The Unknown Aristocrat

So Sirota...

if you're so anti-aristocrat, why'd you work for Ned Lamont?

It's OK to be an aristocrat if you get money from them?  It's OK because he made his positions known to you?  It's OK because you like Lamont but don't know anything about Bennet?  Riiight...

In other words, you don't have a problem with aristocrats, you have a problem with aristocrats that you don't work for.

I still say all this is based on you being born in New Haven and not getting into Yale after High School...  :)

Michael Bennet is the new Abraham Lincoln.
- Sharon Hanson

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by: Dabee47 @ Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 17:40:09 PM CST

Well said....

Lamont had also never ran for office prior to seeking the Senate Seat  from Connecticut which Sirota asserts should be a key qualification.

Discounting an individual for being rich or having rich friends/business contacts is just as bad as discounting someone based on being poor or having poor friends/business partners.

Having said that, I am not ready to offer a ringing endorsement of Bennett either.  I want to know his position on issues and then I'll decide if I will support him in two years. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt based on the fact that I trust Bill Ritter and his judgement.

"But when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."  Glenn Beck  

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by: Arvadonian @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 09:11:22 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Greenwich Conn City Council

Lamont served two terms on the City Council of Greenwich Conn.

I don't think that's much of a qualification but for the sake of accuracy we should mention that service.  

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by: Steve Balboni @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 09:30:24 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Greenwich City Councilman is better than...

...being merely an aryan from Darien.

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by: Jambalaya @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 09:51:11 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Like having been the mayor of Wasilla

Amazon tax? Bad Idea!

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by: DavidThi808 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 10:33:01 AM CST

[ Parent ]

The Mayor of Wasilla

Went on to run and win a Statewide election against a corrupt member of her own party.

She's also worked a day in her life, unlike creepy Ned Lamont.


"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  

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by: Laughing Boy @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 10:46:31 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Running a business doesn't count as working?

I knew you were a secret syndicalist!

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by: sxp151 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 17:16:36 PM CST

[ Parent ]

SHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Running a business doesn't count as working?

It might, but it also makes you evil, and 'the man'.

At least that's what I've learned on Pols.  Come on, you don't think Lamont's creepy?

"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  

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by: Laughing Boy @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 21:53:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

No comment on "creepy"

But Lamont has worked for a living.

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by: sxp151 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 23:59:35 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Appointment vs. election

Sirota's whole post was about the appointment of an aristocrat who's views were not known. Lamont ran in an election where he stated his views on all the issues of the campaign. Like the individuals or not, that is the difference in the situations and Sirota made that very clear.

"America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it."--Paul Krugman

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by: gaf @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 11:41:10 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Sirota's wackier than I thought

The guy's great at marshaling facts and statistics that support his point of view, but then he doesn't know what to do with them.

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by: Another skeptic @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 12:54:12 PM CST

[ Parent ]

As I noted

in a previous comment during my last appearance posting a comment on Colorado Pols, Bennet's Obama-centrist positions on just about anything shouldn't come as a surprise, as he made it to the finish line for secretary of education.

As i further noted the last time someone asked me my opinion, in response I replied that I would say the same thing I said the last time I gave my opinion. "RedGreen," the inquirer asked me, "thank you for sharing that." I could only nod in return, much as I have done previously in earlier instances when I was called upon to assent to unsought praise.

Why, just the other day, several interested parties e-mailed me wondering what I thought about the Bennet news. I'll say now what I said then: "Time will tell, my friends, as I've said many times, in both national and local blog settings."

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by: RedGreen @ Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 19:34:54 PM CST

Does anyone know how to remove a Vodka Press from a keyboard?

Someone seems to have spit-sprayed his/her cocktail all over my keyboard...perhaps while reading RedGreen's comment and laughing out loud (through no fault of his/her own).

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by: Jambalaya @ Sun Jan 04, 2009 at 19:48:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Someday Jambalaya will say something positive and...

Amazon tax? Bad Idea!

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by: DavidThi808 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 00:08:53 AM CST

[ Parent ]

and ...

we'll all be the poorer for it. There are enough sycophantic Pollyanas on this blog.

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by: RedGreen @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 00:12:06 AM CST

[ Parent ]

hater in da'house

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by: Jambalaya @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 09:47:44 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It's still a mystery to me

Bennett's appointment that is.

I'm all for waiting and seeing how he does and what his positions are, BUT.....

Our crazy conservatives have taken this with glee, but for the wrong reasons.  Most people running for higher office turn over their campaigns pretty much to alleged experts, so that's not the issue.

Unless Ritter pulls a rabbit out of his hat, come reelection time he will be noted for failure to pass health care reform and this.  Not that Bennett is a bad decision, it is a weird decision.  The electorate does not like weird decisions.  

How much support will he get from his own team?  The Romos', Mutters, the lege members?  The lesson is clear:  Do what you will to be effective, but don't count on me recognizing that.

For those reasons, a bad, bad choice.  

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." -Bertrand Russell

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by: parsingreality @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 09:23:19 AM CST

I'll wait with you...

We're on day #4, still with no sign about Bennet's policy positions.

"I have come to the conclusion that the making of laws is like the making of sausages-the less you know about the process the more you respect the result."  -- Anonymous IL State Rep. circa 1878

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by: Phoenix Rising @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 12:49:11 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'll wait another cupla hours.......... :)

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." -Bertrand Russell

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by: parsingreality @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 13:22:39 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Kos parroted Sirota's

earlier "War and Peace" post on Bennet. Considering the level of groupthink that pervades Daily Kos, I found the level of pushback from readers pretty interesting.  (Markos really got his ass kicked.)

Here are some of the (hilariou) comments:

http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...
http://www.dailykos.com/commen...

And I'll paste this one, since I think it nails Sirota's mindset pretty well too:

Why can't Kos understand the difference
between attacking a process and attacking the people selected via that process?

As long as Kos continues to do the latter, he loses credibility on the former.

It seems like many on the left aren't buying the faux-populist bellowing from across the primeval swamp.  

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!" - Nietzsche  

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by: twas brillig @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 10:53:37 AM CST

Oh, that WAS fun to read.

Thank you for that! :)

--From a "real dick."
by: JO

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by: Middle of the Road @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 20:53:47 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Reading Sirota saps my strength.

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by: PERA hopeful @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 11:55:44 AM CST

Mr. Sirota, if your going to make these kind of accusations the least you can do is cite to some evidence

Your statement that it is clear Mr. Bennet was picked because of his ties to "money, Establishment power and Beltway insiders" remains merely an unsubstantiated assertion at this point. Please cite some evidence.

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by: Republican 36 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 12:14:28 PM CST

It helps when you read the post

It helps when you read the post and read the links included in the post...you know, like this one in the first sentence.

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by: davidsirota @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 13:22:53 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Nah...

I agree.  Your opinion is that he's aristocratic, but you present it as fact.

Comparing him to Kennedy is a total canard.  She's a pure socialite, a party fixture that didn't even vote half the time she was eligible to.

Bennet took on perhaps the most thankless job in the City of Denver, and swam upstream trying to make many needed changes.

Just look at what he went through to close a high school that had graduated something like 18 students the year before, and has now rebuilt to be much stronger.

You're just pissed because Bennet isn't enough of a total wacko for you.

Hey - aren't you SYNDICATED?

Why are you slumming around here?

"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  

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by: Laughing Boy @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 14:11:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Hey LB

I thought I had carefully educated you about DPS and Bennet and yet here you go again.  

Bennet took on perhaps the most thankless job in the City of Denver, and swam upstream trying to make many needed changes.

Just look at what he went through to close a high school that had graduated something like 18 students the year before, and has now rebuilt to be much stronger.

Swam upstream against whom???  Who opposed him?  He had a rubberstamp BOE.  What did he go through  to close a high school???   He held a public meeting with the kids and their parents and talked about some changes he wanted to make. This was on a Saturday.  The following Thursday, while the kids were coming down the stairs from the upstairs cafeteria where they had been waiting to speak at a public hearing, the BOE voted to close the school.  By the time the kids reached the board room, their school was gone.  Brave man.  Every student was tossed out. None were eligible to return when Manual reopened a year later with just a freshman class.....Manual is not doing that well under the new regime...either..

She's a pure socialite, a party fixture that didn't even vote half the time she was eligible
to.

She is a recluse, if anything, not a socialite, at all.  She's a lawyer, she written two books on the Constitution, and has worked with the New York Public School system to raise money and promote change.  She has more experience with public education than your new superhero
Bennet.

Where is your evidence on anything you cited???

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by: dwyer @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 20:03:47 PM CST

[ Parent ]

As for the not voting

I don't have an explanation for that....I know the woman buried a mother and a brother and I wonder what the dates of the nonvoting coincided with...that was my first thought....

Maybe there was a time when she hated politics...I don't know.

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by: dwyer @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 20:09:23 PM CST

[ Parent ]

THat would make sense on the voting.

Dwyer, do you think Manual didn't deserve to be shuttered and rebuilt?

What kind of process would you have preferred Bennet to go through?

"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  

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by: Laughing Boy @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 22:06:27 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Let me talk about Manual

The problems at Manual High School in 2006 were the cumulation of mistakes made first by DPS in the nineties, and in conjunction with the Gates Foundation from 2000, forward.  The kids were guinea pigs.

There should have been:
1) A careful review of what went wrong.
2) A plan, FIRST, to support and provide remediation to the kids who had been guinea pigs. Probably, DPS should have made an attempt to have Gates fund that effort.
3) If a decision was pending to close Manual, then the BOE or the Bennet should have had a transition plan for each and every kid at Manual, before considering the decision to close the school.

Manual High School is a brick building. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is a brick building with administration,
staff and students which are totally distinct from what was
there in 2006.  People talk about Manual as if it were
some kind of living thing or there was some kind of
continuity between 2006 and 2008.  There isn't. The only thing the same is the name.

Buildings don't "deserve" anything.  kids "deserve" to be treated fairly by the people paid to make sure that happens.

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by: dwyer @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 23:07:05 PM CST

[ Parent ]

More on Manual

What Bill Gates and the Foundation proposed, with the full support of the DPS BOE, was to divide Manual into three different schools, because the Foundation was experimenting with its pet idea that small schools are better.  The three schools in one building were divided along ethnic and racial lines.  

The plan did not boost achievement. There were all kinds of problems.
By 2006, the school for the Hispanic kids had been rated unsatisfactory by the state two years in a row and was coming up on its third unsatisfactory.  This meant under NCLB, the state of Colorado would be taking over that school.

DPS moves heaven and earth to keep its schools from being taken over by the state, because it loses the revenue..the $6000 or so per pupil which the state gives the district.  

Bruce Randolph was the last school in danger of being taken over because of coming up on a third unsatisfactory.  What DPS did with that school, and this was on Bennet's watch, was to reconfigure it.  It went from
a middle school to a 6-12 .  The state finally agreed that
that change was significant enough to avoid a takeover.

If the state had taken over one of Manual schools, it would have been embarrassing for Gates; awkward for the  BOE and DPS in an election year, and DPS would have lost the revenue.  Barbara O'Brien, who was with the Children's Campaign, a lobbying organization for agencies which serve children, supported the Gates plan at Manual.  She wound up on Ritter's ticket.  For the dems, all around, getting rid of Manual was a good political move. Because the kids were dispensed throughout the system, DPS did not lose revenue.....however, how many actually stayed in DPS and stayed after the "Count Day," I don't know.  And, of course, Bennet got credit for "being brave."  That profile in the New Yorker was written by a friend of his.

The whole think stunk to high heaven.

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by: dwyer @ Tue Jan 06, 2009 at 06:00:30 AM CST

[ Parent ]

You still haven't cited one piece of evidence to support your assertions.

For example name the "money" people and the "Establishment power," as well as the "Beltway insiders" who engineered this decision.  You sound more like the members of the old John Birch Society who always accused American politicians of being controlled by the communist conspiracy even though they couldn't name or cite any proof one existed or who were the controlling members.

Your thread boils down to nothing more than an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.  

Governor Ritter was motivated by the fact he believes Mr. Bennet will make the best senator out of all of the applicants. You certainly don't have to agree, but ascribing some unsubstantiated conspiracy as the basis of this selection is pointless unless you can name names and specific events to support it.

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by: Republican 36 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 14:26:24 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Shorter Sirota: "Disprove my negative premise!"

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!" - Nietzsche  

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by: twas brillig @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 16:57:51 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Shorter Sirota: "Disprove my negative premise!"

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!" - Nietzsche  

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by: twas brillig @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 16:57:51 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm feeling contrarian

This senate appointment is for two years and then the voters get to reject or reelect.  I can't see a better time to put a non-politician in the seat.  What's the harm?  There're lots of senators.

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by: Emma Anne @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 14:37:58 PM CST

Here's the harm: DSCC will have to spend $5 million

on a race that shouldn't be this competitive.

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by: bobster1 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 22:25:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Get over it!

Despite my respect for some of those whom Ritter passed over, Bennet's the guy.  And to assume that he's some sort of a neocon in disguise, a tool of the corporatist establishment blah blah blah is simply ludicrous. I've never met him, but I knew his Dad pretty well-went to college with him. Michael went to the same place-Wesleyan, which was then, and is now, the most liberal of the liberal-far further to the left than Harvard.  By all accounts, he's a sensible, moderate guy.  And remember, this wasn't an election-it was Ritter's call.

We'll see, two years hence, whether it was a good one-but if the son has anything like his father's smarts, he'll do just fine. Doug finished a distinguished career as president of Wesleyan, a job which he performed with great distinction.

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by: H-Dog @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 16:46:23 PM CST

Boolah! Boolah! Sis boom ba!

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by: dwyer @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 20:07:11 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Dad's credentials

No question Bennet grew up as a Washington insider.  That can be good when it comes to getting things done in Washington -- but he just seems a bit too "back east" by Colorado standards.  Water, land management, resource extraction, protection of natural areas, etc.  Salazar and now Udall understood those issues here.  Does Mike?

Below is a bio on his dad (Doug) from an article he wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations in Fall, 1977.  Followed by part of the current Wikipedia article about him.

Douglas J. Bennet, Jr. has been Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations since March 1977. From 1969 to 1977, he was successively Administrative Assistant to Senators Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri) and Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut), and the first Staff Director of the Senate Committee on the Budget. Between 1963 and 1969, he served in the executive branch as a staff member of the AID mission in New Delhi, Special Assistant to Ambassador Chester Bowles at that post, and Assistant to Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

By the way, the current Wikipedia article on ol' dad is a little less flattering:

Born in Orange, New Jersey, Bennet grew up in Lyme, Connecticut, and attended the local public schools. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan in 1959, an M.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1960, and a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1968. In 1994, he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Wesleyan. In 2008, he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Trinity College.

On May 4, 2006, Bennet announced that he would step down as President following the 2006-2007 academic year. The last several years of his presidency were mired in conflict, with a large student movement feeling that President Bennet's fund raising priorities directly conflicted with the interests and needs of the student body, and the University's mission of education. Notably, this came to a head in December 2004, when hundreds of students surrounded the small campus administrative building South College, where President Bennet's office is located, demanding that he address and prioritize student concerns.

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by: Ranger77 @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 22:36:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Dadio evidently dodged the draft

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by: dwyer @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 23:11:10 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Wouldn't that make him

a Republican?

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by: RedGreen @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 23:51:01 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Draft dodger?

A little history: draft deferments were available to anyone who attended college in those halcyon days of the late 50's.  The Vietnam war draft didn't really begin until 1964-65, by which time Doug Bennet was 26, at which age he wouldn't have been drafted in any case.

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by: H-Dog @ Tue Jan 06, 2009 at 11:27:50 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Wait!!!

Is this Bennet?

"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"  

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by: Laughing Boy @ Mon Jan 05, 2009 at 23:09:05 PM CST