Monthly Archives: May 2016

Welp, the mouse died.

2 Replies

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the marijuana debate entitled “They labored mightily and brought forth a mouse.”

Turned out I was overly optimistic, because the mouse didn’t make it.

No legalization. No grow-your-own. And as for the House’s idea of a study commission (thx to Seven Days’ Terri Hallenbeck, who never would’ve gotten this into the Free Press):

“Fuck the commission,” a frustrated Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears (D-Bennington) said after his effort to create a public advisory vote failed. “The commission was unnecessary.”

Agreed. Especially since the commission would have apparently been funded with money diverted from opioid treatment. Sheesh.

The only good thing about this: the House’s brilliant idea of a new saliva test for buzzed driving also failed. That’s the test with no clear scientific basis, according to a state-sponsored study.

Continue reading →

Phil Scott finds his beau ideal

10 Replies

Huh boy.

Vermont’s Prince In Waiting, Phil Scott, has revealed his choice for President. And it nicely encapsulates my cynical vision of his prospective governorship. VTDigger’s Mark Johnson:

Scott, who declared he would not vote for Trump, revealed later Thursday he has decided to write in former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas as his presidential choice in the November election.

“He’d make a great president,” Scott said about the four-term governor.

Ah. Jim Douglas. How… predictable.

Men of good will may disagree about the qualities of the former four-term governor. But it takes an awfully limited definition of greatness to see him as potentially a “great president.”

If you disagree, please tell me: Jim Douglas was governor for eight years. What is his legacy? His signature accomplishments? Where did he leave his stamp?

Continue reading →

Dept. of Unwarranted Hubris, EB-5 Division

3 Replies

I don’t know what it would take for Patricia Moulton to realize that the jig is up, that business as usual in the EB-5 program simply won’t cut it anymore. But clearly, a major scandal isn’t enough.

The chief of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development put in an eppearance Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, where she steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with Vermont’s EB-5 program. According to VTDigger, one lawmaker characterized her testimony as “unrepentant.” And Sen. Kevin Mullin, not exactly an outside-the-box thinker, said Moulton “kind of scared me today because she was so much of a cheerleader.”

Okay, let’s look at the record. Moulton, following in the footsteps of her predecessor Lawrence Miller and his predecessors in the Douglas Administration, allowed horribly lax oversight of EB-5 projects, thus enabling the (cough, allegedly) fraudulent Jay Peak scheme to proceed for most of a decade. The last two people in charge of overseeing EB-5 left the agency to take jobs with EB-5 developers. The Shumlin administration, belatedly, realized that ACCD was failing to do the job and transferred regulatory oversight to the Department of Financial Regulation.

After all that, the feds raid Jay Peak, haul off the records and computers and change the locks, and issue a massive indictment of Bill Stenger, Ariel Quiros and company, which is a tacit indictment of Vermont’s dereliction of duty.

And now comes Patricia Moulton saying “as secretary of ACCD, my job, absolutely, is to be a cheerleader for the [EB-5] regional center.”

Amazing. How tone-deaf can you be?

Continue reading →

Profiles in Porridge

1 Reply

This week has turned into a festival of schadenfreude for liberals, as we watch Republicans of all stripes coming to grips with their putative nominee, Donald Trump. The reactions can be broken down into three categories, none terribly edifying.

— Resignation and acceptance. Many Republicans and conservative commentators who staunchly opposed The Donald are now busily explaining why he’s really not that bad.

Some of these people can’t bear to utter the man’s name; they simply say they will support “the Republican nominee,” whoever that is.

— Phony re-evaluation. These folks, like the insufferable Joe Scarborough, say they will decide based on how The Donald comports himself from now on. As if he didn’t have a lifelong record of being a self-entitled woman-hating narcissist, and a year-long record of conduct unbecoming a major-party nominee.

— Denial. Some insist they will never vote for The Donald, although most refuse to say what they might do instead. A few are opting for Hillary Clinton, but most are temporizing. Which begs the question, is Clinton really worse than Donald Trump by any rational metric?

Here in Vermont, we have one gubernatorial candidate (Bruce Lisman) in category two, and one (Phil Scott) in category three.

Not that Republicans have any good options, but neither man is covering himself in glory.

Continue reading →

Shoot the Messenger

2 Replies

As its final months drag onward, the Shumlin administration is remaining true to one of its core principles: Shoot the messenger. We have two prime examples of this time-tested strategery today: a top state official slams a respected media outlet, a move that has backfired big-time in the past; and the administration puts a big fat price tag on transparency.

First, Lawrence Miller, Vermont Health Connect czar, has beef with VTDigger.

[Miller] testified Wednesday in the House and challenged the veracity of a VTDigger story that said the state has been unhappy with its current Vermont Health Connect contractor and is negotiating with another company.

… [Miller said] that any frustration he expressed in emails was a normal part of negotiations.

Digger’s earlier story had quoted emails from a state official expressing dissatisfaction with VHC contractor Optum. Which would be noteworthy, since Optum was supposedly the savior of Vermont Health Connect. Miller pooh-poohed the story’s assertion, saying that a certain amount of “friction” is a normal part of the process.

Maybe that’s true, but here’s the problem. This is the same “Lawrence Miller” who was in charge of the Agency for Commerce and Community Development when it was happily attempting to both promote and regulate the ill-fated EB-5 program. He headed ACCD from 2011 to 2014, when he was tasked with cleaning up the Vermont Health Connect mess.

In other words, Miller has been hip-deep in two of the Shumlin administration’s signature disasters. Is it possible he negotiated Shumlin’s original land deal with jerry Dodge?

Continue reading →

Adventures in Unfortunate Graphic Design

6 Replies

Generally speaking, Sue Minter’s gubernatorial effort has taken on a sharper edge since Molly Ritner came on board as campaign manager. They’re quick on the draw with statements on the issues, they’ve got Minter out and about quite a bit. And they came up with a nice way to spotlight a liberal jobs agenda: the Making Vermont Work Tour.

Arguably derivative of Pihl Scott’s Vermont Jobs Tour, but a good way to push back on Republican claims that Democrats are job-killers.

However… this logo.

MinterLogo

I take one look at that, and I see the bus about to go off a cliff.

 

Galbraith’s strange bedfellow

1 Reply

The self-described progressive choice for Governor, Peter Galbraith, took a trip inside the Beltway Monday night to attend a megadollar fundraiser for his gubernatorial campaign.

As reported by Seven Days’ Paul Heintz, the top ticket price for the fete was $4,000, although you could get your foot in the door for a measly $250.

The mere fact of a DC fundraiser doesn’t bother me overmuch, although (as Heintz pointed out) it’s a bit ironic for a guy who’s made such a stink about the excessive influence of money in politics. He claims the mantle of Bernie Sanders, but he’s fundraising like Jeb Bush. Still, you’ve got to play the game by the rules as they stand, even if you’d like to see them changed. And I’m sure Galbraith has plenty of generous friends in our nation’s capital.

No, something else stood out for me.

Continue reading →

They labored mightily and brought forth a mouse

5 Replies

Rarely have I felt so ambivalent about being right.

Last Friday, in my inaugural appearance on Vermont PBS’ “Vermont This Week,” host Mark Johnson asked the panel to predict the outcome of the marijuana debate in the House — a big change, a little change, or nothing at all.

The three of us all agreed on “little,” but I put my answer in two-word form: “Study commission.”

Take it away, distinguished lawmakers…

In the end, the chamber barely agreed to create a commission to study legalization. With the legislative session expected to end this week, marijuana legalization supporters conceded they’ve run out of time to try for more.

Hip, hip, hooray. Let’s hear it for representative democracy. The study commission: the Legislature’s favorite decision-avoidance technique.

Continue reading →

Phil Scott needs a good financial advisor

9 Replies

Our Lieutenant Governor and putative gubernatorial front-runner, Phil Scott, released his financials on Monday. He’s worth three million dollars and some change.

Which sounds like a lot, but then you get to the details. The vast majority of his wealth — more than 80 percent of it — consists of his half-share in DuBois Construction, the family contracting firm that does a lot of business with the state of Vermont.

Now I understand why he’s been so reluctant to part ways with DuBois, even at risk of ethical entanglements: that firm IS his financial lifeline. Which, if he were less than a thoroughly honest man, would provide ample temptation to stack the deck in favor of DuBois when state contracts go out for bid.

Might be nice to have an Ethics Commission to handle such things, but c’est la vie.

I’m not usually too big on candidates’ financials; releasing them is a formality, and it’s extremely rare that they contain any surprises. But there was one number that stuck out like a sore thumb: his retirement and savings accounts add up to $192,290.

A hundred and ninety thousand dollars, any financial advisor will tell you, is barely a start toward a comfortable retirement. In fact, it’s grossly inadequate for a man in his late 50s.

Continue reading →

You can’t blame the ethics issue on the media

3 Replies

Jeanette White never wanted ethics reform.

The Putney Democrat and chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee made that clear, over and over again. And she blamed a tried-and-true scapegoat for bringing it up:

The issue of ethics and the lack of an ethics commission has been of great interest over the last year or so to the media. How many Vermonters are passionate about the issue is not clear…

Which was obvious bulldookie at the time. But now I’ve got evidence from an unexpected source.

Researchers at Illinois State University have been involved in a lengthy study of corruption in state politics. They took an unusual approach: seeking the perceptions of reporters covering state politics and corruption issues. They reasoned that corruption cases are handled differently in different states, so rates of indictment and conviction might be grossly misleading. Just because, for instance, New York has pursued several high-profile cases doesn’t mean its politics are more corrupt than, say, New Jersey’s. Perception-based studies have their own limitations, but it’s a different way to evaluate what’s going on.

Turns out that in Vermont, reporters see the state as fundamentally clean, untainted by political sleaze. Vermont ranked near the top in most categories, and overall was one of the “cleanest” states in the country in the eyes of our own allegedly cynical media corps.

Continue reading →