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28.3.24 0340
The W - Current Events & Politics - Pot calling the Kettle Black....
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Grimis
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Since: 11.7.02
From: MD

Since last post: 4713 days
Last activity: 3167 days
#1 Posted on | Instant Rating: 7.29
Shooting his mouth off will, in fact, be his downfall....

* * * * * * * * *

AP: Dean Had Own Secret Energy Group
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean (news - web sites), who has criticized the Bush administration for refusing to release the deliberations of its energy policy task force, as governor of Vermont convened a similar panel that met in secret and angered state lawmakers.

Dean's group held one public hearing and after the fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but Dean refused to open the task force's private deliberations.

In 1999, he offered the same argument the administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret.

"The governor needs to receive advice from time to time in closed session. As every person in government knows, sometimes you get more open discussion when it's not public," Dean was quoted as saying.

His own dispute over the secrecy of the task force that devised a policy for restructuring Vermont's nearly bankrupt electric utilities has escaped national attention, even as he has attacked a similar arrangement used by President Bush (news - web sites).

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dean defended his recent criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s task force and his demand that the administration release its private energy deliberations.

Dean said his group developed better policy in a bipartisan manner, seeking advice not just from energy executives but environmentalists and advocates for the poor. He said his task force was more open because it held a public hearing and divulged afterward the names of people it consulted even though deliberations were held in secret.

The Vermont task force "is not exactly the Cheney thing," Dean said. "We had a much more open process than Cheney's process. We named the people we sought advice from in our final report."

Dean said he still believes it was necessary to keep his task force's deliberations secret, especially because the group was reviewing proprietary financial data from Vermont utilities. "Some advice does have to be given in private, but I don't mind letting people know who gave that advice," he said.

An expert in political rhetoric said it was risky for Dean to attack Bush and Cheney on an issue where he was vulnerable.

"In general, what is good for the vice president should be good for the governor. A candidate who attacks on grounds he is vulnerable is foolish," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who helps run a Web site that compares presidential candidates' rhetoric with the facts.


Dean's campaign said it was "laughable" to equate the two panels.


"Governor Dean confronted and averted an energy crisis that would have had disastrous consequences for the citizens of Vermont by bringing together a bipartisan and ideologically diverse working group that solved the problem," spokesman Jay Carson said Sunday.

"Dick Cheney put together a group of his corporate cronies and partisan political contributors, and they gave themselves billions and disguised it as a national energy policy."

In September, Dean argued that the task force Cheney assembled in 2001 and the Bush energy policy that were unduly influenced by Bush family friend and Enron energy chief Kenneth Lay. He demanded that records of its deliberations be made public.

"The administration should also level with the American people about just how much influence Ken Lay and his industry buddies had over the development of the president's energy policy by releasing notes on the deliberations of Vice President Cheney's energy task force," Dean said on Sept. 15.

In 1998, Dean's Vermont task force met in secret to write a plan for revamping state electricity markets that would slow rising consumer costs and relieve utilities of a money-losing deal with a Canadian power company, Hydro Quebec.

The task force's work resulted in the Dean administration and state utility regulators advocating that Vermont have the first utility in the country to meet energy efficiency standards.

It also freed the state's utilities from burdensome costs from a long-term deal with Hydro Quebec that had left them near bankruptcy by passing as much as 90 percent of those costs to consumers. Utility shareholders also suffered some losses.

The parallels between the Cheney and Dean task forces are many.

Both declined to open their deliberations, even under pressure from legislators. Both received input from the energy industry in private meetings, and released the names of task force members publicly.

Dean's group volunteered the names of those it consulted with in its final report. While Cheney has refused to formally give a list to Congress to preserve the White House's right to private advice, known as executive privilege, his aides have divulged to reporters the names of many of those from whom the task force sought advice.

The Bush-Cheney campaign and Republican Party received millions in donations from energy interests in the election before its task force was created.

Dean's Vermont re-election campaign received only small contributions from energy executives, but a political action committee created as he prepared to run for president collected $19,000, or nearly a fifth of its first $110,000, from donors tied to Vermont's electric utilities.

One co-chairman of Dean's task force, William Gilbert, was a Republican lawyer who had done work for state utilities. At the time, Gilbert also served on the board of Vermont Gas Systems, a subsidiary of Hydro Quebec.

Many state legislators, including Dean's fellow Democrats, were angered that the task force met secretly.

"It taints the whole report," Democratic state Rep. Al Stevens told the AP in 1999. "I'd have more faith in that report if the discussions had been open."

Elizabeth Bankowski, a Democrat who co-chaired the task force with Gilbert, told the legislature that the secrecy requirement "was decided in advance by the governor's office and the governor's lawyer."




Four more wins....
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AWArulz
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Since: 28.1.02
From: Louisville, KY

Since last post: 99 days
Last activity: 99 days
#2 Posted on | Instant Rating: 6.52
This reminds me a lot of the old deal people used to put to Hogan. Yeah, he's a politician, he hold people down, he's a bastard. That young kid, Hunter, deserves a push.

Oops, now it's Trips who is getting the Hogan rip.

I figure that, like Hogan, and Trips and every other guy who has carried a Fed has been in this position, as have most executives. Just like Bush needed some feedback about how to do energy, Dean needed it. In all likelihood, if we checked 50 states over the last 20 years and the Fed (and for that matter, other countries), we'd find similar commissions founded for similar issues, be it energy, transportation, resources and other stuff.

and I suspect there are people (although I don't think Bush's commission is guilty of this) who have benefited from these commissions.

and of course, Dean, like Hunter, is going to say he never did it, but that Bush, like Hogan, did.

This is going right up on my site. Thanks, Grimis



Rasslin' republicans - visit it soon
DrDirt
Banger








Since: 8.10.03
From: flyover country

Since last post: 2345 days
Last activity: 2247 days
#3 Posted on | Instant Rating: 7.59
    Originally posted by AWArulz
    This reminds me a lot of the old deal people used to put to Hogan. Yeah, he's a politician, he hold people down, he's a bastard. That young kid, Hunter, deserves a push.

    Oops, now it's Trips who is getting the Hogan rip.

    I figure that, like Hogan, and Trips and every other guy who has carried a Fed has been in this position, as have most executives. Just like Bush needed some feedback about how to do energy, Dean needed it. In all likelihood, if we checked 50 states over the last 20 years and the Fed (and for that matter, other countries), we'd find similar commissions founded for similar issues, be it energy, transportation, resources and other stuff.

    and I suspect there are people (although I don't think Bush's commission is guilty of this) who have benefited from these commissions.

    and of course, Dean, like Hunter, is going to say he never did it, but that Bush, like Hogan, did.

    This is going right up on my site. Thanks, Grimis


Please don't faint AWA and Grimis but I never was terribly upset over the Cheney group. There are times when things need to be kept confidential to insure that what need to be hashed out is. The trouble the American people have is that if your government says it needs to be kept secret, how do you really know unless they reveal the secret. There are many cases at the state and local level where elected officials abuse the executive session privlige but trying to definatively prove it is tough.

As it says at the bottom of my posts, "perception is reality." Cheney and company may have been totally above board but it looked bad. But how does the Veep disprove a neagtive.



Perception is reality
Big Bad
Scrapple








Since: 4.1.02
From: Dorchester, Ontario

Since last post: 1927 days
Last activity: 1495 days
#4 Posted on | Instant Rating: 5.54
From the way that article phrases things, I don't see what the problem is. It looks like Dean's group led to a lot of positives in Vermont, whereas Bush's group....well, we have no idea what they did. It looks doubly bad when the names of Enron and Ken Lay are invoked, since then even if the POTUS was just doing his job, it just looks bad by association.



Rob asks Dave and Ric if they want to go backstage to play Hungry Hungry Hippos and Flair and Batista immediately bail. Flair wants to be Green. Man, EVERYBODY wants to be green. Except the girl in the commercials. She wanted to be pink. That either means that the ad agency was sexist or that she was communist. Of course Hungry Hungry Hippos is a rather capitalist game isn’t it? No self respecting communist would play Hungry Hungry Hippos. Except Stalin. He LOVED Hungry Hungry Hippos. God, I’ve got no clue what the hell I’m rambling about anymore.-- Matt "Excalibur05" Hocking, Raw Satire writer extraordinaire

You know, I just can't call it the "WWE." I just can't. My body's rejecting it like a bad liver transplant.-- Bill Simmons, espn.com/page2
redsoxnation
Scrapple








Since: 24.7.02

Since last post: 3923 days
Last activity: 3923 days
#5 Posted on | Instant Rating: 5.50
This stuff is coming out way to early in the campaign. At this rate, (fake)Dean will implode by mid January. Of course, if (fake)Dean survives the primary season and is the Democratic nominee, I can already see the 'I Refuse To Pre-Judge Bin Laden' comments making a nice campaign commercial for the GOP in the Fall of '04.



If only Paul Jones had brought in General Skandar Akbar as a technical military advisor, Paul Jones' Army could have thwarted the McMahon infidels and prevented the collapse of wrestling civilization.
MoeGates
Boudin blanc








Since: 6.1.02
From: Brooklyn, NY

Since last post: 23 days
Last activity: 20 hours
#6 Posted on | Instant Rating: 6.28
I always just apply the "what if it were Clinton" rule to judge the GOP hypocracy over this type of stuff. Hmm, if Bill Clinton (OK, Gore for this analogy)had met in secret to formulate policy with a guy that happen to be his biggest campaign doner and personal friend AND just happen to be the biggest thief this country has seen in quite some time, what do you think O'Reilly and Limbaugh would be harping on nonstop for the next year and a half? What do you think would have special counsels and congressional investigations up the wazoo. What do you think the right-wing media would keep in the papers until doomsday? Not that I think it's bad, but other than Judicial Watch, all these groups and people that claim to be for "Open Government" and "Truth and Honesty" and all that shit have proven to be nothing more than partisan shills. This is just one more example. Sure, I (and everyone) understand the need to keep closed-door meetings in the government sometime. But really, you don't see the difference between that and not telling the American People who you get that advice from? This isn't national security here folks (although I'm sure Cheney will find some way to weasel that into his excuses). The only reason I can think of is that the "advisors" list is going to look a lot like the "buddies and campaign doners" list, which is going to look a lot like the "have gotten real rich lately" list which is going to look a lot like the "criminals" list. I mean, otherwise why not just say who was on the stupid committee?

Jesus, am I in a mood today.



I wonder how much money George W. Bush gave Paris Hilton.
Grimis
Scrapple








Since: 11.7.02
From: MD

Since last post: 4713 days
Last activity: 3167 days
#7 Posted on | Instant Rating: 7.29
I never though the secrecy of the task force was a good thing to begin with. Cheney wasted a lot of political capital to keep it secret. And as DrDirt said, perception is reality. Bad call on their part to keep up appearances.

The moral of this story, as always, is that Dean is a moron.



Four more wins....
ThreepMe
Morcilla








Since: 15.2.02
From: Dallas

Since last post: 7145 days
Last activity: 6804 days
#8 Posted on | Instant Rating: 4.54
    Originally posted by Grimis
    The moral of this story, as always, is that Dean is a moron.


Oh great, so it's looking like for 2004 we'll be voting for Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber.


Fun!



I would like to congatulate Al Snow on his contact with La-Z-Boy. Because we all know Al doesn't sell chairs. - Mick Foley
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As much as it personally pains me to say it, Grimis is right. (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.) There has to be at least ONE of the 55 candidates who are worth voting for. At LEAST one.
- Leroy, This has to be a dream. (2004)
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