Freyne Land

Not that it appears to be doing them any good, mind you. But after last week's Republican double-header victory under Montpelier's beautiful Golden Dome, they had to do something.

That something turned out to be this Wednesday's press release from the Vermont Democratic Party HQ in Montpeculiar under the signature of its chairman, Ian Carleton of Burlington. Ian's a 30something corporate attorney with Yale on his resume and statewide political aspirations. Sources say he gave some serious thought to taking on incumbent Republican Gov. Jim Douglas in 2008, but has decided against it. Yes, indeed, King James has no challenger of merit on the horizon, yet.

As far as we can tell, Carleton's press release got little if any attention from the Vermont press even though it had a snappy headline:

"Douglas Gives Sweetheart Deal to Big Donor"

"Fecteau Residential, a Berlin-based business, has fared well recently under the Douglas Administration, first scoring a deal to lease temporary facilities for state employees in Bennington and now turning that lease into a sale (in spite of initially supplying defective units).  As his Monday campaign finance disclosure reveals, it turns out Jim Douglas is faring pretty well with Fecteau Residential, too."

Chairman Carleton's release stated Democratic research of state campaign finance records had found that Fecteau Residential of Barre, the company that leased trailers and has now sold "temporary modular buildings" to the state, also - ready for this? - also donated a total of $1,100 to Gov. Douglas' 2006 Campaign.

Shocking, eh?

Carleton's Democratic Party research also found that Fecteau Residential donated $500 to King James' 2008 re-election campaign in February and "about two weeks ago," the state cut a deal to purchase $539,000 of modular offices.

Yesterday, yours truly "ambushed" King James after the big ribbon-cutting marking the opening of Grand Way Commons in South Burlington.  Told him about Lord Carleton's attack,  one which insinuates the modular office contract had been bought with contributions to his gubernatorial campaign.

DOUGLAS: I’m proud to have thousands of Vermonters support my candidacy. I’ve never had this many contributors at this point in an election cycle and it’s because I have broad support around the state. More and more people are embracing my leadership.

FREYNE: But this is the company you just bought the trailers from.

DOUGLAS: You may well find other businesses that do business with the state who are my supporters. I’m sure of it. I’m proud of all the supporters I have!

Good answer, eh?

After all, accepting campaign contributions from Vermont businesses or persons is not exactly against the law, is it?

Nice try, Lord Carleton.

God forbid if the State of Vermont had done  business with any corporation or person that donated to Howard Dean's gubernatorial campaigns, eh?

Howard who?

***Updated 5:50 P.M.***

The boys are en route from Marseilles to Montpellier today. A long. flat, hot ride along the south coast of France.

A poor man’s European holiday via the tele for a Burlington columnist/blogger more familiar with Montpelier, Vermont.

And the opportunity, rare these days, to watch current events on TV that do not involve random mass murder by suicide bombers answering their god’s call, or the roadside-bombing of American soldiers in Iraq, a country they were ordered into based on some of the greatest lies ever championed by an American White House.

Speaking of which, on Monday, that courageous antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan intends to lead an occupation of the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in action fighting the Bush-Cheney War of Lies in Iraq in 2004, wants Conyers to take action on impeachment.

It's fair to say, she's far from alone.

Nonetheless, as of the moment, many of the same Republican congressmen acting outraged at calls for Bush’s impeachment for causing the death and dismemberment of thousands of US troops, were on their moral high-horses when the previous president denied having consensual sex “with that woman.”

They felt back then that impeachment of the president was the ONLY way to go!

Vermont’s congressional troika, as you know [Leahy, Sanders and Welch], opposes Mr. Bush’s Iraq War, opposes the Bush administration on just about every policy front, but also opposes congressional action on impeachment. Their spin is that it would divert attention in Dubya’s last 18 months from other congressional investigations of the corrupt regime.

Some folks deal with all this, no doubt, by simply tuning out the news completely. Hey, it’s summer!

Many, however, simply cannot, even if they haven’t had a family member killed or crippled in a  war launched to defeat an Iraq threat to the United States that did not exist.

Holding those responsible does not seem an outlandish idea to many good and decent “ordinary" Americans and "ordinary" Vermonters.

In fact, a recent poll by the American Research Group  found 45 percent of Americans want action on the impeachment of Bush - 54 percent on Vice President Dick Cheney. If you have a moment, do check out the recent Bill Moyers Journal.

Closer to home, local impeachment activist Jimmy Leas, a South Burlington attorney, informs us a similar occupation of Vermont Congressman Peter Welch’s Burlington office is planned to coincide with the one Cindy Sheehan will be leading in Washington on Monday.

Cool.

*** UPDATE ***

Posted late Thursday Afternoon

Welch Sit-in Called Off

Got this via email from Jimmy Leas after the above post. A change of plans for "Impeach Bush" folks:

"Rather than just going to the congressional office in Vermont on July 23 to meet with staffers we decided to find a time when Peter Welch will be in Vermont and use that opportunity to hand him the petitions with the signatures of hundreds of Vermonters for impeachment."

Sometimes I still have to pinch myself:

United States Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

Started covering the gentleman everyone knows as "Bernie" back in 1981 when he upset Mayor Gordon Paquette by 10 votes.

Now look at him!

Why, after about 20 years, he even started to relax a bit, realizing, apparently, I have a job to do.

So does he, right?

Which probably explains why Sen. Sanders does not include questions from the press, his unrehearsed answers, and the back-and-forth that goes on there in the video "propaganda" postings of his press conferences you can watch his senatorial website.

But, Bernie, they're called "press" conferences!

Didn't have room in the print "Inside Track" column to report on that part of his "press" conference where we asked him for a reaction to Republican Gov. Jim Douglas' double-victory last week over Statehouse Democrats & Progressives who tried to override his vetoes of their sacred climate change and campaign finance reform bills.

The Sunday before Wednesday's special session, Sen. Sanders convened a Montpeculiar Town Meeting on global warming that featured Author/Activist/Whistle-blower Bill McKibben of Ripton.

Sanders supported the veto override of H. 520 as did everyone of the 250-plus Vermonters at the Sunday morning conclave.

Sanders' side lost.

Reaction, Ol' Bernardo?

“It’s unfortunate. Look, anyone who does not think that global warming is a serious problem really does not know what is going on. There are large numbers of people, according to the World Health Organization, who have already died as a result of global warming. You’re looking at droughts. You’re looking at floods. You’re looking at tremendous dislocation of our economy.

"The good news is we know how to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We know how to reverse global warming.We know how to do it, and you know what?

"We're going to learn more and more about this in the years to come."

Apparently a tree or two did grow in Brooklyn, eh?

Bernie cited one man from St. Johnsbury at Sunday's Town Meeting who had retro-fitted his home and cut his energy consumption in half!

"It’s waiting to happen. Wind technology is the fastest growing source of new energy in the world.  All of this is waiting to happen. Prices will go down. Technology will expand. We can do it, and it pains me we are not moving forward more aggressively because if we are not successful the results could be calamitous."

Given the opportunity to smack GOP Gov. Douglas, our socialist, tree-hugging U.S. senator declined. In fact, he noted his comments on Sunday in support of the veto-override came in response to a question from a reporter - me

Just doing my job, right, Bernie?

Only one state in the United States of America Republican President George "WMD" Bush has not visited - the state of Vermont!

Independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders [pictured at this morning's press conference with Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie of the Vermont National Guard], let it be known in response to a question from yours truly that several months ago, he personally invited President Bush to Vermont before his term runs out. Here's the transcript of that part of today's presser at Ol' Bernardo's Burlington office:

FREYNE LAND: Is there any outside hunch, gotta ask, if this deployment of the Vermont National Guard is in any way, that there’s a political side of it in terms of Vermont being the only state the President hasn’t visited, and, given the politics of our congresssional delegation in opposing the President...

SANDERS: Do I think it is a coincidence that this is the last state, the only state that the President has not visited?

No, I don’t think that it’s a coincidence. [Chuckling breaks out.]

I think he understands that he is not enormously popular in this state.

But, let me be very frank. He is the President of the 50 states, and I hope he has the decency and the courage to come to the state of Vermont. That’s his job as the President of the United States and furthermore, I hope he will do what he very rarely does, and that is, in a respectful meeting of sorts, answer the questions that people have. Here’s the President of the United States and he deserves to be treated with respect.

But one of the issues that has concerned me with regard to this president for many years, he keeps giving speeches into audiences which are not quite open to people who have different points of view. And I would hope that he would allow us to ask him questions. And I hope and expect that in this state they would be done respectfully.

FREYNE LAND: So have you invited him?

SANDERS: I did, actually, as a matter of fact, a number of months ago when I met him [at the White House], I did.

FREYNE LAND: You said, 'Come to Vermont?'

SANDERS: Sure. We’d love to talk to you.

Two things one can say about Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington:

1. She's evolving...politically.

2. Nice haircut.

Fresh from a holiday with her daughter in Norway and a butt-kicking on two big veto votes on the House Floor, Symington of Jericho occupied the hot seat on WCAX-TV's You Can Quote Me Sunday morning.

We will.

"Is the tax on Vermont Yankee off the table?" inquired News Director Marselis Parsons.

SYMINGTON: I think the tax on Vermont Yankee is off the table for funding the all-fuels utility.  I know there are many members of the House who are very concerned now that we have done this work we really understand that there is a very large business in the state who was being asked to pay a property tax that is way out of line and much lower than any other business in the state. And I think you might see legislation that addresses that in the question of tax fairness. When one business is paying less than its share into the Education Fund we know that it increases the burden on everybody else.

Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington is the target, er, the guest on "You Can Quote Me" at 11 this morning on WCAX-TV.

Her third-in-command, House Majority Whip Floyd Nease [left] was the target, er, guest at the Democratic State Committee Meeting Saturday in the library at Montpelier High School.

One committee member wanted to know why if somebody's supposed to count votes ahead of time, Wednesday's double-barreled Democratic defeat was allowed to happen?

“You asked the right question," replied Whip Nease. "I’m the guy that counts the votes." He conceded he knew ahead of time what the votes were in both chambers on both bills: global warming and campaign finance reform.

But Nease made the pitch that, "It was an opportunity to hold Gov. Douglas accountable even if we lose the votes."

Nease pointed to the editorial in the following day's Rutland Herald. "It really did generate some press," said Nease, press that talked about Douglas in a way he hadn't been talked about before.

Yes, indeed, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Editorial Writer David Moats personally attended the Wednesday circus in Montpeculiar. Thursday's Herald editorial carried the headline: "Stymied."  And Ol' Moatsie showed his 60s-generation roots, calling Vermont's Republican governor "Dr. No."

Don't know about you, but it made me think of Sean Connery right off, showing my 60s-generation roots. Wrote Moats:

Doctor No is trying to portray himself as Doctor Sort Of. The political reality is that climate change and energy issues have significant political momentum, and Douglas could become an irrelevance unless he takes action.

The Legislature will be prepared to move ahead aggressively in January on energy and climate issues; one hopes the leadership will avoid political minefields like the one into which it tiptoed with the Yankee tax. This is a priority that will not go away.

House Speaker Gaye Symington was persuasive in her statement that climate change is a Vermont problem and that Vermont must show leadership. She also made the salient point that the two bills that went down on Wednesday —campaign finance and energy — were linked.

Big money has the power to block action in the public interest. Douglas helped preserve the prerogatives of big money through his veto of the campaign finance bill. It will be up to the Legislature in January to continue the fight to address the climate and energy issues, dragging the governor as it goes.

Nease noted that on the House Floor only one Republican stood up to defend Jim Douglas on the campaign-finance veto and that was [Burlington Rep.] Kurt Wright.

Ol' Floyd's argument that, even in defeat, the majority Democrats scored points by getting "Dr. No" on record as an opponent of reform legislation addressing campaign finance reform and  global warming didn't fly with everyone.

State Committee Member Bill Sander from Jeffersonville told the gathering Wednesday's embarassing Democratic defeat at the Statehouse - one that gave the Guv the opening to call the Democrats "big losers" - was "an exercise in exposing Gov. Douglas to folks who already knew" where Jimmy D stood on those issues.

"The guy is a fascist with a smile and it's clear to us," said Sander. In many quarters, he told the committee, Gov. Douglas "comes out looking like an effective leader and comes out with a plausible explanation if you don't look at it too carefully, and most folks don't."

Good point, eh?

Watching Le Tour de France this morning.

Feeling French.

Way back in the Freyne Family genes, pre-Irish, pre-Norman, there was a French connection.

Speaking of the Freyne Family, got a voice mail yesterday from a a lovely lady in Plymouth, Massachusetts who said she knew my dad. She had recently completed an Irish Studies course through University of Galway that included the book My Kilkenny IRA Days by James Comerford.

Would you believe, she informed me, Papa Freyne took the cover photo?

The man I knew as a dad, a Peat-Marwick CPA [and Irish Sweepstakes agent in his 50s and 60s], was also a camera bug. Getting that Leica at Shannon Airport in 1960 made a difference in his final chapter.

About a decade ago before Seven Days was online, back when the Michael Collins movie came out, I wrote up the story of my father's Dublin Brigade IRA days in 1920-21. A story I grew up with. Days that included the death of his little brother, the uncle I never met, Peter Freyne. Peter was killed in action by the Black & Tans in Dublin in April 1921. Born on a Kilkenny farm in 1901, dear old dad died in New York in 1974.

Nice to hear from Ms. Buckley that history lives on!

At a time when polls are showing President George “WMD” Bush with an approval rating below 30 percent, there aren’t many silver linings left for Republicans in the United States of America these days - except Vermont!

Yesterday, under Montpeculair’s Golden Dome, the Republican minority - with a little help from Democrat defectors in the House - defeated attempts by Majority Democrats to override two “line-in-the-sand” vetoes by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas of Middlebury. That’s the Guv appearing “live” on WDEV’s “Mark Johnson Show” Wednesday morning from just outside the Statehouse cafeteria. Furniture was in short supply. No couches.

Gov. Douglas, governor of the state of Patrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders and DNC Chair Howard Dean, had vetoed two key pieces of Democrat legislation this past session relating to items near-and-dear to their hearts and their campaign literature: global warming and campaign finance reform.

Gutsy, eh?

And he got away with it, too!

Instead, the real “inconvenient” truth is that Vermont Democrats were defeated on both by GOP Jim and his loyal GOP minority, despite all the hooopla and activism and intense lobbying from activists and environmentalists like VPIRG’s Executive Director Paul Burns entering the Statehouse Wednesday ‘morn with his fist raised for battle!

Time for the White House to take notice.

Until two weeks ago there were only two states in the United States that had not been visited by President George W. Bush: Rhode Island and Vermont.

Then, Dubya paid a visit to the Naval War College in Newport to give a speech.

Now there’s only Vermont.

But show me a state anywhere in the country where the Republican Party has, of late, not only been able to stand up in public, but stand up and win, eh?

Credit where credit is due.

That White House gets awful stuffy, doesn't it, Mr. President?

You're kidding?

But I thought Vermont was a strong, pro-environment state?

Yet in one historic skirmish in what will be a global environmental war to prevent Mother Earth's overheating, the tree-huggers lost today. Republican Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of H. 520 was upheld.

There were 86 votes in Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington's House of Representatives to override the Douglas veto and 61 votes to support him. Two-thirds are required to override.

"I don’t feel like we lost," said Speaker Symington [at left in front of Gov. Howard Dean portrait] afterward. "I feel like we stood up for a good bill. We stood up for Vermonters and  we stood up for good work. We said in the beginning this was going to be a challenge and we took it on anyway and we will continue to work and invite the governor to have a more constructive role in it."

What does it mean?

"It means that the power of the large corporation won the day," said Symington. "And the message of money won the day. And that the interests of Vermonters were put aside to the interests of one very large business [Entergy Vermont Yankee].

"And my reaction is we’ll continue to work. We’ll have the second-half of the session ahead of us and we’ll continue to work toward comprehensive legislation that addresses our energy future and the extent to which Vermonters can afford their energy bills. And," she said, "I invite the governor to have a more constructive role in that discussion than he’s had this year, rather than standing in the way."

How was Norway [where she recently went for vacation]?

"Beautiful. It was Incredible. The sun goes down at like midnight. It’s light all the time. We went hiking up in the mountains. At 11 o’clock I took a picture. The clouds were pink, but other than that it looked like it was three o’clock in the afternoon," said Speaker Gaye.

Vermont Democratic Party Chairman Ian Carleton, the Burlington attorney who wants to be something someday, had a statement & video ready to go.  Looks like the Democrats intend to make Gov. Scissorhands wear his global-warming veto victory through the November 2008 election.

Good strategy, eh?

Thunder and lightning in the forecast - both inside and outside the Statehouse today!

The Republican governor of Vermont, James Douglas, may well "win" the global-warming battle today, but "lose" the war. Know what I mean?

That is, having his veto of H. 520 upheld today might only fire up the Democrats, Progressives, Independents -  and even a few environmentally-conscious Vermont Republicans -  to replace him in 2008. In politics, they say, "the action's in the reaction."

The "CW" going in is that Entergy Vermont Yankee's favorite governor has his veto sustained on H. 520, but his veto of the campaign finance bill gets overturned.

We shall see.

Anyway, recognize this gentleman?

I had coffee with him at Uncommon Grounds on Church Street the other day. He was up from Washington where he's the press secretary for a certain U.S. senator who's the champion of "poor people, working people and the elderly."

I did a little item on Michael Briggs in the print "Inside Track" column that's out today, but I didn't have room for the photo.

With Briggs, Ol' Bernardo, er, Sen. Bernie Sanders gets a heavy dose of Capitol Hill experience. He's previously worked for Sens. Paul Simon and Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and - get this - for Sen. John Edwards!

And before that, he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times for 14 years. Mike certainly knows the ropes on Capitol Hill, and he knows he's got a rare and special bird to rep in the person of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Nice.

Also in the political noise this Wednesday - in the dailies and in "Track" - is antiwar activist and Newfane Selectman Dan DeWalt's promise to field an independent candidate in the 2008 congressional race if Incumbent Democrat Peter Welch doesn't jump on the Bush Impeachment Train.

Welchie had a good comeback when we asked him about it privately after his Monday presser promoting UVM cafeteria use of locally-grown food [including Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream!].