Pardon the short diary, but I wanted to raise an idea u on the flagpole and see if anybody saluted it (with the caveat that I’m not sure if I ascribe to it myself).

First we have Wes Clark, offering a fairly harmless comment that the McCain people are smart enough to realize can be blown out of proportion among the media. One wonders if Obama’s quick denunciation of Clark (which, incidentally, has got to decrease the incentive for high-profile Obama supporters to put themselves out there into the media for scrutiny, given that Obama was so quick on the trigger to condemn him, but I digress…), didn’t fire off some kind of light bulb over the head of the McCain team.

Because now we have the same yarn being spun about Jim Webb. Given that both have been suggested to be potential running mates, is it possible that there’s a real intention from the McCain campaign to use what strikes me as a genuine weakness from Obama (the hyper-quickness to distance himself from anyone who comes anywhere near the question of McCain’s service and its relevance to the debate) to drive the decision over Obama’s running mate? Do they agree with the many pundits and observers who have suggested that the dustup has removed Clark from the veep list, and are now going after the next high-profile name on the list with military cred, hoping to push Obama into distancing himself from Webb as well (and in the process, knocking him out of contention)?

I’m not saying I’m convinced this is a conscious strategy….yet… I’m jus’ sayin’, is all…

It’s not just Obama’s support of wiretapping and obsequious approach to all things pro-Israel; it’s not just Obama walking away from those, such as the Reverend Wright, who helped put Obama in the position he is now in; it’s not just Obama’s falling under the sway of those who have to wear flag lapels to prove they aren’t what they are; it’s not just Obama’s willingness to leave us entangled in Iraq for years or decades to come; … it’s also such as this:

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and – in a move sure to cause controversy – support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

( Obama to expand Bush’s faith based programs, Yahoo News, 07/01/08)

Obama has surrounded himself with DC establishment advisers and quite predictably is going to end up at more of the same old same old.

In the end there will be no difference between Obama and McCain with one exception: McCain will do us in quickly … Obama will continue the slow but inexorable creep to ultra-right wing land that Democrats and their enablers have been doing since the sixties.

And the sad truth is there is no need for Obama to do all this.

From today's Times Argus:

MONTPELIER – There is a Democrat running for Lieutenant governor: Blogger, school board member and upholsterer Nate Freeman said Monday he will try to unseat incumbent Republican Brian Dubie this fall.

“We haven't seen the lieutenant governor's office really do anything other than a ceremonial role over the last six years,” said Freeman, who lives in Northfield. “We forget the role played by Madeleine Kunin and Howard Dean.”

 Nate joined us at the Washington County Democratic Committee meeting last night to share his ideas, collect signatures for his petition, and get some good campaign advice. I don't think anyone is understating the difficulty of this race, but it's not as though Brian Dubie has left deep footprints in the job.

( – promoted by odum)

Here’s a leadership hot button opportunity for some State politician’s skills. The ongoing Intervale compost saga cries out for resolution. A timely issue to say the least. Burlington and the State benefit from this energy saving program it’s in the public’s day to day lives. This tangle is a micro-drama of the Statewide political landscape. It’s got Gov. Jim, Gaye Symington, Progressives, the ANR, Historic Preservation, the State Attorney General and the Chittenden Solid Waste district all on stage at once.

The nonprofit composter will continue to accept waste and sell compost for the moment, but its future is “incredibly tenuous,” a spokesman for the nonprofit Intervale Center said.

Attorney General Bill Sorrell, whose office holds one key to the short-term future of the composting operation, said he hopes for a “win-win settlement” of Intervale’s problems.

At the solid waste district, general manager Tom Moreau said his board has been increasingly skeptical that composting has even a near-term future in the Intervale.

“They are saying, we’ve put in a tremendous amount of time and resources, and maybe we should cut our losses now,” he said.

While the solid waste district is interested in taking over the operation for two years – until an alternative site can be developed – there are too many unknowns about what regulators would require during that two years, Moreau said.

“We’re not getting transparency from the Agency of Natural Resources or the Division of Historic Preservation, and what we do see appears to make the operation financially infeasible,” he said.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

Another useful compost operation may fail due to lack of coherent policy leadership

Vt. Compost told to halt operations(not Intervale)

Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – The Natural Resources Board has told Karl Hammer to halt operations at Vermont Compost Co., located on Main Street a few miles outside of the state’s capital city.

Hammer’s company, along with the composting operation in Burlington’s Intervale, have been used as examples of how to get food scraps out of the landfill and into people’s gardens and farms.

But both have run into trouble with state regulators and neighbors. In Hammer’s case the question at the root of the matter is whether his site in Montpelier is a farm – therefore outside the jurisdiction of the Act 250 land use rules – or a manufacturing company subject to them.

Early this year Hammer was told he needs a permit under the state’s sweeping land use regulation to run the composting facility. He appealed that “jurisdictional opinion,” but the Natural Resources Board has now declined to allow him to keep operating until that process is complete.

If I'm walking down the street and the police ask me to break into your house, rifle through your possessions, and bring them anything I think they might be interested in, I could be prosecuted, charged with burgalary, breaking and entering, theft, and unlawful trespass, and besides that, you could sue me for it.

Now, according to the bill that Bush and the House of Representatives want to pass, if the police asked me to do it, my criminal acts would suddenly be legal.

I'm talking about the new FISA legislation. Last year many of us were hugely supportive of Chris Dodd because he stood up to the administration and the Senate leadership and he was willing to filibuster to block FISA, and especially the retroactive immunity provisions.

Now it's back and Obama is saying he's going to support the bill even with the retroactive immunity provision in it.

I am so angry I am thinking about asking our delegation not to support him in Denver.

Before doing that, though, there is a way for Obama supporters to make their voices heard. If you go to www.mybarackobama.com you can sign up with the group called Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right.

Since last Wednesday more than 6000 Obama supporters have signed up, probably 4000 since noon yesterday.

I've been trying to get the message through every way I can. As soon as I learn that Obama has a staff person in Vermont I'll post that information. Obama needs to hear this. Maybe if we rise up with one voice, and make clear that we aren't going along with Bush's assault on our civil liberties, and we don't want him to go along with it either, it will make a difference.

Remember this shocker from the Rutland Herald/Times Argus a couple weeks ago?

Is the state Agency of Natural Resources too cozy with Omya Inc., the marble processing company with a plant in Florence? That is the view of whistleblower John Brabant, an agency official who believes his superiors at ANR have not been following agency rules in giving Omya a break on the waste it has been dumping in abandoned quarries…

…Brabant says the agency was subject to political pressure from the Douglas administration. When the agency issued its initial finding letting Omya off the hook, Jeff Wennberg, former mayor of Rutland, was commissioner of environmental conservation, and it was possible to believe that Gov. James Douglas and Wennberg together decided it was best to bend the rules to help a company with 300 employees in Rutland County.

This is not the first such story, this year or previous years – or for that matter, previous administrations. Whereas a comparable story at the federal level would result in immediate hubbub, and likely congressional hearings under oath, that’s not generally how it works in Vermont. It’s not that the legislature doesn’t have oversight power in this state – it does. They also have the power to issue legislative subpoenas, if you look deep enough into their governing documentation. There’s also no reason not to take testimony under oath.

But that’s not how it works in Vermont. At least not now.

Sometimes legislative committees that would seem to be the logical places for executive oversight do ask questions, but the questions are never sustained. Nor are there opportunities to do the asking when the session is over. It just doesn’t happen, and when oversight doesn’t happen, a cavalier executive culture develops and thrives.

It’s not that there isn’t interest. It’s not even that there isn’t will. It’s that there isn’t time. The same problem that brings us strange, cobbled together Frankenbills, or laws so painfully bereft of details, too many of those details are punted to that same executive branch to be worked out and implemented as they see fit. It’s yet another manifestation of a theme that is becoming a common one on this site; the need to professionalize our legislature.

We’re not about to take that plunge anytime soon. So, what’s the solution? I’ve suggested that a more feasable proposal might be to professionalize the relatively small State Senate only, allowing committee action to continue outside the session. Short of that, legislative leaders could consider tweaking the committee structure to consolidate executive oversight, taking it out of already overburdened traditional bill writing committees and dumping matters into omnibus oversight committees (wouldn’t you love to chair one of those, eh?).

In any case, the culture needs to change, and the sooner the better.

Seven and three-quarter years later, the the state has dotted its last “i” and crossed its last “t” in my Kafkaesque experience with Deborah Markowitz’s Office of Professional Regulation (OPR).  It ended predictably, providing, in the course of it all, considerable documentation that argues for the necessity of creating a State Ombudsman Office in Vermont.  I put up a featured post about it on BureaucracyBlog today–click here.

The outcome has so far had the effect of raising a few more eyebrows, and a few more people starting to talk about the wisdom of creating a State Ombuds office.  We need it the more so in Vermont, as the small size of the state makes for fewer degrees of separation between any two people in the state, and thereby increases the opportunities for conflicts of interest to be present.

Much more to come in the days and months ahead, including a book about the whole 7 & 3/4 years in the not too distant future.  Working title: Professional Breaks and Broken Professionals.

Onward.

Deb Alicen