Noting that a number of court cases have gone aganst Bush’s claims of omnipotence, wouldn’t it be wonderful if all those conservative judges that the Repubs fought so hard to get appointed turn out to actually believe in the Constitution and effectively overthrow John Woo and Cheney?

( – promoted by odum)

Property taxes, K-12 education spending, health care costs, transportation spending, higher education grants, lake pollution, disappearing family farms … all these problems face Vermont as front-burner issues that demand attention.
The Democratic Senate Caucus elected returning State Senator Pete Shumlin as the next President Pro Tem of the Senate. The Democrats hold 23 of 30 Senate seats, so his election will be a formality when the Senate reconvenes in January.
Shumlin’s first announcement was that in his opinion, the most pressing issue facing our state is … Global Warming.
Is this guy nuts? Is he out of touch with the needs of Vermonters?
Not by a long shot.

Shumlin realizes that slowing the advance of Global Warming is a lot like stopping a freighter or landing a jet – you have to plan far ahead to get the desired result when you arrive.
Shumlin readily admits that there will be discussion of the bread and butter issues facing the state. Property taxes will be front and center, along with the attendant cost of education. All the usual causes will be looking for more money to spend on their valid and pressing issues. It is a given, much like the sunrise.
What he said loud and clear is that if Vermont does not lead on the issue of Global Warming, much of what we hold dear – skiing, sugaring and foliage will disappear in a haze of warm wet winters and hot dry summers punctuated by torrential rain.
He has a point. Most of Vermont’s pollution does not come from industrial sources that are easy to address. Smokestacks are easy to police and it is relatively easy to monitor them and reduce emissions. We don’t have many.
Over 60 percent of our electricity comes from Hydro-Quebec and Vermont Yankee and does not contribute to Global Warming, yet the contracts come due in less than ten years and we don’t have a plan to replace them.
VELCO is making it easier to import power to Vermont, power that many times is generated by coal and gas plants – major contributors to the problem. There is a 40 mW gas plant proposed for Derby, a 10 mW “peak” plant on the way to approval for Swanton. Vermont is on the way to increasing its contribution to the problem in the name of short-term economic savings.
Our biggest contribution to the problem is the increasing use of the automobile. If this small, rural state can find a way to decrease exhaust pipe gasses, then there will be a model for rural and urban areas to emulate.
If Shumlin can focus the conversation now on how Vermont contributes to Global Warming, we will have a chance to do something about it before Vermont becomes a semi-tropical paradise of ticks, mosquitoes and a year-round growing season.
Some would argue that our social climate is as threatened as the atmospheric climate – a theory we didn’t ascribe to until we saw the movie “Borat.”
Crowds have thronged to see this movie, touted as one of the funniest, most innovative comedies in years.
The plot is a faux-documentary of a Kazakhstani TV talking head named Borat who is sent to New York City to make a documentary about the United States to help Kazakhstan improve as a country. The movie is revolves around his backward understanding of human relations and the racism he encounters as he journeys across the country.
“Borat” is a racist film that vilifies Jews, making it funny to hate them. Is this desensitizing any different than Germany 70 years ago? At what point in America’s history did the repeated denigration of a race of people become funny? There is a reason that blackface comedy is no longer funny. We thought it was in poor taste, but perhaps we are mistaken. Perhaps it is has merely become passé.
“Borat” is also in extremely poor taste not with sexual innuendo, but with blatant, graphic scenes that had us cringing in our seats. Incest, pornography, graphic sex – the only thing missing was bestiality. The relentless sex jokes were not troubling – just gross.
It is a sad indication of morality that a movie so over the top is popular. We may be called prudes for objecting to a movie that allegedly makes fun of bigotry through exaggeration, but if the success of “Borat” is an indication of our social climate, our atmosphere is truly poisoned.

Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolution

TOPEKA, KS-In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

[UPDATE: It’s being pointed out on other parts of the blogosphere that the snarky celebration of this news could be seen as insulting or demeaning to people with mental illness. I hear that, as I’ve been close to the issue, and frankly didn’t even come at the story from that direction. I was just laughing at the idea of support for Bush being a pathology. Hope I didn’t offend. By all means, rip me a new one if I did. That’s only fair.]

Not a joke. Not from “The Onion.” Not a product of a leftwing blog (although thanks to Hunter at dKos for drawing my attention to it). From The New Haven Advocate:

Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

I will say nothing. Not a word. Not a peep. Not an “I told you so” or a single “neener neener.”

“Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry,” the study says.

Lohse says the trend isn’t unique to Bush: A 1977 study by Frumkin & Ibrahim found psychiatric patients preferred Nixon over McGovern in the 1972 election.

Rakfeldt says the study was legitimate, though not intended to show what it did.

“Yes it was a legitimate study but these data were mined after the fact,”

Well, now we understand why Bush and the GOP have been so anti-science, eh? There are things they don’t want us to find out…(D’oh! I wasn’t going to say anything…)

Remember when it came out that the Military was being used (including State National Guards – and of those confirmed, neighboring New York was on the list) to spy on Quakers and other domestic peace organizations involved in benign, peaceful protests? Well, Senator Leahy hasn’t forgotten, even though the Military claims to have cleaned up its act. From MSNBC:

At universities across the country, an antiwar group called Veterans for Peace has staged protests by setting up crosses for soldiers killed in Iraq. In New Mexico last year, the local paper described the event as a display of honor.

But a previously secret Pentagon intelligence report labeled that same event a “threat to military installations.” The report lists the group’s upcoming events and warns that while it’s a “peaceful organization,” there is potential that “future protest could become violent.”

The latest complication, of course, is that the Republican Congress recently and quietly gutted the Posse Comitatus Act – the law which disallows actions by the military (including federalized state troops) against the citizenry it serves. In the flood of high profile attempts in the waning months before years end to retroactively innoculate President Bush from the numerous illegalities of his administration, this one slipped by public and minority scrutiny.

But the current question concerns the Department of Homeland Security, and even if there isn’t outright illegality, this investigation could prompt corrective legislation.

“What’s clear is that there’s a proliferation of surveillance and targeting of Americans who have done nothing wrong, other than disagree with the government,” Anthony Romero says. The documents also suggest for the first time that agents of the Department of Homeland Security played a role in monitoring antiwar activities.

Leahy:

“I fully intend to ask what’s in those databanks, because many of them go way beyond any legitimate needs for our security,”

Without question, Leahy is going to make Judiciary the committee to watch.

Easy come, easy go. The Vermont Journal just got sold and will be ceasing publication. There goes my short-lived column that gave me the opportunity to talk directly to more than 20,000 Vermonters in swing areas. Ah well… I promise to go out with a bang (check back Wednesday)

It’s the least snowy November on record, as reported by VPR today (and barring a last minute freak blizzard). Wonder why?

The closest State House recount is over. Democrat John Moran (Windham-Bennington 1) was leading by 7 votes, and picked up 10 in the recount. Maybe that’s an omen for the Auditor recount?

Speaking of the Auditor recount, volunteers are needed across the state to manually recount ballots. Unfortunately, the 9-to-5 weekday hours of the recount process (over two weeks) make it very hard for working people to participate in (and the $30 payout doesn’t exactly offset things). If you have flexibility, or are a retiree with free time, contact your local Dem County Committee. I’m told the last statewide recount in the 80’s, while not changing the result, did flip more than enough votes than would be needed to shift this one from Brock over to Democrat Tom Salmon Jr. This one’s not over yet.

Allen Watch update: GMD’s number one fan at the VT Press Bureau had a fantastic column yesterday promoting gay marriage by noting that South Africa (formerly of Apartheid fame) is recognizing same-sex unions, while the US is still mired in discrimination. On to next week, where I’ll be hoping Mr. Allen will prove me wrong about his writing patterns…

Great White North. We may have lost our title of whitest state to Maine for a couple years, but Vermont has roared back into a tie for first. Does anybody else find this embarrassing?

Our Washington delegation may have one full head of hair between them, but, as discussed in this Freeps article from Sunday, they may well deliver our tiny state more clout in the new Congress than all the biggest, hairiest states out there. Go team!

Frequent visitors will recall that I have written in favor of Instant Runoff Voting, as have Jack and mataliandy. They will also probably recall that I am not wildly enthusiastic about it. To an extent, it’s because I am cautious about any policy proposal that has become an “article of faith” as IRV has (IMO). Articles of Faith are not to be questioned – and often that includes honest assessments. Articles of Faith bring out a sort of “you’re with us or you’re against us” polarity among the true believers which I find both distasteful, dangerous, and antithetical to the democratic process. They also have the tendency to suck up those who agree with them in principle – just not as a matter of dogma – into accompanying true believer rhetoric that they may or may not agree with. IRV, for example, is often trumpeted as a means to the end of allowing third parties to rise into their imagined rightful place of political dominance.

This is not a view I share, as my support of IRV is simply the support of an enhanced democratic process for its own sake. I’m not inclined to predicate that support on my opinion of where that will or won’t lead us. But because I have an almost knee jerk aversion to anything that strikes me as political dogma, political Articles of Faith creep me out, as I am concerned that they may be enacted (or rejected) without sufficient consideration or scrutiny. What are the disadvantages of IRV? Is IRV the only game in town, or are there other alternate voting systems that might be superior?

Given that the topic will come up during the upcoming legislative session – and out of concern that IRV’s more dogmatic supporters may frown upon, or even actively disparage, any such analysis – I’m offering a snapshot of voting systems, as well as the potential pitfalls of voting reform, below the fold. Please chime in with opinions or corrections as I don’t pretend to be an expert on this stuff.

Nobody likes the fact that a candidate can win an election with less than 50% of the electorate supporting them. Nobody likes the idea that a vote for one’s preferred candidate, who may have no real chance of winning, could prove to help throw the election to the candidate you most abhor.

UVM Prof Tony Gierzynski’s terrific study of IRV’s implementation is a must-read, and lays out the pros and cons well. While the upside – that is, theoretically bringing a result that is a more accurate picture of the preferences of the voting public – is hard to refute, in this world nothing is perfect. In his piece shortly after the Burlington mayoral election, Philip at VDB reviews the study and gives a bulleted list of some of the drawbacks.

* In 1974, Ann Arbor adopted IRV, only to reject it two years later after a mayoral candidate took 49% on the first round, but lost subsequently by 121 votes.

* “The Thwarted- Majorities Paradox, in which a candidate who can beat every other candidate in direct-comparison may lose the election; the Multiple-Districts Paradox, in which a candidate wins every district individually but manages to lose the general election when the districts are combined.”

* And finally, yes, the IRV result That Dare Not Speak Its Name: the “Perverse Outcome,” in which increased votes for a candidate lead to that candidate’s defeat.

More disturbing are the studies from San Francisco’s experience with IRV, which suggests that non-whites, working class citizens, and the less educated were less likely to use their full voting ability at the ballot (meaning they were less likely to fully rank all the candidates and more likely simply to vote for their first preference). In a relative – but very real – sense, the more white, affluent and educated a population was, the more vote they got for their ballots. It’s an ugly reality, but it does seem to be just that – a reality. It’s hard to feel too thrilled about that result, and it clearly places a burden on supporters to simultaneously endorse a comprehensive voter education program if they are successful. The Burlington demographic spread in the study is less clear, but the following:

…suggests the same dynamics are in play.

This stuff matters, and it’s not for the white, educated, affluent crowd to just blow it off as irrelevant (as they often do with inconveniences outside their demographic).

The other potential problem with implementation is (surprise, surprise), the Republicans. Consider the following:

Making such a profound change to the mechanics of Democracy should really have buy in from a majority in each party. Proponents should make it a priority to try to squeeze that Republican number up to at least 50% plus one (a bit ironic, that).

But what other options are there? If the IRV debate does come before the legislature again this session, should the debate on improving our elections system begin and end with IRV?

At the very least, folks should know that there are other models.

The Condorcet Method avoids some of the problems of IRV by selecting the candidate that wins against every other candidate in one-on-one pairings, instead of the way IRV goes to a second choice. From a voter’s perspective it works like IRV as voters just rank their choices as 1, 2, 3, etc (both IRV and Condorcet are considered forms of “preferencial voting”). This pairing system makes the behind-the-scenes calculations mathematical, and by making it more arcane, could further exacerbate the understanding gap across demographic groups and limit voter confidence. Still, here’s an example of a fascinating election where the  Condorcet results were compared against what the result would have been if IRV had been in play – they are different, and in this case, common sense suggests (at a glance) that the Condorcet result was more democratic, highlighting the comparitively crude nature of IRV’s elimination methodology.

Fusion Voting: The following comes from a great diary written by dcsohl, posted earlier this year at a GMD sister blog, the Blue Mass Group:

Fusion voting is an extension of FPTP that relies on parties. Parties are not essential to FPTP [“first past the post” – the current system -odum], but they inevitably creep in, and fusion takes advantage of this. In classical FPTP at a general election, each party nominates a candidate, and the winner is he with the most votes.

Fusion voting allows two parties to share the same candidate. So if the Green Party decides that they are splitting votes off of the Democrats (and enabling Republicans to win), they ordinarily have one alternative: Don’t run.

With Fusion voting, they can nominate the Democratic candidate as their own. Now voters can “send a message” and vote for Gore on the Green ticket. If Gore gets 60% of the votes and half of them are Green-based, he can see that environmental issues are very important to a third of the country.

Advantages: “Sending a message”

Fusion is intriguing, but to those who see IRV as the shortcut to radical change through 3rd party ascendency, it probably won’t be too appealing.

The most feel-good voting system has got to be Approval Voting. In this system, everybody can vote for as many candidates as they like. The totals are tallied and the most votes wins, but there is no voting “against” anyone, and as such it limits the problem in any system – but particularly in preferencial systems (like IRV) – of so-called tactical voting.

Tactical voting is when voters use their votes or preferencial rankings not to indicate their genuine preferences, but to try and strategically avoid distasteful outcomes. Under the current system, the manifestation of tactical voting is obvious. In preferencial systems, it becomes possible to marginalize potential rivals to one’s first choice by voting for non-preferred candidates as a second choice. There were charges of this sort of tactical voting in the Burlington mayor’s race, as GOP candidate Kevin Curley was reported to have actively encouraged some supporters to indicate Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss as their second choice in order to skew the runoff results for Democrat Hinda Miller (this despite the fact that Kiss would have been the honest, ideological second choice of few Republicans). There’s no evidence that this ocurred on a scale to effect the election, but the potential for such sleaziness is there, and IRV proponents do themselves (and the democratic process) no favors by pretending it isn’t.

Approval Voting makes this sort of mischief ineffective, but is opposed by IRV proponents such as the Center for Voting and Democracy because it leads to the most “feel-good” candidate who bugs the fewest people coming out on top, and therefore potentially squeezes out dynamic or challenging candidates.

In any event, it seems clear to me that the buzz in Vermont is entirely too binary; either the current system or IRV – and that the debate over IRV is too binary as well; you’re either for it (and for more representational democracy) or against it. For my part, I support IRV (as I’ve said many times), but I also support a healthy, honest debate on the matter and recognize the unfortunate truth handed down by Arrow’s theorem. From Science News:

Is there a best voting procedure? In 1952, Kenneth Arrow, a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., proved that no voting system is completely free from counterintuitive outcomes. Arrow looked at voting systems that satisfy two harmless-sounding properties. First, if everyone prefers candidate A to candidate B, then A should be ranked higher than B. Second, voters’ opinions about candidate C shouldn’t affect whether A beats B-after all, if you prefer coffee to tea, finding out that hot chocolate is available shouldn’t suddenly make you prefer tea to coffee. These sound like reasonable restrictions, yet Arrow proved that the only voting system that always satisfies them is a dictatorship, where a single person’s preferences determine the outcome.

The paradoxical behavior Arrow studied crops up all the time.

Or perhaps we’re just faced with another social manifestation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Perhaps if you look too closely at any human institution, process or component, the results get a little… fuzzy.

All the more reason to move forward with deliberation and without dogmatic preconceptions or preconceived outcomes – but as always, to keep moving forward nonetheless.

For more (and there is much more), check out the Proportional Representation Library, and by all means come back and post on your favorite.

[Originally published in the Vermont Journal, with slightly different editing…]

The Democrats are coming back into power nationally – and into increased power locally – in a brave new world. More citizens are engaged as voter turnout is way up, and those voters are communicating with each other via the Internet. Political blogs and citizen journalism sites are changing the way information is gathered, processed and transmitted, in extraordinary ways. Only those deeply in denial would still argue that this “new media” isn’t having a profound effect on electioneering.

But there is another key thing about this new, energized, engaged (and educated) electorate that has changed in the brave new world.

Our expectations.

If there was another loser besides the Republican Party this last election, it was (to an extent) cynicism. Over the decades, voter cynicism has enabled our elected officials to so often perform in their public appearances as bad actors. It’s not that they’ve actually been fooling very many people (although I suspect many of them think they have), it’s that we don’t expect anything more from them, so we let them slide by.

After all, if they’re all a bunch of crooks and liars and our vote doesn’t matter, why should we be surprised if a professional politician sounds laughably insincere at every opportunity? It’s been going on so long, it’s not simply a bad habit; cheeseball phoniness is practically the unspoken modus operandi of the professional politician. The artificial and inappropriate ear-to-ear grin the second the camera is on, the punctuated unnatural cadence to the spoken word, and the saccharine inflections in the tone are all meant to demonstrate how deeply a politician is feeling our pain.

The recent internal battle over the number two post among US House Democrats in Washington was an unwelcome reminder. After a testy contest between Rep. Steny Hoyer and Rep. Jack Murtha, the new leadership team did their obligatory press conference. There was the briefest of moments while the door to the press room was opening that you caught a glimpse of newly anointed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s true expression and demeanor. In barely a split second, she threw her political switch and the giant smile turned on as easily as a light switch. It was one of those smiles that is wide and broad, but doesn’t really turn upwards at the corners the way a genuine expression of joy would be expected to. It looked almost painful – as did all the similar “smiles” of her leadership team.

All that is, except one – Rep. Murtha, the “loser.” Despite his many shortcomings, Murtha has never been one for the mannequined delight that his comrades of both parties so readily sport. He looked at ease – natural, but most of all he looked honest. He looked real.

The contrast was striking.

The event spawned the rhetorical manifestation of the cheesy grin from others in the caucus (including our own Rep. Peter Welch) who suggested that everyone was a winner in the end.

I saw Murtha’s face. He wasn’t a winner. He lost.

Now, I don’t believe that everyone sporting (or speaking) the cheesy grin-thing is automatically a phony or a liar – not by a long shot. In fact, it’s precisely because I don’t believe that of them that I expect more from them – and I don’t want to be patronized by a mirage of faux gleefulness, especially when the stakes are actually high.

I want to see some real leadership, not a second rate Shakespeare in the Park.

The long and short is that in this brave new world of politics, the era of the phony grin is over. We all expect more. The new majority’s new watchword should be candor. Anything short of that in Washington – or in Vermont – is not going to fly anymore.

Okay, John, I didn’t think of doing it, but just for fun, here goes.

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The Thanksgiving diary I really really really wanted to post is delayed for technical reasons, sadly. Hopefully I’ll post it tomorrow. In the meantime, consider the following spotted a couple blocks from my house yesterday:

Bearing in mind two points: one, that this is on beyond a gas guzzler, this vehicle is an in-your-face “fuck you” to any concerns about efficiency, environmentalism, sustainability, class, and those who hold them – and two, that the maxi-pad sticky stuff could actually cause monetary damage to the vehicle when removed.

Discuss (after you finish chuckling, I know – it is funny-lookin’)…