{"article":{"id":97981,"heading":"The Dean Deception","author":"Vote Green, not Dean!","created":"2003-12-19 18:18:10","modified":"2003-12-19 23:17:24","last_modified":"Sat, 20 Dec 2003 06:17:24","article":"

International Socialist Review Issue 32,

November-December 2003

The Dean Deception

By KEITH ROSENTHAL

We must face the appalling fact that we have been

betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican

Parties. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., in Facing the

Challenge of a New Age, 1957

WITH more than a year remaining before the

presidential election of 2004, the former Vermont

governor, Howard Dean, has stolen national attention

for his criticisms of the recent unilateral war on

Iraq by confidently arguing on the campaign trail:

\"We’re gonna’ beat George Bush!\"

He has called for universal health care, environmental

protection, the shredding of the \"Bush Doctrine\" of

preemptive attack, a reversal of the tax cuts and has

even called out the leadership of the Democratic Party

for cowering before Bush’s right-wing onslaught.

But Dean has done much more than simply grab the

attention of the national media. He also has many

antiwar activists, progressives and former Ralph Nader

voters excited about his campaign. Gary Younge

described Dean in the Guardian (UK) as \"the great red

hope.\"1 In the Nation, Katha Pollit recently wrote,

\"My fingers itch to write Dean another check.\" She

continued, \"Howard Dean is Ralph Nader’s gift to the

Democratic Party.\"2

An even broader number of people on the American left

-- those who are weary of some of Dean’s proclamations

in favor of Israel’s targeted assassinations of

Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq, welfare reform

and the death penalty (to name a few) -- have simply

concluded that Dean has the best chance to win the

election.

Others have been driven so far by their hatred of Bush

that they are launching preemptive strikes against any

third-party candidacy. \"A third party presidential

challenge from the left would be reactionary and

traitorous in the 2004 election,\" wrote Vermont

liberal Marty Jezer.3

It is easy to understand why progressives want to

eliminate George W. Bush after three years of attacks

that included a war on Afghanistan and Iraq, massive

tax cuts for the rich, racist scapegoating of

Arab-Americans, the invocation of Taft-Hartley against

West Coast dockworkers and billions of dollars poured

into the colonial occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq

while the number of people in poverty in America has

steadily risen. For many, \"Anybody but Bush\" appears

to be the only alternative.

With Howard Dean currently leading in the polls in the

key election primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire,

the choice for voters in 2004 could very well be

between the man from Vermont and the man from Texas.

The question is: Does Dean deserve your vote and your

hope? His record as governor of Vermont holds some

clues.

\"The pain for Vermonters will be real\"

Though he has been dubbed a \"raging liberal\" by

admirers and critics alike, Howard Dean governed

Vermont strictly within the framework of the

conservative Democratic Leadership Council.

Many people on the Vermont left see Dean’s current

posture as politically motivated. \"The notion that he

is a liberal is ludicrous to those of us who worked

with him in Vermont,\" said Terrill Bouricius, a former

state representative.4 Dean admits that he recognized

early on that the popular anger at Bush is \"a raw

energy, an energy that I know could be channeled.\"5

Back in February 2003, Dean candidly admitted to Salon

magazine that if he were to win the nomination of his

party he would \"probably dispense with some of the

more rhetorical flourishes. One time I said the

Supreme Court is so far right you couldn’t see it

anymore. Next summer I won’t be talking like that.

It’s true and I’m not ashamed to have said it, but it

doesn’t sound very presidential.\"6

But such political maneuvering is nothing new for

Dean. Upon becoming governor of Vermont in 1991, after

the sudden death of then-Republican Governor Richard

Snelling, Dean made a sharp turn to the right and

pursued that course ever since. In his 11 years as

governor, Dean would shift rightward on one position

after another, all the while claiming to be concerned

for the needy and less-fortunate, and disappointing

all who thought they were getting someone who would

govern from the liberal end of the political spectrum.



Dean inherited a massive deficit in the state budget

from Snelling. Refusing to raise taxes on wealthier

Vermonters (and rendering the tax system more

regressive than previously), Dean declared in his

first State of the State address that it would be his

mission to balance the state budget with some \"tough\"

cuts. Even though Vermont has no law requiring a

balanced budget, Dean promised, \"The pain for

Vermonters will be real.\"7

Dean slashed millions of dollars from all sorts of

social programs, from prescription drug benefits for

Medicare recipients and heating assistance for poorer

Vermonters to housing assistance funds. In defending

his cuts to social programs, Dean said, \"I don’t think

I have to shy away from that just because I’m supposed

to be a liberal Democrat.\"8

Throughout the 1990s, Dean’s cuts in state aid to

education ($6 million), retirement funds for teachers

and state employees ($7 million), health care ($4

million), welfare programs earmarked for the aged,

blind and disabled ($2 million), Medicaid benefits

($1.2 million) and more, amounted to roughly $30

million. Dean claimed that the cuts were necessary

because the state had no money and was burdened by a

$60 million deficit.9

But during the same period, Dean found $7 million for

a low-interest loan program for businesses, $30

million for a new prison in Springfield, VT, and he

cut the income tax by 8 percent (equivalent to $30

million) -- a move many in the legislature balked at

because they didn’t feel comfortable \"cutting taxes in

a way that benefits the wealthiest taxpayers.\"10 By

2002, state investments in prisons increased by nearly

150 percent while investments in state colleges

increased by only 7 percent.11

Indeed, Dean’s mix of \"fiscal conservatism and social

liberalism\" seems to be not much different than Bush’s

so-called compassionate conservatism, and certainly

paralleled Clinton’s signature combination of liberal

\"I-feel-your-pain\" rhetoric with neoliberal policies.

\"Move the retirement age to 70\"

Politically, Dean moved into the outstretched arms of

the Republicans and the business community of Vermont.

As Elizabeth Ready, Vermont state auditor and former

legislator during the Dean administration said, \"His

top advisers were all money people, brokers and

bankers.\"12 When Dean boasts on the campaign trail

that liberals \"hated him\" for his \"fiscal

conservatism,\" he is not lying.

People on the left who think they will get a friend in

the White House if Dean were to be president are

sorely mistaken. As Sam Hemingway of the Burlington

Free Press recounts, \"At times he loved to pick on the

extreme liberals in the state sort of as a foil, to

build allegiances as a moderate and to pull in

Republican supporters. He knew they’d have nowhere

else to go.\"13

Dean red-baited and smeared even those in his own

party who would criticize him for his conservative

policies. In 1992, when assailed by Democrats for

jettisoning his support for single-payer health care,

Dean responded: \"The progressive wing [of the party]

needs to take a look at what works and to discard

ideas that in many cases have been discarded by

history, including the history of what happened in

Eastern Europe.\"14

Most of the Democrats in the legislature rebelled

against Dean over the budget cuts, and he ended up

depending on Republican votes to pass most of his

proposals. At the time, a local Vermont newspaper

wrote, \"The biggest items on Dean’s agenda for next

year are likely to provoke more opposition from the

Democrats than the Republicans. Nevertheless, Dean

said he feels no particular pressure to deliver the

goods to his party or to promote the Democratic

agenda.\"15

In the mid-1990s, Dean even aligned himself with the

likes of Republican Newt Gingrich on his stance on

cutting Medicare. He opined at the time, \"The way to

balance the [federal] budget is for Congress to cut

Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut

defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the

states cut everything else.\"16

On two separate occasions, once in 1993 and again in

1995, hundreds of welfare recipients, and elderly,

impoverished, disabled and progressive Vermonters

poured in to the capital, Montpelier, from all over

the state to protest Dean’s cuts, comparing him to

Newt Gingrich. In 1995, the protesters carried a

banner reading: \"Dean\/Newt Robbing Poor Kids to Spare

the Rich.\"

The Rutland Herald described how one protestor,

Henrietta Jordan of the Vermont Center for Independent

Living, \"said it would be much fairer to raise taxes

on people with expensive homes and cars, children in

private school and a housekeeper at home than to cut

programs that helped the 66,000 Vermonters living with

disabilities.\"17 Dean responded callously, brushing

off the pleas of Vermont’s most vulnerable by saying,

\"This seems like sort of the last gasp of the left

here.\"18

Dean went above and beyond a \"fiscally conservative\"

agenda when it came to welfare reform. He proudly

boasts on his Web site that Vermont was the first

state to implement a workfare program, which includes

mandatory work requirements for welfare recipients.

Dean complained at the time that people on welfare

\"don’t have any self-esteem. If they did they’d be

working.\"19 After the first three years of Dr. Dean’s

treatment, demand for food stamps and emergency food

aid in the state reached record levels.20

Moreover, Dean was the most devout business advocate

in Montpelier, always supporting corporate interests

regardless of the cost to workers or the environment.

For IBM, the state’s biggest employer, Dean bent over

backwards. The manager of government relations at the

Essex plant commented how \"[Dean’s] secretary of

commerce would call me once a week just to see how

things were going.\"21

IBM in Vermont is notorious for slimming a workforce

that has been trying to unionize with the

Communication Workers of America for some time.

Nonetheless, IBM never got anything but \"kid-gloves

treatment\" from Dean.22 IBM also happens to be one of

the state’s biggest polluters, but receives consistent

environmental praise from Dean.

Few people in the labor movement in Vermont would be

willing to characterize him as a friend of labor. The

Vermont section of the National Education Association

(V-NEA) endorsed Dean only once in 11 years.

Dean did support the union drive of nurses at Fletcher

Allen Hospital in Burlington in 2002 (though, this was

only after he had announced that he would run for the

presidency). But he is more memorable for his actions

during the 1998 strike of nurses at Copley Hospital in

Morrisville, VT, when he repeatedly refused to talk

with the union, agreeing only to meet with management.

When Dean was governor, he was a staunch supporter of

NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and World Bank. While he is

now distancing himself somewhat from certain aspects

of these institutions (most likely a calculated move

to win in the primaries), he still fundamentally

supports their spirit -- free trade, open markets and

the pursuit of profits. And he still maintains that

NAFTA was good for Vermont even though the state

suffered 6,000 trade-related job losses in the

1990s.23

Dean openly admits that he was a conservative

budget-cutter and that he governed in Vermont as a

\"centrist.\" But there is much on the campaign trail

that he is simply not being honest about. For all his

talk about Bush lying to the American public, on issue

after issue Dean seems to be quite skilled at it

himself. Below are some examples.

Health care

Dean claims to have a health plan that will guarantee

insurance for all Americans modeled on the system he

set up in Vermont. In reality, according to his own

Web site, his plan would leave at least 10 million

Americans uninsured. And that is only if he actually

implements his plan -he is determined that \"nothing

will happen on health care-until he works out a plan

to balance the budget.\"24 If he does model the

national health care system on Vermont’s system, it

won’t be pretty.

Vermont actually doesn’t have universal health care.

It is true that almost all children under the age of

18 are covered, but U.S. Census Bureau figures show

that 10-12 percent of Vermonters remain uninsured.

This is only a little better than the national average

of nearly 15 percent uninsured.

For those Vermonters who are insured under Dean’s

plan, their access is extremely limited. Dean’s plan

requires families to pay monthly premiums for

government-subsidized health care. Because services

are provided through private insurers, however,

premiums have been steadily increasing while care has

been steadily deteriorating. Over the past 10 years,

employee health insurance costs have increased by 400

percent.25

Dean has also cut basic services from the health plan

such as X-rays, dental services, physical therapy,

psychological care and cheap prescription drugs. As

Dean explained to the Rutland Herald in 1991, one of

the main assets of his health care plan is that \"it

definitely keeps people out of the emergency room.\"26

It seems his main concern was not so much universal

coverage as cost-cutting. In his first State of the

State address he moaned:

We spend too much money in this country

and in this state for unnecessary medical

procedures. We must reduce the combined

pressures of professional liability,

consumer demand and reimbursement

mechanisms which encourage providers to

administer more care and to order more

tests.27

In other words, health care under Dr. Dean means

paying more for less.

Women’s rights

Dean has positioned himself as a friend of the women’s

rights movement because of his support for abortion --

even late-term abortions. But Dean’s \"fiscal

conservatism\" often got in the way of his \"social

liberalism.\" When cutting the budget in the mid-1990s,

Dean’s axe managed to find itself aimed at battered

women’s services.28 And his welfare reform forced

single mothers into mandatory jobs, hurting both the

mother and the child. Moreover, although Dean himself

is pro-choice, he has stated that he wouldn’t accept

Dennis Kucinich’s challenge to make Roe v. Wade a

\"litmus test\" for appointing federal judges.29

Gay rights

While it is true that Dean signed a civil union bill

into law while governor of Vermont, it is not

something for which he can claim any credit. In 1999,

the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that gay

couples were due the same legal rights of marriage as

heterosexuals, and ordered the legislature to pass a

law codifying that right. During his 1998 reelection

campaign, Dean refused to talk about the issue

publicly, saying he was waiting for the Supreme

Court’s decision.

When the legislature began to formulate a bill, Dean

made it clear that he would not sign anything

permitting gay marriage. The compromise was the civil

union legislation, which Dean signed \"in the closet,\"

privately, away from the cameras. At the time of

signing, Dean \"was going around the state telling

folks he was only doing it because the Vermont Supreme

Court made him.\"30

Dean says he will not push for national civil unions,

but will let the states themselves decide (in other

words, he shares the same position as many

Republicans). This is like being opposed to Jim Crow

laws but willing to let the states decide whether or

not to impose segregation.

Education

Dean has lambasted Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act as

a fraudulent misnomer. But Dean is no champion of

sweeping education guarantees. When he was making his

budget cuts, financial aid for higher education was

first on the chopping block. According to Ellen David

Friedman, organizer with the Vermont National

Education Association, Dean was not necessarily

sympathetic to teachers. Friedman recalled in an

interview with the ISR how during contract

negotiations, \"Dean would make public statements

encouraging school boards to shift more of the cost of

health care onto teachers.\"31

While Vermont’s school system is funded relatively

equitably through a general fund set up under the Act

60 legislation, this, like the civil unions, has

little to do with Dean’s efforts. It too was born of a

Supreme Court ruling that had virtually no previous

support from Howard Dean.

According to information released by the Vermont State

Colleges office, during Dean’s tenure, from 1991-2000,

state funding per Vermont student decreased by 13

percent.32

Environment

As president, Dean promises to \"bring [his] commitment

to our environment to the White House.\"33 Many

environmentalists in Vermont simply ask: What

commitment? Dean boasts that he preserved over 400,000

acres of forests and farmlands while promoting

renewable energy. But aside from those 400,000 acres,

the rest of Vermont seemed to be fair game for

development.

\"Dean’s attempts to run for president as an

environmentalist is nothing but a fraud,\" said Annette

Smith, director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.

\"He’s destroyed the Agency of Natural Resources, he’s

refused to meet with environmentalists while

constantly meeting with the development community, and

he’s made the permitting process one, big

dysfunctional joke.\"34 Tom Elliot, the former

political director of the Vermont Sierra Club said

that \"Howard Dean’s environmental record in Vermont is

toxic.\"35 The club has never endorsed Howard Dean in

his five campaigns for governor.

Dean supported major mining operations by the

Swiss-based company OMYA, despite the protests of

environmental grassroots organizations; he stood by

the massive pesticide use of Vermont’s mega-farms; and

he awarded major energy contracts to two highly

questionable endeavors: the Vermont Yankee nuclear

power plant and the Hydro-Quebec electric company,

which had been damming up and flooding the James Bay,

threatening the livelihoods of the indigenous Cree

people who live there.

In 1998, Dean pushed for a natural gas plant and

pipeline project that would have required large-scale

clear-cutting. It took a two-year fight with a

grassroots citizens’ group to force Dean to back off.

During that same year, Dean had struck a deal with

George Bush, then-governor of Texas, to ship Vermont’s

nuclear waste to a poor, mostly Hispanic community in

Sierra Blanca.36

Dean’s administration did adopt strict air pollution

guidelines, but according to Marilyn Miller, the

executive director of the Vermont Auto Dealers

Association, the rules were never actually enforced.37

At one point, the Dean administration even petitioned

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase

the amount of air pollution that can be released by

Vermont industry.38

Mark Sinclair, director of the Vermont office of the

Conservation Law Foundation, noted, \"the governor’s

willing to be an environmentalist only when he thinks

it’s politically important for his re-election

campaign.\"39

Civil rights

Howard Dean criticizes Attorney General John

Ashcroft’s shredding of the Constitution with his USA

Patriot Act and has even compared Ashcroft to the

notorious Joseph McCarthy. But Dean’s record and

stances on the justice system and civil rights are not

very good.

Shortly after September 11, Dean said that the U.S.

\"needs a reevaluation of the importance of some of our

specific civil liberties.\"40 He currently does not

oppose the Patriot Act, but says he only opposes the

expansion of the Patriot Act and certain specific

items in it. Dean also wants to repeal a portion of

the Bush tax cuts in order to increase spending on

homeland security.

Howard Dean thinks that the justice system is flawed,

but not because it is racist or targets the poor. He

says it doesn’t work because \"it bends over backwards

to help defendants and is totally unfair to

victims.\"41 In 1994, Dean stated, \"I am one of those

people who believe that 95 percent of the time that

police arrest somebody they are guilty.\" He went on to

say that \"the criminal justice system should deal more

rapidly with people who are arrested, and convicted

criminals should only be given one chance before being

incarcerated for life.\" Dean has also said that it is

acceptable for police to lie to the public during the

course of their investigations.42

In 1997, Dean changed his stance on the death penalty

and declared that he now favored capital punishment.

His reasoning was that, \"Until life without parole

means life without parole, the public is not safe

without a death penalty. Until we have a judicial

system that can adequately protect us, the only thing

that will is the death penalty.\"43

In keeping with Dean’s position that the legal system

is unfairly weighted in favor of defendants, during

his tenure he made major cuts to the Vermont Legal Aid

budget and even refused to accept a federal grant

offered by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to

assist defendants in Vermont who have mental

disabilities.44

Dean also had a penchant for favoring judges who had

little respect for the technicalities of civil

liberties. Several of his judicial appointments are

now awaiting hearings before the U.S. Second Circuit

Court in New York City for violating the first

amendment, right to counsel, double jeopardy and due

process.45

By the time Dean had left office in 2000, Vermont had

experienced its fastest rising rate of youth

incarceration, and according to the Drug Enforcement

Agency, the imprisonment of women had increased by

over 140 percent.46

Although Dean proclaims on the campaign trail that he

is very sensitive to racial issues because he lived in

a Yale dorm with two African-American roommates, his

stance on racism and discrimination in Vermont was, at

best, negligent. In 1999, the Vermont Advisory

Committee to the United States Commission on Civil

Rights released a report concerning racial harassment

in Vermont public schools in which it described

widespread acts of racist violence, including

instances of a 13-year-old African-American boy being

\"beaten with a baseball bat,\" and parents testifying

that, in Vermont (one of the whitest states in the

country), \"Racism is not a problem or an issue; it’s a

way of life.\"47 The report ruled that:

Racial harassment appears pervasive in

and around the state’s public schools.

The elimination of this harassment

is not a priority among school

administrators, school boards, elected

officials and state agencies charged

with civil rights enforcement. In some

instances, administrators and government

leaders have denied the existence of

the problem and do not acknowledge

the need for improvements in overall

race relations within the state.48

Dean didn’t follow through with any of the

recommendations advised in the report, and instead

offered the tepid solution in his next State of the

State speech -- Vermonters simply need to listen to

each other more.

War and occupation

Perhaps the deception runs deepest concerning Dean’s

stance on the war on Iraq and the current occupation.

The evolution of Dean’s position over the past year

reveals a foreign policy conceptualization that is not

fundamentally different from Bush’s, though there are

some tactical disagreements.

Dean is by no means a \"dove.\" He supported the war on

Afghanistan and the first Gulf War in 1991. On

February 21, at the winter meeting of the Democratic

National Committee, Dean drew headlines by asking,

\"What I want to know is why in the world the

Democratic Party leadership is supporting the

president’s unilateral attack on Iraq.\"49 But just

four days prior to this condemnation, Dean sang a

different tune at a Drake University speech:

Now, I am not among those who say that

America should never use its armed forces

unilaterally. In some circumstances, we

have no choice. In Iraq, I would be

prepared to go ahead without further [UN]

Security Council backing if it were clear

the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein

was imminent, and could neither be contained

nor deterred [author’s italics].50

In the end, Dean’s main criticism of the war was that

the U.S. did not work hard enough to get the other

major allies on board -- but he never disagreed with

the general premises of the \"regime change\" dogma.

Presumably, Dean would have fully supported a UN or

NATO-backed war on Iraq.

And he is as hawkish as Bush about the occupation. He

wants to send 30,000 - 40,000 more troops to

Afghanistan and 50,000 troops -- albeit foreign troops

-- to Iraq. Defending a long-term occupation under

U.S. control, Dean warned in the Washington Post,

bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year

proposition. Having elections alone doesn’t guarantee

democracy. You’ve got to have institutions and the

rule of law, and in a country that hasn’t had that in

3,000 years, it’s unlikely to suddenly develop by

having elections and getting the heck out\". [the

constitution] would be American with Iraqi, Arab

characteristics. Iraqis have to play a major role in

drafting this, but the Americans have to have the

final say.51

Beyond Iraq, Dean’s perspective on the Middle East is

outright belligerent. Dean supports Israel’s policy of

targeted assassinations of Palestinians, and supports

the current construction of the apartheid wall that

will separate Israel from Gaza and the West Bank. At

times he claims we need an \"even-handed\" approach to

the conflict, and at others declares that there will

be no negotiations until Palestinians stop the

terrorist attacks. He has never uttered a critical

word in public against Israel’s attacks on the

Palestinians.52

Dean has also shown himself to be a staunch supporter

of Bush’s \"war on terror,\" leveled strong criticism at

Bush for failing to confront other Middle Eastern

nations that he says support terrorism around the

world: \"We must have a president who is willing to

confront the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis and

others who send money to Hamas, and finance a

worldwide network of fundamentalist schools which

teach small children to hate Americans, Christians and

Jews.\"53

Towards an alternative

In 2000, Anthony Pollina ran on the Progressive Party

ticket against Dean in the gubernatorial race getting

close to 10 percent of the vote -- clearly tapping

into a broader feeling among ordinary people that

there was a need for a real alternative to the twin

parties of the status quo. Far from being the

lesser-evil in Vermont, Dean was the evil that many

working and poor people in Vermont felt very tangibly.

Illusions in Dean and the Democrats as a lesser-evil

to the Republicans only served to mute the necessary

struggles that were needed to fight against his

right-wing policies.

In the end, that’s what the debate between the

Democrats and Republicans comes down to. We

automatically lose every time if we accept a framework

for this debate that says we must, to be \"realistic,\"

always vote for the lesser of two evils -- the least

awful of two pro-business candidates.

Thinking that the Democrats are any better for us than

the Republicans is like thinking that the bully who

pushes you down and steals your money is worse than

his friend who helps you up but shares in the bully’s

spoils.

What happens if Dean gets elected, puts all of his

electoral rhetoric aside and pours more money into

fighting terrorism, takes his axe to American social

programs and dispatches more troops to Iraq? Will the

left stand by its \"antiwar\" candidate and refrain from

fighting against cuts at home and war abroad because

\"at least he’s better than Bush?\"

That Dean will prove to be a conservative in office of

is frankly admitted by BusinessWeek, which assessed

Dean’s politics this way:

Dean had a knack for positioning himself and never

lost an election. Those who know him best believe Dean

is moving to the left to boost his chances of winning

the nomination. \"But if he gets the nomination, he'll

run back to the center and be more mainstream,\"

predicts [Vermont Republican businessman Bill] Stenger.

Says Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at

the University of Vermont: \"Howard is not a liberal.

He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican.\"54

If Business Week can see Dean clearly, so should we.

Real change in America has always come when masses of

people take to the streets on their own initiative --

the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation

movement, the labor movement, the Vietnam antiwar

movement. The problem so far is that these kinds of

movements have never coalesced into a lasting

political party that could offer an alternative to the

twin parties of American capitalism. Rather than argue

for a vote for someone who is sure to repay our

support by cutting our living standards and promoting

American power abroad, progressives and socialists

would do better to argue for a break from the

Democrats, focus on building the struggles that make

all real progress possible -- and create the political

alternative that can embody them.

The sooner we break our illusions in the Democrats the

better. If Dean is attempting to transfer his policies

from Vermont to the entire nation, I would propose

that the example of the Progressive Party be

transferred too.

Keith Rosenthal is an activist in Burlington, Vermont.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Gary Younge, \"Winners and losers,\" Guardian (UK),

May 5, 2003.

2 Katha Pollit, \"Selling Dean short,\" Nation,

September 1, 2003.

3 Marty Jezer, \"On Howard Dean,\" CommonDreams.org,

April 24, 2003.

4 Sarah Schweitzer and Tatsha Robertson, \"A meteoric

rise in Vermont politics,\" Boston Globe, September 22,

2003.

5 Laura Blumenfeld, \"Empower Play: The pitch that

works for Dean,\" Washington Post, October 1, 2003.

6 Jake Tapper, \"On the campaign trail with the

un-Bush,\" Salon, February 19, 2003.

7 \"Challenge of tough times,\" Rutland Herald, January

8, 1992.

8 Jack Hoffman, \"Dean: Time for ‘serious cuts’,\"

Rutland Herald, December 29, 1991.

9 All figures come from a collection of articles in

the Rutland Herald: see Christopher Graff, \"Governor

set to cut spending,\" July 11, 1995. Also see, Chris

Graff, \"Dean balancing act enters tough phase,\"

December 17, 1995 and Diane Derby, \"Hundreds protest

governor’s plan to cut Medicaid,\" November 2, 1993.

10 See Jack Hoffman, \"Budget boosts housing; VIDA

funds,\" Rutland Herald, September 9, 1992; Frederick

Bever, \"Dean wants larger cut in state tax,\" Rutland

Herald, December 23, 1998; Jack Hoffman, \"Dean

outlines his case for cutting income tax,\" Rutland

Herald, January 9, 1999.

11 Interview with Anthony Pollina by Democracy In

Action at the Progressive Party offices in Montpelier,

Vermont, July 9, 2002. Anthony Pollina ran for

governor against Dean on the Progressive Party ticket

in 2000. Available at

www.gwu.edu\/~action\/2004\/dean\/dean0702\/pollinaint.html.

12 Elizabeth Mehran and Mark Barabak, \"State residents

see a new Dean in presidential race,\" Los Angeles

Times, July 13, 2003.

13 Tapper, \"On the campaign trail.\"

14 John Dillon, \"Dean to feel pressure from left at

convention,\" Rutland Herald, May 10, 1992.

15 Hoffman, \"Dean: Time for ‘serious’ cuts.\"

16 Miles Benson, \"And politicians wonder why they

aren’t trusted,\" Newhouse News Service, March 5, 1995.

17 Bryan Pfeiffer, \"Advocates deride Dean,\" Rutland

Herald, July 11, 1995.

18 Ibid.

19 Diane Derby, \"Dean sorry for remarks on welfare,\"

Rutland Herald, January 23, 1993.

20 Robert Piasecki, \"Hunger: A growing problem,\"

Rutland Herald, June 16, 1994.

21 \"Who’s the real Howard Dean,\" BusinessWeek, August

11, 2003, p. 58.

22 Ibid.

23 Economic Policy Institute, from U.S. Census, Bureau

of Labor Statistics data, available online at

www.bls.gov.

24 \"The cool passion of Dr. Dean,\" Time, August 11,

2003.

25 Tracy Schmaler, \"Pollina criticizes Dean for a lack

of college funding,\" Rutland Herald, September 28,

2000.

26 \"Dean outlines his strategy for providing health

care,\" Rutland Herald, February 19, 1991.

27 \"Challenge of tough times.\"

28 See \"Advocates deride Dean.\"

29 See \"Democratic presidential candidates continue to

reinforce pro-abortion positions,\" National Right to

Life News, June 2003.

30 Mark Steyn, \"Democrats are turning to…this guy?\"

Chicago Sun Times, July 6, 2003.

31 From an interview conducted by the author on

October 4, 2003.

32 Schmaler, \"Pollina criticizes Dean.\"

33 See www.deanforamerica.org.

34 Michael Colby, \"The Man from Vermont is not Green

(he’s not even a liberal),\" available online at

www.Counterpunch.org, February 22, 2003.

35 Lisa Wangsness, \"Dean green on trail but Vermont

knows better,\" Concord Monitor, August 22, 2003.

36 David Halbfinger, \"National Briefing: Kerry attacks

Dean for Bush pact,\" New York Times, October 2, 2003.

37 Wangsness, \"Dean green on trail.\"

38 John Dillon, \"Dean and Pollina pitch ‘green’

records,\" Rutland Herald, March 19, 2000.

39 Ibid.

40 David Gram, \"Dean’s comments on civil liberties

cause alarm,\" Rutland Herald, September 14, 2001.

41 Jack Hoffman, \"Dean explains philosophy, plans,\"

Rutland Herald, August 21, 1991.

42 Wilson Ring, \"Governor wants to get tougher with

criminals,\" Associated Press, December 10, 1994.

43 Diane Derby, \"Dean reignites talk of death

penalty,\" Rutland Herald, November 2, 1997.

44 Diane Derby, \"Dean rejects federal grant,\" Rutland

Herald, May 10, 1999.

45 Josh Frank, \"Howard Dean’s constitutional hang-up:

Dean would rather execute an innocent man, than let a

guilty one walk free,\" available online at

www.Counterpunch.org, August 12, 2003.

46 Anthony Pollina, from an interview conducted by the

author on October 6, 2003.

47 \"Racial Harassment in Vermont Public Schools,\"

Vermont Advisory Committee to the United States

Commission on Civil Rights, February 1999, p. 1.

48 Ibid., p. iii.

49 Available at www.deanforamerica.org.

50 \"Defending American values -- protecting America’s

Interests,\" Drake University, Iowa, February 17, 2003,

available online at www.deanforamerica.org.

51 Fred Hiatt, \"Defining Dean,\" Washington Post,

August 25, 2003.

52 See James D. Besser’s interview with Howard Dean,

Jewish Week, October 8, 2003.

53 \"Restoring American leadership: A new direction for

American foreign policy,\" speech before the Council on

Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2003,

available online at www.deanforamerica.org.

54 William C. Symonds, \"Who’s the real Howard Dean,\"

BusinessWeek, August 11, 2003, pp. 59.

<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.isreview.org\/issues\/32\/dean.shtml","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":""Howard is not a liberal. He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican."","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/12\/97981.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":97982,"heading":"Why the hissy fit?","article":"It's not like Dean's got a chance.","author":"nonanarchist1317","parent_id":97981,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-12-19 18:25:48","modified":"2003-12-19 18:25:48","fileurl":""},{"id":98018,"heading":"Dean is dead on arrival","article":"Dean hasn't a chance against George W. Bush. He's a sacraficial lamb in an election year that the Democrats will choose to forfeit.\r\n\r\nThey're going to keep their powder dry and wait until 2008 to run their serious candidate, the bitch, Hillary.\r\n\r\nThat's also going to be a no-hoper because the voters are catching on. We could see that in the recent California governatorial election.\r\n","author":"Adult Supervisor","parent_id":97981,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-12-19 23:17:26","modified":"2003-12-19 23:17:26","fileurl":""}]}