After what seemed like years of meeting with City officials, gaining local grassroots support, and discussing the petition wording ad nauseam (OK, it was only 2 weeks, but I am not really a patient person :-), the Rutland IRV effort is now ready to start collecting petition signatures!

The petition is to have a Charter change question placed on the March 3, 2009 ballot to have the Rutland City Mayor elected using instant runoff voting (IRV). The Charter change would be similar to the one Burlington passed a few years ago and now uses to elect their Mayor.

IRV is good because it ensures that the candidate who is elected has majority support (the current Mayor of Rutland was elected with just 33% of the vote), and does it in a way that doesn’t involve a costly separate runoff election.

This effort is endorsed by Rutland DFA, Democracy For Vermont, Fair Vote and Vermont Common Cause. Several more organizations are expected to make official endorsements this week.

We are looking for 40 volunteers to collect 20 signatures each. If you can help, please email me at jjem1999@yahoo.com

Douglas’s new head of the Agency of Human Sevices, Rob Hoffman (former Corrections Commisioner), was on Vermont Edition yesterday. As VPR puts it, AHS is “the state’s largest agency and it provides services to the most vulnerable people”.

Host Jane Lindholm discussed the upcoming, widely expected push from the Douglas Adminsistration to respond to budget issues by cutting into critical social programs and jobs, and invoked the recent “kerfuffle” (as she describes it) over emails released to the press that discussed the possibility of reclassifying social service jobs so they could be eliminated under the public’s and the legislature’s radar. Lindholm suggested better transparency might be a good idea (not, obviously, if Douglas & Company intend to hide things), and what steps Hoffman might take to make the decision making process open. Here’s an audio clip:

(“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”-Edward R. Murrow – promoted by kestrel9000)

I didn’t vote for Obama. In the end I chose Nader as my “none of the above” because McKinney didn’t make it onto Vermont’s ballot.

Why didn’t I vote for Obama? I grew disillusioned with his drift into neo-con foreign policy land and his willingness to go along with the same tried and failing economic plans that have been tried and failed more often than not in the last 30 or 40 years.

I was still considering Obama when I placed my #2 pencil close to the ballot. In particular I appreciated Obama’s comments that we as individuals are responsible for what goes on around us … it’s not just some government’s job to make things work right.

What kept my attention the most was Obama’s ability to articulate a big view. He was able to to talk about life in philosophical terms … the vision thing if you will.

But this is where I became uneasy too.

While Obama talked about a world built from the bottom up, his policy choices have been more in tune with the top down: a mandatory medical insurance plan instead of a national health care plan; big brother spying permissions as in the telecoms vote; expanding the military even beyond its already bloated size; more federal mandates on our schools; expanding “faith” based funding.

Nothing about Obama bothers me as much as his foreign policy: it wasn’t Georgia, it was all Russia’s fault; Israeli pandering; expanding our war machine; not wanting to really pull out of Iraq; expanding the Afghanistan war not only in that country but into Pakistan too.

I don’t like his cabinet and close staff picks for the most part: for someone who talked about change there sure is a hell of a lot of the same ol’ same ol’ Clinton administration heading back to the White House. Apparently Obama has also picked up the concept of borrow and spend without regard to what’s going to happen to future generations because of our financial missteps … to me it speaks poorly of his choice in economic advisers.

Don’t expect some grassroots driven presidency. I’ve never seen any indication that Obama doesn’t run that which he heads. Trying to hold his feet to some mythical post-election fire when he’s cloistered himself in Chicago isn’t going to cut it.

BUT …

I’ll know by mid-summer where Obama is heading with his administration. Until then I plan on keeping my undies unbunched and working at those things I believe I can be helpful in.

If nothing else … he’s a legitimate electee.