OK, for those of us interested and involved in the political questions and possibilities raised by the Second Vermont Republic organization and the notion of regional secession from the “United” States, I have something here.  For those not interested in such things, I suggest you skip along to a different diary; but before you do head, perhaps I could interest you in a quick rant…..

…..I would like to suggest, despite whatever realistic or practical arguments can or can’t be made about the idea of secession, the fact is that the SVR has (almost) brought a conversation regarding the role of the State and the Federal government in our daily lives to the discussion table in a legitimate manner unseen since the progressive era of the early 1900’s and the days of “radical” mainstream politics like that of Eugene Debs.  If we’re going to be engaged in politics, and do so under the guise of trying to make the world (or our simply our individual lives) better, than a sincere question of what and who has power is very legitimate, necessary, and healthy in moving us (our society and culture) forward.

Here is an article I just found in which the author bemoans the sad state of affairs for one of the first independent, most progressive, “activist” internet media sites (indymedia.org).  As you can read in the article, it points out that it is precisely the lack of an active, anti-racist, anti-right wing, and pro “open” and “non-judgemental” agenda that has proven to be the downfall of one of the left’s most visible and valuable resources over the past few years.  I think this is precisely the situation that has fallen upon the SVR, and I sincerely think that instead of defending the morally indefensible, and instead of attacking those who are supportive of their aims but uncomfortable with their methods, the SVR should grow-up and admit to making a mistake and engage in a constructive (and re-constructive) dialogue rather than continue on its march to irrelevancy and political obscurity.

On a a more relevant and practical scale to most of those on this website, I would suggest that this all has a useful lesson for the Democrats and Progressives to learn as well:  naming certain (political) ideas as ‘wrong’, ‘short-sighted’, ‘racist’, or whatever, is sometimes necessary.  It is not that the idea of “working together” or being “bi-partisan” is useless.  But, I mean, when the right has power they make little to no effort to be so inclusive of ideas or people that they disagree with and think are wrong.  It is high time that the practice of “relativistic pluralism” (meaning, there are an infinite plurality of viewpoints, and the value of each is always “relative” and “subjective” to the individual; meaning everybody is right in believing whatever they want to believe) be ended.  Some ideas are plain wrong- and although it is true that reasonable people can disagree, reasonable people can also identify destructive and anti-social ideas worth rejecting entirely.

If there is an unpopular war, end it.  If there is a criminal president, charge him.  If there is no health care, provide it.  If there are regressive taxes, change them.  If there are struggling families (and family farms) help them.  There seems little need to give lip service to those who profess to value things violently opposed to the ends of a fair, free, and democratic society.  We would do well to ourselves, and our children, to remember these things as we navigate the complicated world that surrounds us.

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(from the San Francisco Chronicle)

by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

A federal judge assigned a magistrate as a mediator Tuesday to try to resolve the case of Josh Wolf, the blogger who has been in prison nearly six months for refusing to turn over a videotape of a  protest to a federal grand jury. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who held Wolf in contempt of court in August and has rejected several defense requests to free him, said in a brief order that he was referring the case to U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero “in the interest of reaching a resolution satisfactory to both sides.”

Alsup did not mention any basis for a possible settlement or otherwise explain his order. Neither the U.S. attorney’s office nor Wolf had requested mediation. Dan Siegel, a lawyer for Wolf, said he was “pleased but mystified” by the order.

Wolf, 24, an activist and freelance video journalist, filmed part of a July 2005 protest in San Francisco’s Mission District against an international economic conference in Scotland. During the demonstration, a police officer was hit in the head and suffered a fractured skull, and someone allegedly tried to set a city police car on fire with a bottle rocket.

The federal grand jury is investigating the possibility that the attack on the police car was a federal crime because the Police Department receives funding from Washington. Some of Wolf’s video was shown on local television, but he has refused to release the outtakes to federal authorities. Wolf says they contain no evidence of a crime and that he is unwilling to assist the prosecution.

Wolf became the longest-imprisoned journalist for contempt of court in U.S. history Feb. 6, his 169th day at the federal prison in Dublin. He could be held until July, when the grand jury’s term expires, or for an additional six months if prosecutors extend the jury’s term.

Neither side has given any indication of an impending compromise.

In the most recent prosecution filing, successfully opposing a defense motion to have Wolf released, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Finigan described Wolf as “delusional” and a self-styled “journalistic martyr” who had not really been acting as a journalist, just someone with a video camera at a public event.

He also said a defense lawyer’s offer to turn over the videotape, an offer the lawyer denies he made, showed that imprisonment is having its intended effect — to pressure Wolf into cooperating.

Wolf, in an interview from prison Friday with the Pacifica network’s “Democracy Now” radio show, said it is a “scary idea” that the government could decide who is a journalist. He said his case shows the need for “a free media that’s not encumbered by interference, that doesn’t force journalists to act as agents of the state.”

Democrats.  It would seem even most people who identify, proudly, as being one are loath to much of what they actually do (and don’t do) while in power.  They are all over the spectrum, from the Lieberman’s to Clinton’s to the Kennedy’s to the Dean’s and Edwards’ and Kucinich’s, and hell, the countless who don’t even trust them or identify as one but insist on backing them (often, if not always) because really, what else can an American voter do to keep the regressive proto-fascist modern Republican Party out of power?  Nearly all of us, regardless of political values, parties, ideals, hopes, see the Orwellian horrors of what the GOP has done to this country and this planet not only since Regan, but as well at a frightening pace since taking complete power in 2000. 

I mean, my 88 year old, life-long Republican grandfather thinks Bush is the worst president in U.S. history and that my generation, and my children’s generation, are increasingly likely to live a miserable, poor, war-torn future, if the planet manages to survive the next few years at all.  The neo-Republicans are increasingly representative of pure Evil, but they speak clearly on distractions and they work with what must be the most talented and cunning team of PR people and social psychologists ever assembled.  But they have turned such a huge swath of the public (voting and non-voting alike) against them, and as such we arrive with seemingly our only other option: the Democrats.

But Democrats? We know we prefer them because we know they will not outlaw a woman’s right to have authority and choice over her own body and her own life.  They usually understand that a diversity of ideas, races, creeds, gender-identities, make life more enjoyable, not more Hell-like.  We prefer the D’s because they reject a nationalistic identity of overt aggression, of fiefdom-like tax codes, and outside the legal system domestic spying (they are smart enough to know that the laws allow them to spy on pretty much anyone they want to anyway, why draw attention to yourself by breaking the law needlessly?). 

Still, with control of Congress up until the 1994 GOP take-over, and with Bill Clinton in the White House, the Democrats brought us things like NAFTA, which have driven down real wages not only here but in fact globally; and which, along with the aggressive expansion of things like the IMF and WTO in the post-Cold War Era, is responsible for a shocking Chasm between the wealth and security of rich and poor, have and have-not.  Yes, even the Democrats are engaged in a class war that favors the rich and powerful over everyone else.  But we can say that they are in no way as ruthless and unforgiving and demonstrative as the GOP in how they go about their business (which is in fact big business).  And so we hope for their victory on election day.

But Democrats have not given us affordable, universal health care as a right of citizenship, as with the rest of the post/industrial West.  They have not provided the working person with all the possible luxuries of personal freedom and liberty, as the revolutionary government of “democracy” had promised it would.  There are no “livable wages” and therefore no “livable country”.  D’s can, when those of them choose to do so, speak out against war in Vietnam, Iran-Contra, or war in Iraq.  But they can’t really do anything about it, because it behooves them to allow the forces of State to play-out their economic rules of perpetual and unfettered expansion, development, and “progress”.

Just think of places the U.S. has bombed or gone to war with since WWII: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980’s), Nicaragua (1980’s), Panama (1989), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-present), and Iraq (1991-present, including the military enforcement of no-fly zones during Clinton).  Oh, and didn’t we just bomb Sedan again the other day, too?  Can you name a democratic, free society among the bunch?  We stay clear from the GOP because we know their vision for the best that human-kind can do in governing herself is not good enough.  We turn to the Democrats because to not is to assure the Bush’s and Rumsfield’s and Gingrich’s have the power.

Thus, the problem of the Democrats, and so likewise the challenge to them, is that they counter the GOP’s strong, healthy, organized, and passionate lesser-developed worldview with a weak, confused, unfocused, and overly-intellectualized insult to our common sense.  They declare they are going to take congress, work hard, and dissolve the growing divide of America.  Then they give themselves a long weekend after their first few days of work in order to have the day off for the college football championship game (a game that started in the evening, no less).  They give themselves raises at a pace only my property taxes, mortgage and health care premiums can keep up with.  And so, we should be careful not to fall for the weak knees of neo-liberalism.  As considerate, freedom-craving people, we must always be vigilant, weary, and critique-ing of those who would profess to be leading us for some greater good.  They may on occasion have our vote, but they should never have our trust.

If nothing else, maybe with will get a conversation about health care going, but otherwise, sorry if this comes across as self-serving whining:

PLEASE, someone, anyone, lots of people, whoever can. . . solve the health care problem NOW!  If the feds are unwilling and unable, lets a least get it done in Vermont.

A personal story which are my reasons for this plea: 

I don’t have health care through work and pay for it out of pocket.  My insurance did cost me $125/month with a $10,000 deductible.  Once a year I get a physical check-up, see an eye-doctor, and a dermatologist.  I REALLY need to see a dentist but can’t afford it at all and dental isn’t a part of my insurance.  I have one regular prescription that I use half the recommended dose because if not it would cost me over $350 a month including the health insurer’s measly contribution towards drugs.  This does not include self-medicating measures such as alcohol, which I can’t seem to convince anyone to write me a prescription for. 

So essentially I pay $1,500 a year for less than a 40% reduction in the cost of one prescription and to protect me should some horrible accident happen.  I have never in my life needed emergency care, so far.

I am under 30, physically active, and healthy.  OK, OK, I’m a smoker, but I never told the insurance company that which means that doesn’t fit into my costs.  I PROMIS (mom, if you’re reading this) that I’ll have quit long before the health consequences catch up with me.

But notice that I said my insurance did cost me, because recently they cancelled my coverage.  I haven’t been able to find anyone willing to offer me coverage for less than $100 more than this.

Oh, the reason my coverage got cancelled?  Good question.  One day I noticed that I hadn’t seen a bill from them, so I called to ask why.  It seems that they, for completely unknown and unexplainable reasons, changed my zip code in their computer system from 05682 or 05602.  I certainly didn’t tell them to do that, and they couldn’t tell me how or why they did it.  In their oh so understanding of THEIR mistake way, they did tell me that if I pay the one month that they didn’t receive a payment from me for, then I would be more than welcome to re-apply as a new policyholder for a policy from them.  Oh, their quote for the exact same coverage I had was suddenly $10/a month more.

I hate people, businesses, institutions, and everything else that treats people this way, and I loath to give my business to a company who would be such assholes to someone who’s asking to be ripped off by them, but otherwise I have no insurance.  I cannot afford the policy I have, let alone a more expensive one.

I Googled “health care spending per person, industrialized nations” and got, well 479.000 hits, many of which were intelligent, informative, and reputable sources of information about how entirely insane the U.S. health care system is when compared to the rest of the industrial and post-industrial world. 

Thamls for hearing me bitch.

For starters, I believe Odum does a great job of picking up immediately on the most interesting, noteworthy and objectionable elements from Darren Allen’s piece.  There is no doubt that the continual rightward stretch of the spectrum of political discourse in this country is horrific at best.  From comparing the Swift Boat Veterans to MoveOn and labeling Clinton as “liberal” Odum is right on the mark about the audacious re-defining of political terms that the media enables and endorses, if it doesn’t outright produce.

And, whereas I would disagree that most of the media is actually politically left (as we shall see bellow), I do agree entirely that most of them are relatively liberal, which Odum seems right in his conclusions on, including how it creates for a very curious and complicated political-media environment.

But towards those same ends, lets take a look at where this piece starts to look like it’s replicating Allen’s tactics rather than taking a stance against such things:

For starters, I believe Odum does a great job of picking up immediately on the most interesting, noteworthy and objectionable elements from Darren Allen’s piece.  There is no doubt that the continual rightward stretch of the spectrum of political discourse in this country is horrific at best.  From comparing the Swift Boat Veterans to MoveOn and labeling Clinton as “liberal” Odum is right on the mark about the audacious re-defining of political terms that the media enables and endorses, if it doesn’t outright produce.

And, whereas I would disagree that most of the media is actually politically left (as we shall see bellow), I do agree entirely that most of them are relatively liberal, which Odum seems right in his conclusions on, including how it creates for a very curious and complicated political-media environment.

But towards those same ends, lets take a look at where this piece starts to look like it’s replicating Allen’s tactics rather than taking a stance against such things:

In the very beginning, it’s pointed out that “‘ultra-left’ is clearly beyond simply `left'” which is true enough, except that neither is actually defined.  While some things can easily be assumed to be (near) universally understood by the reader, these terms don’t seem to lend themselves to that trait- especially given that this confusion of what “left” entails is essentially the premise of Odum’s article.  In other words, I know my grandfather considers unemployment checks from the government a “crazy scheme of the left” whereas I do not consider any action taken by a capitalist State to be outside of the far right, other than what is occasionally leaning towards the left.  A French journalist recently covering Bernie Sander’s election to the Senate said something to the effect of “in France, his politics would be considered very mainstream; certainly not on the right but by no means on the far left” (I’m sorry that my internet search skills keep me from actually finding a direct quote or a link; I assume anyone who doubts me will be quick to fact check on their own).  Where Odum’s piece really confuses me is where he really seems to agree with the self-serving statements that brush aside those whom this piece finds politically distasteful, i.e., “radicals” who are “not to be trusted and have little or nothing to do with everyday political dialogue.”  It would seem that the actuality of this “left” that we’re talking about is being defined in the same manner by both Allen and Odum, with only the slightest of differences.  Perhaps both should take a quick trip to Europe, where they might get a slightly broader understanding of “left” that is far more international and historical in scope than anything spoken in either the traditional U.S. media or this website.

I take part in this forum precisely because I have a very real interest in the everyday political dialogue of Vermont, and I assure you, I fall in your (and many other’s) definition of “ultra-left”; so much so that there are those that call my views “post-left” (so far left I’m right! ;-}).

And while I know that Odum was only listing examples that came from a google search, I do have to point out that “Marxism” and “anarchism” could, with little debate, find themselves being called “far-left”.  However, for those few who actually study the politic that carries that dubious distinction, Lenin is about as deserving of the title as Clinton.  Lenin orchestrated horrific slaughters of literally millions of people, often by wretched means such as cutting off the food supply to vast regions where he had little support, which hardly seems populist and “left” to me.  Regardless of the incredibly successful efforts by both capitalist and Marxist interests to paint the Soviet Union as such, neither Lenin, nor the Soviet Union, came anywhere near being a communist state for the Russians.  Lenin and the USSR were unquestionably nothing more than a State-run capitalist dictatorship, as with North Korea, China, and Cuba today.

Perhaps these points could be ignored by Odum’s search for the “real spectrum of American discourse”- it’s irrelevant what France calls left or right, only the major pockets of political opinion here, non?  But how could this be? The whole point of the piece is that Odum objects to the narrowing definitions of the political spectrum.  If so, then aren’t we better served with the broadest of spectrums, so that every idea for how best to interact as a social species can be discussed and debated based on merit?  Should we demand the spectrum be broadened so as to place our own opinions somewhere other than on the undesirable fringes, but use those same fringes as proof itself that those we disagree with are wrong, in fact “crazy”?

Which isn’t meant to be some sort of proof that I’m not crazy, but there’s no way to deduce from that that my ideas are as well.

And while Odum seems to champion some sort of idea of “progressive” values, I wonder if he recognizes the history of such demands.  There was, after all, an incredibly fruitful and successful Progressive Era in this country several generations ago.  Back then, when they fought for such crazy ideas as public education for every child, child labor laws, health care, decent wages, a minimum wage, worker’s comp, safety standards on the job, etc, guess who were the social heroes, the leaders who played no small part in helping to organize the working class so that we were capable of accomplishing such victories? Those “radical, crazy, not to be trusted and have little or nothing to do with everyday political dialogue” “ultra-leftists” such as Emma Goldman, “Big Bill” Haywood, and Mother Jones.  A visit to Karen and her husband (who’s name I always forget) at the Aldrich Library in Barre will also provide some great stories about the not-so-small part that Vermonter’s, particularly those from Barre, played during the Progressive Era.  The “conservatives” of those progressive movements were often “merely” Marxists, to say nothing of the anarchists and communists, who despite not being worth our trust, managed to get child slavery, I mean labor, outlawed and established the 40 hour work week.  In fact, with the 40 hour work week increasingly abused by our present-day economic realities, perhaps we should start bringing some of those untrustable, “outside-the-acceptable-range-of-debate” ultra-leftists back into the conversation so that we can re-establish our human right to not labor-away our lives with no time to enjoy the fruits of our toils. 

Finally, my least favorite liberal myth, that of the “objective” media.  There never has and never will be such a thing, and thankfully so.  We’re probably all aware of the continual consolidation of the media, but lets not forget that this consolidation began long before Bush or even Nixon.  A hundred years ago there were often dozens of different newspapers in any given city; New York City alone had something like 30 at one point.  And each and every one was very clear about the politic that it espoused and the political slant of the reporting that was being done.  In this, a very broad spectrum was covered and you consumed the media knowing what the angle was, free to pick and choose as you saw fit.  It is a rare and in fact very sterile story that reads entirely factual, like a lab report, with no human inference.  And yes, sometimes a story is objective and better for it, but seldom in political matters.  Hunter S. Thompson would remind us that the journalist is in fact a character in the story he or she is reporting, and therefore the only honest thing to do would be to let that be known explicitly to the reader.  I have countless friends who may scoff at my continual consumption of sometimes dubious media (from Fox News, CNN, NPR, NY Times, that really obnoxious True North Radio on WDEV that makes me NUTS but for some reason I listen to almost every day, the Burlington Free Press, etc) but I have a very good understanding of where each of them are coming from, who their target is, and what their agenda may or may not be, so I can understand so much more than if I were to simply accept that some (or all) of these media sources were reporting in an objective, “fair and balanced” way.  The same holds true for when I listen to Democracy Now! or read the magazine Northeastern Anarchist; I understand that these media are providing me with an opinion that is shaped by their politic, and I can take what I may from them because I know and understand their slant, not because they’re promising me that they are objective and neutral, like the form my doctor fills out when I get a check-up.

One last note, which is that, OK, this diary clearly cements me as the token “ultra-left” pinko-commie on this site.  I’m fine with that.  I am here because I find the opinions and stories interesting, informative, and valuable.  I do not mean to be attacking Odum as a person here in this diary and I hope no one takes it as such; I don’t even know Odum, but from what he posts on GMD I know that I sometimes agree and sometimes don’t, BUT, and more importantly, Odum is clearly a thoughtful, well-meaning, rational person, which seems to me far more important than political agreement.  Cheers.