Author Archives: John S. Walters

About John S. Walters

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

Same song, different verse

Hey, who switched the teleprompter to Español?

Reactions to the Governor’s budget address…

First, I hope the Republicans are happy. Last week they complained about a lack of attention to some major issues. Today they got a whopping hour and fifteen minutes. Be careful what you wish for.

This speech followed Shumlin’s usual pattern. There’s a whole lot of incrementalism — small, inexpensive approaches to big challenges — and, to spice things up, a handful of bigger proposals almost certain to go nowhere. It strikes many observers as a deliberate tactic: offer an unpalatable solution, and force the legislature to find an alternative. Example from a previous year: his plan for a major cut to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

I’ll give him credit, he’s very good at incrementalism. He finds modest improvements that don’t cost much, if anything. In today’s speech, he was constantly talking of leveraging federal funds, private-sector participation, and partnerships with entities of all sorts. A classic example: his plan to offer “motivated high school seniors” a free two-year Associates’ Degree in engineering technology “with no additional cost to the Education Fund.”

The plan involves the state Agency of Education and participating employers identifying students, and leveraging existing programs plus employer contributions to get them free tuition and a summer internship if they stay and work in Vermont after graduation.

It’s classic Shumlin. It sounds good, it will actually help some people, it’s cheap, and it can be effective as far as it goes.

But it doesn’t touch on the underlying problems: high college costs and stagnant earnings for all but the very wealthy. Even if the incremental stuff works, it seems like small potatoes for those of us who vote Democratic.

How big is the budget gap? It’s soooooo big.

Then there’s the other thing we get: the “big idea” that probably won’t go anywhere. I could mention a few; the double ban on teacher strikes and contract impositions, giving power to the state school board to close schools that fail to meet spending or achievement targets, the payroll tax increase to fund better Medicaid reimbursement.

Indeed, his entire education package seems designed for rejection. For one thing, it seems to do nothing to immediately mitigate rising property taxes. That’ll be lawmakers’ top priority, after last year’s election.

Shumlin’s broader reforms are an odd mix of distant and scary. Neither the teachers’ unions nor the school boards are likely to accede quietly to a plan that will strip them of their ultimate bargaining chips. The idea of eliminating “contradictory incentives” like the small schools grant may be good ideas, but they’ll be tough to support for lawmakers with small school in their districts.

Finally, the idea of Agency of Education “evaluation teams” going into every school to measure achievement and spending performance — with those who fail to meet benchmarks in line for state funding cuts or even closure — is DOA. It’s mandatory consolidation and top-down control via carrot and stick, rather than direct mandate. Kinda the worst of both worlds; no immediate impact, and a whole lot of state interference (as it will be perceived) in local decision-making.

He calls it a “partnership,” but one partner has the ultimate power.

If you think I’m too gloomy on Shumlin’s prospects, just take a look at this reaction statement from House Speaker Shap Smith:

…the Governor acknowledged Vermonters’ concerns about the unsustainable cost of health care, burdensome property tax increases, and the need to clean up our waterways. …I look forward to working with the Administration to make Vermont the best possibly place to work and live, and one that provides opportunity for all Vermonters.

He applauds the Governor for addressing the big issues — but not a peep about the Governor’s proposals. I expect lawmakers to consider Shumlin’s ideas, but he won’t get priority over others’ ideas.

This is all part of the game, as it has been since Shumlin took office. It’ll be even more so after an election that was largely a personal rebuke of the Governor, not the Democrats.

His budget message was a starting point. From here on, it’s a matter of top lawmakers devising proposals of their own that they can convince Shumlin to support.

Multimedia note: if the photos seem a bit blurry, it’s because they’re screengrabs from the Vermont PBS livestream. Workin’ from home today.

The Shummy Shimmy

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Before the November election, I’d planned to write a post-election piece offering my services to the Shumlin administration for the newly-created position of Shitkicker-In-Chief. The duties would include pointing out the flaws in administration reasoning, deflating egos when necessary, and the occasional loud guffaw.

The idea was based on my belief (hahahaha) that the election wouldn’t be close. When Shumlin won by a shoestring, I thought my idea was irrelevant. The election was a more effective shitkicker than I could ever be.

Seems I was wrong, because the Governor has quickly fallen back into to some bad habits. One of his worst is his almost-complete inability to admit that he was wrong about something — even if it’s something trivial. It makes him appear small-minded, overly defensive, duplicitous, and condescending.

This habit is again on display in the foofaraw over releasing documents related to single-payer health care.

For those just joining us, when the governor announced in December that he was ditching single-payer, WCAX’s Kyle Midura asked a provocative question. Here’s the exchange, as reported by Seven Days’ Paul Heintz:

“Will you waive executive privilege for all backdated documents at this point related to this question so we can see what you knew when?” Midura said.

“There is nothing to hide on what we knew when, so we’d be happy to show you any documents you wish to look at,” the governor responded.

Emphasis: “any documents you wish to look at.” And Midura’s use of “this question” is generally seen as referring to Shumlin’s decision on single-payer.

Naturally, multiple media outlets made public-records requests for any related documents. And that’s when Shumlin backtracked: the administration withheld “hundreds of pages of documents related to single-payer,” reports VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld.

Shumlin says he never intended for him comments on Dec. 17 to mean that he’d release all internal communications related to single-payer.

“Now no governor ever divulges inter-staff conversations, but what we did divulge was all the data that led us to the conclusions that we came to,” Shumlin said.

Okay, I can see that point of view. But why did he promise, on Dec. 17, to release everything?

Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu!

So far, we’ve heard two different explanations.

In an email to Heintz, the Governor’s legal counsel Sarah London asserted that Midura’s question referred narrowly to “the specific question of Medicaid reimbursement rates.”

On the other hand, Shumlin told Hirschfeld that he thought the question referred only to documents involved in a lawsuit by Rep. Cynthia Browning.

“Well as you know we had a fairly well-publicized court case … where we were asked to divulge all the data, studies and information about every detail that led us to the disappointing conclusions that we came to about public financing,” Shumlin said. “I assumed that his question was simply, are you going to continue to withhold that data? Or are you going to share it?”

It got even worse when Shumlin tried to clarify his position at a news conference yesterday:

“If you listen to the entire question, I answered it very clearly. And what I said was, the question I understood — I had it played back to me, so I think I got it — was, ‘Are you going to release the documents that, frankly, hadn’t been released before?’ You may recall Cynthia Browning requested them and we went to court and the court ruled in our favor. ‘Are you now going to release those documents? The documents that give us the data, all the dates, what you’ve done, all the studies?’ And I said, ‘Of course, we are. We want Vermonters to have that information.’ If you took the question as something else, you should’ve asked it that way. You didn’t.”

The Shummy Shimmy.

It’s one of his worst features: ducking and diving in a transparent effort to avoid admitting he was wrong.

I guess they could still use a Shitkicker-In-Chief.

Here’s a little free advice. Or consider it part of my S-I-C job application. Here’s what he should have said — and it’s not much different from what he did say.

“I apologize for misspeaking on Dec. 17. I should not have promised to release ‘all documents,’ because every administration needs some measure of privacy in its internal policy discussions. Any chief executive would agree with that.

“We have provided as much documentation as we can. The information we have released should be more than adequate to understanding how we arrived at our decision. I hope you, and the people of Vermont, can appreciate our position.”

There. Was that so hard?

The occasional apology would go a long way toward changing Shumlin’s image for the better. The long-term benefit would far outweigh the immediate discomfort.

Lock up the wimminfolk — the gunslingers are comin’ to town.

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Talk about your Statehouse security risks.

Anytime now, you should expect an invasion by “the most sought-after Guns for Hire,” flooding the Statehouse hallways and your TV screens with an all-out barrage of ~~propaganda~~ issue advocacy.

The approaching marauders hale from a D.C. PR firm with the faintly unbelievable name “Goddard Gunster.” On its home page it proudly boasts of being “the most sought-after Guns for Hire,” as Business Week once called them.

GG will work for anyone who can pay its exorbitant bills, but a frequent customer is the American Beverage Association and its fellow peddlers of sugary drinks. They’ve turned to GG whenever a beverage tax or bottle bill or ban on SuperSizing rears its ugly head — from San Francisco to Telluride to New York City to Massachusetts.

And now, after an unsuccessful effort in 2013, we’re about to see another drive for a sugared-beverage tax* in Vermont. Which means, sure as the sun comes up in the east, Goddard Gunster will be ridin’ into town, guns a-blazin’.

*Popularly called “soda tax,” but would apply to any beverage with added sugar.

In 2013, an SBT bill won approval in the House Health Care Committee, which saw it more as a public health measure than a revenue enhancer; but it failed on a 6-5 vote in the Ways and Means Committee. During the three months between the bill’s introduction and its death, Big Sugar and its retail allies spent more than $600,000 fighting the bill. That’s an astounding figure in Vermont terms.

If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe black-hat lobbyist Andrew McLean, who spearheaded Big Sugar’s anti-tax efforts under the Golden Dome:

MacLean concedes his clients spent “a lot of money” on a “very aggressive campaign” to halt the tax.

“I have not been involved in a campaign that’s that expensive,” he says.

This, from a guy who reps many of the biggest business and industry clients in Vermont.

And it’s sure to be even more expensive this year, because the SBT may have a better chance of passing. The reason? Vermont’s massive budget deficit, most recently estimated at $94 million.

There will be cuts to be sure; but cutting all the way to $94 million would be incredibly painful. It would, of necessity, focus primarily on the Agency of Human Services, which consumes the lion’s share of the General Fund budget. That’d be unpalatable to most lawmakers and to a liberal base already put off by Gov. Shumlin’s abandonment of single-payer health care.

So lawmakers will be looking for relatively painless ways to raise revenue. And that could carry the day for the SBT, which would raise about $35 million per year. That’s more than one-third of the budget gap taken care of right there.

The SBT does face a long uphill battle. Gov. Shumlin opposes it, although his stridency appears to be dwindling a bit. House and Senate leadership are cool to the idea, but advocates are hoping they will warm up as the budget pressure increases.

And sure as shootin’, “the most sought-after Guns for Hire” will be ready to ride into town, tossing money around like bullets in a spaghetti Western. The TV ads will be ubiquitous, touting “consumer choice” and featuring Mom ‘n Pop types worried about the tax’s impact on their little corner store. They’ll also be prominently featured in anti-SBT testimony in the Legislature — even though the big money behind the campaign will come from the beverage industry and big retail chains.

If they spent $600,000 two years ago to kill a longshot SBT bill, how much will they spend this year? Your guesses should start at a million bucks. Two mill would not surprise me.

Just think: more money than any political campaign in Vermont history, spent in a few short months over a soda tax.

This may be our first real taste of the post-Citizens United, Wild West world of unfettered money in politics.

Dan the No Longer Libertarian Man

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(UPDATE: Per VTDigger, he’s joined the Republican Party. See below.)

Here’s a little piece of political news so shocking that I almost stifled a yawn.

Yes, it’s true. I have resigned from all my Libertarian Party leadership positions. Thanks for all the emails.

— Dan Feliciano (@DanFeliciano) January 14, 2015

Oooooookay, then. I imagine this will rattle around the Vermont political media for a few hours and then we’ll get back to stuff that actually matters.

Not to disparage the contributions of Mr. Feliciano. But we are talking about a guy who enjoyed a boatload of free publicity, including widespread speculation that he might outpoll Scott Milne, and in the end he barely managed to fend off the bottom-of-the-ballot Nutbar Brigade. He couldn’t even push the Libertarians into automatic ballot status for 2016.

I can see three possible implications. In order of likelihood:

— He’s had enough of politics and will turn his attention back to work and family. 10% chance; once bitten by the political bug, the fever usually persists beyond one election cycle.

— He doesn’t know what’s next, he’s on the outs with the Libertarians anyway, so he’s clearing the decks. 30% chance; it’s neat and clean, but I suspect he has an idea what he wants to do. Which is…

— He’s aiming to run for governor in 2016 as the darling of the right wing. 60% chance. The opening is there, unless Randy Brock re-emerges from the weeds. (Which I doubt.) The right needs a front man with some sort of credibility, and Feliciano was a perfectly cromulent candidate in 2014. He’s got some name recognition, he’s got a foothold in the Vermont political world. He impressed the likes of Darcie Johnston, even if he pretty much failed with the electorate.

There are problems with this scenario, obviously. His “proven appeal” amounts to 4% of the vote, even with all the publicity he got and all the troubles of his Republican counterpart. He’d be aiming to represent a wing of the VTGOP that’s clearly on the outs; if the 2014 election proved anything, it’s that a center-right position is much more appealing to voters than a hard-right stance.

Plus, in a hypothetical primary against Phil Scott, he’d get flattened.

Of course, the fact that the right wing is clearly on the outs makes them desperate enough to see Mr. Four Percent as their knight in fiscally conservative armor.

UPDATE: VTDigger’s Tom Brown reports that Feliciano has joined the Republican Party, saying its larger base would give him a better chance of winning a future campaign. That might be another run for governor; he might also pursue another office:

“It depends on what it is,” he said. “I have to be in a position where I can really influence things and get things done. I would not be good in the middle.”

I think we can all agree on that.

Fear and loathing under the Golden Dome

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Funny thing. The more time goes by since last Thursday’s inaugural protest, the more fearsome and dangerous it seems to become.

We haven’t had any single item more outrageous than Sen. Dick McCormack’s employment of that fine old epithet “fascist.” What we have had is a proliferation of exaggerated characterizations and inconsistent rationales for why the Vermont Workers’ Center went too far.

At first, the ire was mainly concentrated on a single incident, in which a lone protester entered the chamber singing and chanting over the benediction. Regrettable and stupid.

But apparently Our Elected Leaders realize that that one incident fails to justify their reaction, because they’ve been using their creative powers to devise new ways the protest crossed some invisible boundary. I suspect that by the end of the month, the protest will be described as a cross between the Chicago riots, the nude scene from “Hair,” and the supercharged zombie attacks from “World War Z.”

The Inaugural Protest. (Not exactly as illustrated.)

Anyone who’s experienced real political turmoil would have to admit that the VWC was remarkably restrained. They did not, as many media outlets have reported, “disrupt” or “interfere with” the proceedings.

I listened on the radio, and I heard very little of the protesters — and I heard no interruptions in the proceedings. If those in attendance couldn’t hear, they could have asked that the sound system be turned up.

Recently, we’ve heard that some lawmakers felt uneasy about proceeding into the House chamber through a crowd, even though police officers lined their path. (And even though there was no hint of any violent intent by the protesters.) Indignant lawmakers have stopped referring to the benediction incident in favor of overly-broad depictions of the protest as loud or disruptive, which is only true if the expectation is library-standard quiet. We’ve heard references to possible fire-code violations — in a building whose last major fire was, I believe, in 1857. (We haven’t heard a peep from the police or the Sergeant At Arms about the fire code; that’s all come from opportunistic Republicans.)

Today we had the unedifying spectacle of Republican lawmakers threatening to walk out of the Governor’s budget address on Thursday should the protesters return, on the transparently specious grounds that they fear a stampede in case of a fire. Hell, those protesters are probably better organized than the assembled dignitaries. I suspect they’d be fully capable of calmly proceeding to the nearest egress.

We’ve also heard a whole lot of blaming the protest for potential security upgrades at the Statehouse. Which is ridiculous. First, because the protesters did not pose a threat to anyone with an ounce of common sense. And second, because enhanced security has been on the table for quite a while now — and will inevitably penetrate the hallowed halls. Because that’s just the way the world is these days. To blame it on that protest is utterly disingenuous.

Most of all, we’ve heard repeated appeals to respect and dignity and civility.

What this is really about is a set of crusty old traditions about the Statehouse. Voices are generally lowered, at what might be termed a “power mumble.” (It’s hell for old radio guys like me, with moderately compromised hearing.) There’s an unspoken expectation that men shall wear button-down shirts and ties. VWC members have one strike against them from the gitgo, since they dare to wear red T-shirts while roaming the sacred halls.

Playing by the unwritten rules is important to Statehouse regulars. The longer they’ve served (McCormack, a total of 22 years), the more wedded to Statehouse mores they become. And the more they resent it when the outside world dares to intrude.

They call it the People’s House, and accuse the protesters of disrupting the People’s business. But they themselves want everyone to treat it like a cross between a museum and a mausoleum.

It’s too bad when democracy — the People’s real business — gets a little messy and intrudes on what some consider sacred space. But I don’t feel sorry for them, not at all.

And those traditions? Throw ’em out with the trash, if you ask me.

Metapost: The Augean Stable of my comments section

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One of my li’ll buddies.

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All include links that I wouldn’t dare click, even if encased in the Internet equivalent of a Hazmat suit. They purport to offer discount merchandise and other stuff; all I do is spend about twenty minutes a day hitting “Delete.” (I could dump them all en masse, but sometimes an actual comment finds its way into the Spam folder and I try to rescue it.)

The only entertaining part of this little daily annoyance? The fractured Spamlish that is these bots’ native tongue. And here are a few examples.

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Don’t expect the Vermont Workers’ Center to go away anytime soon

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Those dirty hippies who made Joe Benning walk the gauntlet on Inauguration Day are most likely in this for the long haul. I say this because the Vermont Workers’ Center is a rapidly-growing organization with surprising financial muscle.

According to the nonprofit’s most recent IRS filing, VWC had revenue of nearly $680,000 in the year 2013. VWC head James Haslam told VTDigger’s Morgan True that this year, the figure will be around $800,000. As recently as 2009, its intake was less than $200,000; you do the math.

That’s pocket change in Koch World, but in Vermont it makes VWC a power to be reckoned with, beyond its ability to draw a crowd to the Statehouse.

Aside from money, it’s also tapped into a deep vein of dissatisfaction with/alienation from politics as usual. Its members are committed enough to turn out large numbers for a demonstration or flood the Statehouse hallways when needed. They are also willing to financially commit: VWC charges membership dues, and pulls in about 30% of its budget from members without much apparent effort.

My big question, when I saw VWC revenues in the high six figures, was: where is it all coming from? Haslam:

That work is supported by a combination of foundations which, typically, is about half of our support or maybe a little bit more. The other half is from our base, which is individuals and trade unions. I think it’s something like 20% unions, 30% individuals. It fluctuates year to year, but that’s about right.

I didn’t ask him for a list of foundations; as a nonprofit, VWC is not obligated to release donor information. VTDigger’s Morgan True reports that the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is its largest nonprofit donor, having given $50,000 this year and a total of $160,000 since 2010. True also reports that VWC has strong ties to a national network of progressive organizations; “We’re part of a broader people’s movement to turn things around for working people,” Haslam told him. Well, if its largest foundation gift was 50K and they’re pulling in 400K from foundations, then they’re drawing from a large donor pool.

One other note from Thursday’s protest. It’s been reported that five of the 29 people arrested that day were paid by VWC, which has raised some hackles. Haslam says the five are members of VWC’s ten-person staff. He says they did not receive any remuneration beyond their regular pay for taking part in the protest or for being arrested.

At a planning meeting before the protest, Haslam told me, people were asked whether they would be willing to be arrested if necessary. “We were hoping that nobody would be arrested,” he said, “but our members felt that it was important for us to take a bold stand.”

Those who volunteered for arrest, he said, “were all people who had had first-hand experience with the health care crisis.” Five of them happened to be VWC staff. “That was a voluntary act for sure,” he says. “We have a number of staff people who didn’t do it.” Including, as it happens, Haslam himself.

With a committed membership and a growing financial base, VWC shows no signs of being a flash in the pan, or some sort of Occupy movement that will burn brightly for a brief time and then flame out. They look to be in this for the long haul, on a broad variety of issues. Whether or not they continue to declare themselves at big political events, they’ll be around, promoting their causes and making it harder to ignore their issues.

The art of the overblown headline

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Ah, clickbait, thy name is Burlington Free Press. Today’s headline:

Accused Shelburne meat marauders cited

Wow. The mind reels. Was this a vicious gang, going around marauding meat? (Whatever that means.) Or were they an even more vicious gang, turning people into meat?

WIth breathelss anticipation, I clicked the link.

What a letdown.

Two people tried to steal $333 worth of meat from a supermarket.

Yep, that’s it.

Not only was the crime unworthy of the “marauder” monicker — they got caught!

“Marauders,” ny Aunt Fanny.

Oh, by the way… the carbon tax? It’s dead.

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(Note: I’ve updated this post to include more quotes, because the interview is now available online.)

You may have missed the news amid all the hugger-mugger over the inaugural protest, but the Legislature’s top advocate for a carbon tax has already thrown in the towel.

Rep. Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier), chair of the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was one of the headliners at last November’s news conference announcing a broad-based push for a carbon tax. “I’m going to push really hard on this,” he said.

Well, that was then. This is now.

There’s not gonna be [a carbon tax] this year. It’s not gonna be passed out of my committee or any other committee.

Klein said those words on January 8, Inauguration Day, in an interview on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show. I caught the interview when it aired, but it got lost in the Inaugural Shuffle. Sorry about that.

After Klein’s declaration, Johnson asked him why there would be no vote.

It will not pass because, one, the Speaker told me it won’t pass. [chuckle] And two, the way it came out to the public, with a real lack on our part of preparation, there was a pretty scary reaction to it. I accept that; that was a mistake.

That’s a reference to the immediate reaction to the November presser. I’m not sure how he would change the rollout; my own view is that it seemingly came out of nowhere. There wasn’t any build, just a big announcement. At the same time, I’m not sure if any other strategy would have made a difference; too many top Democrats simply don’t like the carbon tax. Well, put it this way: they don’t want Vermont to go it alone: they want a regional or national approach.

Klein concluded:

I’m certainly not going to ask the members of my committee to vote on something that may cause a lot of discomfort, especially if it’s not going to go anywhere.

Which is wise chairmanship. I can’t argue with it. I can’t even argue all that much with Shap Smith’s reputed diktat, because this is already shaping up to be one hell of a session without considering a tax on fossil fuels during home heating season.

It’s too bad, because with oil prices currently low, it’d be a great time to enact a carbon tax. After all, the price of gas is a buck and a half cheaper than it was nine months ago; as proposed in November, the carbon tax would add 45 cents to the price of a gallon of gas. And, lest we forget, 90% of the revenue would go into broad-based tax cuts and targeted rebates for low-income Vermonters.

Klein said his attention would turn toward “aggressive funding” of weatherization and other efficiency measures. Which would be great, except we’re in a budget situation that would seem to rule out “aggressive funding” of anything. If Klein’s committee passes a significant expansion of efficiency measures, we can expect to see it expire on the surgical table of House Ways and Means.

The carbon tax proposal was a carefully-crafted plan that would have minimized the pain on Vermonters, reflected the true cost of fossil fuels in their price, and made a huge dent in Vermont’s carbon footprint. I’m not surprised to see it fall in the face of unpleasant political realities; I’m just sad to see it happen so quickly. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Here’s something Governor Shumlin should stop saying

The Vermont Political Observer.

a.k.a. theVPO: Analysis and observation of Vermont politics from a liberal viewpoint

Author Archives: John S. Walters

About John S. Walters

Same song, different verse

The Shummy Shimmy

Lock up the wimminfolk — the gunslingers are comin’ to town.

Dan the No Longer Libertarian Man

Fear and loathing under the Golden Dome

Metapost: The Augean Stable of my comments section

Don’t expect the Vermont Workers’ Center to go away anytime soon

The art of the overblown headline

Oh, by the way… the carbon tax? It’s dead.

Here’s something Governor Shumlin should stop saying