in general for daring to utter a doubting word about the General. Then they extolled grandiloquently about his virtue, honor, patriotism, truthfulness, and their utter faith in his every word. The military code of honor would forever hold its finest.

            There was a time not long ago when these overwrought protestations would have at least been grounded in truth. There was a recent time when our nation looked to such a General, a man whom we could trust without reservation. In fact, without this fine General, the very embodiment of military honor, George W. Bush would not have been able to convince the Congress and the public to let him start his criminal and murderous war.

            But General Colin Powell let us down. He stood before the United Nations and the world, and when he pointed at the little maps and smudgy photos, he presented “facts” that were no such thing, made sweeping conclusions that were dead wrong, and when he was finished, America lined up behind the administration and smartly saluted.

Years later, when it was too late to do any good, Powell owned up somewhat to his failure. But in the meantime a country has been turned into a nightmare, millions of people have had to flee their homeland, and upwards of a million have been killed outright as a result of the policies which he helped scam into place.

            When Colin Powell enabled Bush/Cheney to launch their crooked war, he had the same credibility and was accorded the same honor as General Petraeus today. It is not any slur against Petraeus if people are skeptical about his testimony. This administration has politicized the military to an alarming degree. They have plowed through Generals at a steady pace during this war and hope that finally Petraeus will be the one to achieve their impossible dreams.

            General Petraeus assures us that he wrote his own speech, and he probably penned the words. But what exactly was the purpose of all of the work being done at the White House to help prepare the report?  This General’s job is to do the bidding of the Commander in Chief. This report was about justification and cheer leading and there is no way that it can be seen as anything other than the military leadership’s attempt to spin the war on the administration’s behalf.

            Whatever you think of Move-On.org, they have every right to question this General’s testimony. The Bush/Cheney administration has shown us that they will lie and lie and lie again. The fact that anyone is willing to give them any credibility at all is astounding, let alone to presume that we should automatically trust anyone who is associated with them not to misrepresent reality when convenient.

            Increasingly lost in this swirl of debate over the quality of the surge’s “successes” is the fact that the surge was not to prove that thousands of American troops could control isolated areas of a small nation that has been crippled by years of war. No, it was to create breathing room for the politicians to organize their democracy. But since that hasn’t even begun to happen, they’ve just changed the debate, as they always do, and now they’re all talking tactics and strategies and we’ll soon see if the politicians are all corrupted enough, and we’re all numb enough to follow them once again down the yellow brick road. Peace is War. Lies are Truth. Go Shopping.

You know, I couldn't have picked a worse time to cut back on the blogging (not like I have much of a choice right now). Let's see, coulda done a million posts on Larry Craig and his “wide stance”, there's the next round of capitulation from the Dems on the war  (we're watching, Mr. Welch), Grampa Fred Thompson adds “yet another Republican hack who will never be president” to his resume, Obama's “Audacity of Hype” rolls on, etc. There's so much going on, and so little time to report it.

So I thought I'd take the time and just throw this juicy little nugget from Pensito Review out there. Now, those of you reading this are, by now, not shocked by the almost daily hypocrisies that entail being a modern Republican. Were you really surprised about Larry Craig? Well, apparently four more self-proclaimed “social conservatives” are quite possibly the next to come out of the GOP's closet of hypocrisy:

In the wake of closeted Sen. Larry Craig's self-outing in an airport men's room this summer, Mike Rogers, the Washington-based publisher of blogActive who outed Craig, is threatening to reveal the secret sexual identities of two leading GOP senators, while two allegedly gay Republican congressmen are making headlines and drawing unwelcome attention to themselves, the timing of which could not be worse.

The senators are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, from Kentucky. More about them below but first let's look at two allegedly closeted members of the House, representatives Patrick McHenry and David Drier, who have been in the news lately.

Yep. Mitch McConnell. How's that going to play in the bluegrass state? But apparently, it's not just the hypocrisy angle that could very well get Mitch in deep doo-doo. Word is out that McConnell got booted out of the Army in 1967 after only 10 days, for fondling another private's privates, according to Mike Rogers, the blogger doing the outing. 

Now, the issue isn't and shouldn't be whether or not these men are gay (and there is no way in hell McConnell or Graham could be elected in the Bible Belt if they were out). As we've discussed before, it's the hypocrisy of being leaders of the anti-gay faction in Washington. And it's a price they'll need to pay. 

As an added bonus, this could really be the undoing of the GOP, when the country club Republicans and anti-taxers that made up much of their ranks got in bed with the intellectually and reality-challenged Christian Right, back in '79. And as the Review points out, if the Christianists jump ship, there ain't “enough country clubbers and anti-taxers out there to win a national election”. And the GOPwill find itself where it was, post-Watergate. Screwed. Now if we could just do something to fix those Dems….

[First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate 2008 Guru: Following the Races.]

Does it seem like there's a new Republican scandal in the news every single week?  Well, that may be because there is.

That seems like an awful lot of corruption, scandal, hypocrisy, impropriety, and jail-worthy crime, huh?  A lot of corruption.  One might say an entire Culture of Corruption.

Central Vermont energy activist Carl Etnier has been doing a series of interviews with various voices on the state energy scene.

Guests have included Matt Cota of the Vermont Fuel Dealers' Association, 
Blair Hamilton of Efficiency Vermont, and Jerome a Paris, an 
investment banker and energy blogger in Paris, France.

You can listen to the interviews here.