Candidates speak ... are you listening

I was interested to see coverage of the aldermanic debates this morning. Nine of the 10 candidates were available, with the 10th having to attend to an emergency. Discussion was wide-ranging.

The questions, submitted by the Creative Economy group, practically begged the candidates to articulate their visions for the future of the city, so I guess it's predictable that the word "vision" appeared in the lead and the headline. For the record, the word itself came up once that I noticed, 88.5 minutes into a 90-minute debate, when Sean Sargeant answered the final question.

I think the debate worked in that at the end of 90 minutes, I had a clear view of what the candidates stood for without hearing the standard platitudes. And maybe the word "vision" is one of those platitudes, but there's a clear division between the candidates on whether we need to pull our horns in and hope a rising tide raises our boat along with everybody else's, or push the city of Rutland as a great place to live and work. And there's a clear division in terms of how the board of aldermen can best achieve that.

It's impossible to summarize a 90-minute debate in an article or a blog post, but I encourage voters to look at the video on PEG-TV's website. They also have candidate statements up, and we'll be publishing a grid of answers on some more basic questions in tomorrow's paper.

First Amendment court case

An important decision on maintaining the ability of news media to report on court cases, from the First Amendment Center. It defends the right to report fairly and accurately on court proceedings, including initial filings, without fear of a libel action.

Transfixed by Egypt

I took a 400-level modern Chinese politics class in college, under one of the "top" China watchers, the year before he moved to a tenure-track position at a Big Eastern School (McGill?) My term paper was an analysis of whether the Chinese army would crack down on students pushing for democracy. The prof. made it clear that he didn't believe they would, so that's what I wrote, even though I wasn't 100 % convinced.

At the time, I was up enough on the subject so I knew who the "hard line" generals were as opposed to the "reformers." What I didn't know and nobody seemed to notice was that the Central Committee had moved a division led by a reformer out of the capital to the Vietnamese border for "training," and had moved in a division led by a hard-liner.

That summer was Tiananmen Square.

That lesson learned, I'm watching the Egyptian tanks with concern, wondering who the hard-liners are in their army.

For those of you who have been paying attention to the news coverage and missing the bloviation, here's a handy wrap-up of the fringe view of events in Egypt, courtesy the Guardian.