All posts by Sue Prent

About Sue Prent

Artist/Writer/Activist living in St. Albans, Vermont with my husband since 1983. I was born in Chicago; moved to Montreal in 1969; lived there and in Berlin, W. Germany until we finally settled in St. Albans.

The DNC as Chicken Little

National, , , ,

“The sky is falling! the sky is falling!” “Donald Trump is gaining on Hillary!”

It’s Chicken Little time at the DNC.

Following the dust-up at the Nevada Convention all artifice of civility has been suspended.

No, I’m not talking about the handful of Bernie supporters in Nevada, but the hyperbolic response from the DNC as it closes ranks with what it thinks is the best argument for shutting Bernie down.

This is what it’s come to.

Bernie has been saying since he entered the race that he is in it until the Convention, but apparently the Party elders didn’t believe him.

You don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and you don’t mount a revolution spouting nothing but platitudes and  pleasantries from a place of no-contest.

Suddenly, Bernie Sanders is evil incarnate and has to throw in the towel so as not to ‘damage’ Hillary.

Newsflash: she’s already damaged; she was damaged coming into the race.

As intelligent and experienced as she is, she persistently transmits inauthenticity and entitlement in an election year that despises both. Even if there were no Bernie Sanders, these traits would not win the day.

And dragging out her equally damaged husband as her standard bearer in the crisis only makes matters worse. It plays to the worst stereotypes about women; the ones we had hoped the first female presidential candidate would kick to the curb.

This is a teaching moment for the DNC: never assume.

Why was Martin O’Malley the only card-carrying Democrat to challenge Hillary for the nomination? There certainly is plenty of talent out there, from Elizabeth Warren to the Castro Brothers and Joe Biden; but no, this one was for Hillary. It had been earmarked by the Hillary camp since 2008.

O’Malley’s only hope was to conduct himself so well in the campaign that he would become the Vice-Presidential nominee. No one was looking at poor O’Malley; quite a decent guy, at that.

Bernie was supposed to be a blip of comic relief; here today and gone tomorrow. No one would really support a democratic-socialist for president! Maybe if Hillary was not so damaged from the start, Bernie’s revolution wouldn’t have taken hold; but she was, and it did.

Just like the Republicans, who refused to believe that Jeb Bush wasn’t inevitable, the DNC made the same mistake about Hillary; only the RNC got ‘lucky’ and a bona fide arsonist named Trump dispatched Jeb and set the revolutionary tone for his own party long before Hillary even took notice of Bernie. Oh, the humanity!!

Now, the RNC is way ahead of the DNC at restoring itself to at least functional unity.

The DNC is still in denial of its diagnosis while the RNC is already at the acceptance phase in the process. They may not like Donald Trump but it it won’t be the first time they’ve gotten lucky with a feckless idiot, and they know that. Think George W. Bush and the miraculously (and posthumously) rehabilitated Ronald Reagan.

Instead of watching and drawing a valuable lesson from Bernie’s ability to engage a whole new and untapped electorate, easily matching those enlisted by DT on the other side, the Hillary Camp (and the entire Party hierarchy) plucked superficially from the message to garnish Hillary’s presentation, like parsley on potatoes.

Only the parsley proved to be much more appetizing than the potatoes and Bernie began to actually win votes no matter how much the convoluted rules worked against that end.

Even burying the debates in impossible time slots did not protect the presumed nominee from damage.

Bernie was apparently not expected to lay a glove on Hillary, and when he actually raised salient questions about her ties to Wall Street, her judgment on matters of war, and the sacred memory of her husband’s global economic policies, the Party twitched visibly but still plastered a strained smile on its lips.

Bernie, they said, would ‘toughen’ Hillary for her ultimate clash with Trump, and that was ‘a good thing.’ Behind the scenes, the Party of Hillary tightened the screws on the inevitability machine even more. Unfortunately, their collective slip was showing, and some Sanders supporters, new to the rigging process, began to cry ‘foul.

The Nevada DNC’s biased chairing of ‘their’ caucus proved to be the last straw for a a few attendees who became loud and abusive in their language, but not violent.

Despite breathless news reports to the contrary, there is no evidence that a chair was thrown. Video shows one man picking up a chair, then putting it down again. There were nasty phone calls and social media outbursts, but these have not by any means been confined to Sanders supporters.

The Sanders campaign condemned the bad behavior, but also condemned the biased conduct that had prompted it. Apparently Bernie was expected to dress in sackcloth and cover himself with ashes, never mentioning the pattern of bias that has permeated the primaries under Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He did not, and the floodgates of Democratic establishment figures aching to tell him to F.O. was suddenly opened.

One state, one caucus, a handful of Sanders supporters behaving badly, and everyone is insisting that Sanders should do the ‘decent’ thing and drop out before the convention.

Meanwhile, finally under some impulse control by the RNC, Trump has risen in the polls and Hillary has fallen. Much as the DNC would like us to believe that this has something to do with Bernie’s continued resistance to her inevitability, that is not the case.

Trump is proving to be an armor-clad wrecking ball of nastiness. He needs no help from anyone. It’s what he does.

With her extremely long and checkered political history, Hillary is the softest target imaginable.  Whether or not she can successfully prevail in the general is looking more and more like an open question.

Further alienating that energized Bernie base by going all Head Prefect on their chosen candidate will not help.

Suggestion? Stop insisting that it’s up to Bernie to unify the party ‘because that’s what Hillary did in 2008.’ This isn’t 2008 and Bernie’s revolution won’t be politically disciplined by a promise of support for 2016.

If the Hillary camp values the support of Bernie’s base, they will have to convincingly demonstrate a willingness to include at least some of that base’s priorities in the party platform, not just pay temporary lip-service and claim to be a ‘progressive.’

Dollars to donuts she won’t call herself a ‘progressive’ in the general, and that’s okay because its only a word; but if she continues to beat a path to the right as she has already begun to do with that remark about having Bill balance the country’s checkbook, she will only reinforce Bernie supporters’ conviction that she doesn’t represent our interests.

There’s only so much that Donald Trump (or Hillary) threats can do to blackmail a disenchanted electorate into turning out to hold their noses at the ballot box.

Time to reassess the fairness and efficacy of a two party system.

The First Presidential Psychopath?

National,

My buddy, Perry Cooper, sent me the following in response to my most recent musings on the prospects of Trump (“Donald as the Princess and the Pea”). It was so apt that I thought I’d share it with GMD readers as a stand alone blogpost:

The June issue of Discover Magazine, discover.com, has an article titled “The Psychopath & The Hare.” The hare is Robert Hare, a Vancouver forensic psychologist who created a ‘Psychopathy Check List,’ PCL, and a revised PCL-R.

“It’s now the top violence risk assessment tool used by forensic psychologists in North America, the significant majority in post-sentencing and parole hearings of the most dangerous, high-risk prisoners.

The checklist’s 20 items include:

            glibness/superficial charm,
            grandiose sense of self-worth,
            need for stimulation/proneness to boredom,
            pathological lying,
            conning/manipulation,
            lack of remorse/guilt,
            shallow affect,
            callousness/lack of empathy,
            parasitic lifestyle,
            promiscuous sexual behavior,
            early behavior problems,
            lack of realistic, long-term goals,
            impulsivity,
            failure to accept responsibility,
            many short-term marital relationships,
            juvenile delinquency
            and criminal versatility.”
 
“The clinician scores each item with 0 (no presence), 1 (uncertain) or 2 (definitely present). Psychopaths score 30 to 40 points. The general population typically scores less than 5, while the average score for prisoners is 23.”

Using the seventeen items in the list from the article, I scale Trump at 32. The three missing items could only increase the score. Trump is a psychopath.

Read the article at http://discovermagazine.com/2016/june/12-psychopath-and-the-hare.

Perry Cooper

Doug Hoffer on EB-5

local/regional, Uncategorized, ,

Green Mountain Daily is pleased to host this op-ed, written by our  state auditor, Doug Hoffer, who has been an occasional contributor to our pages for many years:  

The unfortunate situation with the EB-5 program presents an opportunity to reflect on the State’s approach to economic development. Among other responsibilities, the State Auditor’s office examines various programs to determine whether they achieve the goals established by the legislature. That is, are we getting our money’s worth?

To answer the question, we conduct performance audits according to Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards. To do this, we need evidence that is sufficient and appropriate (i.e., quantity and quality). In the absence of such evidence, we cannot reach meaningful conclusions or make recommendations.

Unfortunately, some economic development programs present serious challenges. Here are some examples.

 
1.  By statute, the Vermont Training Program may only award grants for training that is supplemental rather than replacement. That is, taxpayers should not pay for training that would have occurred anyway. For example, if a company routinely trains new hires, it would be difficult to justify a training grant intended for new employees. Although applicants are asked about the nature of the proposed training, their statements are not validated. Therefore, we cannot determine the program’s effectiveness because there is no evidence that the grants are only for supplemental training.

 
2.  The primary performance measure of the Department of Tourism & Marketing (T&M) is the annual increase in rooms and meals tax revenues. This assumes that growth in revenue is due to T&M spending. However, the legislature’s economist reported in 2015 that “current taxpayer-financed advertising expenditures for the tourism sector are estimated to represent a mere 3% of total industry advertising expenditures.” Thus, it is impossible to evaluate the impact of state spending when it represents such a tiny percentage of the total.

 
3.  The statute that created the Enterprise Fund (e.g., $1 million to Global Foundries) required the administration to submit a memo to the Emergency Board making the case for the award. Among other things, the Board was supposed to consider whether the information presented was sufficient for the State Auditor to conduct a performance audit. I reviewed those confidential memos and the answer was no. As a result, we cannot audit the impact of the grants.

 
4. The Vermont Employment Growth Incentive (VEGI) is predicated on a statement from applicants that “but for” the incentive, the promised jobs and capital investment would not occur, or would occur in a significantly different and less desirable manner. However, such statements are subjective and cannot be audited. Therefore, it is impossible to know whether some of the economic activity would have occurred without the program. That means that claims about the program’s impact cannot be verified.

 
The EB-5 situation highlighted another area of concern with some economic development programs; namely, the inherent conflict of interest between promotion and regulation. Bureaucrats charged with promoting development are unlikely to be unbiased in their oversight of those viewed as “partners.” In addition to EB-5, we see this in the decades-long relationship between the state and the ski areas that lease public lands.

 
Clearly, the state has an important role to play in creating and enhancing conditions for job creation. As the legislature and the new governor consider their options as to how best to allocate scarce resources, I hope they will insist that all programs are designed to provide the evidence necessary to measure their effectiveness. Without that critical information, how can Vermonters know whether we are getting a fair return on our investment?

If we can’t measure a program’s performance, we’re left with faith, which I can’t audit.

Doug Hoffer

Donald as the Princess and the Pea

National, Uncategorized, , ,

As Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, on behalf of the entire RNC, engage in the dance of mutual castration, Democrats have reason for cautious optimism.

By the time the Democratic Convention crowns its nominee, Mr. Trump may be showing a little wear even for his most devoted accolades. That’s because the Republican nominee is as sensitive as the ‘Princess and the Pea.’

Behold a few of the metaphoric mattresses atop which his presidential hopes fitfully sleep:
1)    Cooperating with anybody, let alone ‘establishment’ Republicans is not a good look for the Donald; yet, he now needs them as much as they need him because he isn’t prepared to self-fund his campaign in the general.

2)    He can no longer claim to be self-funded and not beholden to anyone. We already
know by his own words that he understands the quid-pro-quo game all too well and
accepts as fair that there will be no “quid” without the requisite “quo.”

3)    His almost uncontrollable inclination to contradict himself, sometimes going back and forth in a dizzying display of indecision, has finally caught the attention of the media. Decisive he can’t claim to be.

4)    His unlimited need for attention has provided a life-time of stupid and offensive remarks ripe for the picking. If the Republicans didn’t have the balls to do it, Democrats will not hesitate to dispatch them in volleys.

5)    Unlike his Republican rivals, the Democratic nominee can and will resist the temptation to get down in the mud with him because there are plenty of capable surrogates like Elizabeth Warren (not Bill Clinton, please!) to do the job for her or him. Elizabeth Warren ties knots in Donald Trump without breaking a sweat…and both Hillary and Bernie are cool heads under pressure. The Bloviator-in-Chief  is decidedly not.

If, as seems increasingly inevitable, Hillary walks away with the nomination, she just has to leave Bill at home watering the plants, and she’ll be fine.  She’ll owe Bernie BIG time for mobilizing his minions to support her, but I think they can work out that deal so long as he keeps the faith with his supporters all the way to the Convention. It’s the policies that matter most to Bernie and its the White House that matters most to Hillary.

6)    Just because none of Donald Trump’s “unforgivable” insults have proven to be the ‘silver bullet’ necessary to disqualify him for Republican primary voters doesn’t mean
he’s out of the woods. The power high of winning the nomination will only curb his appetite for sensation temporarily. Dollars to donuts, he’s just one or two soundbites away from the next big goof. He’s programmed to offend. He can’t help himself.  And he’ll find that general election voters, reflective of the true diversity of the country, are not nearly so forgiving.

7)    No one even pretends anymore that he might know what he’s talking about. Ignorance ispretty much baked into his identity at this point. His supporters don’t care, but anyone not already in that delusional state is not likely at this point to be persuaded that he is the ‘smart’ candidate, no matter how much money he has…or says he has.

8)    Which brings us to his taxes. The longer he resists releasing them, the more everyone will be convinced they contain a bombshell. Why is the guy whose brand is supposed to be
spontaneity and transparency suddenly so secretive?

9)    Donald Trump has no sense of humor. We’ve all known people like that. They love to
ham it up and make jokes at other people’s expense, so long as they themselves aren’t the
butt of the joke.  In fact, they are particularly thin-skinned; apt to flush in anger and behave unwisely when teased.   I think we can guess what lies ahead in that department.  We’ve all seen the tape of his angry face at the Correspondent’s Dinner when the President poked fun at him.

10)   Donald Trump himself is not at all sure he wants or can even do the job for which he is
competing.  I swear I read somewhere that Trump once said that if he ever ran for President, he’d do it as a Republican because they’ll believe anything. Maybe I dreamt it, but it just seems so like him.

11)   DT says he “does great” among women; but what he really means is Republican women, which is, of and by itself something akin to an oxymoron.  He maintains the same fiction about his popularity with minorities. It was difficult to adequately test those assertions in the Republican Primary, since relatively few minority voters were involved, and there is a certain expectation of dysfunction from  women who identify with the party that would consistently act against their best interests.

The general election is a whole different animal. As unmotivated as minorities were to
vote in the Republican Primary, they will be doubly so motivated to vote Democratic in
the general election; firstly, out of a sense of outrage; and secondly, in preservation of
their own best interests that have been so conspicuously under attack from Donald Trump.

More than half of all women self-identify as leaning Democratic. Roughly 36% self identify
as Republicans. It can safely be assumed that most of these are women who also
self-identify as ‘conservative’ and many generally support conservative principles and
regional Republican candidates, but see Donald Trump as neither conservative
nor invested in their regional Republican concerns.

According to Newsweek (March 15 2016) female voters in the Michigan Republican Primary dividedtheir vote more or less equally between Trump and Cruz and Katich. That’s not a very impressive validation even from the relatively narrow pool of Republican women. As late as March of this year, 47% of Republican women “could not imagine themselves voting for Trump.”

This weekend, the New York Times  announced open season on Donald’s ‘female troubles’ with a scathing retrospective on his playboy years.

A theory that’s been going around is that Trump never really wanted to be president. This whole campaign was just an opportunity to burnish his brand and get a whole lot of face-time.

Now, it’s “Be careful what you wish for” time.

He clearly never prepared to win the nomination. Assured as he thought he was that the GOP would never let him have the nomination, I think he honestly believed he could play the aggrieved losing candidate to a sea of adoring Twitter followers for years to come, ensuring a new reality TV show and all the sycophants he could exploit for the remainder of his vapid life.

He’s not stupid (although he plays a stupid person on TV). He knows that if, God forbid, he ever did land in the White House, he would quickly become the most unpopular president of all time. His negatives would dwarf those of his campaign, and provide absolutely no amusement for him, because he would be stuck in the narrative that he himself recklessly created.

If Obama has had to endure eight years of abuse, can you imagine what thin-skinned Trump would experience in the same office?

I think he can.

Instead of being able to fling his feces at both the President and Congress,
from the safe distance of an ivory Trump Tower, he would himself be the target, day-after-day-after- endless day of blunders, indecision and head-on collisions with reality.

He’s already uncomfortable answering demands for his taxes and questions about his butler.  Even attempts to deflect to Hillary Clinton are failing to engage as the news media belatedly tries to drill-down on his pathological lies.

In what may have signaled the beginning of cognitive breakdown under pressure, Trump now appears to have double-punked the press, first by leaking an old tape of himself pretending to be a press agent boasting about Trump’s romantic conquests, then lying about the lie.  The permutations of his deceits are positively dizzying.

And I expect it isn’t fun anymore.

 

RRR: Republican Robo Redundancy

local/regional, ,

Tonight around 7:00 PM, when most households  could be expected to be attempting  a quiet dinner, I completed a phone survey, paid for by Phil Scott For Governor, four times!

The calls originated from North Troy, and I took the first ungrudgingly.  I am always happy to waste Republican dollars; and fortunately, I was planning a late dinner.

It was a “three question” survey:

Question 1:  Do you support strongly Phil Scott for Governor? Do you support him moderately? Do you support a Democrat? Are you undecided?
Question 2:  Do you strongly support Bruce Lisman for Lt. Governor? Do you support a Democrat or other candidate (or something like that)? Are you undecided?
Question 3: What is the most important issue to you? There were seven choices, some of which were dog whistles, but I chose the environment just to be perverse.

As soon as I hung-up, the phone rang again and I took the poll again; and again twice after that.   I would like to think that I wasn’t the only lucky respondent to get multiple opportunities to ding the same poll; and I would also like to believe that others like me, took full advantage of the situation to maximize obfuscation.

I hate robo calls, but it is my great pleasure to take them at the expense of the caller. I just do something else, like checking my e-mail, while they prattle-on.  Try it, you’ll like it.

In this, the year of the Trump Dumpf, we need all the devilish distraction we can get.

A new ‘Zion” for Vermont?

local/regional, , , , , ,

Thanks to GMD reader, Jennifer Shaw for suggesting the topic and providing a timely link.

With the Q-Burke development scandal still playing out, attention should be directed toward another uber-ambitious development plan, by one David Hall of Utah, that has so far seen limited public discussion.

Here’s the latest skinny, as carried on AP:

“SHARON, Vt. — A Mormon Utah businessman who wants to build a massive, futuristic, utopia-like community in central Vermont says he’s about to buy 500 more acres of land for the project, bringing his total to about 1,400 acres.”

The plan is to build a massive community reflecting the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith’s 1833 concept for a city called ‘Zion.’

To build this city, Hall aims to acquire a total of 5,000 acres of land in south-central Vermont. Clearly, once this current purchase is complete, he will be well on his way to the full acquisition and will have increased credibility with potential investors.

The proposed utopian development Hall envisions will include housing for 20,000 people, plus offices, gardens, forty-eight basketball courts and 48 Olympic size swimming pools! That works out to one pool and one basketball court for roughly every four-hundred residents.

With all that planned recreational real estate, I’ll bet Hall dreams of the rebellious youth of his ideal community sweating out their trouble-making on the court or in the pool.

The idea is that the community should be self-sustaining (nothing wrong with that), producing sufficient food, jobs etc. to support all the occupants. How exactly that can be accomplished is yet to be fleshed-out, but with a timeline of “several decades” to work out the details, and a whole lot of money, Mr. Hall seems to think his dream could become a reality.

I wonder what kind of local permitting conversations are going on about that now? Act 250 alone should be a formidable challenge but we’ve all seen projects that should not have, by any reasonable understanding of Act 250, been permitted under the existing laws, but somehow managed to squeak through.

We have become so accustomed to the truism that ‘growth’ is the solution to all of our problemsthat some small communities have ceased to question whether it is indeed true in their case. It’s difficult to believe that a place as lovely as Sharon could be ripe for exploitation, but that’s apparently what Mr. Hall is relying upon. After all, someone is selling him the land.

At the right price, he observed, “Everything’s for sale.”

This proposal should ring alarm bells for anyone who recognizes the importance of preserving the open spaces and village character of rural Vermont, desirable qualities that are in extremely short supply everywhere else in America.

A city incorporated under Hall’s vision would be technologically very advanced but somewhat lacking in opportunities for individuality.

“In Hall’s “city,” people would live in energy-efficient modular homes within walking distances of heavy industry, farms and a central square consisting of 24 four-story buildings. Residents would deposit their assets in a communal fund upon arrival, though they’d be free to leave whenever.”

Vermont is now the most non-religious state in the Union. We pride ourselves on tolerance, but the majority of us prefer a personal spiritual journey to one that has been organized by others.

Even though Mr. Hall insists that the community would not be religiously exclusive, it is doubtful that the arrangement would attract many people outside the Mormon faith; and such a massive new enclave of homogenity is hardly going to enrich Vermont’s already feeble diversity.

I suspect that many Vermonters will hesitate to criticize the plan, lest they appear insensitive to a religious minority, but there is much to criticize about such a huge shift in land use away from rural, low-density uses, toward intense human habitation with all the environmental impacts that accompany such a change. Lawns, gardens, swimming pools, toilets and dishwashers all take their toll on the watershed. So do acres of concrete and new roads to service 20,000 new residents.

I say ‘new residents’ because there are currently only about forty-five hundred Mormons living in Vermont, and it is unlikely that all of them wish to up-stakes and move into a planned community.

20,000 people is greater than the population of South Burlington, Vermont’s second largest city.    All of Windsor County is only 56,000 people.

I’d like to hear from our readers who live in Windsor County what their thoughts are on Mr. Hall’s plans. Is this a change you can envision for your region?

Automatic voter registration comes to Vermont

local/regional, , ,

For those (like Jon Margolis of VTDigger) who do not believe in the possibility of positive changes in the electoral process, Vermont now has a powerful rejoinder:

Automatic Voter Registration.

While other states are busy finding ways to circumvent the inconvenience of democracy by disenfranchising more and more people, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed into law H.458, which automatically registers to vote any driver in the state who obtains a valid driver’s license.

A measure so simple even a child might suggest it, automatic voter registration tied to driver’s licenses has only so far been adopted in Oregon, California and West Virginia (!)…and now Vermont.

At the signing, Governor Shumlin had this to say about the significance of the bill and the key role that Secretary of State Jim Condos has played in advocating for its adoption:

“While states across the country are making it harder for voters to get to the polls, Vermont is making it easier by moving forward with commonsense polices that remove unnecessary barriers and increase participation in our democracy,” said Gov. Shumlin. “I would like to thank Secretary Condos who has long championed important electoral reforms to help more Vermonters exercise this fundamental right to vote.”

To which Secretary Condos responded:

“As Vermont’s Secretary of State, I believe voting is a sacred right – one we must protect and encourage by removing unnecessary barriers. Automatic Voter Registration saves time and money, increases the accuracy of our statewide voter checklist, curbs the potential for fraud, and protects the integrity of our elections,” said Secretary Condos. “AVR saves time and money, increases the accuracy of our statewide voter checklist, curbs the potential for fraud, and protects the integrity of our elections.”

The most progressive state in the Union, Vermont already enjoys the distinction of being among the states with the highest rate of voter registration, per capita; and has permitted same-day voter registration since 2015.

Even though Automatic Voter Registration will not come into effect until 2017; when it does, it is expected to increase the volume of new voter registrations by 30,000-50,000 within the first four years of its adoption.

Now that really IS change we can believe in.

 

A movement, not just a campaign.

National, , , ,

Not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders intends to remain fully engaged in the primary process right to the end. He has promised to focus on the issues, which suggests he may feel he’s devoted as much energy as he is prepared to invest in Hillary Clinton’s record.

If Democratic voters haven’t followed the bouncing ball of her reluctance to disclose the content of paid Wall Street speeches to its obvious conclusion yet, there’s little hope in this election cycle that they will. Likewise the implications of her judgement on Iraq, Libya, “Free” trade agreements, criminal justice etc. etc.

Faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of winning at the delegate game, Bernie needs to use his bully pulpit in the remaining primaries to advocate strictly on policy issues. The relatively few months that were available to him to introduce himself to the entire U.S. voter population and bring media attention to the issues about which he cares most deeply, were never going to be enough to realize a complete revolution in the Democratic Party, and now they are drawing to a close.

Bernie himself acknowledged that to the people who flocked to his rallies, from the very first one which we were privileged to witness in Burlington. A single election cycle would never be sufficient to change the politics that have condemned the U.S. to growing income inequities,declining opportunities, social injustice and the quashing influence of big money on any possibility of meaningful reform.

His candidacy is the vanguard of a new political movement that is still evolving on the left in the footprints left by Occupy Wall Street. It’s adherents are mostly younger, with much of their voting life ahead of them. If the Democratic party fails once again to live up to the progressive expectations of this base, like the Republicans before them, they can look forward to declining influence as young voters demand effective third and fourth party options within the primary process.

I look forward to the day when someone challenges the constitutionality of closed primaries in a voting system already dominated by two monopolies.

In the meantime, we are left with what can only be thought of as a caricature of democratic choice as reflected in the two likely nominees.

On the one hand, we have Donald Trump, a narcissistic billionaire, whom we can safely say will be the most unqualified nominee for President in the history of the office.

On the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton, a career politician and multi-millionaire, who, based solely on experience, must be one of the most qualified candidates in recent memory. Unfortunately, that experience is blotted both by her meathead of a husband’s own famously poor judgement, and costly mistakes that she herself has made in an official capacity.

Though jubilant at their almost certain victories in the nomination process, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton share the distinction of being the most unpopular candidates in either party… practically, ever!

Each is also campaigning under a false flag of ideology: Donald Trump insists he is a Conservative, but his positions are rarely conservative in any sense of the word. They range from neo-facist, through cracker-conservative, all the way to conventionally ‘liberal.’

Hillary Clinton’s own politics have mirrored those of her husband and surrogate Bill, who was more right of center than left when he held the reigns of power. She now styles herself a “progressive” with Bernie’s personal comb. Since her days in the White House, she’s remained pretty much dead center with a dash of social liberalism, hawkishly veering right on many foreign policy issues. One gets the impression that the very word “progressive” was anathema to her until Bernie rolled into town and started getting all the attention.

The distrust for Hillary that is felt by some of Bernie’s supporters stems from her inconsistency over the years and her reluctance to ‘fess up to glaring errors in judgement.

In fairness, if Donald Trump were running for ‘President of American Enterprise,’ the only higher office for which he might arguably be qualified, he would be dogged by his own equally glaring failures of judgement over the years.

The fact remains that, all things being equal, come election day, American voters will be limited in their choice to a highly competent but ethically challenged Hillary Clinton or that wholly incompetent, wholly unpredictable, self-serving loose-canon, Donald Trump.

She might say one thing now and then do something else once in the Oval Office.

…But with Trump as Commander in Chief? There is a real possibility that he might wake up one morning feeling petulant over a sleight  by some other bellicose demagogue, and exercise his command of the nuclear codes.

I’ll hold my nose and vote for the competent, sane choice every time.

Zuckerman Claims Key Endorsement

local/regional, , , , ,

With the New York primary, we’ve just had an object lesson in the fallibility of the national “two party system.”

What better time to celebrate the candidacy for lieutenant governor of perennial Progressive (that’s, with a large ‘P’) Senator David Zuckerman of Chittenden County, who is running as a Democrat in the primary?

And celebrate we should, since Mr. Zuckerman has just received the notable endorsement of former Lieutenant Governor Doug Racine. While a respected Democrat throughout his years in office, Racine was enthusiastically endorsed by Vermont’s Progressive Party in his own primary run against Peter Shumlin (and three others) for Governor in 2010.

Senator Zuckerman gained the endorsement of Brandon Riker, who was himself a candidate, when Mr. Riker announced his departure from the race in March.  A successful sustainable farmer, Zuckerman has also been endorsed by environmental advocate Bill McKibben.

Now, only Senator Zuckerman and Rep. Keisha Ram, also of Burlington, remain to compete for the Democratic nomination.

Boots Wardinski (P) is also running for Lt. Governor, but under the Progressive banner.

The ironic lesson in civics from the national primary race has a faint echo here in Vermont.

Senator Zudkerman has a good chance of winning the general election against Republican Randy Brock, who has already tried and failed to defend his seat as Auditor of Accounts in 2006 and lost the governor’s race in 2012. However, Zukerman shrewdly grasped that, in order to not suffer attacks for being a ‘spoiler,’ he must necessarily compete as a Democrat.

I well understand that decision because I am a big ‘P’ Progressive who counts herself lucky to be given any choice at all in the primary. I’m supporting Dave Zuckerman, not because of his party affiliation, but simply because I believe he is the best choice to defeat Randy Brock and bring some substance to the office of Lieutenant Governor that has too long been little more than a convenient staging area for Republicans contemplating a run for the roses.

Unlike current Lt. Governor Phil Scott (R), who used his opportunity as a Senate tie-breaker to kill a bill that would have protected Vermont children from toxins, we can trust David Zuckerman to put community health and the environment before corporate interests.

RIP: Two-Party “System”

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The Democratic primary is beginning to descend into more or less the same hell as is the Republican primary.

Are we approaching the final act of the two party system? Isn’t it about time?

In the U.S., we’re given to enshrining arbitrary social constructs, such as capitalism=good and socialism=bad, in the pantheon of sacred truisms that simply will not be challenged. The primacy of our two party system is one of those enshrined assumptions that deserves renewed scrutiny.

This system emerged in the infancy of our nation when its population was more or less homogenous and the practical value of cooperation was pretty generally accepted.

While growth and economic expansion was the primary goal of the young nation, unbridled immigration was a way to maintain a cheap labor force and gain entrepreneurial preeminence in the modern world.

As the population inevitably grew more and more diverse, there was never any thought given to retooling the one-size fits all, conservative vs. liberal divide represented in the rigid two party system.

We limped along, giving one side and then the other control in pretty rapid succession, leaving more and more individual viewpoints out of the conversation or dissatisfied with the available parameters.

Polarization within the two parties and distrust of government has resulted in a crippled process.

The party system has come close to going off the rails on a few occasions, but the 2016 primary race has taken us to a new low, with both parties seeing meaningful challenges to the party elite from an unyielding base on the perimeter.

‘Closed’ primaries, superdelegates, coin-tosses and all the rest are reflections of how undemocratic and arbitrary the two party system is. Somehow, these two ‘clubs’ have been allowed to seize the system, and because they are autonomous unto themselves, they are allowed to make all their own rules. Anyone who wants to play must join one of the two clubs or be reviled as a spoiler.

Sometimes, as in the case of the New York primary, it’s made very difficult for independents to gain a vote in either club.

While a closed primary may protect the establishment candidate on his/her path to the nomination, in the long run, it doesn’t do the party any favors. Independents can and will vote in the general election, so taking their preference into consideration in the primary would seem to be an essential first move.

We frown on business monopolies but have surrendered our democracy to a similar scheme.

Now we have come rather abruptly to the logical conclusion of such exclusivity, with both parties moving to opposite polls and gridlock resulting in Congress.  There is no possibility of coalition, as there is in the Canadian Parliament where several parties successfully compete and collaborate in the process.

If we gain nothing more toward reforming the election process, job one should of course be  reversing the Citizens United decision. Job two? Challenge the constitutionality of closed primaries.  In a nation where the majority of voters identify as ‘independents,’ closed primaries represent good ol’ fashion voter suppression.

Aren’t we better than this?