Author Archives: John S. Walters

Unknown's avatar

About John S. Walters

Writer, editor, sometime radio personality, author of "Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives."

The Good Senator from ALEC

1 Reply

An unknown number of Vermont Republican state lawmakers are affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative organization that promotes model legislation for statehouses across the country.  The most recent estimate came from State Rep. Bob Helm (R-Fair Haven), ALEC’s state chair, who figured there were about 20 Vermont lawmakers on the ALEC rolls.

Which is about one-third of all Republicans in the Statehouse.

But of all those 20-odd people, there’s one who has benefited from ALEC’s largesse more than any other Vermonter. And you probably wouldn’t be able to guess who it is.

Kevin Mullin, Republican from Rutland, not especially known for being a hardliner. Indeed, like a beige house with beige trim, his blandness is his most distinguishing characteristic. Well, that and being Norm McAllister’s clueless roomie.

(The Rutland area seems to be a hive of ALEC activity. In addition to Mullin and Helm, Sen. Peg Flory is also on the ALEC list, as are a couple of former Rutland-area lawmakers. Is it something in the water?)

We can’t tell exactly how much Mullin has dipped his snout into the ALEC trough because for the past several years, the group has refused to release information about its members, its “scholarships” and free travel to ALEC meetings and conferences, usually held at top-flight hotels and resorts.

See, it became too embarrassing to its beneficiaries.

But the figures are still out there for 2009 and before. And boy howdy, has Sen. Mullin cashed in.

Continue reading →

Bernie FTW (Update: Also Pat)

Leave a reply

Bernie Sanders is definitely in it to win it, on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Sue Minter. He spent three days last weekend appearing at campaign rallies for the Democratic ticket, and now he’s doing the same this weekend. (Schedule below.) Plus, earlier this week, he sent out a fundraising email blast to his millions of supporters, asking them to donate to the Minter campaign.

He may have waited a long time to endorse Minter and other Vermont Dems, but he’s doing everything he can to make up for lost time.

The Bernie/Dem relationship has always been a bit of an eggshell walk, neither side completely trusting the other. Generally speaking, the Dems don’t assume he will help; anything he offers is considered a bonus. The Dems may have been less hopeful than usual this year because Governor Shumlin and Senator Leahy came out early for Hillary Clinton.

So Bernie’s dive into the deep end of the pool is a welcome development. The rallies are driving media coverage and enthusiasm in the Dem/Prog base. And the fundraising?

Continue reading →

Two bites of the apple

1 Reply

The Progressive Party doesn’t have much of a ticket this year. Many of its candidates are running as Democrats because they stand a better chance of winning. Smart tactics in the short term, and something of a worry for Dems. They’re seeing previously “safe” seats peeled off by the Progs, potentially weakening their legislative caucuses.

This year, we have a new twist on that technique: Progressives running as Democrats, losing the primary, and then refiling as Progs for the same contest.

There are four such candidates (that I know of), all running for the House, and all in “safe” Democratic districts. The Two-Biters:

— Jill Charbonneau, Addison-1

— Steve May, Chittenden-1

— Marci Young, Lamoille-Washington

— Carl Etnier, Washington-5

This is of direct interest to me, because I live in one of those districts.

Each person must make up their own mind. Me personally, I’m disinclined to vote for a Two-Biter.

Continue reading →

Here’s how you report a wind story

1 Reply

As one of my correspondents put it, “It’s a sad day when the Chester Telegraph is outperforming VTDigger.”

But it’s true. While Digger posted a slanted, incomplete story about the American Bird Conservancy weighing in on the Stiles Brook wind farm, the Chester Telegraph’s piece is a model of good journalism. It explored the story beyond the press release, it discovered nuances, identified relevant expertise, and fairly represented both sides of the story.

VTDigger’s Mike Faher, you may recall, uncritically reported on the American Bird Conservancy’s criticism of the Stiles Brook plan, giving weight to the wind farm’s potential impact on the threatened Bicknell’s Thrush. ABC’s Michael Hutchins was given loads of space to air his concerns — and only at the end of the article did Faher reveal that Hutchins didn’t actually know anything about Stiles Brook.

By contrast, the Telegraph’s Cynthia Prairie dug into the background of ABC’s involvement, and actually contacted a Vermont-based organization that’s been studying the Bicknell’s Thrush for a quarter century: the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.

Continue reading →

When the truth isn’t truthy enough

4 Replies

The Phil Scott and Sue Minter campaigns are in full froth over alleged negative advertising. Each accuses the other of willful distortion: Team Scott is upset over ads questioning his pro-choice credentials; the Scott campaign, meanwhile, is slammed for tying Minter to a proposed carbon tax.

Funny thing is, they’re both right on both counts. The attacks are based in fact, but are designed to mislead.

The pro-choice ads were produced by the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund. They cite two pieces of evidence that call Scott’s abortion stance into question. The first: his past support for some restrictions on access to abortion. The second: the fact that Right to Life Vermont “recommended” Scott.

Both are accurate. But still misleading.

Second point first. RTL did not endorse Scott, but it did “recommend” him as, basically, the best of an inadequate lot. RTL doesn’t particularly like Scott, and they’d much prefer a harder-line candidate, but he was, in RTL’s view, the least bad option.

Continue reading →

What if Phil Scott loses?

7 Replies

In my second-most-recent post, I listed all the bad news visited upon Vermont Republicans over the past few days. I ended by asking “What if Phil Scott loses?”

I’ll get to that question, but in the meantime, WCAX released its own poll showing Scott with a seven-point lead over Sue Minter, which has triggered much rejoicing Chez Phil.

In his lede, WCAX’s usually reliable Kyle Midura made an unwarranted inference: since the VPR Poll had shown a statistical dead heat, the TV poll shows that Scott is “pulling ahead.”

Which, c’mon now. These are two polls from different organizations with possibly differing methodologies. (We don’t know because WCAX hasn’t released any details. VPR has disclosed all of that.) Drawing that direct a line between the two polls is misleading at best.

What we have are two data points. One (VPR) from an in-state academic polling outfit, one (WCAX) from a New Jersey-based for-profit firm.

Pollster Paul Braun engaged in some speculation that ought to unnerve those placing a lot of weight on his survey. He credited the WCAX gubernatorial debate for driving Scott’s alleged momentum — when, in fact, debate audiences tend to be very small, and the impact of debates on public opinion is also small. (Unless you pull a Trump, of course.) There is no evidence to support Braun’s assertion.

Continue reading →

VTDigger’s at it again

33 Replies

I was hoping maybe my recent post, “VTDigger is Biased Against Wind Energy,” would at least make the folks on the second floor stop and think.

I guess not. Because they’ve got another doozy today, entitled “Bird Advocates Concerned About Stiles Brook Proposal.”

The gist of the article is that an organization called the American Bird Conservancy has weighed in on the proposed Grafton/Windham wind farm with dire warnings about rising piles of bird and bat corpses.

“ABC questions whether the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our shared ecologically important birds and bats justifies building any large, commercial wind energy facility in areas with seasonally high concentrations of birds and bats, like (Stiles Brook),” wrote Michael Hutchins, director of the conservancy’s “Bird Smart Wind Energy Campaign.”

Okay, hmm. “Hundreds of thousands, if not millions” from a single wind farm? Sounds awful.

Too bad it’s completely false.

Continue reading →

Bad days for the VTGOP

4 Replies

You could excuse Phil Scott for feeling down in the dumps these days. There was the ice-bath shock of the VPR Poll, showing a dead heat in the race for governor. Then came a huge weekend of high-energy unity rallies for the Democratic ticket featuring Bernie Sanders, Pat Leahy, and Peter Welch thumping the tub for Sue Minter ad company, plus President Obama cutting a radio spot for her.

And now comes an ABC News poll showing Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 12 percentage points.

The growing gap is bad enough, but the worse news for Scott is deeper in the poll results.

The previous ABC/Post poll found a sharp 12-point decline in enthusiasm for Trump among his supporters, almost exclusively among those who’d preferred a different GOP nominee. Intended participation now has followed: The share of registered Republicans who are likely to vote is down 7 points since mid-October.

That’s a tangible sign that Trump is becoming a dead weight on down-ballot Republicans. And more evidence that Phil Scott has his work cut out for him, in what was once thought to be a cakewalk for the VTGOP’s King-in-Waiting.

Continue reading →

Early voting on fast pace in Vermont

Leave a reply

We’re hearing reports from various states that a whole lot of people are voting early. And the evidence, with a couple of exceptions, is that the trend favors the Democrats. In key state after key state, they are outperforming President Obama’s 2012 pace while Donald Trump is lagging behind Mitt Romney’s performance.

And how are things in Vermont? you may ask.

We’re way ahead of 2014, and on pace to threaten our record for early voting, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

As of Friday afternoon, the state had received more than 51,000 requests for early ballots, and are getting an average of 2,000 per day.  Absentee requests have already exceeded the 2014 total — which was lower than 2012 because so many voters were disaffected by the Shumlin/Milne race. (2014 total turnout 196,000; in 2012, it was over 301,000.)

As of midafternoon Thursday, voters had returned nearly 25,000 ballots. That’s getting close to 2014’s total — and we still have more than two weeks until Election Day.

Continue reading →

Another xenophobic VTGOP candidate

8 Replies

This week has brought controversy to Republican House candidate Michael McGarghan and Burlington School Board member David Kirk for posting hateful content on their social media accounts.

Well, we’ve got another hot one: Bill Lawrence, candidate for the House in the Chittenden-3 district, which includes Jericho and Underhill. And I’m guessing that if we spent a few hours trolling the social media accounts of Republican candidates, we’d find more than a few like McGarghan (who Tweeted that President Obama should be hanged) and Mark Donka, whose Facebook extremism has previously been chronicled in these pages.

I might humbly suggest to Don Turner that he should teach his would-be candidates not to post egregiously awful stuff on Twitter or Facebook. I mean, you don’t want to make it appear that the VTGOP is a party full of racists, conspiratorialists, and extremists, do you now?

Bill Lawrence, to judge by his social media content, is a very conservative Republican, a Donald Trump supporter, formerly an enthusiastic backer of Bruce Lisman, a racist and a xenophobe (especially when it comes to Muslims), and an aficionado of far-right conspiracy theories.

He certainly has the First Amendment right to post whatever garbage he wants to. And I have the right to inform the good people of Chittenden-3 what kind of person is tainting their ballots.

Mr. Lawrence’s proclivities were brought to my attention by a fellow liberal Tweeter named Scott Pavek (@RSPavek), who RT’d several of Lawrence’s more intemperate Tweets. Good thing, too; Lawrence seems to have closed down his Twitter account after his posts were discovered.

Too bad we have screenshots. Also too bad that Lawrence hasn’t thought to scrub his Facebook page, which has quite a few other nasty pieces of alt-right propaganda.

And here, submitted for your consideration, are some entries from the Lawrence Files.

Continue reading →