Bridging the gendered toy gap

NEW STATESMAN, Glosswitch usually nails it: 'We are happy to allow girls to indulge in equality make-believe every now and then (check out these pink NERF guns!), just as long as boys are not being unmanned by insufficiently boisterous play (indeed, it has reached a stage where some parents might even question whether a boy who likes Disney princesses, Hello Kitty and My Little Pony can be a boy at all). It is as though girls, preparing for a life of flexible multi-tasking, must bend to different roles, whereas boys must remain static and fixed. Gender liberation itself is run along strictly gendered lines.'

If there's one thing....

‎"If there's one thing we can all agree on: We want to end the violence that breaks all our hearts." - Sen. Patrick Leahy, a dek quote on the front page of today's Burlington Free Press. He was not talking about the Children Killed by American Drones.

Hey! Watch Your Language!

"The Belgian government is on the brink of dissolution for the fifth time in three years. A bilingual electoral district, an old culprit, is to blame."

Boston Globe profiles Bernie Sanders

I don't always agree with Bernie Sanders. Local media categorise him as a far-left socialist. He's more like a European democratic socialist. This profile appeared in the Globe on Friday, January 9th:

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has spent his career trying to remake American capitalism in a more Scandinavian image. His favored targets of late have been top finance regulators he considers far too deferential to Wall Street. Last year, Sanders spent five months trying to block a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman before securing promises from Gary Gensler to aggressively fight market excesses.

Now Sanders is aiming at the top of the regulatory pyramid, putting a hold on the renomination of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, whom he blames for the country's financial collapse as a "key architect of the Bush economy.''. . .

Congress's only self-described socialist, the 68-year old Sanders gives the appearance of having stepped in from a tornado and speaks as though still trying to be heard over the noise.

His voice may finally be breaking through. Over 16 years in the House, his lonely crusades - which amount to a lifelong campaign to remake American capitalism and social policy - were usually received as little more than glitches in an otherwise well-functioning two-party system. Since his 2006 election to the Senate, however, Sanders has found that a junior senator's single vote is enough to keep him in the middle of things. . .

Sanders disappointed liberal allies who had counted on him to mount a one-man stand against the Democrats' health care bill for omitting a public insurance plan. Sanders, who had introduced an amendment to create a single-payer plan, had initially threatened to oppose any such bill without a public option. . .

Sanders eventually secured $10 billion to expand a national network of rural medical clinics that he calls "perhaps the most significant and least-known public health program in America.'' (The Senate bill had one perk just for Vermont: $600 million to cover the state's previous expansion of its Medicaid program.). . .

"He deep down believes he can change American politics,'' said Larry Sanders, the senator's older brother and a county councilor in Oxford, England, representing the Green Party. "He's not afraid of being boring and making the same points for 20 years.''

A longtime critic of mainstream media, Sanders controls the flow of his own information. He wrote radio ads for his congressional campaign with friends around his kitchen table. Before being elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, Sanders developed educational film strips about New England history - and one 30-minute documentary about Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs - for sale to local schools.

Last year, Sanders began working with muckraking director Robert Greenwald on weekly Web videos designed to build a national constituency around his issues. . .

Congratulations, Annise Parker, Mayor-Elect of Houston

'“I promise to give to citizens an administration of honesty, integrity and transparency,” she said. “The only special interest will be the public. We are in this together. We rise or fall together.”' - Annise Parker

I lived in Houston for over 20 years and voted for Annise Parker when she ran for city council. She got her start in civic activism in Houston's Neartown, which includes Montrose - where I lived. She's now the first lesbian elected mayor of a major American city!

From the Houston Chronicle:

When Parker finally appeared at 10:30 p.m., resplendent in a gold pantsuit and pearl necklace, the room at the George R. Brown Convention Center jammed elbow-to-elbow with supporters erupted with a deafening cheer. Some were newcomers to political waters. Some had been with her a dozen years ago when she claimed her first City Council seat.

“Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the doors to history,” she said. “I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who thought we could never achieve high office. I know what it means. I understand, because I feel it, too. But now, from this moment, let us join as one community. We are united in one goal in making this city the city that it can be, should be, might be, will be.”

She was interviewed by NPR's Melissa Block:

BLOCK: You said on election night that you hope your election will change people's minds about Houston. What do you think needs to be changed in people's mind?

Ms. PARKER: A lot of Americans have an image of Houston as a, perhaps, stuffy, conservative, southern city. We are a huge, sophisticated, international city. We are one of the most diverse cities in America. And we clearly value people more on what they can do than who they are. I do believe that my election will cause people to give Houston a second look as a place where they might want to live and work.

Right on. Houston's come a long way indeed. I do look forward to the day when electing an lbgt person to higher office (in civic life or in religious institutions) will not be a big deal. But there's work still to be done!

Greenwald: "Major victory for ACORN and the Constitution"

"Yesterday, in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Federal District Judge Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York found Congress' de-funding of ACORN unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement."

Glenn Greenwald is right to celebrate the light of justice shining in the dark. So, is Peter Welch hanging his head in shame? Wanna bet? Wanna bet Obama's DOJ will not appeal the decision?

Burlington: The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising...

As we enjoy warmish, almost sultry, November days in Burlington, it's getting too darn hot around City Hall. On Thursday evening, John Odum at GMD wrote about new, bitter, heated letter exchanges surrounding this continuing, messier saga of Burlington Telecom and Mayor Bob Kiss's administration. He ends with,

"It's amazing to read this while considering how different the whole situation would now be if Kiss and Leopold had simply had a tried-and-true "mistakes were made," mea culpa-ridden press conference and pledged to work with the council when this all broke in the first place."

"Mistakes were made" and "mea culpa" are not the same. The former is in the passive voice, the latter, in the active. "Tried and true"? Nah, there's a lack of responsibility and accountability which doesn't cut it. All politicians rely on it with crossed fingers - moving on and hoping that settles it. A cloudy murk has settled over the Kiss administration. I don't think this is what the city's Ad Hoc Committee on Transparency had in mind when it met a few years ago. Why is it so hard to say "I am sorry, and I pledge to do better"?

Welch calls for investigation of Blackwater

Although Peter Welch voted with Republican wackos in September to defund ACORN without the House calling for an investigation, it's nice to know he reads Jeremy Scahill.

About Last Night....

Here's Jon Stewart's brilliant take. He does a swell job at pointing up the shallowness of the MSM pundits pontificating for those who are too dumb.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2009 - Reindecision 2008 And Beyond
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Breaking: Maine has voted no to marriage equality

Conservative bigotry again shows its ugly ass. From the Boston Globe:

PORTLAND, Maine - Maine voters overturned the state’s same-sex marriage law yesterday, delivering a potentially crushing blow to gay-rights advocates after a year when their cause seemed to be gaining momentum with legislative and legal victories in four states.

As the ballot counting continued well past midnight, the margin continued to grow - with 52.7 percent of voters in favor of the repeal - and the Associated Press called the contest in favor of gay-marriage foes shortly before 1 a.m.

The “people’s veto’’ came six months after Maine’s law was approved, and one year after California voters rejected gay marriage by a similar margin.

“This is an amazing moment. It’s beyond words,’’ said Mary Conroy, spokeswoman for Yes on 1/Stand for Marriage Maine, the organization leading the fight against same-sex marriage in Maine. “I feel energized, overcome, overjoyed for the family and the people of Maine.

“Clearly, this tonight is the people of Maine speaking.’’

Gay marriage advocates, who gathered in a ballroom at a Portland hotel, spent much of the evening dancing and cheering, but grew more subdued as the hours passed and the votes favoring a repeal of the gay-marriage law pulled steadily ahead.

No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly vowed to continue counting votes into this morning, but even he seemed to concede that they had lost this battle.

But voters approved marijuana dispensaries.

Vote on Goldstone Report today

Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the sponsor of HR867, screams bloody murder against a report that has shown Israel committed atrocities against Palestinian civilians. Don't forget that the report also condemned Hamas's rocket attacks against Israel. Go here to see co-sponsors. They all know the truth, but not one gives a shit. Michael Ratner, writing yesterday at Mondoweiss, urges that Congress should first hear from Judge Goldstone and call him to testify before taking a vote,

This Resolution is a rush to judgment. It is a rush to judgment made on the basis of serious factual errors and mischaracterizations of the Goldstone Report. The Goldstone Report documents in a dispassionate and even-handed manner “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by all parties prior to, during, and after Israel’s assault on the occupied Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009.

Arar lawsuit dismissed

"I promised myself one thing, that I will continue my quest for justice as long as I have breath." -- Maher Arar talks in 2007 about his experience of extraordinary rendition.

From the Globe and Mail today: In the United States, judges have determined that Maher Arar's complaint of CIA "extraordinary rendition" is merely a potential case of "graymail" against Washington - the equivalent of blackmail against government agencies in the shades-of-grey intelligence world.

In dismissing the lawsuit known as "Arar v. Ashcroft" yesterday, a U.S. appellate court expressed fear that going forward could prompt dangerous disclosures of state secrets.
[...]
A vocal - and seemingly outraged - minority on the Second Circuit complained that their colleagues' disregard for Mr. Arar's rights smacked of "utter subservience" to presidential authority.

Lost in the talk of "graymail," they said, was the suffering of a torture victim. "A person - whom we must assume a) was totally innocent and b) was made to suffer excruciatingly and c) through the misguided deeds of individuals acting under color of federal law is effectively left without a U.S. remedy," dissenting judge Guido Calabresi wrote.

Always that fucking excuse of the powerful about state secrets privilege to avoid responsibility.

TRNN: Clock Ticking in Honduras

The Real News Network:-- For the past four months, ever since the military coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya from power in Honduras, the oligarchy has been accused of purposefully delaying to make it to the scheduled election of November 29th. But now, with only one month to go, it looks likely that no more than a handful of countries will recognize the elections unless Zelaya is immediately returned to power. Al Giordano, who has been extensively covering Honduras since the coup for Narco News, shares his belief that the latest attempt to negotiate Zelaya's return will not work, and that there are some inside the coup resistance in Honduras that are hoping to take advantage of election day to do more than just boycott the vote.

Last night in Texas, "the nation's busiest death penalty state"

Andre Bios, Iraqi War veteran and brother of Reginald Blanton, speaking on Tuesday morning with Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Democracy Now! -

Amy Goodman: Andre, you’re about to visit your brother. Are you going to be, if in fact he is executed, one of the witnesses to the execution?

Andre Bios: Yes, I am. It was one of the things that I did not want to do, but he has been requesting over and over again for me to be there ...

And the reason why I didn’t want to witness what was getting ready to happen to my brother is because it’s like a slap in my face from my own country, you know? His constitutional rights were violated, but yet I can go overseas and fight in another country to uphold peace, liberty, for them to have, but I can’t uphold peace, liberty and equality for my own brother.

Reginald Blanton was executed on Tuesday, Oct. 27th, injected with poisonous chemicals considered too cruel to use on dogs, and pronounced dead at 6:21pm.

On death row since 2001, Blanton was the 19th prisoner to be executed this year in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state. He was the third from Bexar County.

The family of Garza said in an interview about a week prior to the execution that they hoped it would bring them closure.

His attorneys filed two last-minute appeals to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court and Blanton also requested a commutation of his sentence. All were denied.

Six more men in Texas have execution dates in 2009.

Cross posted at The Peace Tree.

Amira Hass: One of Israel’s Greatest Journalists

H/T to Joseph Dana at ibn Ezra.

Burlington's 'telecom tussle' goes national

Dave Gram/Associated Press:-

BURLINGTON, Vt. — A public option for phone, cable and Internet seemed like a good idea when this Vermont college town launched Burlington Telecom four years ago.

Now top city officials are under fire to explain a $17 million debt and whether taxpayer dollars are subsidizing an enterprise usually left to the private sector.

Burlington has touted its telecom system as one of fewer than three dozen "fiber-to-the-home" cable systems in the country, with gigantic capacity and superior speeds for Internet transmission. One of the hottest debates in its brief history came last year when Burlington Telecom decided to continue carrying the English-language version of the Qatar-based network Al-Jazeera.

The new telecom tussle has unfolded in recent weeks after city officials revealed that Burlington Telecom had borrowed $17 million from the city's "pooled cash" in the past two years but had not paid it back within the 60 days required under its state license.

The administration of Mayor Bob Kiss has come under attack by critics who say the mayor's office failed to keep the City Council adequately informed of Burlington Telecom's troubles and kept the public in the dark.

Bush motivates protests in Montreal yesterday...

Via CTV.ca:

"He has nothing to offer," said Helen Hannah, a colourfully dressed member of the Raging Grannies.

"He stands for modes of torture, modes of warfare and modes of lying that don't represent the way most Americans and most Canadians want to face the world -- we don't believe in those things."

Andre Gravel said Bush was a bad president who was incompetent on many levels, including his handling of the environment, the wars in the Middle East and the economy.

The conflicts Bush waged in Afghanistan and Iraq have destabilized world peace, he added.

"I am in favour of (his) right to speak," Gravel said.

"But we have the right to protest against him.

"Everything he did was negative."

"Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? "

Johann Hari: Everything You Have Been Told About Afghanistan Is Wrong: The Three Great Fallacies

Vermont Happenings: "Secret Lives, Public Officials"

Apart from the news that corporate warmonger/murderer General Dynamics - 4th on POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database - is moving its Burlington offices to suburban Williston (not far enough!), the recent political bombshells about the city administrations in Burlington and Montpelier have been the talk around the water coolers and in coffee-bars since last week. Shay Totten's Fair Game column in today's Seven Days newspaper brings us up to date on the City Hall shenanigans around the state:

The financial scandals embroiling Montpelier and Burlington have some striking similarities. No, it’s not just that the administrations of both cities are liberal — if not downright progressive.

Rather, key administrators opted to keep their money troubles — and the strategy to get out of those fiscal pickles — a secret from citizens.

In Montpelier, Mayor Mary Hooper and City Manager William Fraser, in collusion with city councilors, kept hidden from the public an overpayment to a contractor that will cost taxpayers $400,000 to remedy. It may have already caused water rates to rise. They kept the information to themselves for three years.

During that time frame, Hooper ran for reelection unopposed. She’s up again in March. Want to bet she’ll see a challenger this time?

In Burlington, a top aide to Mayor Bob Kiss is on the hot seat after it was revealed that he authorized a $17 million loan from the city’s checkbook to keep fledgling Burlington Telecom afloat.

Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold told “Fair Game” that it was he, and he alone, who decided to extend the money to BT in early 2008. He loaned it in anticipation of receiving a new round of financing from outside investors. The deal never materialized because of the global financial meltdown, and the city’s checkbook became the bank.

“It was me, and I’m not ashamed of it,” said Leopold. “I still believe it was the right thing to do. In hindsight, you can always find things you could have done differently, but this was prudent and the taxpayers are not at risk.”

Leopold said refinancing BT’s current debt could cost about $1.1 million in fees, and he hoped to refinance the old debt and the cost of the remaining build out all at once. That process has taken longer than anticipated.

Leopold said he did brief city and state officials about BT’s finances, and the use of the loan, as far back as December 2007 and again last fall. Still, there is no explicit OK on record from the board of finance or the city council to loan the money, which is what irks many councilors and the public.

I never knew the phrase “checks and balances” means the guy in charge can request the loan and write the check.

Leopold’s actions also protected Mayor Kiss during a spirited four-way race for mayor this March. Wonder if voters would have been as likely to back Kiss for a second, three-year term if they had known the full details of the $17 million loan?

It also helps fuel ongoing speculation that Kiss is clueless and Leopold is really running the city.

Burlington and Montpelier aren’t alone in their secret shenanigans. As I noted recently in “Fair Game,” the Winooski School Board ran afoul of the state’s open-meeting law when it decided in an email exchange to “protect” the children from Pres. Barack Obama’s speech to schoolkids.

Recently, too, the weekly Waterbury Record took its town select board to task for holding subcommittee meetings without telling the public, or even keeping minutes of the meetings. Sheesh.

In the Winooski and Waterbury cases, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz said that, while there was a violation of law, they were honest mistakes. An intentional violation of Vermont’s open-meeting law is punishable with a $500 fine.

It isn’t the first time the Record has caught the Waterbury select board running afoul of the law, notes editor and publisher Maria Archangelo.

As with all these cases, perhaps there’s more intent than meets the eye?

Telecom Turmoil
Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss said he supports a full, independent audit of Burlington Telecom’s finances, among other steps, to reinstate confidence in the venture.

Kiss outlined these fixes to the city council before a special meeting Tuesday night. [Click here for Shay Totten's report from that session on Blurt: The Seven Days staff blog].

The audit request comes on the heels of an extensive war of words between the Kiss administration and David O’Brien, the state’s public service commissioner.

The public flap erupted after “Fair Game” first reported that BT borrowed $17 million from the city after years of promises that it wouldn’t rely on taxpayer money to be viable. O’Brien said it was “the most irresponsible utility behavior” he’s seen in his seven years as commissioner.

CAO Leopold, who OK’d the city loans to BT without explicit approval from the board of finance or the city council, will recommend several refinancing options to councilors by their November 16 meeting, Kiss said. The financing plan could include an immediate repayment of the $17 million.

Funny timing.

In a letter to city officials on Friday, O’Brien’s department urged BT to repay the city loan immediately and stop taking more cash from taxpayers.

City officials say O’Brien either doesn’t talk to his own staff or, worse, he wants to deliberately sabotage BT.

“The tone of urgency of the letter is ironic since the DPS has known about the city’s use of pooled cash since November 2008,” the usually quiet Kiss fired back in a prepared statement. “This is a public relations ploy consistent with Mr. O’Brien’s inaccurate and unwarranted statements about BT’s finances. His remarks undermine public confidence in BT and increasingly appear to be a strategy to close BT down.”

Oh, come on. The only folks who might like to see BT shut down would be Comcast. And I don’t recall seeing the giant telecom company on O’Brien’s holiday party guest list last year — you know, the one “Fair Game” wrote about? In his Stowe condo, O’Brien rubbed elbows with Jay Thayer, the head honcho from Entergy Vermont Yankee.

Queen City taxpayers are being invited to a special council-sponsored city hall forum about BT on Thursday night. There, voters will finally have a chance to give city councilors a piece of their minds.

Imagine that, letting the public weigh in.

"As Maine goes, so goes the nation..."

A heartfelt plea for marriage equality in Maine. It's going to be a tight vote.



Thanks to dantojours at Culture Choc.