The funding of the Rainville campaign from scandal-ridden Republican power brokers in Washington only becomes clearer with ongoing revelations of a coverup from the GOP House Leadership in the Mark Foley congressional page scandal.

First, Rep John Shimkus (R-IL), head of the Congressional Page Program (who sat on the Foley concerns and did NOT inform fellow page board members of the issue). From KSDK in Illinois:

Since the scandal broke last week, there have been calls for Shimkus to be fired from his role as Chair of the House Page Program.

Shimkus says he will not be forced out by what he calls “false accusations” and “the politics of personal destruction.”

“I think we’ve improved the program,” says Shimkus.

Contributions to Martha Rainville by Shimkus’ “John S Fund”: $1000.00 (03/31/2006)

Second, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), chair of the NRCC. From WaPo:

With his statement, Reynolds, who is locked in a difficult reelection campaign, signaled he was unwilling to take the fall alone amid partisan attacks that were becoming increasingly vituperative. The Democratic National Committee yesterday issued a statement asking “Why Did Tom Reynolds Cover Up Congressman’s Sex Crimes?” It continued: “While the shocking [online] exchanges produced an immediate uproar that cost Congressman Foley his job, at least one member of the House Republican leadership had known about the situation for months and did nothing about it: . . . Reynolds.”

Contributions to Martha Rainville from Reynolds’ “TOMPAC”: $5000 (03/31/2006)

Do we really want our US Representative beholden to these people?

Tommy Douglas the NDP premier of Saskatchewan introduced a single payer health care system into that small (by population) rural and agricultural province.  The doctors initially opposed the program and went on strike in 1962.  The strike failed when a little girl died because of it.

The minority liberal government of Lester Pearson soon thereafter introduced medicare nationally with the support of the NDP now led by Tommy Douglas.

The Canadian health care system is viewed by the overwheming majority of Canadians as one of the country’s crown jewels.

Recently, Canadians voted Tommy Douglas the greatest Canadian of all time beating out Banting and Best (insulin)Trudeau, Pearson and even Wayne Gretzky. 

When Vermont introduces a single payer health care system, this small, agricultural, and rural state will once again lead the nation and I can only hope that Scudder Parker will be our Tommy Douglas.

Two quick items: First, Scudder Parker is currently introducing himself to the Daily Kos crowd. His diary has made the recommended list and is drawing comments (and contributions?) from around the country. Go have a look see and drop a comment.

Second, the Caledonian (Broken) Record is currently running an online poll for US Congress. This is the flagship paper of the angry right in Vermont, so it’s not Peter Welch’s crowd. Nevertheless, he is holding his own and is only a bit behind Martha Rainville (224 to 198) at posting time. Go help him out with a vote, and spread the word. [UPDATE: When I posted this, Rainville was around 30 points up in the online poll, and I now wake up to Welch being almost 50 points up….nice work folks. Keep it coming – this poll is up for an unspecified amount of this whole week (wonder if they’ll pull it the second Rainville gets ahead again, if that even happens)]

(MONDAY, OCTOBER 16 — Even though this diary has been up for a while, I’m bumping it to the front in the hopes of renewing and expanding the discussion. It’s a good one. – promoted by odum)

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Libertarians, kind of the same I have with ideological Socialists; their world view doesn’t seem to take into account human nature or the way the world really works. Now, I am in total agreement with social libertarianism, it’s just the economic part I’ve had a problem with, because it goes under the assumption that the free markets will somehow do the right thing if left unhindered by regulation. We don’t need a USDA; selling bad meat is bad business, so they won’t do it, or so the (il)logic goes. Somehow, I wouldn’t find that comforting when I get E. coli from that uninspected hamburger.  I think that’s starting to change, as corporations now find themselves having more power than governments.

Markos, of Daily Kos fame, wrote the featured essay at the op-ed website of the libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute, called ‘The Case for the Libertarian Democrat’. In it, he lays out a compelling case for libertarian support of the Democratic party, as the Republicans have abandoned much of what libertarians hold dear, and represent a great threat to freedom, and are too in bed with the corporations to offer any kind of protection from abuses of power. There’s too many good points in the article to paraphrase here, so just go check it out here.

Even more refreshing than Kos’ commentary is Harold Meyerson’s commentary that is a response to Kos, called, ‘Democrats, Liberals, and Libertarians.’ He makes the telling point of Kos’ idea being ‘libertarianism for the real world’:

..and more particularly in 21st-century America, encroachments on privacy, personal security, and the environment are as likely, if not more likely, to come from business as they are from the state, and these are threats that require state regulation if they’re to be mitigated or dispelled…

…To argue, as a classic libertarian might, that a consumer is as free to switch banks as a bank is to sell its data neglects to note that a bank that doesn’t sell its data is at a competitive disadvantage with one that does, and a consumer who can’t find a privacy-protecting bank is simply out of luck. In short, the free play of markets can be a threat to individual freedom, unless individual freedom is a term that applies only to businesses and not to their consumers or employees or the people who must breathe their pollutants. This is something that New Deal liberals and social democrats have long understood and sought to redress. Indeed, the central insight of 20th century liberalism was that freedoms conflict, that a company’s freedom to dominate the marketplace was often in conflict with a consumer’s freedom to find a product at a fair price, or a worker’s freedom to find a decent job or form a union, or a citizen’s freedom to have an equal voice in the legislative process. And that to establish some parity of freedoms, the state had to take a hand…

…In short, as the balance of forces in capitalism shifts entirely towards investors and executives and away from employees, the need for a state that takes the burden of economic and health security off employers who won’t pick it up and employees who can’t pick it up is increasingly urgent. It’s hard to predict what exactly the tipping point will be as our private-sector welfare state continues to contract. But at some point, the Democrats will embrace a decisively larger role for the state in these matters because the public will demand it—not because the public will suddenly identify itself as liberal, but because there will be nowhere else to turn. And at that moment, I think even the Mountain State neo-libertarians will go along. After all, the New Deal didn’t arise because Americans suddenly awakened and proclaimed themselves progressive. It arose because the unchecked power and unregulated practices of major corporations and banks and the market itself led to an economic disaster.

Admittedly, Meyerson is no dyed-in-the-wool-Cato-fellow, he’s a bit of a lefty, but damn it, he makes sense. Especially to me. I’m not in favor of some big nanny-state government; I don’t believe that just because you’re an American, you’re entitled to a good life. But the tough-shit-you’re-on-your-own mentality of many Repubs and Libertarians doesn’t work for me either. What we’re talking about here falls somewhere in between.

you can read more of J.D. Ryan’s writings at Five Before Chaos.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, former Clinton staffer and head of the DCCC just can’t let an opportunity go by without insulting or smearing Howard Dean. Never mind that we’re less than four weeks from Election Day and petty infighting and backstabbing is even less appropriate now than it is in general. It sticks in his ego so badly that Dean’s “50 state strategy” has the support of the Dem rank-and-file that he doesn’t even bother pretending to contain his infantile petulance. What a prick. Click here to give him a piece of your mind.

So, the Vermont media is definitely working on what Freyne is now calling “porngate” – that is, the allegations that Martha Rainville covered up an illegal porno film made by Guard members (including, possibly some high-profile names?). How do I know? Cause I got a call today from a member of our local fourth estate to ask me about a rumor that’s been circulating that I have a copy of the..er, “piece”… myself. For the record I don’t… but I’m not sure what to think about this rumor that I do… (“Hey, ya hear about this Guard porno tape? Yeah, I bet ODUM’s got a copy..”). FYI: If you haven’t yet, click the link above and check out Freyne’s transcript of the Rainville press conference where she was grilled on this. She doesn’t hold up too well…

The cover story of this week’s Seven Days, concerning the limited (but not insignificant) Defense Department contracts brought into Vermont by Senator Patrick Leahy is a truly interesting, fair, and thought-provoking read. Do we want those contracts? What about the jobs they create? Is there a difference between the contracts for making body armor and mobile hospitals vs missiles? It’s fuzzy enough that even the Progressive quoted, Rep. Winston Dowland in the Northeast Kingdom says:

“I don’t agree with this war, but I agree that we need to keep buying this stuff,” Dowland says. “People are just interested in making a living and trying to feed their families.”

I’m still working out my feelings on the whole business (besides the general queasiness), but I’d be very curious to hear the views of others. Please post away…

…and the day after I start ads on the site, Baruth comes out with an indictment of national liberal blogs with corporate ads run amok. Yeesh. Great timing, Philip. Thanks for that. Just to make GMD look worse, this dynamic google-ad-thing that I have on my site has stuck up ads for John McCain and George Allen! Hyarrrrgh!! Tell you what – it’s part of the user agreement that I promise not to explicitly encourage people to click on any ads…but they didn’t say anything about explicitly encouraging them to avoid an ad like the plague. Please don’t click on Republican ads. There was also a Hillary Clinton one – that one I’ll (shudder) leave to your better judgment, gentle readers… but I don’t wanna know if you go there, deal?

( – promoted by odum)

The Republicans in charge of our federal government have spent the past six years in their own world. The result has been a twisting of reality that has cost lives and caused suffering in this country and around the world. It is time to demand a change not only in the culture of our federal government, but a change in our spending priorities.

Our President has taken to lying to us. In a recent series of campaign stops, he accused Democrats of not wanting to intercept the conversations of terrorists and accused them of wanting to wait until we are attacked to deal with terrorists.
You would think that Democrats are worse than terrorists.
Perhaps to him, they are.
He is the leader of the party also in charge of the House and Senate. Under their combined leadership the world has become more unstable and its people more fearful.
These leaders have taken a budget surplus and turned it into a record deficit. They have turned the overwhelming support of the world in the aftermath of 9/11 into an almost global derision of our beliefs and policies.
These are the same people who continue to mismanage the war in Iraq.
The same people who deny global warming exists and refuse to increase auto mileage standards.
The same people who promote a system of lobbyists who draft legislation and pay for our bloated election system.
The same people who served huge tax breaks to the wealthiest among us in the face of abject poverty and widening disparities in income
The same people who brought us the absurdity of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the fight to “save” Terri Schiavo.
The same people who deliver government resources to special interests in the form of no-bid contracts and earmarks to special interest groups.
The same people who have created a culture that supports people like disgraced Rep. Mark Foley, who resigned amid a flurry of emails where he was soliciting Congressional pages.
It is time for a change.
We need to create a sensible government by demanding a higher standard from our elected officials. Ending the lying and criminal behavior is obvious. We have to go farther to address our budget priorities and insist politicians keep their hands out of the cookie jar, even if we have to give up our own pet projects in the bargain.
It is hard to argue against a bridge in Alaska when we happily accept federal dollars for a recreation path.
Everyone from business leaders to government officials to homeowners thinks taxes are too high. We struggle with choosing between several under-funded programs while the least fortunate among us do without.
What we need is lower taxes and more money for social programs.
A group of legislators introduced a bill in the U.S. House in March of 2006 called the Common Sense Budget Act of 2006. The program spearheaded by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities calls for eliminating $60 billion in defense spending.
It is a drop in the bucket. Half of our annual discretionary spending, $440 billion, goes to the Pentagon, much of it for out-dated, cold war programs that do little more than prop up an incumbent.
That doesn’t include the billions we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By comparison, the federal government spends $40 billion dollars on K to 12 education, $1 billion on world hunger and $50 billion on children’s health care. We spend $2.5 billion on energy independence and renewables. (See www.sensiblepriorities.org)
Imagine if $60 billion a year in useless military spending was used for health care, combating global warming and improving education. The influx in local spending would lower taxes while improving lives. It would stimulate the economy while solving a host of social problems.
A Democratic leadership may remove the worst of the Republican guard from power and given enough time may undo some of the worst that has been committed in the last six years. However, most Democrats are not talking about reordering our spending priorities.
Most of them have not signed on to the Common Sense Budget Act. Not Sen. Leahy, not Jim Jeffords, not Bernie Sanders and certainly not any Republican candidate.
We know of only one Vermont politician who understands that reducing unnecessary Pentagon spending could make all the difference in the world.
Peter Welch.
Welch has spent decades serving Vermont and understands the issues. He supports universal access to health care, actively reducing global warming, improving education and how we fund it and a sense of fiscal responsibility.
Vermont would be well served by electing him serve in Washington.

Rainville then (emphasis added):

Rainville reiterated her clean campaign pledge earlier this week when she proposed creating an office of public integrity to oversee Congress.
“I will not attack my opponents and I will not condone third parties coming in to attack my opponents, and if that should happen I will publicly and immediately ask them to stop,” Rainville said Tuesday.

Rainville now (regarding the third party ad from the national Republicans using Jim Jeffords’ image, even after he has asked them to stop):

A Rainville spokesman said her campaign will not, and under election finance rules is forbidden to, ask the NRCC to pull the ad.

“It’s a nice ad. We are pleased the NRCC is staying positive,” Brendan McKenna said. “I don’t think it comes across as anyone endorsing anyone.”

Two comparable scenarios, two completely different, self-serving takes on the law.

Another sign that, as many of us have been saying all along, her “clean campaign pledge” is as phony as her plagiarized policy positions. Martha is about whatever helps Martha.

(Tomorrow is the second week of my Vermont Journal column. Since the first wasn’t available online, I thought I might reprint it here. It’s very fluffy and tame by GMD standards, but don’t worry – I get more aggressive this week. The VJ is delivered to about 20,000 homes across all of Lamoille County, about a third of Washington County and a li’l smidgin of Chittenden County)

Vermont’s lack of party registration makes for an odd sort of independence in major elections such as the one coming up in November. It’s not like the comparable label in other states, where “Independent” is always an affirmative statement. As far as politics are concerned, it’s often a more matter-of-fact independence that we see in Vermont – not so much a personal decision so much as the personal default.

This unusual dynamic has created an equally unusual class of swing voter. Though most Vermonters would probably self-identify as generally Republican, Democrat or Progressive, this matter-of-fact independence has given us a large swath of statewide swing voters that decide who they intend to vote for, not based on the ads or the pundits, bur rather, much the way they might decide what to wear on a night out on the town.

Most people (yeah, even men) look at their going-out wardrobe as a collective statement that announces their personality. Someone might choose to dress on the “crunchy-granola” side, but in new and expensive clothing to identify as somewhat alternative, but well-off and sophisticated at the same time. Perhaps a business suit, but with a catchy tie that says “I may be professional, but I’m not boring.”

When Vermont swing voters vote their personal slate on Election Day, many are thinking much the same way. In Washington County (where I live), that accounts for the number of self-identifying liberals who vote for long time Republican Senator Bill Doyle every two years. Where they’ll vote in nearly every other race for those candidates who reflect their interests and ideology, they use a vote for Doyle to make a personal statement of independence. To demonstrate to themselves and others that they are free thinkers, unbound by partisan orthodoxy. Doyle becomes their wacky tie in an otherwise consistent ensemble.

Similarly, conservatives often use a Bernie Sanders vote as a way to make the statement that, while they may be no fans of liberals, they’re savvy enough to realize that large corporations need to have a skeptical eye kept on them.

While perhaps a bit endearing, this dynamic often makes it difficult for qualified challengers to get their message through to people (the obvious exception being Sanders’ challenger Rich Tarrant, who through sheer personal wealth has forced his attack ads into everyone’s face over and over again, but such an in-your-face attack strategy has only served to turn voters off). Incumbents become like favorite outfits that swing voters only bring out for that special event once every other year, leaving many of us on both sides of the political divide scratching our heads, wondering what exactly that 10-15% is thinking

It’s for this reason that we should be grateful for the US Representative race between Peter Welch and Martha Rainville, which is forcing the swing-set to sit up and take a little more notice. Hopefully this extra attention will encourage more of this slice of the electorate to step back a bit and truly examine which candidates actually match their own ideology up and down the ballot, rather than just falling back on old habits once again.

All of us will be better served if they do.

The big news du jour, of course, is that since the Rainville campaign hasn’t had a chance to screw up yet this week, the NRCC decided to screw up on her behalf, finding a way to coax an endorsement of Welch out of Jim Jeffords who had otherwise intended to stay neutral. From the Vermont Guardian piece:

U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords is calling on national Republicans to pull an ad that he says leaves viewers with the impression that he is supporting Martha Rainville in her bid to fill Vermont’s lone congressional seat.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Jeffords said. He’s supporting Democrat Peter Welch.

Jeffords, who has said he would not become personally involved in electing candidates this year, said the new ad prompted him to respond, and to say that he believes Vermonters, and the nation, would be better served by electing Democrat Peter Welch.

In his letter, Jeffords states, “I must advise that while I think Martha Rainville is a talented leader, I feel very strongly that the country will be better served with Democrats gaining control of he House of Representatives in the 110th Congress. Therefore, for this election, I believe Peter Welch is a better choice for Vermont.”

In light of Jeffords’ complaint, he called on the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-NY,to “cease running the advertisement immediately.”…

…The recent ad, funded by the NRCC, begins with the images and names of Jeffords, former Sen. George Aiken and Sen. Bob Stafford …

…However, Jeffords said the use of his name and image “strongly implies that I am supporting General Rainville. This is not true.”

An NRCC spokesman said the group would not change the ad, despite Jeffords’ concerns.

The follies of the Rainville operation are truly staggering.

This from the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star (emphasis added):

Voter registration offices around Virginia were inundated with complaints from residents who received letters last week saying they may not be signed up to vote.

The letters were from the Richmond-based Family Foundation, a strong proponent of the proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“Each voter will be asked if he or she would like to define marriage as a union only between one man and one woman in the Commonwealth,” the letter states. “By amending our constitution this way, Virginians can be sure that our state law banning same-sex marriage is not overturned by an activist judge, leaving/forcing our Commonwealth to uphold/recognize Vermont values.“

It’s amusing (in a pathetic, twisted and depressing sort of way), but if we’re inclined to get complacent and buy into this sort of rhetoric about Vermont as a uniformly “live-and-let-live,” socially libertarian state, we need only look at WDEV’s True North program to realize we have plenty of homegrown, wingnut bigots in our own backyard that would make their counterparts in Mississippi proud.

After getting cut off by Mark Johnson on his earlier program, usual-suspect-whackjob Brian Pearl called in to use the Mark Foley congressional page scandal to engage in his standard-fare verbal gaybashing by suggesting that Vermont Statehouse pages might be in danger due to their contact with openly gay Rep. Bill Lippert (D-Hinesburg). While Pearl is a laughingstock in most in political circles (except, of course, Rich Tarrant’s) – and hearing him repeatedly confuse Douglas administration Press Secretary Jason Gibbs (presumably) with Burlington Representative Jason Lorber is certainly a hoot, the fact is that the hosts joined right in, waxing gleefully about their hatred of Lippert, nominally based on his support of Outright Vermont and the Gender Identity Bill (obviously many officeholders support these things, but if they’re not gay, these kind of knuckle-draggers aren’t as excited to try and link them to pedophiles).

Just to underscore the point that Pearl isn’t alone in this hatemongering, the phone lines seemed to light up in the last few minutes of the broadcast with like-minded nutbars. Now I know many feel that we should just ignore the far-right fringe rather than grant them attention with direct confrontation, but I disagree. As an organizer during Oregon’s Measure 9 and 13 battles in the nineties, I’ve seen first hand that you can’t get complacent about these folks and these issues.

If you can hold your bile down, you can check the three, poorly recorded mp3s I was sent from Thursday’s broadcast, the first being Pearl’s initial call, and the next two being his choir of cheerleader bigots. The last one even has the host discussing the “big bucks” Lippert gets from the “homosexual agenda,” and then starts directing listeners to where they can find copies of this agenda online. Weird.

File 1 –
File 2 –
File 3 –