You know, if that's a Republican baby, maybe she'll stand up to the wingers after all. And help keep their numbers down, too.

All ye who support Edwards, abandon hope!  Your candidate is doomed, I tell you, doomed!

You should immediately shift your support to [ Obama / Clinton ], otherwise [ Clinton / Obama ] will get the nomination and will cause us to lose to [ Huckabee / Romney / McCain / the Pilsbury Dough Boy / Satan ].  

If you fail to shift your support from Edwards to [ Obama / Clinton ], you are personally responsible for the nomination of  [ Clinton / Obama ].  You can not hope to win, so you must change your allegiance in order to prevent the obvious problems a campaign by [ a black man / someone named Clinton ] will face come November.  

It is now your responsibility to join the side of [ Obama / Clinton ].  For it is spoken, with less than 1% of elected Delegates now decided, that the election will come down to just two people and only one can defeat [ Fred Thompson / Dr. Octopus / the Incredible Hulk / Ron Paul ] come November!  

You.  Have.  Been.  Warned.

Most people around here are not that supportive of Obama, and even less supportive of Clinton, but it looks like that's the choice we're faced with.

I'm not happy with the choice, but if we have any contest at all in Vermont by Town Meeting Day, that's my prediction of what it will be. Therefore, maybe we should start thinking not just about our ideal candidate, but about our actual choice.

Here's a good diavlog between Joshua Cohen and Glenn Loury on this very question: should people who support progressive change support Clinton or Obama?

I'm not going to even try telling you the answer, or what I think the answer is, yet. They do get into some of the important questions, though, including whether there are any policy differences between the two, who has the better chance of winning, and what will happen if each of them gets elected. I do encourage you to watch, listen, and think about it, though. 

bomb the crap outa’ them!

Side by side headlines in today’s (01/11/08) Times Argus: “Bush outlines ideas for Middle East peace” and “Massive U.S. airstrikes hit insurgents in Iraq”. That juxtaposition illustrates our federal government’s approach to foreign affairs so well.

As a nation our mouth pieces talk about peace and democracy and fairness, but the actions in our names are the direct opposite … violent and imperialistic and arbitrary.

Right now bush is in Palestine/Israel talking like he wants a fair shake with all involved, but at the same time he encourages a regional war against the Gaza Strip and their freely elected Hamas government.

Hamas is the only group to actually enforce a cease fire of it’s members regarding Israel, and they are the only Palestinian group with a proven track record of providing basic services such as food distribution, medical care and education to the Palestinian people. But Hamas refuses to be U.S./Israel sock puppets so they are evil.

(Interesting side note: Hamas was born in part out of Israeli (non)intelligence efforts to combat Arafat and his Al Fatah organization, with the support of the Israeli government.)

Of course Abbas and his Al Fatah party are the ones bush finds common ground with: Al Fatah has proven itself as an organization to be corrupt and pliable to monetary and militarization bribery.

Now … where are the broad, idealistic and much needed changes being suggested?

Because I don’t care if it’s coming from Dems or Reps or pretend indies … I’m sick of talking the talk and then bombing the crap outa’ them.

Somebody already brought this subject up in another thread, but I think it deserves to be in a thread of it’s own.

I am not a Ron Paul supporter.

I’ve seen mention of these articles for a month or better now, but I’ve yet to see an actual original source. I would like to know more about those newsletters: Was Paul’s name simply on the banner or did he take active part in publishing them? Who wrote the racist articles, who (if anyone) edited them and who put them into print?

It is a possibility that Ron Paul is directly or indirectly responsible for these, but then again if you read this CNN article you’ll see that Paul disavows the content and language of the articles.

Let’s not let the rumor mongers do to Paul what the rumor mongers did to Joe and Valerie Wilson simply because we don’t like Paul’s politics.

In 2007 a new campaign finance reform bill was passed by the House and Senate under the leadership of Peter Shumlin and Gaye Symington.  It was vetoed by the Governor but will return essentially unchanged again this year.  

The bill, S.164, appears to be yet another time consuming and questionable effort on the part of the Legislature in either defiance of the 2005 US Supreme Court decision in Randall v. Sorrell or ignorance of more than 35 years of legal precedence in Buckley v. Valeo.

 

For those who are not familiar with the story behind campaign finance reform over the last 10 years, here is a brief history.

In 1997 the Legislature passed Act 64, significantly lowering campaign contribution limits.  The sentiment behind the law was that so-called “large” contributions of $1000 influenced policy making here in Vermont.   However, the law cited neither examples nor evidence of this kind of corruption, but instead offered broad allegations and a controversial argument that contributions are equivalent to political corruption from outside influences.  

Candidate contribution limits were therefore summarily reduced.  For the position of State Representative, the decrease was 5-fold, plummeting from $1000 to $200 from any single source including political parties.  The law remained in effect until 2005 when the United States Supreme Court concluded that Act 64 was unconstitutional.  

Among several reasons listed, the Justices concluded the following:    

1.The State failed to demonstrate a corruption problem in Vermont; and

2.The contribution limits are too low to survive constitutional scrutiny in respect to either the First Amendment or more than three decades of legal precedent settled in Buckley v. Valeo.  (In Buckley a $1000 limit is upheld.)  

In response to the Supreme Court ruling in 2005 a new bill was introduced to the Senate in 2007.   This bill was brought forward despite both Attorney General Bill Sorrell and the Secretary of State's position that campaign finance law simply reverted back to Vermont's pre-1997 law.  

To make matters more interesting, the new bill offers little change to Act 64 regarding contribution limits, which have already been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  The new bill, if enacted into law, will be just as susceptible to legal scrutiny as campaign finance reform efforts in 1997.  

For example, while the Supreme Court ruled that the contribution limits were unconstitutionally low, this new bill raised the bar so slightly that it once again can be challenged in court.  Section 2805 of Bill S.164 regarding contributions sets “single source” donations at $250 for candidates to the House, $500 for those seeking Senate, and $750 for statewide offices.  Since Act 64 was cited as unconstitutional due to exceptionally low limits, it appears that bill S.164 is nothing more than an attempt to challenge a Supreme Court decision by restating the same argument made in 1997 as well as last year.  

The first finding in S.164 suggests that so-called “large” campaign contributions of $1000 increases the risk and appearance that elected officials will not act in the best interests of all Vermont citizens.  However, defending Act 64 before Supreme Court justices in 2005, Attorney General Bill Sorrell acknowledged that this type of corruption has not been identified in Vermont.  The first finding in Bill S.164 therefore flies in the face of reality here in Vermont, contradicts the conclusions of six Supreme Court Justices and ignores three decades of precedence in the Buckley case.  

Justice Breyer concluded, among other things, that the rationale for preventing the appearance of corruption does not mean “the lower the limit the better.”  This is because,  

contribution limits that are too low also can harm the electoral process by preventing challengers from mounting effective campaigns against incumbent officeholders, thereby reducing democratic accountability.  

Justice Breyer continues,  

Were we to ignore that fact a statute that seeks to regulate campaign contributions could itself prove an obstacle to the very electoral fairness it seeks to promote.

In “Another Crack at Closing Loopholes” in the January 6th edition of the Times Argus/Rutland Herald, James Bopp, a leading expert in campaign finance law, considers the thinly revised bill as “an attempt by Vermont's General Assembly to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling.”  

"The Supreme Court struck down contribution limits in Vermont because they were too low," he said. "They are making the same arguments to justify those low limits that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected. Can't they read?"  "The limits proposed last year and vetoed by the governor were still too low," said Bopp, who called the bill "an effort to defy rather than comply with that 6-3 ruling."

Such a minimal change in the bill under the leadership of Peter Shumlin and Gaye Symington suggests that they are simply knee-jerking in response to Republican strategies to focus money on key races.  Of course, it has long been an American political tradition for the Majority party to strategically affect laws, rules and other electoral tools to their own benefit against the Minority.  But this is not the stated purpose of S.164, a bill clearly in violation of the US Constitution.  

No matter what the intent of this bill is, it remains as unconstitutional as Act 64 enacted in 1997 and overturned in 2005.  With so many other important issues at stake this session, it's unfortunate that the Vermont Legislature will once again attempt to push through a bill that will clearly create as much legal liability and expense as the ill-fated and unconstitutional Act 64.  

Nate Freeman Northfield, Vermont

Children living within three miles of nuclear power stations are more than twice as likely to get leukaemia as those who live further away, scientists say.

A large study commissioned by the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BFS) found clusters of cases of the blood or bone marrow cancer among children aged under five-years-old living near 16 power stations in the country.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear…

UPDATE–JANUARY 18, 2008: Ways and Means voted yesterday to take Sec 10 of the fee bill, the section on co-pays in corrections, out of the bill. Reps Hube and Condon were not there but the other 9 voted unanimously to strip this section from the bill 

You know that Douglas likes to talk about Vermont's affordability crisis, and how hard people who don't have a lot of extra money have it to afford their basic necessities of life. And it must be really hard if your job pays you a very low salary, like $.25 an hour, right?

That's right, $.25 an hour. You could get paid that little if you're employed by Correctional Industries of Vermont. I'm not sure about license plates, but if you spend any time in state office buildings you've probably sat on furniture made by prisoners.

Well, you say, what expenses do prisoners have? Aren't all their needs taken care of? They get housing, they get three hots and a cot, they probably have doctors and dentists and people like that come in to take care of them, right? How about this: the Douglas administration wants to make prisoners pay a $5.00 co-pay whenever they go to the doctor. If you're only getting paid $.25 an hour, even $5.00, which is a pretty low co-pay in the private insurance world, starts to look like a lot of money.

It's part of the Fee Bill, and here's the legislative language:

Sec. 10 28 V.S.A.§ 801 is amended to read
§ 801. MEDICAL CARE OF INMATES

They're doing it because, in their words, “[T]he costs of medical care could be defrayed, personal responsibility enhanced, and unnecessary usage reduced) (sic) by a modest inmate co-pay per visit.” They also think they'll save $50,000. Out of $130 million.

So in their view, doing this will have the beneficial effect of keeping prisoners from seeing doctors. On the other hand, a study on corrections policy across the country a couple of years ago argues that if we are going to provide decent health care to prisoners, who are, after all, people in the custody of the taxpayers' government, one thing we have to do is get rid of co-pays. 

In a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the cause of outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in correctional facilities in Georgia, California, and Texas between 2001 and 2003, co-payments were singled out as a significant contributor to the spread of these serious and aggressive skin infections because they discouraged prisoners from seeking care (CDC 2003). . . . [I]t is impossible to devise a co-payment
program that does not erect barriers to care that could put the health of individuals n jeopardy, lead to the spread of disease, and cost correctional systems and communities much more in the long run when treatment is delayed.

 This is an area, one of many, in which Vermont is ahead of the rest of the country. While 33 states have adopted co-pays for prisoners, Vermont doesn't have them, and now the Douglas administration is once again racing to the bottom, trying to abandon one positive, progressive aspect of corrections policy, And it's also self-defeating. You may remember this fall when the Springfield prison was locked down because of an outbreak of MRSA. How much worse would it have been if the prisoners were avoiding the doctor because they didn't have the five bucks to get into the office?

 House Ways and Means is taking its first look at this proposal Friday morning at 9:30. Let's hope that they say no to this ridiculous and short-sighted proposal.

Seven Days has an interesting article looking at the new-ish political website, PolitickerVT. I’d been looking at them myself and had been kicking around a diary when I was contacted by Kevin Kelley, the reporter who was working on the story. I dumped what I knew about ’em onto Kelley and had a pretty good chat in general about new media.

PolitickerVT is one of several “Politicker” sites in several states, coordinated out of a central office (in New York), and all supposedly administered by an anonymous mystery man (“Wally Edge”), who writes his op-eds from a generally hard-right wing perspective. If it sounds familiar, it should; this exactly describes the original PoliticsVT site back in 2001-2004-ish – not the “Dead Governors” blogspot site that Haik crusaded against, but the original, headed by mystery man “Moe Robinson.”

A new blog billing itself as “the primary destination for all Vertmont [sic] political news” is generating low-frequency buzz among local new-media mavens as well as head scratching among in-state bloggers. The slickly produced site, with a come-on offering “inside politics for political insiders,” is being bankrolled by a New York City media mogul, and much of its content is being recycled from Vermont news outlets by a reporter based in Washington, D.C.

Politickervt.com aims to attract attention through a mystique of anonymity. Its editor in chief, who’s also the site’s commentator, goes under the pseudonym Wally Edge. He or she did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Alex Isenstadt, the actual name of the site’s sole reporter, also could not be reached for comment.

Bob Sommer, president of the Observer Media Group, did agree to speak for attribution about politickervt.com and similar sites his Manhattan-based company owns in eight other states.

Clearly, somebody has decided that a cookie-cutter approach to new media might make a local, blog-esque “franchise” profitable. Maybe, but I kinda doubt it, frankly, and I imagine that this will go more or less the same way as the original PolVT – a sort of gradual, steady slide into disarray and kneejerk right-wingnuttery before shutting down (PolVT, of course, resurrected shortly thereafter as something rather different).

But Kelley did get one thing very wrong, despite my attempt to disavow him of his misconception:

But, (Carpetbagger Report’s Steve Benen) adds, the out-of-state sponsorship of politickervt.com and its reliance on a reporter writing from Washington will put it at a competitive disadvantage with regard to Vermont-rooted political blogs such as John Odum’s Green Mountain Daily.

The fact is, GMD is not in competition with Politicker. To an extent that’s because we’re very different sites, with very different agendas and reasons for existing. But really, it’s because GMD is simply not in competition with anybody.

This is a weblog. A piece of software that allows a bunch of amateur busybodies to have their say. Whether that draws 6 people or 600 is not the point. Nobody’s making any money to speak of from this, and if all the attention disappeared tomorrow, I doubt that would stop anybody here from posting. We yak because we’re compulsive – and hopefully we can leverage that compulsion to affect the public debate and do some good netroots organizing. If not – oh well… but so far so good.

Politicker and the Observer are motivated by something else: profit. They’re trying to make money, and as such they need to generate an audience and presumably some revenue. Where GMDers may occasionally catch a story, we’re equally content to comment on what’s already out there. Politicker needs material to be profitable, though, and that means getting out there trolling for gossip – apparently in a rather crude way.

For an example of what I mean, here’s an example of the sort of email they’ve been circulating to legislators:

Hey I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself to you. My name is Wally Edge and I am the columnist for a new Vermont political website launched the first week of December called PolitickerVT.com

PolitickerVT is owned by the NY Observer group is a sister state to numerous Politicker sites around the Country including PolitickerNJ which has been the leading nonpartisan political website in NJ for over a decade.

At PolitickerVT we update news links from around the state daily. We also have a paid reporter who files regular stories from around the state.

Our goal is to become your one stop shop for political news from around the state. One of my jobs will to produce a weekly winners and losers list from around the state. If you ever have a suggestion on someone I should consider then please pass their name on to me. Also I will be filing regular column articles which will contain interesting tidbits and confirmed gossip in which I am hearing about.

The way I work: Each state around the country which has a politicker website has a Wally Edge. Wally is and will remain anonymous.? I have no allegiances but I do have a good understanding of the Vermont political scene.

There is good reason for remaining anonymous.? When you decide to share a tip or gossip with me I will never reveal who the information came from unless you specifically tell me to do so. I will not source names unless there is a mutual agreement to do so. Unlike a regular reporter in which you need to assume you are on the record, with myself you can always assume you are on background.

This relationship has been working in other states for over a decade and has a history of success.? I understand some will be reluctant at first, but please don’t prejudge. Give me a shot and you will see the working relationship can benefit both of us.

If you have an email list please add my address. Please share with me your press releases, interesting tidbits about you campaigns, candidates and organizations. Also share with me interesting gossip about you opponents and the other party. I will never publish gossip in which I don’t believe to be true or I cannot get anyone to confirm, but I can publish things without

sourcing that a regular reporter (including our reporter) could or would not.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to a long relationship.

Bleh.

No, we’re not competing. “Wally” and the Observer are playing a very different game.

(Good work on the part of activists. – promoted by JulieWaters)

That awkward pause followed by Lt. Governor Dubie pounding his gavel and asking attendees to “be respectful” you may have heard if you were listening to Governor Douglas’ State of the State address this afternoon was the result of several protesters in the balcony of the House Chamber as they unrolled three seperate banners and tried to bring the fact that we’re a nation at war into the political realities of the Governor and the legislature.

Several local high school students, along with members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and accompanied by other concerned community members banded together as a part of their on-going campaign to tie issues of the illegal Iraq War together with our local community and how the war is effecting our local economy, citizens, and our kids.

I’ve been told by a few of them that, while being escorted out of the room by the Sergeant at Arms, their was a considerable number of legislators and attendees who gave them nods of approval and thumbs up; later, in the halls, they even got a few pats-on-the-back from fellow Vermonters who appreciated their demands as well as their insistence that the War is very much a local issue, and that it must be addressed by our law-makers.

The statement they were handing out to members of the media:

Vermont Troops Home Now.

Today, in the Vermont People’s State House, a group of students,  

veterans and citizens decided it was time to put the issue of the War  

on Iraq on Vermont’s legislative agenda. And so we’ve come to  

Governor Jim Douglas’ State of the State address to remind him, the  

Legislature and all Vermonters that we are a nation waging an illegal  

war against Iraq – a war that has left tens of thousands dead, cost  

nearly $500 billion, and diverted our nation’s attention from other  

pressing issues that deserve our attention. This war must end now.  

And every elected official – indeed, every citizen – must take action  

now to end the Iraq War and re-focus our national and state priorities.

The Governor’s State of the State address is traditionally a time to  

set the state’s agenda. It is a time to assess our past and look  

toward the future. But the “elephant in the room” that will probably  

go unmentioned is the war and its impact on all of our lives. So, we  

ask the Governor and members of the Legislature to consider these facts:

·      26 Vermonters have lost their lives in the Iraq War.

·      It has been estimated that Vermont’s share of the cost of the  

Iraq War is over $660 million.

·      Vermont’s National Guard is participating in the occupation of  

a sovereign nation.

·      U.S. Military and National Guard recruiters are actively  

preying on Vermont high school students and others to join the armed  

services and serve in this illegal war.

·      More than 70% of Vermonters oppose the Iraq War.

Therefore, we ask that the Governor and the Vermont Legislature  

listen to the people and begin to take immediate action to help end  

the Iraq War and/or Vermont’s role in it, including:

·      A call for an immediate end to the war directed at the  

President, Congress, and Vermont’s Congressional delegation.

·      A demand that all Vermont troops come home now.

·      An end to military recruitment in Vermont’s high schools.

Out of Our Schools, Out of Iraq