I haven’t been able to be as active on this site as I’d like to be (more on that tomorrow), but there are a couple things that have happened recently that – although they’ve already been discussed on this and/or other blogs – I feel the need to diary on personally.

Starting with the bad news, a lot has already been said about the passing of Peter Freyne. I didn’t know Peter personally, beyond a passing acquaintance that you smile and say hi to when you see, so I’ll just comment as a blogger. Peter has meant a lot to Vermont through his long career as a print journalist and columnist, but he has played an irreplaceable role in the development of Vermont’s political blogosphere as well, as new and immature as it still is.

When GMD launched, I dropped Peter an email letting him know I was starting a blog. His response was simply a six word “Might as well. Everyone else is.” I suspected at the time he just wasn’t sure what to make of it all, and that sense was reinforced in the early days of his own blog when he still didn’t seem to know what to make of it. He “metablogged” quite a bit, all the while coming off almost like an excited kid discovering an amusement park for the first time.

Which was ironic, truly, because I have never seen a person from the traditional media (or the blogs, for that matter) so effortlessly walk from one world to the other. It’s hard to know whether Freyne was made for the politcal blogosphere or vice versa, but his style and content was such a perfect fit that his engagement with the medium served to raise the quality, profile and impact of all of us almost overnight. Media pros often have a hard time with the transition because the medium is so interactive, meaning that not only are you likely to get back as good as you dish out, but you’re likely to get it from some amateur in his pajamas just getting home from his shift waiting tables. Clearly, Peter was completely comfortable with those rules and that world. More than comfortable, really, as someone who so easily and casually lived and breathed the give and take of politics and media, it seemed an ideal fit. Even though he wasn’t the first in, he was indeed the godfather of the Vermont political blogosphere.

And then there are the happier tidings, as wedding bells rang last week for Rep. Peter Welch. As profound an impact as it can be to lose someone, it is just as powerful a thing to find someone. So while it may not be as broadly newsworthy as the passing of Peter Freyne, the recent marriage of Rep. Peter Welch to State Rep. Margaret Cheney merits a special mention as well. Welch gets a lot of grief, and lord knows a lot of that grief gets delivered by this very blog (and ofttimes this very blogger), but regardless, I know Peter to be a very, very good man. A good human being with a good heart, a sharp mind, and a real desire to make the world a better place. Anybody who would suggest otherwise is, frankly, full of crap (or more likely, full of themselves).

So Peter, if I had a glass right now, I’d be raising it, as belated as that toast would be at this point. You deserve all the joy that finding someone you want to share your life with gives you, and I wish the two of you health, happiness, and good times.

Granted I’m just as likely to give you a hard time about something tomorrow, but that’s blogs for ya. Just for god’s sake, don’t give any more quotes to Republicans for campaign literature, ‘kay?

Sources report that Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is in the race for Governor in 2010 as well, setting the stage for a high-profile primary – which is just what the Doctor ordered to gin up energy, interest, and organization, frankly.

And on the Racine front: Former Governor Phil Hoff hosted a meeting for Racine at his home in Burlington over the weekend with 20-25 supporters in attendance (including at least one person engaged in the blogs/new media). A source who was there indicated Racine talked “about the Vermont economy and how the Douglas Administration has mishandled it, and his focus will be on bettering the economic circumstances of Vermonters – and that includes figuring out ways to protect low-income, senior and disabled Vermonters.”

Wow. What a difference a year makes.

It looks like whatever illness kept all the potential Dem candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor hiding for so long in the ’08 cycle has been fought off. This email is making the rounds of Democratic County Chairs in the state:

Dear County Chairs,

As Doug Racine starts his campaign for governor, he would first like to get around and visit all the county committees and the rank and file Democrats. I told Doug I would help him set up some of these appointments.

Please let me know when your next county committee meeting is. Doug would like to come and visit and engage in a conversation on issues and on the 2010 governor’s race.

Thanks.

-mary sullivan

Racine, of course, is the only candidate who has ever given Douglas a run for his money in a gubernatorial contest – losing by a mere 2.5 percent (and that was with a strong third candidate in Con Hogan pulling 9.7%, as well as an unsanctioned Progressive – Michael Badamo – who pulled 0.6%). Douglas is clearly stronger now, but so is Racine after his own political rebirth. The former Lieutenant Governor pulls terrific numbers in the more conservative Chittenden County burbs that always end up kicking our statewide candidates’ asses against Douglas and Dubie – stronger numbers than he even had in the old days.

And having Mary Sullivan on his side sure doesn’t hurt. There are factions and divisions within the Democratic Party in Vermont, but Sullivan’s long history with the institution and its players at every level make her not simply a “faction-straddler,” but likely the faction-straddler. In the Democratic Party, everybody likes Mary, and that likely makes her unique in the VDP (scratch that – I’m hearing email complaints about her after writing that. Ah, Democrats..).

One can make the case that Markowitz, Spaulding, Shumlin or Dunne (and others) could defeat Douglas, but in each of those cases, there is an element of faith built into the case. Racine remains the only potential candidate for whom the case can be made with math. That’s not to say its a perfectly linear equation, but the numbers are there historically to make the case for a Racine candidacy, as I made in more detail a year ago.

And as a numbers guy myself, that gets me feeling pretty good. More analysis on this tomorrow.

(The folks at The Guardian had me write a 2008-retrospective piece on what I thought the most significant event of 2008 was. It was to run this week, but they’ve posted all their retrospectives, didn’t include it, and my editor hasn’t told me whether or not its just been tossed or not.

I’m guessing at this point that it has been dumped, so I’m posting it here instead.)

2008 was the year of Obama, and even in light of the worldwide financial collapse, it is the image of the young African American President Elect that personifies the year. But as much as the November election itself, the hurdle Obama needed to overcome to reach this historic milestone was the most intractable hurdle in American culture.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright was never supposed to be a household name. The fiery rhetoric that came from the pulpit of Obama’s former minister was not unique, but it’s unique proximity to the candidate made it problematic – possibly fatally so. When that rhetoric was brought to light at the height of the Democratic Party primary season by his political opponents and amplified by an eager media, Obama was forced to act quickly and decisively – and he did so in March through what will likely be proven to be the speech of his life. A speech that was a turning point, not only for his own campaign, but for the turbulent history of race relations in America – one that will continue to resonate for years after the Obama Administration has come and gone.

The discussion on race in America had atrophied badly since the civil rights era, devolving into crude, purely emotional debates on particular policies (such as affirmative action and hate crimes) or on crime statistics and police behavior; affirmative action couched exclusively in terms of African Americans’ history of suffering, stories of white students supposedly passed over for scholarships, etc. Discussions of crime patterns and police profiling also quickly polarized into yelling matches between angry camps.

In rejecting these terms, Obama recast the discussion of race in America as a dialectic, rather than a simplistic bipolarity. White supporters hoping he would distance himself from the generation-bound, liberational rhetoric of aging civil rights leaders such as Jesse Jackson found themselves as surprised as many of his black supporters who had hoped he would tell American whites to stop whining, as to both camps of the racial divide he delivered the same, two-pronged message.

First, that your experience, your feelings and your frustrations around race are real. whatever they are, and whoever you may be. Perhaps those feelings are justified, perhaps not, but they are to be acknowledged and respected regardless.

Second, that moving forward in concrete ways would sometimes mean moving on, even without the emotionally satisfying catharsis we might crave as individuals.

Obama came right out and told America that the simplistic, adversarial templates for racial debate left over from the civil rights era had become obsolete.

It should be clear to all that the cultural problems associated with racism – both immediate and legacy-driven – are still significant, but have become more nuanced than they were in the days of Reverend King. That new nuance required new tools. And in the absence of such tools, an increasing number of people were simply choosing not to have those much-needed conversations. For these people – largely white and upper-middle class, but both educated and uneducated, conservative and liberal – the myth of a post-racial America was appealing. Post-racialism would absolve them of their need to engage with these issues at all, and in fact would make it easy to tar those that would engage in such debate as throwbacks.

When Barack Obama stepped forward to address the American people on race, it was within this context, and it was not without risk to this base of support. To many of his white supporters, Obama was the “post-racial” candidate, and in confronting Wright’s comments publicly, Obama had to shatter the myth of a supposedly “post racial” era. In doing so, he was betting against the charge of an anonymous Clinton adviser in January; that Obama’s supporters were simply drawn to him as their “imaginary hip black friend.” By looking racism in the eye and sharing what he saw with the public, he implicitly trusted that his support was more than just the liberal pavlovianism this adviser had suggested.

And he was right.

Obama did something none in his generation and of his stature have done on the issue of race in America; he spoke to us as grown-ups. More than that, he stepped outside the orthodoxy of how race is to be discussed and what the terms of debate are, and he did so with a profound combination of seriousness, clarity, and casual ease. In the process, Obama gave us permission as a nation to grow up on issues of race, and he did so in a way that only a biracial fortysomething, so comfortable in his own multicultural identity, could do. He cast the nation as a rising adult with unresolved childhood issues who needed to begin moving on – even when moving on means not finding closure for every childhood trauma, as justified and righteous as the lingering anger towards such trauma might be.

Obama couldn’t win under the old rules of racial debate, under which he simply would’ve been “the black candidate.” But neither was he able to win without being “the black candidate.” In the end, his path to victory was to ride the same dialectic that he opened up for the country at large in that one historic speech, encompassing and embodying the many contradictions of the nation.

And his victory in November is only the first, clearest sign of how much things have already changed.

It’s a subjective question to be sure, but I’m always interested in looking back and considering what news events of the last year were either barely covered or incompletely covered, given what their real impact is likely to be. It’s easier to ask that question nationally or globally, but when you get down to the state level, it gets a little more challenging and a little more fun.

I’ve included nine I think fit the bill. What do you think? Any to add (or any of these to quiblle with)?

$250 million. Sure, we’re hearing constantly about the economic downturn and the growing budget crisis in the Statehouse, but $250m is a number we’re not hearing very much. Its what some believe the total budget shortfall against previous projections will work out to be when the dust settles. The quick and easy projection here is that the Legislature will pass a reasonably responsible budget that combines cuts, revenues and debt, but it won’t be simple. A lot of go-to revenue sources – most notably the capital gains tax loophole – are not going to perform nearly up to previous projections of their potential, given that capital is not moving very readily. Whatever does happen, expect the Governor to fight anything good, and then take sole credit for whatever gets through.

Checks and Balances dealt a fatal blow? Jim Douglas clearly used state resources for his re-election campaign, and nothing came of it. Nothing. Barely a peep beyond Shay Totten’s coverage, nothing was done, nobody cared. There is no meaningful oversight of the Executive Branch in this state, and unless something dramatic changes (say, for example, Senator Sears’s suggestion is heeded and Legislative committees start issuing subpoenas and taking sworn testimony), there won’t be.

State emails provided for Open Records requests. Unions and reporters asked for – and received – internal emails under the state Open Records Law that revealed untoward things about the Douglas Administration. A conservative blogger made a similar request of the Legislature, but was stymied for pretty crappy reasons that won’t hold up in the long term. It’s a brave new world, and the implications of the open season on state e-communication have only just begun.

Swapping out the Speaker. “Presumed” Speaker Shap Smith and incoming Majority Leader represent what could be a hugely significant changing of the guard in Montpelier, but the response from the traditional media has thusfar largely been a collective yawn. The implications to the political dynamics are considerable, yet reporters have covered little more than the horse race angle of the caucus vote. Trust me, this will be a different Legislature.

The destruction of Vermont’s campaign finance laws. With that single vote that left the Legislature shy of a veto override, Vermont’s campaign finance laws were largely trashed, and the AG’s office is pretending otherwise. The pretense was given a new lease on life when Judge Sessions ruled in favor of Anthony Pollina’s challenge to that “law” on its own terms, rather than issuing a decision as to whether or not the law itself was still standing. But nothing has changed – we’re still in a campaign finance wasteland. Eventually, someone will call the bluff if it isn’t fixed.

Libel suit against iBrattleboro based on user comments was thrown out. Maybe not earth-shattering, as it wasn’t exactly news (anyone who paid more than perfunctory attention to the law saw it coming), but still worth mentioning. While not a surprise, the coverage of the case reached heights of absurdity and self-parody, with outlets like the Rutland Herald and WCAX revealing their own antipathy towards new media by eagerly suggesting that this non-case would find its way to the US Supreme Court. Sorry guys, even if that fantasy were true, it wouldn’t help solve traditional media’s problems.

Prog peak? For the first time since they started winning House seats, the Progressive Party actually lost ground in the statehouse, meaning the Progs are entering a new phase in their institutional existence, especially given that their success in the State Senate was attained through a Democratic Party primary. What next?

Symington crushed. The floor for Democratic candidates in Vermont has been about 35% for some time, and until the last month of the election season, the polls showed Gubernatorial candidate Gaye Symington bouncing around that floor. Then, in the blink of an eye, her disapproval ratings tripled and that floor was blown apart. Was the brand further damaged as well, or was this simply Vermonters voting for or against the candidate?

Yankee coverage. Windham County residents have long fumed that Vermont Yankee’s continued, duct taped existence has been an issue that folks outside the county simply will not take seriously. It’s news that mishaps and sneaky financial tricks at Vermont Yankee are now getting much wider coverage, as 2008 was the year it truly became a statewide issue.

There are certainly others that I would have liked to mention, but which frankly dance too close to personal interest-conflicts. Others?

Vermont Tiger is the flagship of GOP bloggery in Vermont. Oh sure, they claim to be nonpartisan, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who reads them, of any political stripe, who could repeat that claim with a straight face. Why so many Republicans fueling such efforts (from Vermont Tiger all the way to Fox News) feel the need to camoflauge their loyalties is a topic for another day…

In any event, some days their partisan hackery is more brazenly on display than others. This week it's particularly naked, for the simple reason that site founder Geoffrey Norman didn't go to the trouble of running his attack through the most fundamental filter of rationality and consistency, leading to a little hit that only a true-believer Republican who turns off his or her brain could love.

Don't get me wrong, its nothing big, earth-shattering, or otherwise meaningful. Merely the little 5-sentence smackdown in the screenshot to the right. It's just that its particularly illustrative of the partisan agenda in play and the hypocrisy of a site that continues to insist it doesn't have one.

You gotta give these guys credit, there’s a lot of BS crammed into those five little sentences.

First of all, the message the title sends is clear – evil librul Welch doesn’t want poor everyman “you” to have any more money. No bonuses. What a slimeball, eh? Of course, the content of the very same hit-post clearly states that Welch was referring to – in Norman’s own words – “recipients of Federal bailout money to be paying themselves bonuses this year.” I think its a stretch to believe that Norman believes its these very recipients that are the audience reading his blog, and as such the use of the word “your” in the title, while it may send a convenient partisan “evil elitist” message to the casual surfer, is fatuous at best, overtly dishonest at worst. take your pick (and I do mean “your”).

That’s sentence 1 of 5. Skip down to sentence 4 and you’ll see a snarky line poking Welch by name along with other congress-folk for receiving a scheduled pay-raise at the beginning of the upcoming year. Again, the implication is that Welch specifically is choosing to grant himself a raise (and coupled with the headline, the further implication is that said raise is at your personal expense), suggesting that it is consciously being granted for legislative “performance.” Shocking!

The problem here is that, with a simple click of the mouse on the link they provide, you find that its an automatic pay increase due to kick in without action or personal congratulations from Welch or any other Representative. There is a bill to suspend the increase with cosponsors from both parties of all political stripes (from Ron Paul to Peter DeFazio – although Welch is not among their number), but it’s currently bottled up in committee. So the implication that Welch is voting to increase his own pay for his fine performance is just as phony as the headline.

Finally, sentence 5 attempts to pull it all together with a link to a YouTube piece peddling the Limbaugh/Hannity notion, utterly rejected by non-ideologue economists, that the whole economic meltdown has its complete genesis with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapses, and that they were entirely brought on by liberal Democrats who mandated assistance to low-income Americans. As though the years of laissez-faire-inspired financial deregulation allowing the explosive propogation of bizarre financial instruments heaped upon bizarre financial instruments all destined for massive exploitation and ultimately to collapse in on their own weight is just a fanciful mythology of the evil, elite, librul, latte-sipping media.

Puh-leeze. I doubt even VTTiger’s own Art Woolf would go along with that desperate Republican attempt to avoid reality and responsibility. Although what do I know, maybe he would. Partisan denial is a powerful thing.

But the keyword, again, is “partisan.” And if Vermont Tiger, as it claims, is truly “non-partisan,” then I’ve got Barack Obama’s abs.

During the holidays, the topic of human nature is always, at least implicitly. in the air. Obviously one could write whole tomes on the qualities of human nature (many, many, many have), but in its simplest form, I always felt that questions about that nature can be reduced to musings over the interactions of a few variables in any given context; reason, instinct (which encompassses everything from the instincts to run, to fight – and the instinct to communalism and altruism which we see it other primates), emotions, personal cosmology, and the wisdom of experience. There may be others (or others may define those differently), but those are the basic ingredients in the soup, more or less.

The assumption that is often implicit in political discussions over “the big issues” (as opposed to quibbling over percentage points on balance sheets) is that, if all these variables are in proper balance in an individual, they should end up coming down on the good side of these issues – or at least they should if we enter into the process assuming (or wanting to assume) that human nature is generally itself good.

Case in point, Norwich University Cadet Michael Self.

Norwich University in Northfield is the nation’s first – and only remaining – private military college. While the profiles and activities of the student corps would look similar to those at VMI or another public military college, as a private school with a deep history, there are distinctions. A greater emphasis on the liberal arts, for example, but more than that, the Norwich tradition of military honor seems less subject to being effected by the ebbs and flows of everything from pop culture to the political administration du jour.

It is in that context that Self began his senior research as a criminal justice major into the subject of torture.

At the outset of his project, Self characterized his views as “definitely of the warrior mindset, which almost followed the Bush administration’s approach, which was when we went into Afghanistan we viewed the Geneva Convention as an obstacle to the goal of getting actionable intelligence.” In his own words, if he had been asked whether torture would be appropriate if it was seen as a way to prevent another 9-11, his response would have been “absolutely.”

But Self studied and learned, and the variables in the equation began to change. Self:

“I learned about the ineffectiveness of torture, about the extreme costs in terms of credibility, the loss of moral high ground, violation of international law and the bending of American ideals in an ideological war,” he said. “My ultimate conclusion is that it’s not worth torturing terror suspects for the chance-I emphasize, chance-to get actionable intelligence.”

Self worked on his project with NU Professor Rowland Brucken who worked with him through what became a grant-funded summer undergraduate project. Brucken, who is including some of Self’s research in his own upcoming book within a chapter on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, sees a presentation Self made during the summer on his work as a turning point in his thinking:

“He faced some very challenging questions from professors and students in the audience because his thinking on the subject was evolving,” said Brucken. “His thesis back then wasn’t a strong one because it was equivocal and that opened him to criticism from either side. I think it was a sign to Michael that he had to come to a more succinct thesis, however it evolved.”

I think many of us on the left cling to the idea that, at least sometimes, if we can get a chance to make our case to people of goodwill, that we might be able to change minds.

It’s nice to have that faith in human nature rewarded from time to time.

Self is wrapping up the research that dominated his academic life for a year. He hopes to present his paper at other conferences and possibly have it published.

“Because we’re in an ideological war, trying to win hearts and minds and because of the limited effectiveness of torture, it’s just not worth it,” said Self. “I never would have said that before I started this research.”

Self’s experience stands as a reminder that the cynicism towards our fellow humans that we so often fall prey to is often the greatest impediment we face towards making the world a better place.

Whoa (emphasis added):

From: ONE East Neighborhood Forum neighbors@frontporchforum.com

Date: 23 Dec 2008 03:48:06

To: members@frontporchforum.com

Subject: ONE East Neighborhood Forum No. 597

(snip)

——————–

WARD 2 PROGRESSIVE PARTY CAUCUS JAN. 3

By Jane Knodell, City Councilor – Ward 2, Charles St, jknodell@uvm.edu

Mon, 22 December 2008

Ward 2 Progressive Party Caucus to Endorse Candidates

There will be a Ward 2 caucus of the Progressive Party to endorse candidates for city council, school commissioner and inspector of elections. The caucus is open to voters of ward 2 who wish to be members of the Progressive Party. Since the Progressive Party is a party of principles, membership requires subscribing to the Statement of Principles in the Party Charter, which can be read at: http://www.progressiveparty.or…

The Ward 2 caucus will be held:

Saturday, January 3, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. at the home of Wendy Coe and Gene Bergman at (snip).

For more information contact Terry Bouricius at terryb@burlingtontelecom.net or (snip).

Posted by Jane Knodell, City Councilor, Ward 2

Yowch. I prefer my principles defined bottom up, rather than top down – as messy as inefficient as that obviously is.

In polls, the public continually supports progressive priorities, or at least they do in the broadest senses. For example, in a recent Washington Post poll, 77% want to see the new administration make fundamental changes to the health care system. That’s amazing.

And yet, so often progressive candidates lose elections.

Part of that is the candidates themselves – for decades, lefties from coast to coast have allowed some of the biggest weenies to become our nominal “leaders.”

And yet, the current polls are tied into the Obama Administration, and Obama was not the policy-reform-oriented lefty in the primary. So what gives?

I was just mulling the possibility that Americans as a whole may want to see progressive policies enacted (whether or not they call them that), but they just don’t trust progressives themselves – or at least progressive candidates – to accomplish it.

Maybe that speaks to liberals’ styles as candidates, the individual candidates themselves, or maybe it’s just an “only Nixon could go to China” thing, whereby voters want to see someone approach these changes from a cautious, even dubious perspective.

Or maybe I’m way off. I decided to go ahead and post this without thinking it through, just to generate discussion. I may change my mind completely in a few minutes.

Consider this an open thread.

With so much at stake it becomes a major national issue when a US Senator is to be appointed to replace one stepping down in any state. That one person will, after all, themselves comprise 1% of the entire Senate, and that’s a big deal. Still, there’s been a dearth of commentary at this site about the process underway in our neighboring state of New York.

Former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin, however, has shared her own opinion at the often-interesting blog of the Vermont publishing house Chelsea Green. She says:

Yet, there is a good argument to be made that she would be the best person to fill that Senate seat. There are now 17 women in the United States Senate. With Hillary’s resignation, there will be 16, the same number that existed before November 4. A further argument would be that she could afford to campaign again for the seat in two years. But what interests me most is that the Kennedy legacy has been almost totally male, except for Kathleen Kennedy Townshend, a daughter of Bobby Kennedy, who served as Maryland’s Lt. Governor and lost her race for Governor in 2002.

So Kunin’s “good argument” is threefold:

1. Kennedy’s a woman (which apparently isn’t enough for Kunin to argue on the behalf of Carolyn Maloney or Kirsten Gillibrand, to whom she offers only a perfunctory collective reference).

2. Kennedy is rich.

3. Kunin’s perceived public need to enforce affirmative action among the Kennedy family itself.

I hope somebody has got a more sapient argument on Kennedy’s behalf than this.