1) I wish the state would get out of the partisan political party business. While it makes sense to set up a legal framework for what constitutes a political party, I think this whole process of tax payer funded partisan primaries is sick.

2) The Vermont Progressive Party will not be any better off for retaining major party status, and they won’t be any worse off for losing it. The only differences between ‘minor’ or ‘major’ party status are the 5% statewide vote threshhold, how many town/city committees must be formed and how nominees for the ballot are chosen. At an organizational level it’s actually easier to be a minor party.

3) I understand what Pollina is doing, and I don’t disagree with it. From my perspective this reflects a current reality of an apparent Progressive Party majority: the Progressives in general still see themselves as better Democrats than the Democrats as opposed to offering a unique and third way. Pollina’s early efforts at outreach to the Democratic Party (I’m not referring to likely Democratic voters – just the party) was a mistake, and he needs to back track from that. Running as an “also-Democrat” will lose him votes. Will running as an independent gain him votes? Possibly … I just went from losing interest to renewed interest myself. Packaging does count as all you die hard, party line voting Dems know.

4) There seems to be a lot of time spent on this board attacking Republicans and Progressives. Precious little has been spent touting the many successes of the current Democratic crop. I think this reflects a reality that the Democratic Party is stuck with: it’s salient selling point still is that it isn’t the other guys.

cas-cade (n) a succession of devices or stages in a process, each of which triggers or initiates the next

(definition taken from The New Oxford American Dictionary)

How likely except for the internet is it that the Netroots Nation conference would be viewable literally by folks world wide. Considering the name of the organization, how likely is it that a non-Republican/corporate oriented gathering would be able to garner much, if any, publicity … except for the internet?

In both a devices and stages sense, the internet has proved itself to be a cascade. While I’m focusing on social improvement, businesses and governments are transforming or have transformed themselves due to the massive information connections the various ‘net “tubes” make available.

But I want to go one step lower. Net Neutrality!

In the simplest terms net neutrality describes an even playing field that does not discriminate based upon content. Net neutrality says that Disney or MacDonald/Douglas cannot be given, or sold, a more favorable access to the ‘net than Green Mountain Daily or Netroots Nation because of a web site’s offerings.

Net neutrality today is based upon promises whereby various transport companies such as Comcast (who was caught interfering with peer to peer downloads over their network). As Vermont Yankee has shown us, however, corporate promises are only as good as … well … the promising corporation wants to make them.

The diversity we see today on the internet is solely because in the US we’ve taken a controlled anarchistic (libertarian if you will) view of how it should be run. Thus one can get hard core porn or children’s cartoons; traditional and non-traditional politics; medical information; family vacation pictures and so much more. If net neutrality is allowed to slip there is absolutely no doubt the powers in control (whomever they be) will push for a more homogeneous electronic fare.

I have no doubt in my mind that such as Netroots Nation would have been made prohibitively expensive to broadcast over the internet, and thus to billions of possible viewers, if the internet had grown out of a proprietary business plan as opposed to the government (military don’t ya’ know) turned educational turned public venture project it is.

Look to Apple’s Mac and the PC computers as great examples. IBM (because they didn’t believe there was a future for small desktop computing) released the entire PC design to the public, and it quickly became a standard. On the other hand Apple closely controlled their design and build, and this has kept the Mac a creature of Apple’s business as opposed to plethora of PC compatible computer brands out there. Guess which costs less for comparable computing power and has a wider variety of hardware, software and service providers?

You got it … the PC.

Because the internet was a creation of our federal government, and because the standards that make up the internet were made public a cascade of events occurred. Standards were publicly submitted and reviewed and accepted or rejected. Big corps won some and big corps lost some as did the little people and governments and whatever else.

But there is one other thing to bear in mind. The Siren lure of the ‘net for a huge number of people is because of the great disparity of offerings out there. Before people used the internet for shopping, folks were passing around emails and building personal websites and showing photos which led to a familiarity with the ‘net that made internet shopping as acceptable as it is as quickly as this happened.

Net neutrality is what brought many, if not almost all, of us to the internet. Next to the US government, net neutrality is the most important thing in the social explosion we know as the internet.

If we want to find Netroots Nation next year as easily as we did this year we need to zealously fight for and protect this notion called net neutrality. There is huge huge money in dumping this, and we’re either going to be paying those bills or falling by the wayside should net neutrality dissolve.

Cascades can be good and bad!

Go Netroots Nation!

and I mean “real politicians” in an extremely positive sense.

Not long, as noted elsewhere here on GMD, Lt Gov Dubie was prepared to dive head first into the case of the ever increasing fuel costs. Now he has found a new mission, and it isn’t the least bit surprising.

With Republicans and their supporters issues that deal with the general welfare tend to be dealt with reluctantly. When it comes to the literal basic necessities of life (food, water, air and shelter) the answer has always been in some vague personal responsibility land.

So it was no surprise that Dubie’s promise to read a long book about the state’s emergency response didn’t grab a whole lot of traction.

But when it comes to issues of punishment, Republican supporters are easy to rally. Thus the recent tragedy in Randolph regarding the (still alleged) kidnapping, rape and murder of a young girl is easy to for someone like Dubie to bounce off. Better yet, he’s now got THREE female victims  to go public with. Like a young pup in room full of toys, Dubie hops around from one newly discovered emergency to the next … attention span zero … looking for the most engaging activity.

And here is the test.

Will the state’s politicians be able to address multiple issues at one time? Or is their political agenda going to be dependent upon the success of one issue?

Look around you. People are going to lose their homes and go hungry and cold this winter. Everybody accepts this as a given due to today’s high and rising when compared to wages prices for fuel, food and housing. Because of lack of access to medical procedures due to sky high and rising medical insurance premiums people will die premature deaths. We have no idea how many illnesses are going to be caused due to environmental degradation and the resulting poisoning of our only source of food, water, air and shelter (aka the physical environment). We are waging wars against people who never attacked us, and in the case of Iran showed every willingness to assist us when we were attacked. Constitutional provisions are being discarded like unneeded post-it notes. We have a government that allows police to shoot and kill mentally disturbed people because, like Woody of Brattleboro, they threatened themselves with a knife. The list could go on and on.

The obvious tragedy of the Douglas administration releasing the violent predator Jacques into society unsupervised and the (still alleged) ensuing kidnap, rape and murder of 12 year old Brooke Bennett is no mere distraction from all the above. It is a symptom of problems in how we deal with violence in general in our United States of America and is certainly a part of the above paragraph.

(An aside: remember Douglas’ reaction when it came to a growing marijuana and State’s Attorney Sands?)

But what happened to Brooke cannot subsume the other, and in some cases much larger issues. It can only be a part of what is going on.

And a real politician (spoken in a most positive sense) will be able to put context on what happened to that young girl.

From the ACLU blog:

If you have a problem with school officials strip searching 13-year-olds for Advil – or if you care about the government’s standards for informant use and invasive searches – you can take relief in yesterday’s ruling by a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled 6-5 that students cannot be strip-searched based on the uncorroborated word of another student who is facing disciplinary punishment.

“A reasonable school official, seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a thirteen-year-old girl to a traumatic search to ‘protect’ her from the danger of Advil,” the federal appellate court wrote in today’s opinion. “We reject Safford’s effort to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term ‘prescription drugs,’ in a knowing effort to shield an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against drugs.”

Stop for a moment and consider: this was a 5 to 4 6 to 5 decision.

And then consider this: every law passed by our governments in the name of fighting the emotion of terror or whatever under the guise of such as a “PATRIOT Act” was first tested and perfected under Nixon’s war on the American people often euphemistically referred to as the “drug war”.

Whether it’s the degradation and elimination of our civil liberties, increased big government police powers or the “right” of our governments to use deadly force against citizens innocent of any crime or more … it all started with Nixon’s war (supported with alacrity by Democrats and Republicans alike for decades) on us.

What concerns me is the aforementioned 5 to 4 decision may be more more indicative of a final drift away from the type of thinking that showed some common sense and respect for our constitution and us as individuals.

An aside and a previously unanswered question: when has any of our governments given up, voluntarily or otherwise, police powers once these police powers been assumed? And how many 13 year old girls need to be strip searched over Advil before we decide to change this?

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.

(The School Crotch Inspector, Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time, Reason Magazine, 04/02/08)

Count me in with the latter.

(This is fascinating… – promoted by odum)

A locally based consortium of 23 towns working to create a high-speed Internet network announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with a New York investment bank to raise the estimated $85 million needed to build the project.

East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, known as ECFiber, will contract with New York-based Oppenheimer & Co. to find private investors to back the construction of the network. Investors will recoup their money, plus interest, through fees from eventual subscribers, said state Rep. Jim Masland, D-Thetford, who serves on the organization’s board.

Masland said Oppenheimer has estimated the fundraising will be completed by October, but ECFiber officials say they are taking a more cautious tack and hope that the money will be in the bank by the end of the year.

ECFiber officials expect to begin hooking households up to the fiber-optic network within a year of completing their financing.

(ECFiber Says N.Y. Bank Will Raise Money for Valley Broadband, Valley News, 07/11/08)

In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”

The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

(A Hint of New Life to a McCain Birth Issue, NY Times, 07/11/08)

Now, however, the Senate has moved to put that minor controversy to rest. Yesterday, the Senate passed a resolution declaring that McCain is a natural-born citizen. The resolution was passed by unanimous consent. More surprising than the result, however, was the fact that the bill was written and submitted by Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and co sponsored by both Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). Politics makes strange bedfellows.

(Clinton, Obama Sponsor McCain Citizenship Bill, AOL News, 05/01/08)

How far are you willing to let Obama go just because he isn’t John McCain?

but still say “No thanks”.

(The following is copied from Huffington Post. I couldn’t get through to Obama’s site to get an “original”.)

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That’s why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I’ve said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The recent investigation (PDF) uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I’m persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe — particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I’ve chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention — once I’m sworn in as president — to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I’m happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions. No tool has been more important in focusing peoples’ attention on the abuses of executive power in this administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true — not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I’m not exempt from that. I’m certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country. That is why we have built the largest grassroots campaign in the history of presidential politics, and that is the kind of White House that I intend to run as president of the United States — a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That’s ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

So I appreciate the feedback through my.barackobama.com, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in the months and years to come. Together, we have a lot of work to do.

“You have an independent army for an independent nation conducting independent operations,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said. “To know where that army is so you don’t have an unintended consequence [while running your invasion and occupation force all over this independent nation] would seem like a benefit.”

(U.S. spies on Iraqi army, sources say, Los Angeles Times online, 07/02/08)

It’s not just Obama’s support of wiretapping and obsequious approach to all things pro-Israel; it’s not just Obama walking away from those, such as the Reverend Wright, who helped put Obama in the position he is now in; it’s not just Obama’s falling under the sway of those who have to wear flag lapels to prove they aren’t what they are; it’s not just Obama’s willingness to leave us entangled in Iraq for years or decades to come; … it’s also such as this:

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and – in a move sure to cause controversy – support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

( Obama to expand Bush’s faith based programs, Yahoo News, 07/01/08)

Obama has surrounded himself with DC establishment advisers and quite predictably is going to end up at more of the same old same old.

In the end there will be no difference between Obama and McCain with one exception: McCain will do us in quickly … Obama will continue the slow but inexorable creep to ultra-right wing land that Democrats and their enablers have been doing since the sixties.

And the sad truth is there is no need for Obama to do all this.

ate last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

(Preparing the Battlefield, The New Yorker online)

Oh yeah … real serious questions … like how fast can we sign on the dotted line Dear Leader Bush?

Another round of thanks to our Democratic troika of Leahy, Sanders and Welch for their continued support of a “leadership” that has helped advance every war mongering, constitution busting move made by Cheney/Bush.