There’s already a long, active thread on this subject, but one comment in the thread seems to me to merit promotion to a full fledged diary, and that’s Jack’s. To that in a moment.

First of all, I want to say I finally watched the video. Now to hear the sturm und drang on the web, you’d think that Democratic City Councilors went wild, and Ed Adrian became practically rabid. Republican Council President Kurt Wright simply had to call the cops out to control the unhinged assault on Democracy that will forever poison the city (and the state’s) view of the entire Democratic Party, which was revealed to be either complicit in a pre-planned plot to thwart the will of the people, or hypocritical for not calling for Adrian’s head.

Gimme a frakkin’ break. To say it didn’t live up to the hype is like saying Number 10 Pond doesn’t live up to the Pacific Ocean. Jack:

1. The entire period of the so-called disruption and confrontation regarding the points of order and points of information lasted maybe five minutes or so.

2. It appears that there were a number of different points of order and points of information that the Democrats were raising. As I could make them out, they included whether the Council was holding a new meeting or a continuation of the previous meeting; what agenda they were working from in light of the fact that the clerk had issued a new agenda but Councilor Knodell initially seemed to be addressing an item on the original agenda; whether it was in order to take up the ordinance without its first having gone through the ordinance committee; and whether the current Council was bound by a resolution that laid out a special process for this ordinance, notwithstanding the fact that there had been a change of council membership since the adoption of the original resolution. (I may be missing one or two points, but I think that’s the gist of it.)

3. From what I could tell, the Democrats tried to get rulings on their points of order (or information ), but I didn’t see them pushing any particular point of order once there was a ruling from the Chair on it.

4. There were a number of times when the Chair tried to reject or rule a point of order out of order before hearing it.

5. The Chair eventually informed the objecting members that they had the right to appeal his rulings and seek a vote on their point of order if they disagreed with his ruling; they never did so.

6. At no point did the Chair ask for a vote on whether the Democrats were obstructing the proceedings and should be removed.

I think #6 is an important point. There is a parliamentary process for removing members who are obstructing the work of the body, but they don’t involve the Chair calling the police. There may have been people other than Kurt Wright and Jane Knodell who were annoyed at the objections of the Democrats, but we didn’t hear from them. We can’t know what they would have done if it had been put to a vote, but it is at least possible that members of the Council who would need to maintain a working relationship with the minority might take a different view of how to proceed than the lame duck Council President and Councilor.

What I saw was about eight minutes of what I’ve seen in plenty of other meetings; a minority who felt (rightly or wrongly) that they were being railroaded and opting to choose (rightly or wrongly) to change that by being (shall we say) exactingly precise about parliamentary protocols. Obstructionist? Absolutely… but whether you think that’s a bad thing or not depends on whether you believe that they were being railroaded or not, and I’m not making a call either way. Again – what should matter to folks is that the police were called in, and that decision was plainly outrageous.

What I also saw was a City Council President incapable of controlling or properly running a meeting. That was pathetic.

In any event, it should be plain that ten minutes of Roberts-rules-neener-neenerisms before an incompetent Chair do not merit that Chair compounding his failure by calling the police. Such a decision was not simply ridiculous, it was unethical. So why are so many self-identifying lefties on the internet so eagerly defending the action (and, in the process – or as part of the process – so badly mischaracterizing the supposed transgressions of a few City Councilors)?

It’s all Partisan Derangement Syndrome. Otherwise sensible people getting caught up in the mass hysteria of partisan groupthink. What we’ve got is a few lefties who identify with the Progressive Party – as well as some die-hard Republicans – absolutely losing their shit because of their contempt for Democrats (or their personal animosity towards Ed Adrian). Honestly, after looking at that video, its all I can figure, and its all very childish.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. This whole embarrassing dustup is another reminder that Burlington City Politics is in serious need of an enema. Some Progs & Repubs would do well to take a lesson from folks like Rama and see it for what it is and not for the mass indictment of the Democratic Party they’d desperately like it to be.

Anyway, if you haven’t yet joined the fun, you’ll have to follow this link (CCTV has their audio and video locked up so tight I cant excerpt, and neither can I embed iframe code into Soapblox). Click here, choose the video option on the drop down menu, and click on the Downtown Use and Hieght [sic] Ordinance, and you’ll find the brouhaha roughly 6 or 7 minutes into it, lasting about 7 or 8 minutes before the recess is called (and Police are brought in).

Then come back and look at some of the selection of my favorite comments from around the web on the matter. see what you think.

“Bringing the police in made sense, given the outrageous actions of a few Dems. Those few Dems are an embarassment to the Democratic Party and the City Council.” – Posted by: Dell

Anonymous said…

“So…seems pretty unanimous that certain Dems did a great job of tarnishing their party’s rep on multiple fronts (in person, on cable, in the BFP and in certain excellent blogs).

Prediction: some party shake up / new blood.”

teamoldmill wrote: “Way to go Kurt! Disdruptive, childish Democrats, good way to deal with them. Dems are why VT is going down the tubes, and they get their panties in a bind over 1 story increase?

Police should have stepped in with billy clubs. We have to get the Dems out, or VT is going nowhere.

I am very proud somone stood up to the stupid Dems.”

redvette1 wrote: “Adrian and Berezniak are losers and Shannon is not to far behind. The first two so-called-councilors are always trying to intimidate and then get upset when their tatics do not work for them.

I fail to understand why the voters in their respective wards voted for them – unless they are of the same stock.

Adrian and Berezniak; help the City – leave, just go away, far away.

Kurt should of had you both removed Thursday evening.”

“In my 14 years on the council, I’ve never seen such an unprofessional and disrespectful display,” said (Councilor Jane ) Knodell. “The whole meeting was breaking down, no one knew what they would try to do next, and I think that the council president did the right thing by asking for [police] presence.

I like Jane, I’ve worked on a campaign with Jane, and she should be ashamed of herself for engaging in such ridiculous hyperbole in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. It’s beneath her.

From Wall Street Watch:

Last fall, the house of cards finally collapsed. For those who might have heard the “blame the victim” propaganda emanating from the free marketers whose philosophy lies in a smoldering ruin alongside the economy, the report sets the record straight: consumers are not to blame for this debacle. Not those of us who used credit in an attempt to have a decent quality of life (as opposed to the tiny fraction of people in our country who truly got ahead over the last decade). Nor can we blame the Americans who were offered amazing terms for mortgages but forgot to bring a Ph.D. and a lawyer to their “closing,” and later found out that they had been misled and could not afford the loan at the real interest rate buried in the fine print.

Rather, America’s economic system is at or beyond the verge of depression today because gambling became the financial sector’s principal preoccupation, and the pile of chips grew so big that the Money Industry displaced real businesses that provided real goods, services and jobs. By that time, the amount of financial derivatives in circulation around the world – $683 trillion by one estimate – was more than ten times the actual value of all the goods and services produced by the entire planet. When all the speculators tried to cash out, starting in 2007, there really wasn’t enough money to cover all the bets.

(Sold Out, How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America)

Vermont’s Chief Recovery Officer has some of what I am certain Governor Douglas would find to be horribly radical ideas. Even if they are from a real conservative.

 

So legalizing drugs is a stimulus package (pun intended) that comes at a negative cost to the taxpayer, punishes the bad guys by ruining their business, creates new business opportunities for good guys and lets us treat drug problems as we do alcohol and other addictions. The only problem is that it’s political dynamite and will cause a huge anti-Obama surge from the right (but not from real conservatives like me).

http://blog.tomevslin.com/2009…

A quote from Jon Stewart in his explosive interview with Jim Cramer.

If you haven’t seen this yet, it is worth your time.  Jon Stewart takes Cramer to task and does one of the the best jobs to date in taking Wall Street (and the complict MSM corporate media) to task for driving our economy over the cliff.

see link: www.thedailyshow.com videos.

It’s sad that it takes a comedian on a spoof show to do a real journalist’s job.

While the media is focused on all kinds of fiddle-faddle, silently, a massive unseen change is taking place under the direction of Governor Douglas.

Vermont is on line to secure hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal dollars.  Much of this money doesn’t automatically appear in the state.  We have to apply for the funds.  

In the application the state says what the money will be used for.  

What have we heard about the process to determine the use of these funds???  Nothing!

Where are the public meetings or hearings to decide how the money is to be spent?  How come the press is shedding no light on the process or what the plans are for these funds?

Do we really want the use of these funds to be decided by Governor Douglas and his cronies with no input from the rest of us?  Will we like the result?

We need to insist on an open process to determine use of the funds.

PJ