[Cross posted to Broadsides.org]

I’ve got a nose for suffering – well, in that white-guy American way of suffering, that is. Because it’s all relative. And as much as I’d like to bitch and moan about the goddamn rain that won’t stop, everything was put into perspective over the last day or two as I tended to writing clients and read Murat Kurnaz’s powerful book, “Five Years of My Life, An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.” Like I said, I’ve got a nose for suffering.

Kurnaz, for those who don’t know, was an idealistic German/Turkish young man of 18 years of age who picked a hell of a bad time to seek some international and spiritual enlightening. Kurnaz, you see, grew tired of the partying and mindless pursuits of his peers in October of 2001. Worse, from a strictly timing perspective, Kurnaz decided that a trip to Pakistan and a deep immersion into the lessons of the Koran were in order to jolt him out of the doldrums of his German youth.

In the end, Kurnaz saw more of the world than he wanted, learned more about himself than he ever dreamed of, came face-to-face with the true evils in human nature, and was nothing short of victimized by a U.S.-sanctioned “War on Terror.” Yeah, in a Keystone Cops-like dragnet of racist and paranoid vengeance, Kurnaz was swept up, snatched, and ferreted off to Guantanamo before anyone who bothered to punch, kick and otherwise abuse him took a mere moment of level-headedness to realize he was as innocent as innocent could be. He was seeking peace and enlightenment but he found nothing but an American-made hell.

Remember, these were the not-so-level-headed days of post-9/11 America, where President Bush and his ever so compliant Congress were shelving civil liberties and demanding “the heads” of anyone who looked or felt differently than “us,” where the CIA’s bounty cash was being thrown around to the tune of $5,000 per “terrorist” (read: anyone who merely looked the part), and where Bush’s “dead or alive” edict reached way down into the rank and file of the military he leads, resulting in a de facto suspension of any and all sense of justice or even compassion toward folks like Kurnaz who were only “guilty” of being the wrong color, with the wrong name, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Welcome, my friends, to the early days of the War on Terror.

To say that Kurnaz was merely tortured would be an insult to the pain and suffering he went through at the hands of our government. As a five and a half year inmate in the 6×8 foot cells in Guantanamo (and even on his way there), Kurnaz has more disturbing stories of torture than anything I have ever read. He was routinely beaten. He was hung from the ceiling for days. He was waterboarded. He was psychologically-tortured by interrogators who didn’t even speak his German language but spat at him, cursed him, and refused to even consider the truth of his statements that he was merely a young, innocent man. Indeed, logic was – and remains – the first casualty of this “war.”

Here, for example, is one of Kurnaz’s accounts of the torture he endured:

The escort team brought me to one of the tents. There they told me to sit on the ground with my legs stretched out. I didn’t understand and tried to kneel as always. But they said: Sit! Sit down! Then they pushed my legs to the ground. I was to stretch them out. Two soldiers held my feel tight. Others grabbed my hands and pushed on my shoulders so that I could no longer move.

“So, you’re not a terrorist?” one of the interrogators asked. “You’re not from Al Qaeda?”

I could tell from his tone of voice that they were trying a new approach.

“Today we’re going to find out,” said another interrogator.

Did they have a lie detector? I asked myself. The man was holding something in his hands. It looked like two irons that he was rubbing together. Or one of those machines used to revive people who have heart attacks. Before I realized what was happening, I felt the first jolt.

It was electricity. And electroshock.

They put the electrodes to the soles of my feet. There was no way to remain seated. It was as though my body was lifting itself off the ground of its own accord. I felt the electric current running through my entire body. There was a bang. It hurt a lot. I felt warmth, jolts, cramps. My muscles cramped up and quivered. That hurt, too.

“Did you change your mind?”

“What?”

I don’t know how long they held the electrodes to the soles of my feet. It could have been ten or twenty seconds, maybe longer. It felt like an eternity.

“So how is that?”

The man rubbed the electrodes together and again touched them to my feet. Again I felt the cramps, the tremors, the hot pain.

“Funny, huh?”

The electricity crackled like a series of caps being hit with a hammer. They were like bolts of lightening in my ear. If I could look inside my ear, I thought, there would be electricity there – you could see electricity. At the same time, I heard screams.

They were my screams. But it seemed as though they were coming from outside my body, as though I had nothing to do with them. My whole body was quivering.

“Did you change your mind?”

“No, no…”

“Okay, try this!”

I heard myself screaming.

“Do you remember now who you are?”

“No, yes, no…”

“Okay, how about that…”

I heard my heart. It was beating loudly and very strangely. Quickly and then slowly again.

“Do you now Osama?”

“You…Taliban…?”

“…Atta…?”

I could hardly hear the man any more. I thought I was either going to pass our or die. But he always removed the electrodes from my feet. That was the worst thing, knowing that the pain would come again, until you thought there was no way you could take it any more.

I think I passed out. That was probably when they stopped.

Ah, our tax dollars at work.

But the most uplifting aspect of Kurnaz’s story is his never-ending faith in himself and his innocence. He was literally in hell, but kept focused on his salvation and whatever bright light he could sense at the end of this torturous tunnel.

Even more moving is Kurnaz’s refusal to greet the evil he was forced to go face-to-face with everyday with a similar kind of evil. Here, for example, are the harshest words toward Americans that can be found in Kurnaz’s 255-page account of the unspeakable torture he received in our name:

Sleep would have been the only consolation in such a situation. I thought about the American movies I had seen in Bremen. Action flicks and war movies. I used to admire Americans. Now I was getting to know their true nature.

I say that without anger. It’s simply the truth, and I’m not talking about all Americans. But the ones I encountered are terrified of pain. They’re afraid of every little scratch, bacteria, and illness. They’re like little girls, I’d say. If you examine Americans closely, you realize this – no matter how big or powerful they are. But in the movies, they’re always the heroes.

Again, Kurnaz wrote these rather mild words of condemnation after more than 5 years of pure, unadulterated torture at the hands of soldiers representing us, the United States of America. And the only thing he was guilty of was being a young man in the pursuit of a spiritual and international mission of peace.

Eventually – easy for me to say – Kurnaz was released. But not after being lied to, having his lawyers turned away as a result of guards who reported that he “didn’t want to see them” when Kurnaz had no idea that they were even there, and more than five years of living in the closest thing to a metaphorical hell that any us could ever imagine – let alone survive.

Kurnaz’s book should be mandatory reading for any U.S. citizen who seeks to vote this November. We must understand what has been done and is continuing to be done in our nation’s name. And, most importantly, we must demand from those seeking ANY elected office – especially president – to come clean, condemn the atrocities, and promise nothing but an end to this ugly, draconian and – yes – evil chapter to our nation’s story.

In other words, read it. Weep. And then act. Let’s make it the new American way.

Peace.

For those in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, repeat these words: “Turn Around, Don’t Drown.”

Make them automatic, because as more roads flood and wash out from the additional 1 – 2″ of rain expected to fall today, your life is in danger. A family in NH lost their 7 year old daughter when their car was caught in a flash flood yesterday.

Flash floods are expected in the Adirondacks, Northern Vermont and New Hampshire.

A flash flood is DIFFERENT from ordinary flooding. It’s not the same thing as your basement filling with a few inches of water. Instead, rain falling upstream makes its way downstream all at once, causing sudden and dramatic rises in the water level. This is not a slow rise over the course of hours, but a rise of feet in the course of seconds or minutes.

If you see water flowing across the road from a river, brook, or stream, it could be deadly. Turn Around, Don’t Drown.

There is also a mud slide warning.

For those who don’t live in these states, join me after the fold for a discussion of what I now call “Weather 2.0,” some of its implications, and something I want to try to do about it.

Weather 2.0 – it’s the new weather, and it’s coming to you!

The first release of a new version of software is generally a “public beta.” It may have some interesting new features, but is often buggy – sometimes VERY buggy. You’re getting software that really doesn’t quite work, and that customer support doesn’t quite know how to support….

That’s what’s happening with the new weather, Weather 2.0. Our energy usage over the last century has entitled us to a free, mandatory upgrade to the buggy public beta. Things aren’t behaving quite they way they should be, and it doesn’t seem to matter where you are.

Drought? Yup. Flood? Yup. Flooding during a drought? Yup, even that.

One of the most bizarre things in Vermont early this summer was a flood warning when the fire danger was “Severe.”  How did this happen?  Well, we had just had an extended period of rain, from which the rivers hadn’t receded entirely. In the mean time, we had several days of 90 – 100 degree weather without a cloud to be seen and persistent dry winds. Those winds are the key – they dried everything out like a planet-sized hair dryer on hot.

The rivers still hadn’t settled down, the ground was still fairly damp, and then the thunder storms moved in with torrential rains. So with a severe fire danger from the dry air, we had a flood warning. Those early storms were all upstream from us and didn’t hit where we were, but the flooding did – while the plants remained so dry they presented a fire danger.

Those storms turned out to be the kick-off event for one of the wettest, grayest Julys in history. Vermont usually gets about 4 feet of rain each year. This July, we got 2 feet. There were 17 days of rain. Nearly every day was cloudy.

August has decided to turn up the volume. We had one day with more than 5 inches of rain. Yesterday’s day long thunderstorms were so severe that the weather reporter just said they had new tornado warnings popping up every 5 – 10 minutes. One town we drove through on our way out of town got 3/4″ hail 7 minutes after we drove through. For people who live in flatter places, this is a good time to know that the mountains create turbulence that breaks up storms, preventing tornadoes from forming. Last week there was a tornado that ripped through New Hampshrie (remember what I just said about mountains?). It stayed on the ground for over an hour, leaving a 50 mile long trail of devastation.

There are storms moving through the region again today, and for the northern tier counties, rain and thunderstorms are predicted at least through Wednesday.

A couple of the things that are happening as a result of this weather:

• Some trees are turning color, due to the lack of sunlight. Their low-light trigger mechanism that’s supposed to mean that autumn has arrived has been fooled into thinking it’s here. In August.
• Pretty much any crop planted in the rich bottom-lands along the rivers, if not already dead, will not survive. Those planted uphill are often stunted. Tomatoes in some places are splitting from the excess moisture. One gardening friend is unable to weed his garden and pick his peas, because the ground is so wet he just sinks if he tries to walk in there. Also rust diseases are rampant, and he’s afraid that he would spread it from diseased peas to healthy ones as he picks.
• Red pine trees are dying. I don’t mean that a few look kinda sickly here and there. I mean the bark is cascading off the trees and they are dying very rapidly. Whole stands. It’s happening everywhere I’ve driven in the last few weeks (and I’ve been through most of VT, NH, and eastern MA).
• Maple trees, beech trees, spruces, and others are dying, but a bit more slowly than the red pines. You can’t drive anywhere (I drive too much) without seeing “skeleton trees” – standing dead trees without a single leaf or needle. Out of curiosity, on the highway yesterday, I did an informal unscientific visual survey using the mile markers to measure. There was an average of 1 skeleton tree every 1/10 of a mile.
• At our house, the storms have meant losing (again) our inverter to a direct lightning strike. It also meant we almost couldn’t leave, because the road at the end of our driveway was in the process of washing out. It’s not a flash-flood area, but the volume of fast-moving water running down the hill was eroding a gash in the road that I would not have been able to traverse in another 10 minutes. There was so much water moving so fast that, if we had a small enough raft, we could have gone white water rafting from the outlet of our little culvert.

::

What to Do?

I know that the upgrade is not backward compatible. Once you’ve upgraded to Weather 2.0, there’s no uninstall procedure to bring back Weather 1.0. But we CAN do things to patch Weather 2.0 and help it become a bit more stable.

We’ve all seen the lists of ways you can help the planet. But somehow having a bunch of lists available doesn’t appear to be sufficiently motivating.

So what if we could work together all across the country to do one, small, concrete thing?

100,000 Windows

What if we had a nation-wide community service weekend this fall to put plastic wrap over 100,000 windows?

Why 100,000?

Because it’s a nice round number, it’s achievable, and it would keep 6 million pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

How hard would it be to achieve this goal? We’d need to cover 5 windows in 40 buildings in 4 communities in each state.

Doesn’t sound so big, now, does it?

If ordinary Vermonters volunteering for 3 hours on annual “Greenup Day” each spring can collect 40,000 bags of trash, then volunteer crews around the country can easily tape up some plastic wrap on a few measly windows.

Heck, you don’t even have to trudge down stream banks or haul trash bags.

Another thing largely ignored by the media:

A U.S. military jury has handed a series of stinging rebukes to the Bush administration in the trial of Salim Hamdin, Osama Bin Laden’s driver.  First, the jury acquitted him of conspiracy to commit war crimes – essentially the terrorism charge for which he was imprisoned at Guantanamo and denied rights any other prisoner – either a prisoner of war or a prisoner in the U.S. justice system – would have.  

Secondly, for his conviction of “providing material support for terrorism” (driving Bin Laden around) the military jury sentenced Hamdin to 5 ½ years.  It was not only less than the 30 years prosecutors demanded, it was practically a middle finger pointed at the administration – the jury gave the sentence knowing full well that Hamdin would get credit for the five years and one month he has already spent in custody – he’ll be eligible for release in four months, 22 days.  

Will he actually ever be released?  There is speculation that he’ll continue to be held at Guantanamo even after his sentence is served:

The U.S. will still hold Hamdan as an “enemy combatant,” and it will then be up to a Pentagon review board to determine if Hamdan is no longer a threat and can be freed.

According to one Pentagon official, “He (Hamdan) won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.”

-Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent

So that’s the new game – after fighting for the “military tribunals,” the administration has found they don’t actually work the way they wanted them to.  Their solution is to just do whatever they want to do anyway.

The Bush administration and their Pentagon lackeys aside, the military judge and the jury in this case have restored a little bit of faith in the military for me.  The military is a lot of things, not all of them good, but the people I knew during my 11 years in the military were practically obsessed with doing the right thing – with fairness.  

From the very beginning of this trial, the judge and the jury made it clear that they were interested in serving justice, and not interested in serving the system that had stacked the odds so heavily against a man.  With the sentence they handed down in this case, I think they’ve sent a message that enough is enough.  You can make the military to do your bidding in an illegal war, but you can’t force the people who serve to sacrifice their personal values.

( – promoted by odum)

ECFiber Update, August 2008

It’s been a couple of months since our last update about ECFiber’s project to bring a high-speed fiber-optic network to provide television, telephone, and broadband internet service to its member towns. We’ve been busy – a lot has happened. Here’s a summary:

• 23 Towns Participating
• Three Funding Proposals received, Oppenheimer Chosen
• Fixed-Price Commitment from Atlantic Engineering Group

Full story below the fold ….

23 Towns Participating

The last town presented its signed agreement from its select board at ECF’s Governing Board meeting on May 13th in Quechee, bringing the total number of towns participating in the project to 23. Representatives from these 23 towns will be moving forward over the next few months to continue the pre-registration process, approve  documents governing the financing and implementation of the Project, and begin to review proposals to finance the design, construction and  operation of the network.

Over 15% of the households in the ECFiber service area have already pre-registered for service, with Barnard currently leading the way at over 75%. You can see a list of participating towns, and their current number of pre-registrations, on the ECFiber homepage at www.ecfiber.net. There is also a list of each town’s ECFiber representatives at www.ecfiber.net/townlist.

Three Funding Proposals Received, Oppenheimer Selected

While the Governing Board has been working on the details of creating the organization, two sub-committees have been doing important work to secure funding for the Project and to finalize contracts for its operation. The Finance Committee received several proposals for the financing of the capital lease from potential underwriters, reviewed those proposals, and recommended an underwriting firm. At the June 10th meeting, the Governing Board authorized the Executive Committee to engage the chosen institution, Oppenheimer & Co., Inc., of New York City.

According to Kim Mooers of Sovereign Securities, who is acting as ECFiber’s financial advisor in the deal, Oppenheimer is essentially breaking the lease into pieces and bringing them to market in a public offering. Each “piece” is called a “certificate of participation” (in the Lease) and the entire mechanism is called a “COPs” (or certificates of participation) financing.

Loredo Sola, chair of ECFiber’s Executive Committee said Oppenheimer was selected from three qualified bidders because of their experience with COPs for fiber-to-the-home projects, their understanding of the project and the deal, their proven track record of succeeding with the sale of similar certificates, and their reputation in the market. Apart from a nominal initial signing fee, Oppenheimer has agreed to make all fees and out-of-pocket costs contingent on the success of the financing.

Now begins the important task for the ECFiber towns: disclosure of the Project and the financing structure to potential purchasers of the certificates and “due diligence”. Oppenheimer needs to be sure that the Project is on a solid financial and legal footing. To ensure that this information is thorough and complete, and that it complies with all legal requirements, ECFiber has retained Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a national law firm with an office in Boston, that is well-respected by the financial community, to help the 23 towns provide Oppenheimer with the information it requires.

The “working target date” for closing is currently mid-November, but Tim Nulty, Project Director, is cautious. “I’ve done a lot of complex financings and I know that there are always bumps in the road. Realistically, I will be delighted if the money is in the bank by the end of the year.”

Fixed-Price Commitment From Atlantic Engineering Group

ValleyNet, who will be contracting with ECFiber to provide the Project design and construction services, has entered into a letter of intent (the “LOI”) with Atlantic Engineering Group (AEG) for a fixed price construction contract  (at $29.3 million plus contingency) covering the Project’s core network infrastructure, including the design, construction and installation of the actual fiber-optic cable network throughout the towns but excluding the hub building and the access equipment. AEG ‘s  experience includes building 65 Fiber-to-the-Premises networks,  including 16 that are municipally-owned.  AEG’s proposal was based upon the financial model prepared by ValleyNet. The LOI states that  “AEG considers the ECFiber network design to be sound and has tested the ValleyNet cost figures using its own proprietary pricing models.  Our models are based upon our extensive experience building similar networks and have concluded that ValleyNet’s figures for the elements included [in the LOI proposal] are reasonable and achievable.”  The LOI also states that  “AEG believes that the execution schedule  contained in the ECFiber model is reasonable and will commit to meet that schedule, subject to provisions allowing for events beyond AEG’s control.”

Benefits of Fiber to Vermont

At a recent conference in Burlington sponsored by the Snelling Center for Government, Lewis Feldstein, in his keynote address, pointed out the many advantages to communities when they increase the value of their social capital, the connections that their members have with one another. Being connected technologically is more and more a way to do that, and the all-day conference, entitled “Fulfilling Our E-State Potential: Building Community in a Connected Age,” included presentations and discussions on how Vermont can move forward as an E-State without losing the sense of community that is such an important part of its history and character.

ECFiber is working to bring high-speed networks to its member towns to benefit residents, small businesses, schools, organizations, and government, and we expect that this will become a model for other projects throughout the state of Vermont. The Snelling Center has created a website at snellingcenter.wikispaces.com/Symposium with information on the discussions that took place at the conference, and will continue to offer discussions and opportunities for input on these important questions.

ECFiber Timeline

Once ECFiber obtains funding for the Project, work is expected to proceed at a fairly rapid pace. Engineers will determine the exact layout for the network itself, and will survey each utility pole in the entire region to create detailed plans for attaching the fiber. Once the layout of the network is in hand, the location of the remote fiber hubs can be determined. All of the network lines will run to the main hub expected to be located in White River Junction, which will be built and fitted out with a redundant power supply, networking devices, telephone switching servers, and television controls.

At the same time, other aspects of the Project will get underway — implementation of a customer service operation center and software for a billing and collections system, hiring and training of customer service technicians, and connection of the fiber lines on the utility poles to boxes on the side of houses, shops, schools, and town offices to make the final connection to computers, telephones and televisions.

ECFiber currently expects the first connections to be made in the Fall of 2009, consistent with the Governor’s goals for Vermont as an E-State.  It is expected that the ECFiber service area will eventually cover one-sixth of the area of the state itself.

Pre-Registrations

As we have indicated, the more pre-registrations that we can process before we actually begin wiring houses, the more efficient our work will be and the less the delay will be in getting everyone connected once the fiber is on your street. Please let your neighbors know that they can pre-register on the ECFiber website at www.ecfiber.net/preregister; there’s no obligation if their needs change before the service becomes available, but we assume that those pre-registering are serious about using our services as we work to make them available. There is also a pre-registration form that you can download and print at www.ecfiber.net/documents/ECFiber-pre-registration.pdf.

Sincerely,

Loredo Sola

Chair, ECFiber Executive Committee

ECFiber is a grassroots initiative to build a high-speed state-of-the- art fiber-optic network in over twenty Vermont towns, bringing cable television service, reliable telephone service, and high-speed Internet service directly to homes, schools, and businesses.

To find out more visit www.ECFiber.Net, e-mail to info@ecfiber.net, or write to

ECFiber,  PO Box 8,  White River Junction VT 05001

This isn't getting much coverage at the moment, but a simmering conflict between Russia and the Republic of Georgia has just erupted into a shooting war:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080808/ap_on_re_eu/georgia_south_ossetia

 The reason this conflict is of importance is that there are many, on both sides of the aisle, that would like to see Georgia in NATO.  Thus, under article V rules we could become embroiled (or at least obligated to become embroiled) in a territorial conflict in which the US has no strategic or moral interests.

The Georgians certainly have some ground for grievance.  South Ossetia was grabbed by the Russians when Georgia itself nearly collapsed in the early 90s under Gamsakhurdia.  Conversely, South Ossetia was given to Georgia by Stalin precisely because he knew it would foment this type of conflict.  To make a long story short, for a variety of historical and cultural reasons the Ossetians tend feel closer to Russia than Georgia.  Thus, it is unclear whether the Ossetians living in South Ossetia want to be part of Georgia.

 If you think the Balkans in the 90s was a tangled mess of borders, ethnic hatreds and economic plundering, you ain't seen nothing like the Caucasus. 

If the conflict widens, look for it to feature in McCain's rhetoric.  McCain is an advocate for getting Georgia into NATO (along with Ukraine).  

To my mind, this conflict makes it clear that there is absolutely no way Georgia should be allowed in til it settles its borders (there is another break away region called Abkhazia that is even more problematic).  That may not be fair to the Georgians, but I don't think the US has anything to gain in going to war with Russia over Ossetia.  To paraphrase Bismarck: the whole of the Caucasus is not worth the bones of one American soldier.

Anyway, back to the coverage of the Olympics, Symington's tax returns, etc… 

UPDATE:  Friday morning. Remsen picked it up, looks like she largely confirms what’s in this diary… Barlow, unfortunately, uncritically parrots the Douglas line, leading with “Gaye Symington’s tax return for 2007, released to the public last week.” – even though the point is, it was not Gaye Symington’s tax return that was released to the media. /UPDATE

It’s Thursday night. What will the headlines be tomorrow? That depends on how smart the Vermont press corps is… or isn’t.

All things being equal, the headlines you would read concern the beginning of the Senate hearings on the sex offender issue, and the Brooke Bennett case in particular. Jim Douglas has been push-polling, spinning, and promoting ineffective populist solutions as loudly as he can, all to keep the public from catching on to the fact that his own Department of Corrections screwed up in cutting the likely offender – Michael Jacques – loose. And admissions to that effect were forthcoming at the hearings:

“With the benefit of hindsight we were wrong, the department was wrong, and the prosecutor was right,” said Vt. Corrections Commissioner Rob Hofmann.

And to make a bad situation for Douglas worse, the hearings have already included admissions that the Governor’s proposed policies wouldn’t have mattered in this case, and – most explosively – that Jacques had actually violated his probation, but the Probation officer did not inform the Judge when the decision was being made to release him from that probation early.

Now, if you think that Jim Douglas and Campaign Manager Denise Casey are going to sit back and let that be the headline tomorrow, you’re kidding yourself. Their response?

To try and change the subject, of course – but since they’ve got nothing to work with, they’ve chosen to take a page from the Bush/McCain playbook: smear their opponent.

And it’s a real whopper they’re selling. Big enough that when it hit my ears in its raw form, all I could think in the first few seconds was “Ho-lee Shit… what has Symington done?” A little investigation, and I come to see that it was all a load of particularly sleazy crap… but the question remains, will the press corps have the wherewithal to realize that (or to be able to tell when they’re being played… and played crudely at that).

The charge they’re shopping to reporters? That, because they didn’t want Symington’s husband’s finances to be included in her recent financial disclosure (an awful, awful decision, by the way…), the Symington campaign deliberately altered her tax form and presented it to the media as the original. Scary, huh? Could even be a campaign-ending screwup, along the lines of Rainville’s plagiarism or Elizabeth Ready’s resume alteration.

And, again, it’s bullshit. This is just so many layers of wrong, words just don’t seem adequate. Details, with supporting documentation below the fold…

It’s a big charge to make, and again, it could be a campaign-ender if true. Douglas is obviously eager for that “magic bullet” that eludes them, but this is just sloppy. So sloppy, it further smacks of desperation, suggesting that Douglas’s poll numbers may not be as rosy as he’s come to expect.

The problem is, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the press won’t dutifully parrot it anyway and put the sneaky-cheater-phony narrative Douglas & Casey are trying to propagate about Symington into circulation.

Again, the charge is that Symington released modified (read: fake) tax returns to the media.

But the fact is, I get all those press releases as well. Here’s the one with the attachment in question (emphasis added):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michael Carrese

July 31, 2008 802-651-7141 or 760-8832

RE: Release of Personal Financial Information

Candidate for Governor Gaye Symington is voluntarily releasing her personal financial information for the last four years.  The information includes her income from private employment as well as her public salary and assets.

Note: attached are a one page summary of the Speaker’s financial information and pro-forma tax forms prepared by her accountant.

“Pro forma”:

Accounting. indicating hypothetical financial figures based on previous business operations for estimate purposes: a pro forma balance sheet.

In other words, this was not a copy of a tax form. It was an accountant’s statement in lieu of an actual tax form – in this case, the accountant being Peter Sweeney of Burlington. Something tells me he would know better than to be a partner to an alteration of legal documents.

Why is Symington vulnerable to what sounds like a crude attack that wouldn’t fool anybody?

Because she offered her pro forma report on tax forms. Regular old tax forms.

Yeah – freakin’ brilliant.

Symington’s campaign manager told me that this was done for easy comparison, and at Symington’s accountant’s advice to aid in transparency.

Mistake? Yeah. Big one. Weird decision. But the fact remains that the press release clearly states that this is not a copy of her tax return. That right there makes the charge moot.

And they’re obviously generated from a tax-form template program like Turbo Tax or somesuch. Take a look at the circled portion…

It may have been a dumb move, but having 999-99-9998 as both her and her husband’s social security numbers right up front for all to see indicates the campaign’s sincerity. There’s obviously accounting software in play that requires a social security number, and Symington’s accountant opted to put in a dummy number so the report would run without compromising that bit of information.  To put something like an obviously phony SS# (shared by her husband, no less) front and center would have to mean that they were the dumbest scam artists ever, or that they think the press is pathologically stupid.

So the notion that Symington altered her tax forms is obviously ridiculous. Douglas and Casey must clearly know that its patently ridiculous.

But they peddled it anyway. Why? Because they are desperate to change the conversation.

…and because they obviously do think the press is stupid.

Here’s hoping they’re not proven right.

(Cross posted at Broadsides.org)

It’s all the rage to talk about money and politics. But I think we’re focusing on the wrong end. Sure, we should keep track of the donors to political campaigns. But I think it’s just as important that we begin to ponder the wealth of those seeking our publicly-funded political offices.

Take Vermont’s campaign for governor, for example. Our sitting – and I do mean sitting – Governor, Jim Douglas, recently announced that he and his wife, a dental assistant, are worth more than $2 million and have no debt. The peculiar thing about this Republican’s amassing of wealth is that he’s spent his entire professional career as a “public servant,” working in various elected government jobs since he graduated from Middlebury College 30-some years ago. So you have to wonder how seriously we have to take Douglas when he spills forth with his “big, bad government” mantra. I guess what he really means is that government is “bad for thee, but not for me!” Two million dollars worth – and counting.

Douglas’ Democrat opponent, Gaye Symington, is also a millionaire many times over. She’s just trying to be coy by not including her husband’s wealth in the financial filings she recently handed over to the Vermont press. Her husband, Chuck Lacy, was one of the original honchos at Ben & Jerry’s back when the company’s stock was being handed out like candy and those at the top – like Lacy — walked away with more loot than they knew what to do with. So much loot, in fact, that folks like Lacy started their own charitable foundations (http://www.cdvca.org/about/funds/barred_rock.php)  to give gobs of it away. Nice work if you can get it.

Without her hubby’s millions, Symington declared a personal worth of close to $400,000. But you’ve got to be more than a hypocritical fool (or, for that matter, drinking way too much Dem Kool-Aid) to buy her argument against releasing their joint financial information.

“I’m running for office,” Symington declares, “not my family.”

Okay, Gaye, fan the flames of interest all you want but that kind of lameness isn’t going to make the issue – or the millions of dollars — go away. Besides, I’ll bet you won’t be distancing yourself from “the family” when the photo-ops, the door knocking, the advertisements, the advice, and the support come into play, huh? Of course not.

The simmering issue of Symington taking Vermonters for fools by refusing to release her joint financial picture should be dispensed with by two recent political examples: Hillary Clinton released joint financial statements in her run for president; and national Democrats made a huge issue of the McCains’ refusal to release joint financial statements. Checkmate, Gaye. Release them or prepare yourself for more questions.

Speaking of spousal wealth, the newly declared “Independent” in this campaign, Anthony Pollina, announced that he and his wife (emphasis on “wife”) are worth around $800,000. But if you look more closely at the filing you’ll see that there’s a pot of gold on his wife’s side that is just waiting to be handed over whenever it’s needed. Their joint income of around $90,000 last year included $30,000 in income derived from her family’s Maryland-based businesses. Hmm. Again, a nice job if you can get it. Or, in Anthony’s case, marry into it.

But the bigger issue here – for me, at least – is the wealth of these three media-appointed “leaders” in the campaign for governor. Compared to the average Vermont family, these folks are financial kings and queens. And the same is true when you take a gander at the financial pictures of our federally-elected threesome – Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Congressman Peter Welch (all are millionaires).

When, exactly, will the comparatively extreme wealth of our elected officials and mainstream challengers become an issue? How long will we kid ourselves into thinking and believing that people with such wealth, and, as a result, a built-in disconnect with the economic pains that the rest of us are feeling, will do anything of substance to “change” the system? Hey, it’s worked for them.

None of the aforementioned politicians – or, in the case of Pollina, a wannabe politician – ever have to worry about that pit in their stomach when they go to the mailbox and are greeted by bills that they don’t have the money for. They don’t have to fret about health insurance or even trying to get an appointment to see a doctor (tried that lately?). They don’t sweat with the mental calculations that the rest of us sweat over as we shop for such extravagances as, say, food. They don’t stop filling their gas tank at half-full because that’s all they can afford. And they don’t worry about their retirement, unless, of course, you don’t count the worry of “which house?” or “which boat?”

But yet we continue to elect one wealthy person after another to help us deal with the issues that have made them wealthy and made the rest of us struggle. Nail, meet the hammer, and enjoy the pain.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the crocodile tears from the millionaire politicians. They can’t “feel” our pain. They’ve only been profiting from it.

Sure, let’s get money out of politics, as they say. And we can start by getting the moneyed-elite out of our political offices. Enough already.

And I could win a prize for that ! Washington Post Style section features the news that McCain people are offering prizes for comments .Although the targeted sites are not noticing any surge in pro-McCain comments .As John McCain knows a good surge can take months to show any progress or maybe the prizes aren’t that good .The McCain site has helpful daily talking points and links to targeted blogs ,liberal,conservative ,moderate and other [?]

Win Points for McCain!

Rewards Program for Online Commenters

On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (“John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.

People who sign up for McCain’s program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain’s webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

Cornfield (an executive with a company that markets political-organizing software) says McCain’s program has a couple of bugs.The first, he says, is the lack of disclosure instructions to participants. To rise above AstroTurf — a practice considered ethically dubious by many political operatives — Cornfield says participants should use their real names and identify themselves as part of a campaign participation program (as in, “I’m Mike Cornfield, and I’m part of the McCain Action Team”).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…  http://www.johnmccain.com/Acti…

There's often a little friction between the different lobes of the Democratic electoral effort, usually united under the “Coordinated Campaign.” A certain amount of that friction is always generated between whatever out-of-state staffers are brought onboard and the locals. It's never that big a deal, but it's a dynamic that does annoy some folks mightily – often the local county activists who bristle at being told what's what by the latest passing up-and-coming field organizer.

This year, that frustration seems to be more focused at the Presidential operation than usual. While the Gore and Kerry operations had very small footprints in Vermont, the Obama campaign has paid staff devoted to every state, and is directing their field operatives nationwide to meet specific field benchmarks. How these staffers have been interacting with the local Coordinated Campaigns has varied. In Iowa, there has been some eyebrow raising as the Obama campaign has seemingly taken over the Coordinated Campaign, lock stock and barrel, while in Colorado, there's talk that the Obama campaign is simply ignoring the CC.

Here in Vermont, the Coordinated Campaign hasn't come together as readily or as cleanly as it has in the past (a story for another diary, depending on how it goes…), but the Obama campaign is moving forward regardless, ruffling a few feathers in the process here and there. But the thing that's really got people pissed off? The schwag. The stuff. The campaign gear. Wanna show your support? That'll be a dollar for a bumper sticker, and a whopping five bucks for a lawn sign. The fees have got local Democrats pissed off enough, the Lamoille County Committee recently passed a resolution condemning them in light of the Obama campaign's stunning fundraising.

Now, this is not without precedent. The last two presidential campaigns initially attempted to charge for stickers and signs (presumably its an opportunity for in-the-bag Vermont to help subsidize the overall effort), but the pay-to-promote paradigm eventually fell by the wayside as the Election approached, and in light of activists who would drive across the border to battleground New Hampshire, stock up on freebies, and come back home to pass them out.

Still, if the state Democrats want to break the impasse, my neighbor – usual suspect Dem activist and eco-lobbyist Matt Levin – had a brilliant gordian-knot-cutting idea. The Vermont Party should just pay to print their own, and use the opportunity to make a slight modification, as demonstrated by the image to the right.

So, what's the Obama campaign gonna say? Stop it? Be serious. If the VDP were to hand out this particular free option to all the deprived Obamaphiles, Symington's profile would jump immediately, and in the most positive possible context… and it would have the added bonus of creating an implied “McCain-Douglas” image in the minds of passersby. So hey, VDP – what're you waiting for? I'll be by to pick mine up this weekend…

…who can make really crappy web ads:

I just have one response to this ad.

WHAT?

WHAT?

WHAT?