Doug Hoffer is one man who does not suffer from “the progressive economic inferiority complex”. His knowledge of economic policy is extensive and he is not afraid to openly challenge the economic theories of the right which often get peddled as “fact.” His recent debunking of the Chamber of Commerce’s “Recommendations for Government Sustainability and Effectiveness” was a true gem. His ability to take his policy report and share it with a larger audience through his blog posting is a model that I’d like to see more professional policy people emulate.
He also is quite effective at critiquing government programs that purport to stimulate economic growth but in actuality function as giveaway programs to well-connected business interests. Note how he frames the discussion of VEPC’s tax break program in terms of fiscal discipline and getting a good return on our investment as taxpayers.
Many of us on the left often find ourselves mystified by right-wing claims of an anti-business bias in government policy. But at times the best we can do as a rebuttal is something like “What do you mean? Business interests drive government policy.” Doug’s work gives substance to that instinct and demonstrates the necessity of engaging economic policy debates with the complexity they deserve.
I have no official affiliation with WGDR but I have appreciated what it contributes to central VT for decades. Just Sunday I was driving on rt2 and it was hard to keep my eyes on the road because of the stunningly beautiful foliage. The road was literally littered with leaf-peepers parked on shoulderless stretches of curviness. And on the radio, a great set of Afropop from Mali. Had it not been for GDR, I may have had to choose between the station playing the Bad Company song and the one playing Steve Miller. Yeah I know hands down it would have been Steve Miller, but the point is WGDR brings a world of musical genres to a state where a commercial radio station can claim “true music diveristy” if they play both Paul Simon AND Beck.
I also learned on that drive that it is WGDR’s pledge drive week. Contribute here or call (802) 454-7762.
WGDR doesnt just enrich central Vermont’s musical life with local music and global sounds. It also delivers the progressive politics throughout the week. Check out this schedule: Democracy Now!, BBC, TUC radio, WINGS, Alternative Radio, Unwelcome Guests, Free Speech Radio News, and a host of opportunities for local discussion. When you think about how Vermont has changed politically in the last 35 years, consider the role a cultural and political oasis like WGDR has in nurturing that change.
The parallel between the progressive blogosphere and community radio is clear. Both provide local culture on the cheap with a commitment to increasing the number of voices heard. In conversations with both kestrel9000 and Bill Simmon, blogosphere/radio connections arose. If you aren’t convinced yet, here’s Skeeter Sanders:
Skeeter Sanders has had quite a bit of success posting on DailyKos and has recently started posting here at Green Mountain Daily. He’s been publishing The ‘Skeeter Bites Report since the end of ’05 and central VTers may also know him as the DJ of The Quiet Storm on 91.1 WGDR-FM.
We taped the day after Obama’s health care address, so we both had Joe Wilson on the brain. This clip begins as Skeeter is finishing up enumerated other less publicized instances of Republican boorishness during the presentation to both Houses. Then the discussion broadens:
I found Skeeter’s referencing of 1964 particularly fascinating, perhaps since I had just finished reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. The book traces both Nixon and the Republican Party’s journey from the political graveyard in 1964 to Nixon’s 1972 landslide. The undoing of the liberal consensus in the intervening years was in part stoked by larger events (Vietnam, urban riots) but Nixon had a large role in orchestrating a politics of division that remains today. Perlstein argues that Nixonland (Southern Strategy, the appeals to emotional and cultural discontents, the politics of resentment) defined the blue state/red state divide that became a cultural shorthand in this decade.
A prerequisite for the flipping of a liberal consensus to decades of a Republican White House (with interludes for Southern Democratic centrists) was the ideologically purifying campaign of Goldwater in 1964. What at the time was political suicide– a hard tack to the right during a liberal era– ended up creating just the contrasts necessary to capitalize on the collapse of that liberal era.
So at the risk of forwarding tortured historical analogies, is the present Republican public hissy fit a kind of purifying ritual that will reap them rewards in the future? Or are we witnessing something quite different, a wholesale shrinkage of a party that will have no claim to vast swaths of the electorate save religious regional voters?
Further, ideological purification as a prescription for a party out of power does not seem to ever be followed by the Democrats. The Democratic Party has not embraced its left flank in my lifetime although many a progressive has insisted that the key to success is to rhetorically and legislatively practice class politics and win the great majority of Americans who are not members of the overclass. When Rove was delusionally declaring a permanent Republican majority in 2004, it was a moment like 1964, where it appeared that the party out of power had been reduced to irrelevancy. The Democrats did not take that moment as a signal to ideologically purify; rather they enlarged the electorate and placed their bets with a biracial conciliator, a man who frequently evoked the other President from Illinois tasked with reuniting and healing a nation. They chose someone who is gifted in minimizing, as opposed to highlighting, contrasts.
But perhaps Perlstein’s formulation is for an era that has ended. He wrote Nixonland in 2008 and perhaps the election of Obama signalled that “there are no red states there are no blue states” anymore. Maybe the present ideological purification, this hard tack to the right we are witnessing as Republican madness, will result in further marginalization.
Skeeter pointed out that when Bush lost his own party around immigration reform, it should have been an early warning sign of the extremism to follow. What we are seeing is an exorcism of Bush– with the party base refashioning itself hypocritically as deficit hawk America firsters. Maybe what we are witnessing this time is not the ideological purification of 1964, but the complete inability to compute the reality of a black President, resulting in a mass psychological breakdown.
you continue to respond to the caricatures dancing around in your head instead of external reality. More proof: My understanding of the label “redneck” is not someone who has a love of cops, quite the opposite. I was not using labels at all and I certainly can’t understand how you could think I’d project the redneck label on to you. I actually attach a lot of anti-authoritarian qualities to the label “redneck.” Apparently you were responding to “the voices” and not me. You’ve done another double backflip projection with faulty premises thrown in as a flourish. what a mess, I’m done.
There it is in all its disgusted hostile glory: a reply I wrote but never posted. The sad online version of a letter never sent.
I’m glad I never posted it. I had noticed while reading the thread attached to Jack McCullough’s “You’re under arrest” that one member was making it very difficult to stay focussed on the facts of the case by creating hypotheticals, and questioning the veracity of undisputed facts. I called him on it in a very straightforward manner. He replied, I shot back with some snark, he got long winded and obnoxious, I wrote the above, thought better of it, and walked away with my head held high. Plenty of other members continued to school him and eventually the thread calmed down.
A conversation I had with Bill Simmon helped me walk away from the keyboard. Here he discusses a dilemma of political blogging: either it can become a like-minded echo chamber, or a futile effort to persuade the unpersuadable. We begin by discussing Seven Day’s designation of his candleblog as “non-political,” some background on the daysies reader’s pick awards, political blogging, a shout out to Dohiyi Mir. Then he shares a bit on how he and Steve Benen determine content for their radio and online show Poli Sci-Fi Radio. This segment closes out with a consideration of the Nerd Life.
As Green Mountain Daily gets more popular, it seems that we are experiencing an increase in antagonistic posters. I generally try not get involved with the nattering nabobs of negativism and instead offer support to commenters I agree with. But sometimes I get pulled into that “someone on the internet is wrong!” compulsion and tend to feel like “why’d I waste my time” afterwards. I’m impressed with how members here can engage the hostility dispassionately, or with humor, or with relentless debate. GMD has a strong and just community police squad and it helps maintain the integrity and legitimacy of this place as a lefty forum. So I understand the need to school a fool. But I’d still like to hear about how people deal with that “someone on the internet is wrong!” feeling, maybe some personal guidelines or philosophy on engaging antagonistic commenters. It is clear that people approach the question from many angles, and that is part of why this place gets so lively.
Though I read these thoughtful pieces, I did not register that the public comment period remains open only til today June 22. So if you haven’t yet, please weigh in at
(I wanted to write a diary on today’s shocker in the NH House, but Mike Abadi covered it well. The folks in New Hampshire aren’t giving up. Let’s do what we can to help them! Plus… Euan’s interviewed!!! – promoted by Christian Avard)
When Euan Bear and I sat down to discuss marriage equality, she was in town to celebrate Vermont’s historic legislative veto override. The day before the interview, the NH Senate had passed marriage equality, and the day we sat down, Maine’s Senate followed suit. Can you say “momentum”? Since then, marriage equality has become the law in Maine.
Here Euan shares GLAD’s efforts to challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), “coming out” on bureaucratic forms, Iowa, Jim Douglas, economic and conservative arguments for marriage equality. This clip ends with her discussing a church’s willingness to perform a marriage as paramount, anticipating some of the political maneuvering that has gone on across the river.
In NH, Governor John Lynch said he would sign marriage equality if the bill included language that would protect churches that disagree with gay marriage. The NH Senate passed the amended version, and today the House came oh-so-close
The Senate passed the changes 14-10 Wednesday, but the House failed to agree later in the day by a vote of 188-186. Opponents tried to kill the bill, but failed. The House then voted 207-168 to ask the Senate to negotiate a compromise.
So the bill is not dead, and it looks like the House and Senate can iron out any differences, if the House vote on negotiating a compromise is any indication. My superstitious side says “don’t jinx it” but
The House vote against the governor’s amendment means the bill will be sent to a committee that will try to resolve the differences between the two chambers. It remains unclear how the governor would respond to any changes to his wording.
Lynch has said he would veto gay marriage if his wording is not adopted.
State Representative Steve Vaillancourt, a gay Republican from Manchester, was a leading voice against the amendment securing religious liberties, saying that the House should not be “bullied” by the governor.
Vaillancourt said an earlier bill that did not provide protections to clerics or religious groups was the one that should have been passed, adding that the amended bill would allow discrimination to be written into state law.
That’s what Morgan Brown AKA norsehorse calls the argument that Vermont does not want a functional social safety net because it would attract people from other states who want to mooch off the government. We’ve all heard the claim that quality social services act as a “deadbeat magnet,” as if folks struggling in other states have spreadsheets of social services offerings in our 50 states and move where the largesse is. After discussing the proposed cut of the Housing Specialist position in the Human Services Department, Morgan quite effectively decimates that myth, and then adds some of the real reasons people are drawn to our state.
This segment closes out with an explanation of state-level mental health reform efforts, which apparently have resulted in change: a change in the name of reform efforts from “The Futures Project” to “The Transformation Council.”
So as we see the budget battle move into its final stages, let’s remember that the quality of mental health services are a shame at present levels of funding, and that if we invest to make our services certifiable (pun intended), we can access federal reimbursement funds. That’s why they are called investments; they result in a pay-off.
The Legislature has set aside $150,000 in the capital project bill to address problems found at the Waterbury facility last Fall, the last time certification was denied. The bill also included $750,000 to get the ball rolling on securing better facilities.
(Thank you Michael Abadi for hosting me on your public access show, “VT Blogosphere TV” You are a great host. I appreciated the opportunity to talk about issues important to me and all Vermonters, especially Vermont Yankee, and my role as a Justice of the Peace and my support of Marriage Equality. – promoted by Maggie Gundersen)
Here Maggie Gundersen provides some much-needed historical context to Vermont’s ongoing problems with its dated and neglected nuclear power plant. You know the masters of spin are hard at work when the same Oversight panel report is met with headlines as different as “Oversight Panel Gives Yankee Go-Ahead” (WCAX) and “Pennywise and Pound Foolish” (Brattleboro Reformer).
The big news on Friday was the Vt House passing a decommissioning fund bill similar to the one Douglas vetoed last year. Is it possible that one man could stop both requiring Entergy to increase the decommissioning fund AND Freedom to Marry in one legislative session? That would be retrograde governing of truly historic proportions. Below is a link dump of recent news about the decommissioning bill, the latest valve leak, and the oversight panel report.
The bill, which will now go to the Senate, would require three $114 million payments over the next decade and then a final payment to bring the fund to its final level to accomplish decommisioning. The fund has lost nearly $100 million of its value over the last 16 months as financial markets have tumbled.
…
The final vote on the decommissioning bill, which may well be vetoed by Gov. James Douglas if it gets to him, was 93-47.
A leak in a valve in a steam line at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant was finally sealed Wednesday afternoon.
The fix, which involved injecting a sealant inside a clamp around the valve, is only temporary. The valve will be fixed when the plant undergoes its next refueling outage in 2010.
Arnie Gundersen of Burlington, a former nuclear industry executive and one of five authors of the report, told the Associated Press that prior to the cooling tower, plant employees had asked for extra time and funds to do more detailed inspections of the cooling towers and and been refused by the plant’s owner, Entergy of Mississippi.
Gundersen told the Advocate that the panel uncovered still more evidence of neglect at the plant.
“There were 19 years of inspections they should have done on the transformer [that caught fire in 2004] and didn’t,” he said. “They didn’t have enough people to put data into the computer for their flow-acceleration corrosion program [which monitors the condition of pipes in the plant]. They didn’t put data into the computer for five years.”
The report can’t be much of a reassurance to Entergy, said Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro, adding it would be much easier dealing with the mechanics of the plant rather than having to change the managerial culture.
“Many of these concerns are long term and not easily remedied,” she said. “They will not be able to solve these problems overnight.”
Earlier this month, I asked Jack McCullough to discuss the Ben Stein controversy and his piece “UVM is a National Disgrace.” Coincidentally the interview occurred right before Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
This interview sat with me, particularly the rightist claim that somehow Darwin’s legacy was Nazi Germany. The claim goes something like this: Darwin was a secularist, who, in abandoning Christian principles, elevated a doctrine of “survival of the fittest” that lead to social Darwinism, eugenics movements, and eventually the insane applied white supremacist ideology of the Nazis.
Refutations:
Darwin’s is a theory of natural selection. The idea that humans could somehow direct evolution flies in the face of this theory. Mutations are unpredictable– they are the necessary variable in evolution that can not be accounted for by any kind of engineered “breeding” program
Social Darwinism is a Gilded Age philosophy that is with us to this very day. At its essence is the argument that social policy need not account for the meek. A central tenet is the Gospel of Wealth theory that the rich deserve the spoils of their plunder. It is important to note that Social Darwinism was embraced by many Christians in the late nineteenth century as a way to get around that whole “the meek shall inherit the earth” thing. The idea of wealth as a sign of God’s grace was dressed up in the garb of “survival of the fittest.”
Most important in demonstrating that Darwin was not a Social Darwinist is the fact that Darwin was an abolitionist who consciously set about refuting the idea that Africans were a subhuman species. His writings explicitly show that he was committed to the idea of one human family and the notion that his legacy is the Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy is a grotesque but willful distortion.
Finally, Charles Darwin and Jack McCullough, separated at birth?
If you woke up on Christmas morning like I did and went to DailyKos, you saw kestrel9000’s (Ed Garcia) “Feed the World” diary at the top of the recommended list, followed by juliewolf’s (Julie Waters) “War.On.Solstice.”
So when I interviewed Ed Garcia recently, I had to lead with that.
good stuff
The conversation got me thinking a lot about the relationship between the blogging and the radio worlds. I also got to thinking about the relationship between GMD and Dailykos. There’s GMDers I see over there regularly, some occasionally, some not at all. Some GMDers may be over there but use a different screen name. So….
Loading ...