(There’s gonna be more local race talk in the next few days, and JD kicks us off very nicely… – promoted by odum)

Disclaimer: I’m working for candidate Donny Osman. In the interest of not propagandizing for my candidate, I’d just like to share with you some observations I’ve seen at two of the recent candidate forums, in Waitsfield last week and Montpelier last night. I’m not going to get into bashing anyone. The six candidates are Bill Doyle (R-inc.), Phil Scott (R-inc), Ann Cummings (D-inc), Kim Cheney (D), Jim Parker (R), and Donny Osman (D).

The forums have covered a wide variety of topics, from energy policy to, of course, the property tax. A few observations…

Only one candidate is on that ‘repeal and revolt’ bandwagon in regards to the property tax(Parker). I don’t think that’s selling too well outside the gold towns.

Curiously, civil unions, gay marriage, gender discrimination and abortion haven’t come up at the forums.

The most distinctive party-line split I could see was in regards to nuclear energy. All of the Dems had severe reservations about it, and didn’t support it. The Repubs all support it to one extent or another.

All of the candidates seem to come out in favor of wind power and weaning ourselves of fossil fuels, and none are in denial about global warming.

Healthcare was all over the map, on one end a full and vocal support of universal healthcare as a right (Osman), with market based solutions on the other end (Parker).

Curiously, all candidates stated in both debates that they believe the ‘War on Drugs’ has been a complete failure, and all came out in support of more rehabilitation and education as opposed to more law enforcement.

School vouchers seemed to be a party-line split as well, with mixed levels of support on the Repub side and the opposite on the Dem side.

All in all, this race is really hard to call. I wouldn’t say there’s any idealogues running , but within the candidates there is a classic progressive-liberal on one end and a somewhat conservative free-market Repub on the other, with varying shades in between. I do know which candidate is going to come in 6th, but other than that, I have no idea how this will turn out; there are so many factors.. the possible filtering down of the Democratic wave sweeping the country (which Phil Scott has acknowledged on more than one occasion), Osman’s unabashed progressivism which has been missing from Wash. Cty. races in the past and seems to be resonating with a lot of people, the Doyle factor (the man’s been in there forever – will it work for or against him this time?), and this is also Kim Cheney’s 4th run for senate. Alas, there are no polls to give us a clue.

I’ve met all of the candidates, and found them all to be nice, decent people to varying degrees, and it shows in the manner of decor and lack of personal attacks in this campaign. It’s good to know the venom of the national level (and also creeping into the statewide level) is nonexistent at our local level.

There’s another candidate’s forum on Thursday evening(26th) at the Worcester Grange Hall. I haven’t been able to find out what time, but if I do, I’ll post it.

I’ve learned quite a bit about Vermont politcs since getting on board the Osman campaign in the capacity of tactics and strategy. I’ll share some of it with you after the election.

you can read more of JD Ryan at Five Before Chaos

( – promoted by odum)

You know, with the complete implosion of the Republican party happening right before our eyes, you’d figure I’d be blogging 24-7.  Been busy lately with school and the Osman campaign, so I haven’t had too much time.  And there’s just too much good stuff to write about. Every day, it’s something new, whether Foley-related (or some other cognitive-dissonance-inducing Repub gay thing), an Abramoff thing, or another 2 or three house races suddenly becoming competitive.

Hands down, my favorite has got to be the ‘GOP done been playing the Christianists for suckers’ thing, something I’ve talked about quite a bit at my own blog, Five Before Chaos . And, with David Kuo’s new book, ‘Tempting Faith’  making waves, the cat is out of the bag. Kuo, a self-described Konservative Kristian, was the #2 man at Bush’s Office of Faith Based initiatives. The most overlooked signifigant thing about his book is when he reveals one of the few moments that Bushco spoke the absolute truth, when he describes many in the administration as describing Falwell, Dobson and others as ‘nuts’ and ‘kooks’.

What’s even more striking is the reaction from some evangelicals,  a shoot the messenger tactic. The White House folks are pedaling the ‘doesn’t sound like the same guy we had working here angle’, and radical cleric James Dobson had this to say, a combination of ‘sour grapes’ and ‘waaahhhh, we’re so persecuted’:

“The release of this book criticizing the Bush administration’s handling of its faith-based initiative program seems to represent little more than a mix of sour grapes and political timing. David Kuo’s book doesn’t hit shelves until next week, but excerpts released by media outlets paint the picture of a dissatisfied federal employee taking shots at the White House effort to connect faith-based nonprofit groups with legitimate societal needs.

“Big media will no doubt play this story to the hilt in the next several weeks, because it allows them to take aim at two of their favorite targets: President Bush and socially conservative Christians. Sadly, Kuo’s characterization of his former colleagues, bosses and mission — mischaracterizations, really — will be fed to the public as truth.”

Carpetbagger has some more on that.

A few other good links on the subject:
Howard Fineman’s ‘For the Faithful, A Trying Time’
Alan Wolfe’s ‘Are Evangelicals Over?’

I have to say that I’m loving the position the evangelicals are put in right now: continue to be played for suckers(which shouldn’t be that hard when you look at what they believe in the first place), or stay home and sit out the election. They really have no place else to go. Gawddamn, it feels good to say that. Maybe they’ll form a third party that will accomplish nothing but draw away GOP votes, another winning scenario for us in the reality-based community.

Finally, Keith Olberman has featured the Kuo book on his Countdown program last week. Here are parts 1 and 2. You’ll enjoy. try not to gloat. Aw, hell, gloat. We’ve been waiting for this a long time.

Part 1 of Olbermann on ‘The Nuts’

Part 2

you can read more of JD Ryan’s stuff at Five Before Chaos

(MONDAY, OCTOBER 16 — Even though this diary has been up for a while, I’m bumping it to the front in the hopes of renewing and expanding the discussion. It’s a good one. – promoted by odum)

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Libertarians, kind of the same I have with ideological Socialists; their world view doesn’t seem to take into account human nature or the way the world really works. Now, I am in total agreement with social libertarianism, it’s just the economic part I’ve had a problem with, because it goes under the assumption that the free markets will somehow do the right thing if left unhindered by regulation. We don’t need a USDA; selling bad meat is bad business, so they won’t do it, or so the (il)logic goes. Somehow, I wouldn’t find that comforting when I get E. coli from that uninspected hamburger.  I think that’s starting to change, as corporations now find themselves having more power than governments.

Markos, of Daily Kos fame, wrote the featured essay at the op-ed website of the libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute, called ‘The Case for the Libertarian Democrat’. In it, he lays out a compelling case for libertarian support of the Democratic party, as the Republicans have abandoned much of what libertarians hold dear, and represent a great threat to freedom, and are too in bed with the corporations to offer any kind of protection from abuses of power. There’s too many good points in the article to paraphrase here, so just go check it out here.

Even more refreshing than Kos’ commentary is Harold Meyerson’s commentary that is a response to Kos, called, ‘Democrats, Liberals, and Libertarians.’ He makes the telling point of Kos’ idea being ‘libertarianism for the real world’:

..and more particularly in 21st-century America, encroachments on privacy, personal security, and the environment are as likely, if not more likely, to come from business as they are from the state, and these are threats that require state regulation if they’re to be mitigated or dispelled…

…To argue, as a classic libertarian might, that a consumer is as free to switch banks as a bank is to sell its data neglects to note that a bank that doesn’t sell its data is at a competitive disadvantage with one that does, and a consumer who can’t find a privacy-protecting bank is simply out of luck. In short, the free play of markets can be a threat to individual freedom, unless individual freedom is a term that applies only to businesses and not to their consumers or employees or the people who must breathe their pollutants. This is something that New Deal liberals and social democrats have long understood and sought to redress. Indeed, the central insight of 20th century liberalism was that freedoms conflict, that a company’s freedom to dominate the marketplace was often in conflict with a consumer’s freedom to find a product at a fair price, or a worker’s freedom to find a decent job or form a union, or a citizen’s freedom to have an equal voice in the legislative process. And that to establish some parity of freedoms, the state had to take a hand…

…In short, as the balance of forces in capitalism shifts entirely towards investors and executives and away from employees, the need for a state that takes the burden of economic and health security off employers who won’t pick it up and employees who can’t pick it up is increasingly urgent. It’s hard to predict what exactly the tipping point will be as our private-sector welfare state continues to contract. But at some point, the Democrats will embrace a decisively larger role for the state in these matters because the public will demand it—not because the public will suddenly identify itself as liberal, but because there will be nowhere else to turn. And at that moment, I think even the Mountain State neo-libertarians will go along. After all, the New Deal didn’t arise because Americans suddenly awakened and proclaimed themselves progressive. It arose because the unchecked power and unregulated practices of major corporations and banks and the market itself led to an economic disaster.

Admittedly, Meyerson is no dyed-in-the-wool-Cato-fellow, he’s a bit of a lefty, but damn it, he makes sense. Especially to me. I’m not in favor of some big nanny-state government; I don’t believe that just because you’re an American, you’re entitled to a good life. But the tough-shit-you’re-on-your-own mentality of many Repubs and Libertarians doesn’t work for me either. What we’re talking about here falls somewhere in between.

you can read more of J.D. Ryan’s writings at Five Before Chaos.

My thread on Peter Welch and the state of liberalism has prompted some good discussion on here, especially abot the possibility of a good ‘think tank’, and what it would entail. So, I’m gonna take a stab at it.

In the comments of that post, when talking about Brookings, CAP and such, the term ‘center-left’ has come up. Well, the first thing our theoretical think tank would require is an abandonment of the term ‘center’, for several reasons.

First, what is commonly called the ‘center’ of American politics has moved so far to the right that it offers us on the left very little to chew on. ‘Centrism’ still embraces the tired and oft-disproven mantra, for example that our healthcare crisis can be fixed by ‘market-based’ solutions. How long have we been hearing that one now? HMO’s were the solution? Centrism seems to still blindly hold to the notion that the free market offers the best solutions to ‘insert problem here’. Bullshit. The free market cares not if you live or die, if you’re sick, whatever. Now, I’m not an anti-capitalist as many of my buddies are, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that market-based solutions can fix all of our problems. The point I’m getting at here is that ‘centrism’ in its current form works against many of the things we’re striving for , whether it be healthcare, labor issues, enviro issues and so on.

The next problem with today’s ‘centrism’ is the fact that it implies a compromise with the other side. Well, here’s something to remember. The ohter side (meaning the Republican party and their followers circa 2006) has no interest in compromising with us. On anything. That should be quite obvious to us by now, considering that Democrats have to hold hearings and such in small congressional offices and are often threatened for doing so by the Republican leadership. Plus there are too many things that we should not be willing to compromise on. Torture. Invasions of foreign countries that didn’t attack us. Congressional oversight and accountabilty. Reproductive freedom. Do I really need to go on? Further, we need to remember that there are many of those on the extremities of the right that would completely destroy us if they had a way to get away with it. If you can stomach it, listen to right-wing radio or go to Free Republic or Little Green Footballs. They talk of interment camps, torture, murder, all that great stuff. I’m not kidding and you know it. Now, I know they don’t represent all of the right-wing. Regardless, they are an influential part of it. I don’t want to compromise with them on anything, so we need to stop acting like we’re dealing with rational people here. And often, the rare chances we do get to ‘compromise’ are hardly good at all. Heck, look what the Torture Bill ‘compromise’ looks like; it’s not all that different from the pre-compromise torture bill.

My last little problem with ‘centrism’ is that great change rarely come from the center. The Repubs aren’t getting all of the things they want because they’re coming from the center. The ‘Contract with America’ didn’t come from the center. Neither did the New Deal, the Great Society or the Voting Rights Act. So we need to stop thinking that coming from the ‘mushy middle’ is somehow going to inspire the masses to rise up from their American Idol-induced stupor to support us. If we’re not going to stand proudly in the face of criticism for what we stand for, we might as well just sit down. Heck, lay down.

So that’s the first part of what an effective lefty think tank needs. More to come.

You can read more of JD Ryan’s stuff at http://www.fivebefor…

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Ok, going to make that rare excursion into VT politics again. I’ve just returned from a ‘house party’ for Peter Welch, who is running to fill Bernie Sanders’ seat. Now, for those of you not in the know, in Vermont, due to our smallness factor, we have ‘house parties’ for candidates at the local and statewide level (I’m sure other states do this too, I just don’t know). Anyways, sometimes they’re publicly advertised, sometimes private invite. Since I’ve gotten more involved in VT politics working on the Osman senate campaign, and have gotten to know many more of the ‘movers and shakers’ (god, I hate that term), I seem to get invited to a lot of these house parties, or ‘coffees’ as they’re called. They are kinda cool, because they give one the opportunity to meet the candidate one-on-one, look them in the eye, and question them… and give them follow-ups if they give you the typical politician non-answer. Lots of schmoozing. And, of course, the opportunity to raise cash.

So, anyways, Jenni and I went to the coffee in Marshfield. There were lots of people I knew there. When Welch showed up, I approached him, and thanked him for acknowedging my Rainville bash letter to the Times Argus. He remembered it and thanked me again.

Anyways, after lots of good cheese, pastry and almost too much wine, I went into the big room to hear him speak. His speech was heavy on the Bush-bashing, but more importantly laying out some of the things he wants to do in Congress, such as bringing the troops home, fixing the Medicare D donut hole, protecting Social Security, and repealing the tax breaks for the wealthy and the oil companies. Welch is a very personable guy, not slick at all, and that was a plus in my book. He’s quite soft-spoken, not the Bernie firebrand type.

After the speech, he took some Q&A, and I asked him that basically, time and time again, whether it be torture, war, wiretapping, 9-11, whatever, the Dems drop the ball and roll over, time and time again. I asked him what his thoughts were on that, and considering how unpopular Bush is in VT (the 20’s), it would be politically quite safe to take on Bush, and how agressive would he be in regards to holding Bush and co. accountable?At first he was treading dangerously close to being a bit evasive, repeating his plans to fix things. So I followed up, “Peter, that’s great, but what about accountability? What about investigations and such?” He brought up a good point that often investigations and such can derail other initiatives and be turned against the party (while they are important, they cannot be the only focus), but also talked about the power of committees, in that they can stop a lot of things from seeing the light of day in the first place. He agreed that the Dems have been too timid in taking on Bush and that he would not back down from agressively fighting the president. So he sounds like he would be an obstructionist to the Bush agenda, which is what I was looking for. Every other question from the audience was pretty in-depth and intelligent, and he answered everything straight on, not giving the stock answer. He’s not the pandering type.

Peter’s an intelligent, thoughtful down-to-earth kind of guy, with none of the slickness(such as Bernie), which is a plus in my book. Of course, he’s not as leftie as I would like but I can be quite far to the left of the spectrum, but he needs to get elected, and I don’t think statewide that kind of radical leftism will sell. I donated some to the campaign and also volunteered to drive him around if he needs it. I’ll vote for him, and won’t feel bad about it, unlike when I voted for Kerry. I encourage you to do the same. I think he’d make a great congressman.

Several people approached me afterwards and thanked me for ‘putting his feet to the fire’. Other conversations I had with some of them there agreed that we need to take the gloves off and start getting agressive. Many liberals, for some reason, find this hard to do, whether it be because of political correctness, or the idea that agressiveness is never good, it’s too masculine, whatever. Bullshit. I was having some beers on Friday with my longtime friend Wes and spent a lot of time talking about this liberal hypersensitivity, and how it’s crippling us. That, as well as an overreliance on magical thinking. Libs often offer up these silly, hippie-dippie answers, with no basis in reality and we get mocked by the right-wing even more, because we feed into the stereotypes. Or we offer answers that are hopelessly idealistic, and don’t take into account the political and social realities of America (like the Bible Belt). Enough. I’ve had it.

That is the big difference between the lib/progressives of today and the 60’s radicals. Backbone. For whatever reason, whether because of political correctness or whatever, it’s been lacking, and we get our asses kicked on the political stage constantly since Reagan.

These people fighting us don’t want to compromise; they want to destroy us, and that seems lost on many on our side. Whining and playing defense while worrying about offending people is not a winning strategy, it’s a recipe for disaster, and certainly not a way to win anything.

Wes and I half-joked about starting up a think-tank for rational, proactive liberalism, unburdened by magical thinking, naivite and hypersensitivity, and that plays offense as well as defense. We then realized how few people we knew that we could ask to join. But it’s time for a realignment in the liberal movement that is aggressive, fights back, and commands the dialogue. In some ways , yes, be more like the GOP, except tell the truth and not make shit up like they do. And no, I’m not talking about self-described ‘anarchists’ who go to rallies and throw trash cans through windows – they make themselves feel better about themselves and the futility of their movement, and alienate lots of people who might otherwise agree, but I fail to see how they’re helping the cause progress in any way. Now, I’m not saying the Black Panthers, Weathermen, SDS, or the Yippies did everything right. But dammit, at least they knew how to fight. It’s time we did , too.

You can read this and: other ‘Observations about culture, politics, secular humanism, Christofascist idiocy, Blaxploitation films, Spaghetti Westerns, music and other amusing things, from the Green Mountain state. Not for the ultra-PC or hypersensitive…’ at http://www.fivebefor…

Anyways, it’s time to take a look at the GOP stooge that is vying for Bernie’s old seat, Adj. General Martha Rainville. Now, the purpose of this is mostly to let you know that as much as the VT GOP would like you to believe Martha’s not some backwater Neanderthal Repub (like most of the ones now), a closer look at her shows she is really just another Bush Republican. See, it seems that the strategy the GOP tries time and time again is to avoid talking about issues unless absolutely necessary, because they know that they are nowhere near what traditional VT Repubs, such as the venerable George Aiken, were.

So, lets have a look, shall we? You can look at the bio stuff on her site, I’m going to look at where she stands on the issues, both from the material on her website, and through a Democratic press release graciously forwarded to me from Odum, over at Green Mountain Daily.

A cursory glance on her issues page shows 16 issues, from the Iraq war to No Child Left Behind. Conspicuously absent are two that seem to be quite important to Vermonters, the environment, and gender equality issues. Her energy policy has me quite confused. She mentions often about conservation and weaning us off of fossil fuels numerous times, but still is pushing the ‘increasing domestic production’ option, which to me, is no longer a viable option. There are many people in this country that simply think the answer to our energy problems is drilling our way out of it. Rainville is enabling this short-sighted thinking, and that mentality is also what is pushing for drilling in ANWR and other pristine, formerly-off-limits places. Granted, there are some good points to her energy plan, such as increased conservation, and the use of flex-fuel or hybrid government vehicles. There’s nothing about ending oil subsidies, nothing about increasing fuel mileage standards, nothing about increasing subsidies for solar, biomass and wind technologies.

On other things such as abortion, she supports parental-notification, and is opposed to the Republican buzzword ‘partial-birth abortion’. She supports line-item veto, which, considering we have a president that just ignores parts of the law he doesn’t agree with, seems kind of unnecesary(anything that gives an already power-obsessed executive branch more power is not a good thing).

On tax cuts, she’s taken the words right form the Bush book:
“As a fiscal conservative, I believe that taxpayers spend their hard earned money better than the government. Tax cuts stimulate the economy, promote strong economic growth and create new jobs.”
No surprises there, still playing the thoroughly discredited trickle-down theory.

Same on jobs, more form the tired old Repub playbook that’s running this country into the ground: “cut taxes, reduce regulatory burdens and reform our legal system”. Yep, damn trial lawyers and regulations… She offers nothing new on healthcare reform either, and I suspect that she believes the ‘market’, you know the one that has done such a great job so far with it, just needs a few reforms here and there and it will be ok. Screw universal healthcare.

Now to be fair, she supports a raise in the federal minimum wage, has called for diplomacy when dealing with Iran, is against the Federal Livestock ID system (a big issue in VT), and is in support of some sort of ethics reform. So basically, she’s not a far right lunatic. But, ultimately, what I find so discomforting about her is her position on Iraq. Like all of the assholes pushing the ‘stay the course’ vibe, she ties Iraq into the GOP ‘war on terror’ talking point, and what’s worse, she sees the failure in Iraq as primarily a failure of our government to communicate:
“A very important element has been missing, and that is good communication on what’s going on there… It’s very difficult for citizens to have an accurate perspective of the war of our successes… Part of that is, I believe, the fault of all of those involved for not communicating more openly with Americans, or not telling the story of what’s going on in Iraq.”
So basically, we’re losing the war because we’re not getting the right spin on those 30 or 40 Iraqis killed every day due to sectarian violence and the 2600+ Americans who have died for the lie. Ok. Feel better?

Apparently, Rainville uses this same illogic to explain away the miserable failure known as the Bush Administration:
“I think his weakness all along has been communicating with people. I wish so much that he would tell more of the good news that’s there. There are some positive things happening… We tend to hear the bad news which is a function of how we cover news. I think the help to the Iraqi people that the war has given – I think that needs to be better understood. Those stories get lost, and I think it’s important for our nation as a whole to understand all that’s going in so that we can judge the strengths and weaknesses better of our president or our congress or our foreign policy.”

So what does that mean, Bush needs to lie better? Needs to hide his imbicilic IQ better? Sorry, Martha, that dog won’t hunt. Blame the liberal media? That is soooooo 2002.

So where am I getting at with all this? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, one-party GOP rule has been an unmitigated disaster for this country. It’s been polarizing, and morally bankrupt. It needs to end, now. Bush needs his power checked, in a serious way. And the thing you need to remember, no matter how much Martha Rainville (or Rich Tarrant, whom I’ll get to shortly) wants you to think they are ‘independent’ and ‘moderate’, they are still members of, and will be contributing to the numbers and power of the party responsible for screwing this country up so royally. A vote for a Repub on the national ticket means a continuace of bad foreign policy. Of no accountability. Of divisive domestic agendas that do nothing to make the average person’s life better, nor us better as a society as a whole. Party really does matter in this election, folks. Now I know there is a lot of talk about the lackluster candidacy of Peter Welch, and it is increasingly getting harder to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils, as we had to for Kerry. But you know damn well Welch is not going to be another rubber stamp for Bushco. Rainville and Tarrant will, no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise. Rainville: wrong for Vermont. So there.