Here is another in what seems to be a steady stream of polls in past few years that show confidence in Congress continuing down. Gallup found that Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution down to just 10%.

The pollster telephoned almost 1,600 adults and asked: Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself have in each one – a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little. The results place Congress last for four years running on a list of sixteen societal institutions.

This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record.  

While Congress –  one of the country’s major democratic institutions – continues to unravel, according to Gallup four distinctly undemocratic institutions receive the highest ratings. The military, small business, the police, and the Church or organized religion are the four top institutions eliciting the most confidence.

Americans remain most confident in the military, at 76%. Small business and the police also continue to rank highly, with 65% and 57% of Americans, respectively, expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in these institutions.

The Church or organized religion in the Gallup poll ranked fourth at 48%. All this may not be a good sign for the future when confidence in Congress lags so far behind the military; the police and even small business-not that all three in aren’t deserving institutions in their own way. It seems as if a democracy that is functioning well and in balance would have institutional confidence levels more evenly divided.  

more data after the jump

Exposing the Real Ralph Nader

There are a lot of things people don’t know about Nader.

Any time the name ‘Ralph Nader’ comes up, it is sure to stir controversy.  It is like waving a red flag in front of the Democrats.

We’ve heard it all.  “He’s too old”.  Let’s look at that one. Would it be acceptable to say: “He’s too white, too Hispanic, too black, too short, too tall…”. Ageism is one of the most destructive prejudices that can exist in any culture. It devalues and trivializes an entire class of people – sometimes those with the most experience and wisdom.

Other cultures understand this. They value their elders. Only in the United States do we not ‘get it’.  The current trend would put Nader on an ice floe and replace him with a kid who just spent four years at a keg party.  That is the view promoted by the culture.  

Now is a time when we should celebrate all who contribute to our survival, young and old.  Age is irrelevant at a time when a 29 year-old and other relatively young men are making enormous contributions. Not only is age irrelevant, but also we need to take another look at the ‘paper chase’. Edward Snowden has taught us that being a high school drop-out is not necessarily a bad thing. Self education will be the way of the future.  

We also hear: “Nader can’t get enough votes.”  The right come-back for that one is: “No shit”. (Sorry for the less than creative language there. That’s the only response I can come up with for that old argument.)  A more polite answer would be, if the voters were capable of critical thinking NADER would win any election with a land slide.  Holding any candidate responsible for the actions of voters is fuzzy thinking.  

Voters – not candidates – are responsible for every vote they cast.  Voters have created the current conditions by consistently voting for the ‘lesser evil’.  Never, never, never let them off the hook.   Every ballot has a ‘write-in’ option. There is no requirement to vote only for candidates selected by a Party. Voters have unlimited choice. Our survival depends either on ballots or bullets.  Bullets have no conscience. Voters should.

There are a lot of things people don’t know about Nader.  He is smart.  Most people know that.  Even his critics admit that.   Most do not know that he is guided by a strong sense of justice and morality.

Nader is one of the most egoless Statesmen this war weary nation has ever seen.  I can prove that. Back in the 1970s the Electric Company had plans to build a floating Nuclear Power Plant off the coast of Atlantic City. A small group of citizens in Cape May, NJ fought this proposal. They were getting no where until Nader came from his home in Washington and helped. He came at his own expense. No fanfare. No publicity.  The floating Nuclear Plant was never built.

Nader is motivated by conscience. The list of Conscientious Objectors to USA policies is growing – Greenwald, Assange, Manning, Hammond, Snowden, and many others.  Nader was one of the original COs.  

We owe him a lot. He might never go down in history as President.  Instead he will always have an even higher status… that of Super Statesman.  He is honest. He is moral.  He is uncorruptable. He cannot be bought.  That is more than we can say about those we vote for and elect.

ROSEMARIE JACKOWSKI

Rosemarie Jackowski is an Advocacy Journalist, Peace Advocate, and author of BANNED IN VERMONT.

dissent@sover.net

ON THIS DAY: On June 16, 1933, President Roosevelt opened his New Deal recovery program, signing bank, rail and industry bills and initiating farm aid.

I celebrated when President Obama was elected.  I thought he would be the next FDR.

Instead of a New Deal for a new century, we have an expanded NSA, privacy violations, a country spying on its own people and drones murdering innocent women and children around the world.  

Instead of a New Deal recovery program, we have whistleblower heroes renamed as terrorists, who when captured and in prison are treated in ways that violate the Geneva Convention let alone all values of human decency and moral ethics.

From the Huffington Post:  

Daniel Ellsberg, the former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers

.

Is this the New Deal America voted for?

Change?

On this Father’s Day, I think our forefathers, who were called Rebels and seen as terrorists by Britain’s King George, would see our current lack of democracy and violation of personal rights and freedoms as an abomination.  

This is not the change, I thought I would see.  It is not the FDR-style New Deal most Americans expected.  It is a dishonor to our forefathers and the freedoms under which these United States of America were founded.

Reflect on this situation again on George Orwell’s birthday:  June 25, 1903.  He did forewarn us that big brother is watching…

As Evangelic Christians and their Leaders have uniquely intimate relationships with the Holy Trinity, they know with Extreme Certainty that the powerful gay and lesbian community has incurred the wrath of God numerous times in the past two decades (see Hurricanes Sandy, Katrina, and Bonnie, the Haiti and Northridge Earthquakes, and the Japanese Tsunami, as documented here), how then do those Spiritual Great Ones find cause for the Worst Fire in the History of Colorado, currently destroying All Things Good outside of Colorado Springs, the place many consider to be the Evangelical Vatican?

As you may recall, one of the features of Randy Brock’s Titanicampaign for Governor was the fact that he outsourced many of its functions to out-of-state firms with a history of working for ultraconservative candidates. Indeed, he spent a boatload of money on “experts” from Ohio, Indiana, and California, as well as the shameful amount of cash hoovered up by his supposed friend, Darcie “Hack” Johnston.

One of those “experts” was Nick Everhart, president of the Ohio-based Strategy Group for Media. who served as Brock’s “media consultant.” In other words, Everhart was in charge of deciding which ratholes Brock would pour his money into. Nice work if you can get it.

Well, Buzzfeed has a long and very juicy story about dissension within the ranks at Strategy Group, including the extremely sudden firing of Mr. Everhart on April 6.

It’s well worth your time. It documents a cultlike atmosphere within the firm, and thoroughly displays its extremely conservative (and right-wing Christian) orientation. Buzzfeed reporter McKay Coppins describes the firm as…

…the largest, most combative, and perhaps most controversial band of messaging warriors in Republican politics. Their blandly named company, Strategy Group for Media, has spent more than a decade developing a slashing formula for turning the party’s right-wing rejects into members of Congress. Now there are at least 40 Republicans in Congress who have worked with the Strategy Group, which serves as a campaign and strategy clearing house for the uncompromisingly conservative wing of the congressional caucus that has been at the center of American politics since 2010.

… The company had the rare distinction of working, serially, for two presidential candidates last year – Michele Bachmann then Newt Gingrich. Other clients include the great Right hopes of 2016: Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

I guess Randy Brock didn’t make the list of “distinctive” 2012 clients. Sorry, Randy.  

Everhart’s abrupt exit came after a falling-out with company founder Rex Elsass, who is a real piece of work if the article is to be believed. You can read all the gory details at Buzzfeed; for our purposes, the story is a useful reminder of the kind of people Randy Brock chose to get in bed with.

Which makes you wonder what kind of Governor he would have made. There are several Republican Governors around the country who ran on relatively inoffensive platforms who have now swerved hard to the right (Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Michigan’s Rick Snyder, for example).

Was Randy Brock another stealth candidate for the Koch Brothers/Tea Party agenda? Thankfully, we’ll never know. But the same question could be asked more broadly of the Vermont Republican Party: are they really all that different from their national brethren, aside from ceding ground on lost-cause social issues that are tangential to the agenda of the national party’s paymasters?  

From Ellsberg to Snowden – the best is yet to come…

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. We could celebrate by signing petitions to free Jeremy Hammond. He has fallen between the cracks because so much is happening. We cannot abandon him or Manning or Assange.

About Snowden… Why can’t someone file a Federal False Claims Act Suit on his behalf. Imagine if he received 30% of all the money the government spent on the illegal activities he exposed. He is one of the people who would use the money wisely and compassionately.

Also – imagine if our schools taught about Snowden and used him as a role model, a defender of Democracy and Freedom of the Press – finally a REAL hero instead of those guys who slaughtered Native Americans. I know that most schools won’t allow the truth, but the contribution of Snowden must be incorporated into the schools and the Youth culture. They are the voters of the future.

When’s the movie coming out? Who will play the lead? How about a rock band named “EDDIE AND THE WHISTLEBLOWERS’.

To be continued……………

Well, I’ve been reading some of the Vt. Digger comments (not all) by obvious Little Dems who say Jeremy Dodge has been ‘playing’ back and forth with Shumlin, setting himself up as a martyr on one hand, and, on the other, a slick self-interested con man whose next move will not necessarily be what he says it will be, nor mean what it really means.  I love it!

For what it really means is potentially great theatre, in which Governor Sleaze gets sucker-punched left and right, and, instead of us wondering what the Gov’s latest bullshit will be, we’ll have the spectacle of a low-income habitual offender using all his mentally diminished skills to take our Gov through the political ringer and then the cleaners.  You gotta love it!

Headline:

WHAT THE FUCK DOES HE WANT?!…Shumlin and Diamond Beg Dodge To be Reasonable; Shumlin’s Approval Rating At 29%; Most Vermonters Think Governor Dumber Than Dodge

Yes.  This could get really good.  Bend over, Shummy.  Wish you had moved next to Bill Sorrell now?

Hell, Gov, probably the very first time Dodge saw you as his new neighbor, he said to himself:  “Look at this rich asshole.  I call him meat.  This is gonna be better and easier than any scam I’ve ever pulled.  Just gotta play him.  Yeah, that’s what you do with rich assholes.  And he’s the Governor too.  Can’t afford any scandal shit.  Think I’ll just mosey on over there and see if he wants any landscaping done.  Be neighborly.  Boy, almost too easy.  Meat.”

Hell, if this keeps up, Dodge might end up with Shumlin’s job too.  Sort of a cross between those two classic movies, ALL THE KING’S MEN and A FACE IN THE CROWD.

With more than a little bit of The Culhanes thrown in:

Grandpa:  “That there Governor still thinks he pig-fucked you, Jeremy.”

Jeremy:  “Awh.  He don’t know one end of a pig from another.”

Lulu:  “He sure is in for a surprise.”

Clem:  “I made some posters up for your election next year, Jeremy.”

Jeremy:  “You didn’t use any of that paper I took at WalMart last year, did you?”

Clem:  “Nah.  The Governor gave me a bunch of his letterhead papers.  Said he’d bill me for it later.”

Jeremy:  “You won’t have to worry about that.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what time it is now.”

Grandpa:  “Time to call up them media folks.  Clem wrote a whole new different statement.  On the Governor’s paper.”

Jeremy:  “Tell the media I said ‘Hey’ and that I really like the Governor.  That he’s a nice man.  Even though he disses me.”

Grandpa:  “You bet.  They’ll love that.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what’s on the TV now.”

Grandpa:  “Not us. Yet.”

Jeremy:  “But tune in tomorrow, Lulu.  For a new episode.”

Lulu:  “Jeremy?”

Jeremy:  “What, Lulu?”

Lulu:  “When you get that 2 million dollars and get to be Governor, can you buy me a suitcase of Bud and a quart of Jack?  And put a Cee-ment Pond in on the Statehouse Lawn?”

Jeremy:  “Done.  Boy, I wish I didn’t have to pay them two Republican lawyers forty percent of that 2 million.”

Clem:  “Hey, Jeremy.  I got an idea about that.  And how to make them wind up paying us.”

Grandpa:  “First, let’s finish off the Governor.”

Jeremy:  “He’s as good as finished.  At least on one side.  Gotta flip him.”

Clem:  “I’ll say.”

Lulu:  “I wonder what I’d look like as Secretary of State.”

Grandpa:  “Good, child, good.  Better than even that Deb lady.  Right, Jeremy?”

Jeremy:  “I think I’ll head over to the WalMart.  Anybody want anything?”

Yes.  Tune in again, folks, when we’ll hear Jeremy say:  “I think Governor Shumlin is the swellest fellow I’ve ever done business with ever.”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

(Our next episode of Governor Hee-Haw may include the famous skits: “I’m A Pickin'(Shumlin) & I’m A Grinnin'(Dodge)” & Shumlin & Diamond doing a rendition of “Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me.”  He searched the world over for a great real estate deal, but he met another dealer and (spit) it was gone.)    

I see that Mr. Jeremy Dodge has got himself a lawyer. Or, should I say, the lawyer has gotten himself a Jeremy Dodge?

Yes, Dodge has hired Brady Toensing, second-generation ideological ambulance chaser, to represent him in his Real Estate Deal 2.0 with Governor Shumlin. And Toensing, a purely political attorney by trade, has subcontracted the actual real estate portion of the work to one Joy Karnes Limoge of Williston.

Her specialty is property law, but her passion is Republican politics. As Peter Hirschfeld reports (behind the Mitchell Family Paywall), Limoge was near the top of Randy Brock’s disastrous gubernatorial campaign:

Limoge was a key supporter of Brock, who in his concession speech last year included her name first on the short list of people to whom he offered special thanks for their roles in his campaign.

Limoge’s political proclivities are providential, considering that Master Toensing was last seen in these parts repping for Brian Dubie’s failed 2010 gubernatorial bid. Nice package: top figures from both of Shumlin’s rivals coming together on a case that could cause no end of headaches for the governor.

And WCAX, ever insightful, suspects the worst. Its story is headlined “Is Governor’s Controversial Land Deal Turning Political?”

Coming up after the break: “Does Bear Shit In Woods?” Plus, Dan Dowling with your forecast.

As well-trained advocates, Limoge and Toensing manage to keep a straight face while insisting that their motives are pure as the driven snow. Toensing calls it an “opportunity to assist a fellow Vermonter.” (Maybe Legal Aid can put him on speed dial, since he’s so darn charitable.) And Limoge, speaking with Hirschfeld, went straight for the tear ducts:

“Poor Jerry Dodge,” Limoge said. “He’s a hardworking, poor Vermonter, and he’s coming up against one of the most powerful men in the state with the means to hire one of the best lawyers in the state. He needs legal representation to get himself through this.”

Pardon me, my Weaselometer just hit Defcon One.

After the jump: a stroll through our Toensing Family Memory Book.

Brady Toensing is the junior partner in the DC law firm diGenova and Toensing, water-carriers for conservative causes since the Reagan years. The senior Toensing is Brady’s mother Victoria, a constant presence on shouty cable-news shows. The other partner is Joe diGenova, Victoria’s second husband, who is also willing to yell Republican talking points whenever a camera is pointed in his direction.  

You’ll find a nice summary of family activities on a GMD diary posted way back in 2006, when Master Brady was distinguishing himself as an attack dog for Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s re-election campaign against Democrat Matt Dunne. Some guy named “odum” did some digging in the diGenova/Toensing walk-in skeleton closet; follow the link for details, but suffice it to say that Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova spent the 1990s as part of the anti-Clinton Republican attack machine, and the 2000s as leading Bush Administration apologists on cable news. Most recently, Ma ‘n Pa have been trying to mountainize the Benghazi molehill on Fox News.

The allegedly nice-guy Brian Dubie apparently looooves Brady Toensing, having hired him for at least two campaign stints plus a post-election turn repping Dubie in Bill Sorrell’s campaign-finance lawsuit.

I do hope that Toensing and Limoge spare a scruple or two for Jeremy Dodge, whose best interests are probably served by a quick settlement with Shumlin. Wouldn’t it be a shame if his lawyers did their best to drag the case on and on, spending more time on press releases than on legal briefs, simply to serve their own political interests?

Yeah, that’d be a shame.

(I am, however, looking forward to the gubernatorial deposition. Always a good optic for a politician.)

And, you know, this is exactly what Governor Shumlin left himself open for — the political exploitation of an easily avoidable situation. He knew the original Dodge deal was iffy*, and if he has any political instincts whatsoever he had to know it could blow up on him.

*Evidence? The absence of a lawyer on Dodge’s side; Dodge’s obvious lack of education and legal smarts; and the fact that, although Shumlin and Dodge agreed to the sale in late September, it wasn’t formally registered until November 7 — the day after Election Day. Sorry, I can’t believe that was a coincidence.

Not that it’s likely to make much difference in his near-term electoral prospects. But the entry of Toensing the Younger is one more sign that the Governor (and by extension the Democrats) will pay a price for his acquisitional own goal.  

And another wave of layoffs hits IBM’s domestic operations. And, again, IBM is being completely tight-lipped about the cutbacks. All we know is that dozens of Vermonters (at least) have lost their jobs at Essex Junction. Alliance@IBM, a union group, estimates this week’s layoffs at over 1600 nationwide, and it expects the total to go higher.

This is said to be part of a global reorganization and/or a response to a disappointing earnings report. But really, it’s one more step in IBM’s steady abandonment of America. According to Alliance@IBM, the corporation employed more than 134,000 people in the US in 2005; by the end of 2012, that number had fallen to 91,000. And obviously, it’s still trending downward. (IBM won’t give any layoff or employment figures nationally or for any individual location for what it calls “competitive reasons,” but you know what the truth is: they’re trying like hell to avoid bad publicity.

So, nobody outside of IBM knows how many people are employed at Essex Junction, and nobody outside of IBM knows how many are losing their jobs this week. Is this what it means to be a good corporate citizen? In his written response, Governor Shumlin seems to be discreetly backing away from Our Valued Corporate Partner:

Vermont’s partnership with IBM is very important, but our state is not immune to the forces that are driving this decision in the larger organization.

In other words, “Don’t put your eggs in a Big Blue basket.” And “Don’t blame me if IBM walks away.”

IBM spokesflack Jeff Couture was shoveling the rhetorical manure as fast as he could:

Change is constant in the technology industry, and transformation is an essential feature of our business model. Consequently, some level of workforce remix is a constant requirement for our business.

Nice and neat. Antiseptic, almost. Just a simple “workforce remix.”

After the jump: the human dimension.

And now, let us sashay over to the Alliance@IBM website and witness the human cost of these corporate buzzwords. (All these were posted Tuesday or Wednesday by laid-off IBM workers in Vermont.)

RA’d this am @ BTV. 34 years…. Mixed emotions – relief, humiliation, anger…wanted to leave on my own terms but I guess I’ll take their blood money. Company is F’d any way. … Re-evaluating my IBM stock holdings. Good luck and good riddance! –Anonymous

I was RA’d today from STG Burlington with 31 years of service. –Vermonter

Today, IBM Essex Junction, VT. 93 layoff from Engineering department.. I am lucky one of them.. Bye Bye.. IBM.. Hope my manager will be in 3rd Qtrs.. lay off .. –Tintin

Let go today after 26 years of service. 80% of my dept gone, as well as 80% of sister dept. These cuts were in Essex Junction, Fishkill, and Austin. –Anonymous

Invited to leave this morning. 28 yrs engineer at IBM. And now for something completely different… –anonBTV

Hearing from a friend who works in the Essex Jct. VT, plant that dozens of engineers have been told they no longer have jobs. –Anon-Essex VT

STG Vermont affected today. Standard 30 day notice, 1 week pay per 6 months up to 6 months pay. –Hit Today

Adding insult to injury, the laid-off workers won’t get any pension accrual for their last six months on the job. That’s because IBM now pays into its pension once per year (on December 31, natch) rather than monthly. Slick.

Earl Mongeon summed it up best, in remarks to VTDigger. He’s a 35-year IBMer and an Alliance@IBM organizer:

“It’s like the bully at the schoolyard,” Mongeon said. “He comes one day and takes your lunch money, he comes the next day and takes your lunch, he comes the next and takes something else.”

… “There’s really not a future for people who want to build a career there,” he said.

Damn straight.  

The good news is that four U.S. nuclear reactors have retired so far in 2013.  The latest is at San Onofre, California.

The bad news is that even after permanent shutdown, retired nukes leave a very long and dirty trail.  

It will be many decades after shutdown before they can be buried and uneasily forgotten; and long after then, it will be millennia before the byproducts of their brief curtsey on the energy stage no longer pose a threat to all living things.

But this is still 2013, and far more of these infernal engines continue to tick away, answering  the call of a bottom line so compelling that it will not hear the awful truth:  that nuclear isn’t clean, isn’t safe, isn’t cheap; and, if recent events are anything to go by, certainly isn’t reliable.

Japanese citizens have learned that the hard way.

Now some are finding that all those claims that health impacts from the Fukushima accident would be minimal were just as false as early press releases from TEPCO and their own government that  minimized the danger and advised many to “shelter in place,” when they should have been evacuated.

This past week, it was reported that there are twelve confirmed and fifteen suspected cases of thyroid cancers already in the aftermath of the 2011 accident.   This number was recorded from among 174,000 individuals aged 18 or younger.

The official take on this news was myopic denial:

Researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which has been taking the leading role in the study, have so far said they do not believe that the most recent cases are related to the nuclear crisis. They point out that thyroid cancer cases were not found among children hit by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident until four to five years later.

Yes, we all know how reliable those Soviet era records from Chernobyl were.

Some countries, like Germany, and even Canada, are beginning to get the message, though.  

As in the U.S., one of the advantages the nuclear energy industry enjoys in Canada is a liability limit that essentially indemnifies the industry against the crushing cost of major accidents.  Now Canada is rethinking that policy and preparing to increase the industry’s liability there.  This should prove very interesting because the relatively low cost of insuring nukes has been one of the traditional supports that has served to artificially decrease the cost of nuclear power.

If “cheap” is removed from the industry’s talking points, how well will “safe” hold-up with customers in the aftermath of Fukushima?

We can only hope that nuclear is poised to go out with a whimper rather than a bang.