43 years ago, a small group of us left Middlebury to march with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery.  

Last night, we finally got there.

( – promoted by odum)

I’m running and …

Greetings to all at Green Mountain Daily

I’ve occasionally diaried on GMD and lurked alot.  I’m running for the Vermont House of Reps in Bennington/Rutland (1) – Dorset, Peru, Landgrove/ Danby, Mt. Tabor.  I am a democrat and running against Patti Komline.  I was a last minute candidate in ’06 and didn’t have much of a campaign.  This year, I have more time.  And so… tell me what you think a candidate should be focusing on.  The district is a real mix of rich and poor, residents/second homes, gold towns and out-in-the cold-towns.  Tell me what you think.  Have at me!!!

Ed Weissman, writer, poet, librettist, lyricist.  Middlebury College grad.  Most recent work: Co-author, Episcopal Haiku (2007) and “Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys Invent Vermont,” a musical (book and lyrics).  

Who is Lurleen?  Lurleen Wallace was the wife of George Wallace.  When George was term limited out of running for re-election as Governor of Alabama, he ran his wife.  

There are two very different models of women in politics.  One I like to call the Great Man can’t so the little woman steps in.  Term limits or death or, in the case of Ma Ferguson in Texas, the great man was removed from office and was disqualified from running again.  Sometimes, it’s the great man’s daughter.  In the case of Indira Gandhi, it could be argued that politics is the family business.

The other model is the real move toward equality.  Golda Meir.  Helen Clark.  God help us, Maggie Thatcher.  Here at home: Madeleine Kunin.  Gay Symington.  Carolyn Partridge.  

Gay Symington and her federal counterpart are both from political families.  Nancy Pelosi’s father was a Maryland pol, but she made her home and career in San Francisco.  Gay is the niece or grandniece of Stuart Symington, the Mo. Senator.  

Let’s have real equality.  In short,

LURLEEN, go home and sit down.

If Bush and the Supremes hadn't stolen the 2000 election and Al Gore became the rightful President, how many tens of thousands of the dead would be alive today?

Larry Craig resigns and everyone talks about Republican hypocrites.  I strongly disagree.  The situation is not simply one of saying one thing and doing another.  In fact, the causal relationship is JUST THE REVERSE.  PEOPLE WHO ENGAGE IN MORALISTIC OUTPOURINGS ARE, IN FACT, CONFESSING TO THE 'FAILING' THEY ATTACK.

Remove all troops immediately (like today).

Give a most sympathetic hearing to requests for the extradition to either the Hague or Iraq of all the architects of the war as well as all charged with war crimes.

Domestic trials for those guilty of violations of the Code of Military Justice.

Complete comliance with all requests for information from allied nations.

then let’s talk about other things.

This year marks Barbara Cook’s 80th birthday.  A big celebration for this greatest of all artists is what we should be planning

No, no one’s died.  But this illustrates how the so-called conservatives are incapable of doing the simplest acts of governing. 

Canada is about to mark the 90th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge.  This is a very big deal – think Bunker Hill, the Alamo, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima combined and you get only some idea.  Like Gallipoli for Aussies and New Zealanders, Vimy turned Canada from colony into nation.  How big a deal is the rededication of the memorial at Vimy?  The Queen is leading the delegation not as head of state of the UK or head of the Commonwealth but as Queen of Canada.  The only time I can think of her ever appearing as Queen of Canada outside of Canada was when she and Eisenhower opened the St. Lawrence Seaway. 

So what did Stephen Harper’s Conservatives do or not do.  They didn’t remember to invite members of the opposition to attend until reminded to do so at the last minute.  3600 school children from all over Canada are to attend, but the government has decided they have to buy their own lunch.  But here’s the real biggie.  The bi-lingual plaques in the memorial are in lousy French.  Unnamed persons translated the English texts into wretched French.  Misspellings, using English words, bad grammar.  You get it.

I bet Brownie was hired as the event planner.

I feel a need to weigh in on the issue of whether Naylor and others associated with the Second Vermont Republic movement are tied to racists, racist movements and racism in general. 

In his book, The Vermont Manifesto, Naylor quotes one H. Newcomb Morse of Pepperdine Law School on why the confederate secession was legal.  For those unfamiliar with Pepperdine, the school is fundamentalist and the Dean of the Law School is Kenneth Starr —  yes that Ken Starr. 

“…Morse argues that the proper way for a state to leave the Union is through a state convention elected by the PEOPLE (emphasis ew) of the state to decide one and only one issue, namely the right of self-determination.  According to…Morse every Confederate State properly used the convention process.”

There it is folks – racism to the very core.  The clear and simple meaning of the above is that blacks and women are not people.  Only white men (and not all of them) could vote. 

In Morse’s list of reasons why secession was legal, he fails to mention the need to good faith negotiate assets and liabilities and also fails to provide for a period of time during which those who find themselves on the wrong side of the divide can change location.  As well, he fails to discuss the issue of secession from the seceding entities. 

There are separatist movement in many countries.  I find it interesting that Naylor doesn’t discuss the separatist movement in Quebec.  Separatist movements are all over the political map.  The only justification for separatism is that liberty and participation are not protected and respected in the current regime.  The notion of separation to protect tyranny, slavery, and oppression should be anathema.  And that’s what the Confederate States of America were all about.

Canadians have a wonderful political category – the red Tory.  Sometimes, it is just used as the equivalent of liberal or moderate Republican.  However, it’s more interesting meaning is that of someone who’s political ideas include pieces of left and right.  Not just any pieces.  The wisdom of Edmund Burke, the great English conservative and REFORMER is a major piece of it.  The notion that society is more than just the arithmetic sum of its individual members.  The idea that grand ideological schemes are  very likely to end in blood and horror.  The humility to understand that any act, no matter how well-motivated and thought-through, is still likely to have unintended and not necessarily happy consequences.  As well, there is the crucial notion that doing nothing is still a choice and an act.  If one looks at the constitutional monarchies in the world (ones in which the monarch is a figurehead not like the monarchy in Tonga where the king has enormous power granted to him by a constitution), one sees societies that have successfully evolved from feudalism to modern democracy usually without major upheavals. This shows societies that can deal with change well.

The notion of a solid state constitution that is unchanging is a recipe for disaster and dishonesty.  Disaster because a society that makes change difficult or impossible will become dysfunctional.  Dishonest because it is epistemologically impossible to know what the `framers ` meant.  Any society always has two major sources of disaster – an unchanging society will ossify; a too-changing society will fly apart.  The more one attempts to avoid one of the more likely the other is to happen.  At any given time, the balance must be and will be different.

That’s the Tory part.  The red part knows that elites eventually serve only their own self-interest and one must view them with profound distrust.  As well, the differences in individual abilities, talents etc. is not just a reflection of innate differences, but the result of the social system.  The liberal notion of equality of opportunity is a sham and a delusion in that even if everyone is at the same starting line; their training, their equipment, and even their condition is unequal.  As well, the operation of a free market is never really free so those who proclaim the glory of free markets are really only defending their own distorted power in what passes for a free market.  The Tory in me is doubtful of both planning and central control and the action of the invisible hand.  The red in me cannot believe that innate differences can even begin to account for the enormous inequalities in society.  Is  Bill Gates really that much “better” than Steve Jobs?  Or even better at all? 

Societies live in the natural world.  We often hear of natural disasters?  Are they? Or are they social failures?  Yes, if out of the blue, Vermont were to be hit with a category 5 hurricane, it would be a true natural disaster as would 29 inches of snow in one day in Miami.  But Katrina in New Orleans was a social failure both in preparing for hurricanes and in building levees.  Much of the Netherlands is below sea level; they know how to build dikes.  Yes, there were terrible floods there after WW II for obvious reasons.  And yes, even successful dealings with the natural environment can warp a culture.  The Dutch, brilliant at keeping out the sea, arrived in Manhattan and adapted their dike-building culture to keeping out the Indians by building a wall on what is now Wall Street.  Apartheid was a form of wall building as well.

The right wing nonsense about taxation needs to be exploded.  Sweden’s very high taxes have far economic effect on the Swedish economy than do taxes in this country.  Why?  American taxes are so complex and riddled with loopholes and exceptions that many economic decisions are made on the basis of tax consequences.  As well, some really gifted individuals use their gifts in negotiating (in both senses) others through the system.

Famously, Joe Biden in his last presidential bid, plagiarized Neil Kinnock’s famous statement that the fact that he was the first member of his family to go to university did not mean he was the first one capable of it. 

The liberties of society are not just a bill of rights or a document at all.  In this country, we make a big deal about the Bill of Rights.  New Zealand doesn’t have one in the sense of an entrenched constitutional document.  In fact, it doesn’t even have an entrenched constitution.  Much of constitutional government there is based on custom and usage as is the entire notion of parliamentary system as found in the Commonwealth.  Guess who has the better record on civil liberties?  It’s not even a close thing.

So I guess the Tory part of me comes out in a belief that we’d be better off constitutionally and freer if we had evolved as did Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  Or, we’d be better off in Vermont had the Haldimand negotiations been successful.

(Yay Rep Fisher! Now don’t forget to go sign that impeachment bill again – promoted by odum)

Vermont and Michael Fisher win Buzz flash’s Wings of Justice Award

Don’t know how to paste in the page, but check it out.  If someone can paste it in, please do so. (All set – o)