The bill went down hard, with only thirteen Senators voting for it.
Hall of fame (Senators who voted with the majority of Americans to move towards an endgame):
Hall of shame: all the rest
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate I find it interesting that the Vermont media were quick to announce that Craig Hill has thrown his hat into the Senate race as a Democrat but completely ignored my “Open Letter to Bernie Sanders.” Both events happened the same day, June 21, 2006.
Reference: http://tinyurl.com/h3j64
I know Craig Hill. I met him at the 9-11 Truth Convergence in Washington DC last summer. I had a rather extensive conversation with him on the phone after the conference where he was expounding that “both parties are bad.” He used a lot of vulgarity in our conversation and was quite angry.
I remember feeling he was “a Republican mole” sent to divert us from focusing on the root cause of 9-11, which was to lay the foundation for endless war.
9-11 was part of a Republican conspiracy for war in my view. See Project for a New American Century at
Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnac
The entire “9-11 Truth Convergence” event seemed like a diversion from the truth that Republicans used the event to justify three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq and the perpetual “War on Terror.”
People still ask me “Why would we do it to ourselves?” (9-11) Come on, people! There’s a lot of money to be made in war for capital conquest, especially when the capital in contest is worth $10 TRILLION!
After I called the Truth Emergency Convergence event a “Republican scam” on the “moderated” mailing list for the event …. the list was shut down. End of story.
Now Craig Hill is willing to join one of the parties, the Democrats, which he had previously
put down with extreme anger ( and vulgarity ).
What strikes me as even odder is that
his web site has only one page, the same page it
has had for many months, and no contact phone number.
See: http://hillsenatenow.org/
Furthermore, his one-page web site says that he is a “Green Party Candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
Excuse me? He doesn’t even have time to change his one-page web site to update it so it says “Democrat” instead of Green and he still DESERVES media coverage and I do NOT deserve coverage?
Furthermore, if you try and go to the Green Party
web site you will end up at the Progressive Party
web site. Hmmm. Does this mean the Green party
is the same thing as the Progressive party?
Since Craig Hill is credited with starting the
Vermont Green Party perhaps he can explain why
he is now supporting the Progressive party.
Try it and see : http://www.vermontgreens.org/
The above link is given for the Vermont Green Party given on Politics1 (Vermont) at:
http://www.politics1.com/vt.htm
What’s even more interesting to me is that Hill threw his hat into the race, supposedly, on June 21, 2006 —- the EXACT date
of my “Open Letter to Bernie Sanders.”
It seems that all the major Vermont media have covered Hill’s announcement of a party switch but have ignored my substantial contribution to our political debate. Has anyone even seen my name
mentioned as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in
ANY Vermont media publication or broadcast?
I’ve been actively running for over a year!
It seems the only NEWS in this event is that he has switched parties. He was in the race for a
long time as a Green Party candidate. He is basically a one-issue candidate all heated up about the fact that 9-11 was an “inside job.”
I’ve got a substantial web site, about a book’s worth of material, with many downloadable audio and video files at http://stevemoyer.us
I have elucidated clear positions on many issues and offered specific solutions. I’ve done several public access TV shows and low-power radio shows, sent out dozens of press releases to Vermont media, and started the Vermont Democracy Network, making history by being the first person to put a statewide voter registration database on the Internet in searchable form.
( http://vermont.stevemoyer.us )
Hmmm. Would someone please tell me how a one-issue candidate without a phone number gets statewide press attention but someone who writes substantial essays and is developing an internet democracy system can’t get the time of day from anyone in the Vermont media?
What’s going on?
Steve Moyer
Candidate for U.S. Senate
http://stevemoyer.us
Only a few weeks ago, the Vermont one time nonprofit “Food and Water” came up in conversation, and a friend and I wondered aloud “What ever happened to (Food and Water founder and Director) Michael Colby?”
Colby, for those who don’t remember, was a take-no-prisoners radical lefty. From outside Vermont, through his many columns and writings, he seemed almost as though he could fit along the edges of “mainstream” American leftism, but in Vermont most of us knew better. Colby has always been a leftist in the more radical mode, however unlike many others with the same ideological tendencies, Colby is highly knowledgable, keeping his pulse on the institutional ebbs and flows of modern capitalism (as opposed to resorting to cliched rants against a 1950’s era communist’s simplistic impression of it). He is also extraordinarily quick witted, and although he struck me the one time I did meet him as typically holier-than-thou and carrying the usual chip on his shoulder, unlike many others in the radical set, he didn’t allow that chip to dull or soften the focus of his considerable intellect one bit.
Well, Colby is back in the news, having been arrested recently at the Negroponte demonstration in St. Johnsbury. And some younger Vermont leftists may be finding he is not what they expect. For example, one would think an activist with such a profile would be jumping in with both feet onto the Progressive Party bandwagon, right? Well, consider the following exchange of comments from PoliticsVT attached to their coverage of last weeks’ Progressive Party news conference:
At 15 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
This is news? One of the biggest losers in Vermont political history decides he doesn’t want to lose again? It must be a very, very slow news day.And the Abbott candidacy for Auditor is simply a scheme to try and get a mere 5% of the statewide vote so they can keep their “major” party status. She — and everyone else except the lame and complacent Vermont media — knows it’s all just a sham.
Sorry, but it’s nothing but hysterical that this blog and some of the other Vermont media outlets would call any of this “news,” let alone “breaking news. Pollina is batting about 0-for-6 in his electoral career and his advocacy career is not much better (how are those dairy farmers doing that he’s been helping for fifteen years?).
The media ought to be focusing more on his pathetic track record and his lies earlier this year when he declared that he’d run if the legislature didn’t pass “meaningful healthcare reform.”
If this is all the left has to offer, the left is dead in Vermont.
At 15 June, 2006, rocksandwater said…
How many times did Bernie lose before he won?At 15 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
The answer is five. But to compare Bernie with Anthony is like comparing apples to oranges. Whether you agree or not, there’s no question that Bernie can articulate a strong opinion (over and over and over again). Pollina, however, can’t seem to get a complete sentence out without correcting himself, contradicting himself or confusing himself by his own lack of a coherent ideology. Case in point (again): He threw down the gauntlet with regards to the health care issue earlier this year and then did a complete about-face when he realized his own political backside was in jeopardy by following through on his promises.Look at Pollina’s record: Dairy farmers. How are they doing? Campaign finance reform. He was the ONLY one to benefit from it while everyone else ignored it. In fact, he even spoke out against it when it looked like it wasn’t going to favor his last cmapaign. GMOs. His Rural Vermont outfit failed on this issue miserably, even after agreeing to water down the “farmer protection act” to the point of near-irrelevancy. Health care. Oh nevermind, seemed to be his final opinion on this.
It sure seems like everything he touches fails.
At 15 June, 2006, rowvee said…
Everyone else ignored campaign finance money because they don’t believe in it. They can’t give up the money. I’m sorry Pollina won’t be running. It seems the only statewide vote I’ll cast this year is for Auditor of Accounts.At 19 June, 2006, GiveTexasBack said…
Holy cow, Michael Colby! Did you run out of ritalin?Not only are you clueless about what constitutes “news” and what doesn’t, but your fanatic nature makes you about as credible as a Fox News reporter.
By the way, what have the Dems and Repub’s done to help VT dairy farmers? Pollina has almost single-handedly organized and raised enough money to help them own and run their own milk processing plant… no thanks to the corporate processors who refused such a “loser” concept.
Once that launches, the only name you’ll be calling Pollina is “governor”.
At 20 June, 2006, Michael Colby said…
Holy cow, “givetexasback”! Come out from behind your fake name and then we’ll have a discussion. In other words, I don’t respond to cowards.
Surprise!
Or not.
At the risk of speaking for someone I don’t know, I guess I’ll…well…speak for someone I don’t know (realizing full well it may in fact summon him here to likewise beat up on GMD readers…but hey! Who doesn’t love a good debate (well, some don’t I guess…))
Understand: to someone like Colby, there is no difference between the Democrats and the Progressives, and if anything, I’d wager that the Progressives tend to irk him more because of what is, in his eyes, the pretense of greater enlightenment. Ironically, this is exactly the perspective many Progressives have of Democrats and Republicans.
But Colby has a stronger point than they do. When you factor out a subsection of each group: from the Dems, that subset of moderates who really do like things just they way they are, as opposed to those who see fundamental, systemic inequities in the world that need to be addressed – and from the Progs, that subset that is motivated exclusively by their personal distaste for, or alienation from, people in the Democratic Party, then you’re left with two Parties with one major element in common: they are both looking to make the world a better place based on their subjective judgements of what is possible.
Although I’ve complained about politicians who make that judgement in legislative policy decisions, I (and most people I know) still make that institutional calculus against an impression of the greater culture or the overall political system. Lefties like me who are every bit as “out there” as any Progressive Party stalwart but don’t participate in the third-party-thing see the building of another Party institution within a system truly structured to exclude it as a false solution; like saying 2+2=fish – and we see such attempts as not only doomed to failure, but causing destruction in the process. Others who see the system in a different light see such an approach as possible, even necessary.
But at the end of the day, we’re still making our choices based on our judgement of what is possible, and that’s the commonality that to a Michael Colby makes Ds and Ps indistinguishable. To him, political action should not be chosen by such a calculus. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he may believe that such a judgement is not even realistic, awash as we are in cultural hegemony. To a Colby, the only question is; “what’s broken?” Once that assessment is made, no quarter can be given in making it right.
There is courage to this approach, and an elegance to its purity. A none-too-small part of me wishes that that part of my intellect which sees such an approach as ultimately doomed to failure would just shut up and let me join in. In my more radical days, I’ve been known to speak from my inner social ecologist and make the claim that I only play a Democrat when I’m “in the matrix” (and by “my more radical days” I mean last Saturday…ask me again how I feel tomorrow and you might get something completely different…I wonder if they have medication for this…?). Some days, it would be nice to pretend there was no matrix.
But those of us who are committed to making the world better in the here and now for as many as we can are intellectual slaved to the game of dealing with the cards we are dealt, as opposed to the game of acceptable casualties in a test of absolute leftist purity.
Still, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days that I didn’t look at the Michael Colbys of the world and wish that I too were capable of tossing my cards away and kicking the deck from the dealer’s hand…