Author Archives: John S. Walters

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About John S. Walters

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

A big step forward for legalized pot, but don’t get your hopes up

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This hasn’t been a great month for marijuana legalization in Vermont. Sure, we had Governor Shumlin’s conditional endorsement in his State of the State address; but since then, we’ve had a parade of skeptical comments from influential voices in the House and Senate.

This week brought the best news for legalization since the State of the State: Shumlin and Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears reached agreement on a legalization bill. And since the issue wasn’t going to go anywhere without Sears’ buy-in, this was an important development.

But if you ask me, I say it ain’t happening this year. Eventually, yes. 2016, no.

The Sears/Shumlin deal has raised hackles in the pro-pot community because it would ban grow-your-own. Sears is opposed because it complicates law enforcement, a legitimate concern. If this is the bill’s biggest flaw, then I’d say take the deal, get it into law, and shoot for further changes in the future.

The bill does have a number of positive features, aside from the crucial fact of Sears’ imprimatur. A strong positive: it would ensure that Vermont’s marijuana industry would be small and local. A breath of fresh air after Ohio’s unfortunate experience, where a cadre of high rollers got a measure on the ballot that would have handed the business over to a handful of large companies.

I could go on, but an in-depth evaluation is kind of pointless because it’s not going to pass. There are too many obstacles along the way, and far too many other issues on the table this year.

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WTF, Bernie?

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For months, the Bernie Sanders campaign has been complaining about the lack of debates and their odd placement in low-viewership time slots. But this week, the New Hampshire Union Leader and MSNBC pulled a nice little jiu-jitsu move, inviting the three Dems to an unsanctioned debate next week, just before the #fitn primary.

Martin O’Malley leapt at the chance. The Hillary Clinton camp, rather surprisingly, said she would participate if Bernie Sanders also accepted.

And Bernie said “No.”

I don’t get it. The door was open to a debate in weeknight prime time, at the very peak of interest in the early primaries… and he backed away.

Bernie’s calling for a political revolution. That isn’t the act of a proud revolutionary. It’s the act of a political operative playing the angles.

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Plausible deniability and the $10,000 envelope

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Kudos to Seven Days’ Paul Heintz for a good old-fashioned piece of outrage journalism, a nearly lost art in these days of objectivity fetishism. The object of his scorn: the woefully incomplete “investigation” of Attorney General Bill Sorrell’s demostrably squicky campaign finance shenanigans. (In the interest of self-promotion, here’s a link to my take on the story.)

The whole column is strongly recommended, but I want to highlight one passage — and then It’s Story Time, Kids!

To set this up: In December 2013, Sorrell had dinner with a couple of high-powered lawyers, Mike Messina and Patricia Madrid, who had previously donated to his campaign fund. Take it away, Paul:

“Just before sitting down to dinner, Mike gave me an envelope saying that he and the attorneys from the Texas firm [Baron & Budd] wished to contribute to my campaign for reelection,” Sorrell wrote in the affidavit, which has not been previously disclosed. “I thanked them and accepted the envelope.”

Tucked inside were five checks totaling $10,000 for Sorrell’s reelection campaign.

During the dinner, Sorrell wrote, Messina and his friends “suggested they would come to Vermont at a future date to discuss the possibility of Vermont suing the oil and gas industry, if I was interested.” Baron & Budd has made millions for itself — and the states and municipalities it has represented — by suing the industry over its use of the gasoline additive MTBE.

After Messina handed Sorrell the checks, his clients handed the AG “a folder or manila envelope” containing information about Baron & Budd and a memo touching on “the specifics of relevant Vermont law.” Sorrell trucked it back to his office, gave it to an assistant attorney general and asked him to check with the Agency of Natural Resources to “discuss the possibility” of suing.

Within months, Sorrell’s office had filed suit and hired four firms — including Baron & Budd and Messina — to serve as outside counsel, guaranteeing them a percentage of any money recouped.

The “affidavit” referenced above is a sworn statement provided by Sorrell to independent investigator Tom Little.

Sorrell’s attorney argues that this does “not equate to a quid pro quo arrangement.” Which is downright laughable. But as Heintz notes, Sorrell “practically admitted to the crime” of trading state contracts for political donations.

And now, It’s Story Time.

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If everybody’s leaving, why are most of the moving vans inbound?

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The new year brings a seemingly never-ending flood of 50-state rankings. Some, assembled by pro-business interests, tend to rank Vermont near the bottom. Others, like Politico Magazine’s broad-based quality-of-life mashup, put Vermont near the top. Number 3, in the case of Politico.

Well, here comes United Van Lines with its own 50-state ranking, “which tracks customers’ state-to-state migration patterns.” And contrary to the standard Republican talking point — nobody wants to live here because taxes — Vermont comes in near the top. Number 3, as a matter of fact.

The United ranking is based on one single criterion: where are the moving vans headed? And in Vermont last year, there were a lot more inbound than outbound. Here’s the map.

Screen Shot 2016-01-27 at 1.04.39 AM

Okay, so how do we square this with our flat population and very real demographic crisis?

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Phil Scott, blowin’ in the wind

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I realize that our universally-liked lieutenant governor is new at this whole “leadership” thing. He’s unaccustomed to taking strong stands and providing firm direction. But if he wants to be Governor, he’d better start practicing. Because right now, he’s displaying the opposite of leadership on the issue of paid sick leave. And the Democrats caught him in the act.

For those just tuning in, paid sick leave almost got through the Legislature in 2015 despite the anguished howls of the business lobby. Phil Scott has been right there alongside them, raising heartfelt concerns about the impact of paid sick leave on small business.

This year, paid sick leave looks certain to pass, with some modest tweaks designed to soothe the tender sensibilities of the bizfolk. And here comes our own Braveheart, triangulating his way to the winning side.

“I like the direction it’s going, and I’m happy to take a position on it once it’s out of committee,” Scott said.

The Democratic Party took note of this and pounced. Here’s a fun Twitter exchange, screengrabbed for your amusement.

Dem/Scott Twitter exchange

Oh, snap!

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The Governor gives the Republicans a ready-made campaign slogan

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Hey, remember last Friday, when Governor Shumlin had to walk back a budget-cutting proposal he’d made less than 24 hours earlier?

Yeah, embarrassing and sad. I mean, how many people looked over the text of his budget address and didn’t realize that “cutting benefits to poor pregnant women” might cause a kerfuffle? Even if the cuts are counterbalanced by new benefits, that’s the worst possible topline for a sales pitch.

Well, maybe second worst to “confiscating crutches from crippled kids,” or possibly “Scrooge was right the first time,” but I digress.

Shumlin rolled out his kneecap-the-preggers initiative on Thursday, and took it back during a Friday appearance on VPR’s “Vermont Edition.” And just in case the abandonment itself wasn’t bad enough, he went and said this. For real.

“I don’t want to use this as a way to cost pregnant women more money,” the governor said on the program. “I said to my team this morning, ‘Listen there’s plenty of ways to save money in the budget. Go back to the Legislature and give them alternatives of other ways to make savings.’”

Wait, what?

“There’s plenty of ways to save money in the budget”?????????

?????????????

This, from a guy in his sixth year as governor, whose tenure has been marked by penny-pinching and an absolute refusal to raise “broad-based taxes” (as he himself defines the term)?

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The problem with Shumlin’s latest brainstorm

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On Monday, the Shumlin administration unveiled its proposed all-payer system, which would supposedly remove the perverse incentives driving up health care costs and, as the Governor is fond of saying, “pay our docs and our nurses and our health care providers for keeping us healthy, not for the fee-for-service system that we currently have.”

Sounds like a plan. But is it?

I’ll tell you this. If I was a doctor and the Shummy system goes into effect, I’m going to stop seeing overweight patients. Because contrary to the Governor’s sunny prescription…

“… doctors and hospitals would receive a set of payments for frankly keeping us alive and healthy and feeling good,” he said. “Obviously that puts huge priority on preventive care, on eating right, on exercising, on getting off the smokes, on doing all of the things that we know we should be doing.”

… the truth is, obesity is almost incurable. It doesn’t matter how much prevention and wellness support you provide, the vast majority of overweight people are never going to lose significant amounts of weight.

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Paul Ralston’s vanity project

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This political season, with its rare turnover in the top ranks, has generated quite a bit of activity from politicos whose aspirations are no surprise — Phil Scott, Bruce Lisman, Matt Dunne, Sue Minter, TJ Donovan, etc. — but it’s also created some real headscratchers. There are people running for high office who cause me to wonder, “Who asked for this?”

So far, this category largely centers on the race for lieutenant governor, which has attracted a pair of high-profile liberal lawmakers and a trio of candidates who seemingly came out of nowhere: Brattleboro-area investment dude Brandon Riker, recently repatriated Washington journalist Garrett Graff, and Rutland-area doctor Louis Meyers. Nothing against these worthies or their noble intentions; but really, who asked for this?

Now comes another would-be candidate from out of nowhere, giving his own distinctive twist to this narrative: former State Representative and Vermont Coffee Company founder Paul Ralston. He has declared his potential candidacy for An Office To Be Named Later, under the banner of A Party To Be Named Later Or Maybe Independent, and created his own weekly radio show as a platform for his amorphous ambition.

Nothing against Paul Ralston; he makes my favorite coffees, a hell of a lot better than that Keurig sludge. But this whole thing strikes me as a vanity project more than anything else.

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Just what we needed: More bad news on Vermont Health Connect

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The headline says it all, thanks to Erin Mansfield of VTDigger:

VERMONT HEALTH CONNECT IS GOING BACKWARD, STAKEHOLDERS SAY

The “stakeholders” are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and Vermont Legal Aid, an unlikely pairing to be sure. BCBS is calling for an independent review of the troubled health care exchange, and Legal Aid is fielding scores of complaints from “frustrated consumers.”

“We’re going backwards,” said Trinka Kerr, the chief health care advocate for Vermont Legal Aid. “Towards the end of last year, we were making progress. You could get things straightened out relatively quickly, and now things are more complicated than they used to be.”

Some of Governor Shumlin’s high-profile declarations of victory are now looking inoperative. The “change of circumstance” function, which was supposed to be a benchmark for VHC, had to be taken off line because it simply wasn’t ready to handle the workload. And as a result, the backlog is back!

Yes, VHC has a backlog of change orders numbering about 4,000. To put that number in perspective, VHC has a total of 33,000 customers who buy individual policies through the website.

Now, I stopped being good at math in about the seventh grade, but to me that looks like the backlog amounts to 12 percent of all customers served. Which is, in a word, dreadful.

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We have displeased our benevolent overlords

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Hey, remember when Vermont was ranked third in the nation by Politico magazine as a place to live?

Well, here comes the flip side, courtesy of none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that overflowing cascade of Kochian “economic liberty” bushwa. It ranks Vermont #49 in “economic outlook,” which is a very interesting way to put it. Because what they are ranking is not actual, tangible economic health — it’s how the state is poised for intangible future prosperity. And it is measured in terms of taxation and regulation.

But wait, it gets better. The lead author of the ALEC report is none other than Arthur Laffer. Yep, the guy behind the Laffer Curve, the absolutely unproven bit of dogma that claims you’ll create more revenue by cutting taxes, because the tax cuts will stimulate a cornucopia of prosperity.

Well, not only is it absolutely unproven; when it’s been tried in the real world, the results have been dismal. The Laffer Curve isn’t a coherent, evidence-based economic practice; it’s the money shot in a right-wing porn flick.

In case you think I’m overstating my case, let’s look at a state deemed praiseworthy by ALEC.

Kansas.

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