Just because someone is not a Washington Insider, does not make them not a "political insider". There has been a damned lot that these beltway insiders have gotten done, in the past, tried to get done and had to only get partially done as happens when your party is in a minority, and especially now, when the Bush White House has done some amazingly nasty things to get democrats out of office so they could seize control of both the legislature and the executive branch. Bush's theft of the 2000 election is just one part of his theft. The kinds of abosolutely unethical and simply evil things he did to people like Max Cleland are just one thing.
Without those "Washington Insiders fighting so hard, and doing some very historically unprecedented things, like filibusering Federal Court nominees, which was going out on a limb, and taking great political risks, and simply voted up or down, all those extreme right wing judges would be in the courts today, beginning to overturn Roe v. Wade, completely eleiminating overtime pay, getting rid of ADA, the list goes on. Without the Dems getting Nobel Prize economists to openly state that the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy would not help the economy get out of recession, but a smaller middle class tax cut would, and by simply voting against any tax cut, rather than the recommended cuts, Bush would have simply passed {b]another 1.2 billion dollar tax cut the second time around. This credible testimony by these economists forced Bush to lower his second tax cut to one quarter of what he demanded. Without these insiders threatening antoher filibuster, this time of of ANWR, Bush and Cheneys buddies would be drilling in Alaska today.
Bill CLinton and Hillary Clinton have both stated that it was the fact that they were outsiders that prevented them from passing some of the legislation they wanted passed the most, like Universal Health Care.
Dean himself is no political outsider, and as Governor, democrats, his own party, frequently found questionable behavior on the part of Dean, and his closeness to "special interests" and lobbyists, and wither vetoing legislation, arranging for government deals, or supporting legislation that very large and powerful corporations wanted passed, which were not in the best interest of the people of his state, but in the interests of those large businesses. These businesses have praised Dean's greasing the wheels for them, to allow them to get around regulations that smaller and less powerful corporations have to abide by. There are numerous cases in which campaign contributions to Dean came just a few days before or after Dean vetoed legislation, or helped Repubicans pass legislation that these corporate powers would have had to have very long, protracted fights over, and in the end, still possibly fail to have their way with, had not Dean been so willing to support them, and come to their rescue when they were not getting their way. And in many cases, these things Dean did for these companies had nothing to do with creating jobs in the state of Vermont. I have posted numerous links to such behavior on Deans part in the last day or so, and they are available to anyone who cares to look, One such posting:
Who's the Real Howard Dean?
As Vermont governor, the liberal firebrand was a fiscal conservative with close ties to businessConservative Vermont business leaders praise Dean's record and his unceasing efforts to balance the budget, even though Vermont is the only state where a balanced budget is not constitutionally required. Moreover, they argue that the two most liberal policies adopted during Dean's tenure -- the "civil unions" law and a radical revamping of public school financing -- were instigated by Vermont's ultraliberal Supreme Court rather than Dean...
...Business leaders were especially impressed with the way Dean went to bat for them if they got snarled in the state's stringent environmental regulations. When Canada's Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. wanted to build a new manufacturing plant on 700 acres of Vermont farmland in the mid-'90s, for instance, Dean greased the wheels. Husky obtained the necessary permits in near-record time. "He was very hands-on," says an appreciative Dirk Schlimm, the Husky executive in charge of the project.
And when environmentalists tried to limit expansion of snowmaking at ski resorts, "Dean had to show his true colors, and he did -- by insisting on a solution that allowed expanding snowmaking," says Stenger. IBM (IBM ) by far the state's largest private employer, says it got kid-gloves treatment. "We would meet privately with him three to four times a year to discuss our issues," says John O'Kane, manager for government relations at IBM's Essex Junction plant, "and his secretary of commerce would call me once a week just to see how things were going."....
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_32/b3845084.htmThere are literally dozens of similar articles, from both Progressive and business sources, which also indicate the fact that while he was being so very business friendly, businesse executives have being freindly fo his PAC, Find for a Health America:
CLF seeks details of Dean administration’s talks with utilities
March 11, 2002
(from the State section)
By SUSAN SMALLHEER Southern Vermont Bureau
MONTPELIER — The Conservation Law Foundation will file a freedom of information request with the Dean administration today to find out how many contacts it has had with Vermont utility executives over the pending sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Mark Sinclair, senior attorney with the environmental group, said Monday that recent news reports about the financial contributions made by Vermont utility executives or board members to Gov. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign political action committee were “too much of a coincidence.”
Sinclair said the new offer from Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, Miss., last week wasn’t substantially better than the original bid, and doesn’t really address the serious concerns raised by the state earlier this winter about local control and other economic issues.
“The department didn’t get anything,” he said.
Sinclair compared it to the negotiations with Vice President Dick Cheney by energy companies that are now subject to an investigation by the General Accounting Office.
http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/Archive/Articles/Article/43924These articles are just two of literally dozens I have bookmarked, and they are just a fraction of the hundred I had at one time and then got rid of as I was so offended by Dean's very political insider, back room deal, record as Governor.
Not the stuff that people have to do because it is necessary to sometimes make compromises with businesses in order to accomplish something positive for the people who elected you, but simple down right political favoritism, and rewarding of ones campaign contributors. And those are only the ones that can be found because the local newspapers, or variious advocacy groups discovered.
Where there is smoke there is fire, and considering Dean has been in some questionable positions that were obvious, given the fact that he also sealed many of his records as Governor that are now being questioned, considering Deans own reasons forwanting them sealed, in order to avoid anything embarassing coming up while he was running for president, and in case he was elected to a second term, should give everyone who even thinks about voting for him pause.
One of the reasons that people in Congress's records are not available to the public, is based on the fact that almost all of it is already available to the public, becasue almost all of their work is done directly in the public eye, much of their debate, and their meetings with lobbyists, business experts, and special interest groups on any number of legislative issues is done in public, on places like C-SPAN.
How many of any Governors meetings with these people or groups are filmed, taped or offered live so the public could see how a Governor comes to his decision to favor legislation, or threaten to veto it.
Again, few, or none. Due to this fact, it is rather correct for a Governor to be asked to open his records, particularly if he is running for any higher national office. If he intends to retire, that is something else, and even in that case, I would still think that those records should be open to the public.
Even Wesley Clark's meetings with various Senate and House Comittees were a matter of publicrecord. Video,audio, and typed copies of many of his contact with cogress and comittees and sub- comittees are all a matter of public record, and far less than any Governor's are kept from public scrutiny.
I am not stating that all a Governor's records should be open to the public. Those records that are of a personal confidential nature, or relating to national or state security, shoud of course be, and in most cases, would be anyway, sealed and made private.
But all those records in which a Governor meets with executives to discuss issues that have to do with a Governor making decisions as part of his duties to the public that elected them should be open for all the public to see.
It is the only way to truly make sure that there is transparancy in Government, and also to make sure that a clever and well spoken person, who can convince others that he is honest, when he may not be, cannot be elected to the highest office in the land.
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