Category Archives: Peter Shumlin

The Milne Transcripts, part 8: Open mouth, insert foot, BITE DOWN HARD

Leave a reply

The final installment in my only apparently endless series of posts from Scott Milne’s disasterrific July 25 interview on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show, available for your cringing pleasure on Johnson’s podcast site. 

This time, we bring you some of Milne’s most spectacularly inarticulate moments. 

As you may recall, in part 1 of this series I reported Milne’s desire to fill “the need for a, hopefully what the people will judge me as an articulate voice of opposition to that.”

Keep hoping, brother. Milne went on to embody the polar opposite of “an articulate voice” of anything. At times, he sounded more like an unprepared high-schooler bullshitting his way through an essay than a serious, major-party candidate for the state’s highest office.

Milne had a lot of trouble with health care reform. For several minutes, he got confused between Vermont Health Connect (the current system) and single-payer health care (Governor Shumlin’s ultimate goal). But he began his tiptoe through the minefield with this answer to Johnson’s basic question, “New problems with Vermont Health Connect have been revealed this week. What would you have done differently?”

Whether you’re for or against Obamacare, i.e. the Affordable Care Act, it’s a national law and I think the Founding Fathers set up this federal government that enables states to do a lot of things and enables states to be the incubators of best practices. And one of the fundamental principles of our campaign is that the more locally a decision can be made, the better it is. I would trust a decision by a selectboard or a city council over a state legislature when it makes sense, and clearly a decision made by a state legislature over the federal government when it makes sense.

That was just the preamble to a long, discursive response that could be boiled down to “Shumlin bad.” See what I mean about the unprepared high schooler?

But wait, there’s more. Milne repeatedly called the Shumlin Administration “reckless” in establishing Vermont Health Connect — but at the same time, he refused to take a stand for or against single-payer. That triggered this exchange:

Johnson: You called the Governor reckless on health care reform. You said it was too bold a move. How can you possibly go forward with single-payer?

Milne: Um… That’s a pretty, um, now I see why you’ve got your own show, Mark. Um. You know, it’s part of our strategy to get elected to spend August talking about the Shumlin Administration and their lack of management expertise, which is part of leadership, and the reckless ideas that have given them a greater opportunity to mismanage the affairs of the state. Um, I think that, ah, folks in your seats, i.e. the press, have let the Shumlin Administration get away without answering questions for six years. I’m new to this game; I should get 30 days.

Johnson: What questions haven’t the press asked Shumlin about health care?

Milne: I didn’t say you didn’t ask ’em, I said you let ’em get away without answering ’em. He hasn’t answered how he’s going to pay for it.

Johnson: Is that the fault of the press for not getting the answer out of him?

At this point, Milne seemed to realize that he’d just directly insulted his host, a longtime member of the Vermont media on radio and in print, and all of his colleagues in the media. You know, the folks who’ll be reporting on his campaign. And suddenly, his brain sounded Retreat!!!

Milne: No, no. I mean, but, but I’m saying — uh, no, it’s not the way I — I think, I think it’s, um, I think, I think um, it’s a, it’s a great question. I think it is not the fault of the press, but that, um, letting somebody get away with changing the subject when there’s, you know, an elephant in the room that they’re ignoring, uh, we should be reminding people about the elephant and not talking about the distractions.

Ugh. It’s not the press’s fault, but they did let Shumlin get away with it. In other news, the bank was robbed but it’s not the guards’ fault.

I could bring you many more examples of Milne’s inability to produce coherent sentences, but I’ll just skip to the end of the interview. Johnson, taking some pity on his shriveled husk of an interviewee, tossed Milne a softball for his final question: “Tell us about a life experience you’ve had that would convince people that you should be Governor.”

Fasten your seat belts. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride…

Um, well, let’s see. A life experience I’ve had that would convince people I should be Governor. Um, hopefully the opportunity to meet me over the next 60-90 days, have a conversation, realize I’m really not trying to sell you anything. I mean you talked about fundraising, I’m a little uncomfortable calling people asking for money, but, um, I, I think my whole life experience is one of growing up in Vermont, um, been interested in what’s going on, I’ve met every Governor of my lifetime in Vermont, which is one of the great blessings of being in Vermont, it’s sort of like being in New Hampshire every four years, you can meet primary candidates for Presidents if you want to.

Um. Got a good history in Vermont. I’ve got a political science degree. Paid attention to issues. But I guess my whole life is, you know, there’s reasons why maybe you don’t want to vote for me, and, ah, hopefully you realize I’m, uh, in this, ah, not for my personal ego, uh, I don’t know that this is a great, um, experience for my business, uh, but I just felt like, um, somebody needed to step up and point out the real danger to our future that’s, um, to me very, very apparent if we continue down the road we’re on and it, ah, and the Shumlin Administration seems to be doubling down on everything they’ve done over the last four years now and, they start doing an about-face in the next 60 days, my guess is going to be because they read a poll and realized that’s what they had to do.

Yeah, that “life experience” question is a real stumper. Good grief, Johnson gave you a chance to be a relatable human being and garner some sympathy for your quixotic cause. And all you could do was kick it around for a couple of minutes and leave people wondering what the hell you were talking about.

There you go. My eight-part guide to one of the most disastrous interviews in Vermont political history.

This time they’d better get it right

Leave a reply

The latest turn in the saga of Vermont Health Connect came today, with the cancellation of CGI’s contract to develop VHC’s endlessly troublesome website. The move comes seven months after the Obama Administration fired CGI as contractor on the federal website, and four months after Massachusetts did the same.

You can say the Shumlin Administration waited too long; or you can say they tried to stick with CGI as long as they could because the company knew more about the system than a new contractor possibly could. And, as the Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen reports, this disaster had many fathers:

The marketplace… has struggled since its launch Oct. 1. CGI missed many deadlines to complete processes and make fixes, although state officials and independent analysts have noted the unreasonableness of the compressed federal timeline that all states had to meet.

That “compressed federal timeline” was the result of numerous conservative lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. No serious progress could be made until the Supreme Court had its say, which basically cut half of the preparation time for Obamacare’s launch.

But either way you slice it, the time had come for “a fresh perspective,” as health care reform czar Lawrence Miller put it. Whether CGI was truly at fault or not, a ritual sacrifice was called for. Its replacement, Optum, had already been hired to address a backlog of stalled “change of circumstance” requests.

It must also be noted, disapprovingly, that Miller and Mark Larson of the Department of Health Care Access were left to announce CGI’s departure in what looks, in media photos, to be a dreary and hastily-arranged encounter with the media. No sign of Governor Shumlin who, according to his official schedule, is in Montpelier today but couldn’t manage to join his long-suffering functionaries. He’ll be in public all over the place the rest of this week, wherever there’s good news to be announced; but not today. Sorry.

Those of us who support health care reform with single-payer as the ultimate goal have been frustrated by the continued delays and setbacks at VHC. And by the repeated (and routinely unfulfilled) assurances from the Shumlin team.

Well, now is the time to get it right. Good thing the Governor doesn’t face a signficant electoral challenge this year — although the longer this goes on, the more likely the Democrats are to lose seats in the Legislature. And with moderate Dems already doubtful about single-payer, Shumlin really can’t afford to lose any votes.

But beyond that, if VHC’s troubles continue into next winter, it’s hard to see the Legislature seriously considering a single-payer plan. Miller has accurately noted that single-payer will actually be a lot less complicated than the health care exchange — a bigger machine, but with far fewer moving parts. Still, why should the legislature go ahead with single-payer while VHC is still unproven?

This is a critical time for health care reform. There’s better damn well be measurable, actual progress before Election Day.

The Milne Transcripts, part 7: No vilification here, nope, no sirree.

Leave a reply

This the penultimate entry in my series of posts from Scott Milne’s trainwreck of an interview on the July 25 edition of WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show. Yes, only one more entry after this. Believe me, there could have been more. The hour-long interview is packed with uncomfortable pauses, inarticulate phrasings, abrupt transitions, unanswered questions, and general bumblefuckery. 

Over and over again in his young campaign for Governor, Scott Milne has insisted he will not “vilify” Governor Shumlin. He said so in his campaign-kickoff speech, and immediately followed that promise with words like ultra-progressive, brazen, bullying, radical, headstrong, and “unbridled experimentation.”

No vilification there, none at all.

Milne was apparently nonplussed by the reporting of his speech in this space and at VTDigger, which pointed out the obvious contradiction. Because early on in his Mark Johnson interview, he stuffed this little gem into a discussion of the Shumlin Administration’s competence:

…it’s hard to get into this game without — you know, I want this, this, these are political objective words not meant to be mean-spirited or, and my tone is, you know, I respect most of what Shumlin and his family have accomplished, so it’s not personal at all, but on the one hand you’ve got this guy who’s a very deft, smooth, political guy. On the other hand, if I compare him to the governors going back to Phil Hoff, he’s the mo — he, he, he doesn’t, he doesn’t stack up well against any of them in my opinion.

Got that? Words like radical, brazen, and bullying are “political objective words not meant to be mean-spirited.” Because he respects “most of what Shumlin and his family have accomplished,” but on the other hand, Shumlin is the worst Governor in Milne’s living memory. 

I’d say he’s trying to thread a needle, except there’s no hole. He’s trying to thread a pin.

The rest of the interview was studded with criticisms, not of the Governor, but of the “Shumlin Administration.” Even when the criticism was clearly aimed at the top man in the operation. Take this:

My read on the Shumlin Administration is they run the state like it is a campaign. They’re always readin’ polls, figurin’ out what’s gonna be popular and pretendin’ they’re leadin’ that parade. And I think that’s the opposite of what we need for leadership.

See, you can’t pretend to be talking about the entire Administration by slamming its “leadership.” When you’re talking leadership, you’re talking about the leader — not the team.

At one point, Milne praised Doug Racine as “a man of great integrity.” Later, Johnson asked if he also considered Governor Shumlin “a man of integrity.” Milne squirmed like a fish on the hook.

Uh, Doug Racine, I think, is uh you know, uh, in my limited dealings with Doug Racine, he’s totally comfortable looking you in the eye and telling you he disagrees with you and trying to convince you to agree with him or disagree with you.  My experience with the Shumlin Administration is, that’s not exactly the — uh, and integrity, uh, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say anything about Governor Shumlin’s integrity. I would just say, I think that they run the state like it’s a political campaign, and I would like to see the state run like it’s a, a family where we need to make sure that we’re looking out for our own best interests in the long term.

Woof. Even if you like Scott Milne, even if you plan to vote for him, that’s just painful to read.

It’s a common problem with the nascent Milne campaign: he’s trying to carry out complex rhetorical maneuvers, but he just doesn’t have the skills.

This is the problem when a person who’s successful in another field (usually business; see also Tarrant, Rich) takes a leap into the deep end of politics. A good politician possesses a broad range of skills: crafting a message, interacting with the public, giving speeches, being interviewed, managing a campaign, and a whole lot of stamina. Among other things.

Aside from one losing campaign for a much lower office, Scott Milne is a political newbie. You compound that with a very late entry into the race, and this is what you get.

In the last installment of The Milne Transcripts, I’ll recount some of the worst moments from his interview. I’m serious; there’s worse.  

The Milne Transcripts, part 6: The supreme importance of tone

Leave a reply

Yet another installment in my reports on Scott Milne’s rather disastrous July 25 appearance on WDEV Radio’s Mark Johnson Show. It was his first in-depth interview since formally launching his campaign for Governor. As such, it provides a window on the motivations, priorities, and political skills of the likely Republican nominee. 

Vermont Yankee wasn’t on Mark Johnson’s agenda. After all, it’s a fait accompli; Entergy stopped fighting to keep VY open when low natural-gas prices made it a financial loser, and a closing date has been announced. But Milne brought it up unbidden while trying to deflect attention away from a very unflattering discussion of health care reform, in which he appeared to confuse Vermont Health Connect with single-payer health care. (The former is operational, albeit troubled; the latter is Governor Shumlin’s yet-unattained Holy Grail.)

Milne was critical, not necessarily of the shutdown itself — he remained carefully neutral on that — but on the Shumlin Administration’s “tone.” Which, it seems, is one of the biggest bones Milne has to pick with his prospective opponent.

The tone and the style with which the Shumlin Administration went forward with that… we’re going to end up with a nuclear toxic slum on the banks of the CT River for probably 65 years or whatever the maximum decommissioning time is.

…Iif we had a Governor who was much more, in tone, business-friendly and working cooperatively to fix problems even with people that you disagree with, we could have given them a license extension. In exchange, gotten them to pony up the money for the rapid decommissioning.

Mmm, yeah, a couple problems with that. First, Entergy has never shown any willingness to adequately fund VY’s decommissioning; they’ve always played for the maximum amount of time. Given Entergy’s track record, it’s extremely doubtful that a different “tone” would have induced them to agree to a very costly proposition.

Second, Entergy stopped fighting for VY because it had become a financial drain. Why would they agree to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to the decommissioning find at a time when VY was already hurting their bottom line?

For Scott Milne to believe he could have convinced them otherwise reveals a dangerous combination of naivete and unfamiliarity with the issue.

Speaking of naivete, MIlne apparently believes that a different “tone” is all we need to make Vermont a growing, prosperous economic miracle. He’s harshly critical of Shumlin’s economic record, but when asked how he’d do things differently, this is what he comes up with:

Our primary, um, fix that we’re going to offer to Vermont is, uh, a much better tone and friendly tone towards business, and then some specific plans about how to attract business and keep business in Vermont.

His “primary fix” is a “better tone.” He’s vaguely promising “some specific plans” somewhere down the road, but his #1 solution to our economic troubles is a “better tone.”

I dunno. To me, and to many liberals and progressives, Governor Shumlin is awfully solicitous of the business community. He seeks their input, he listens to them, someties he shapes his policies to accommodate their concerns… and he’s certainly attracted more than a Democrat’s usual share of donations from Vermont businesspeople. Indeed, perhaps the biggest reason for the Republicans’ financial woes is that Shumlin has co-opted many of their usual big-money donors. If Shumlin is such a negative for business, why aren’t businesspeople trying harder to unseat him?

Besides, “tone” by itself is nothing. The “tone” makes a difference only as it affects your policies — say, kneecapping Act 250 or otherwise easing regulatory processes. For Milne to call for a new “tone” as the “primary fix” strikes me as disingenuous. He’s presenting himself as a moderate, so the last thing he wants to do is offer detailed pro-business policies. That’d give away the game. Instead, he talks of “tone,” and sounds a bit like a fool in doing so.

The Milne Transcripts, part 5: I’m not telling you

Leave a reply

The latest in my series of posts about Scott Milne’s epically bad July 25 appearance on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show. Not only is he not ready for prime time, he’s not ready for 9 a.m. on a weekday. 

If the late Fred Tuttle was the Man With A Plan, then Scott Milne, Republican candidate for Governor, seems to be the Man Without A Plan. Time after time during the interview, he refused to take positions on important issues. He deferred until September or even until after the election; he said issues were too complicated for him to immediately answer.

His usual excuse was that he’s only been running for a short time. “I’m new to this game,” he told Johnson at one point, “I should get 30 days.” This is a reference to his campaign strategy: August is for attacking the Shumlin Administration, and September is for unveiling his own policies.

Well, I can sympathize with a candidate who’s just getting started — but whose fault is that? Which inexperienced candidate waited until the last possible moment to launch his campaign?

Er, that would be Scott Milne.

It’s like an actor who agrees on short notice to step into the lead role in a play, but when the curtain rises on Opening Night, he tells the audience he needs more time to learn the part because “I’m new to this game.” You think the audience would walk out?

Sorry, Mr. Milne. You signed up for this. You knew the calendar. The lights are up, the curtain is drawn, and you’re on.

Let’s look at his platform of procrastination, shall we?

— On health care reform, he refused to take a stand on the concept of single-payer (although he also called single-payer “reckless” more than once, so take your pick):

The single-payer is clearly something that we’ll be continuing to look at, and talk to the folks that I’m talking closely with now, and we’ll have some more specific ideas on that before the election.

— He calls Vermont’s economy his top priority. What will he do? “We’ll have a plan for fixing the economy” before Election Day. But he did offer a hint about his plan — albeit a useless one:

Our primary, um, fix that we’re going to offer to Vermont is, uh, a much better tone and friendly tone towards business, and then some specific plans about how to attract business and keep business in Vermont.

Aha. His “primary fix” is a better “tone.” Which makes sense; his primary criticism of Shumlin is the “unfriendly tone” toward business. If we just adopted a better “tone,” our economy would shoot through the roof.

— At one point, a caller asked about the then-extant possibility that Vermont would temporarily house some of the immigrant chlldren who have crossed into the US. He began with some good hemming and hawing:

The, um, situation of, ah, folks coming into, ah, Vermont from Central America is, is a really tough one.

After that inarticulate start, detoured into a standard Republican attack on President Obama, filled with ums, ahs, awkward pauses, and even a “Holy Shamoley,” before Johnson prompted him to answer the actual question.

Uh, I don’t know yet. I mean, I’m not going to jump up and down and say no. … I think it’s a complicated decision that deserves a lot of thought.

And then he patted himself on the back for having no opinion on the issue — because taking a stand would be the easy thing to do. Uh-huh. Also the leaderly thing to do.

— On the vexing subject of reforming public-school funding and organization, Milne plans an even bigger dose of delay:

I don’t think we’re going to have a specific plan before the election. What I’ve promised is, there’ll be a plan from the Milne Administration in the House and Senate in the first half of the biennium.

I can understand why he doesn’t want to stake a position during the campaign; the issue’s a toughie, and he’d be alienating some voters no matter what he said. But again, not exactly Leadership in Action.

All this deferral makes Scott Milne look weak. It’s even worse when he sounds weak as well: his voice hesitant, his sentences often incomplete and littered with “ums” and “ahs.”

Scott Milne posits his procrastination as The Big Plan: the “August Strategy” of attacking, the “September Strategy” of revealing his own ideas. I would argue that this is completely ass-backward: Now is the time when Scott Milne has the stage to himself, because Governor Shumlin won’t formally start the campaign until after Labor Day. Milne should be rolling out his proposals this month, and engage the Governor in September and October, when the two men will be sharing the stage.

Of course, the September Strategy is a convenient rationale for a candidate who’s just getting his feet wet and hasn’t worked his way through the issues. He said so himself, frequently referring to “the people I’m talking to” as he formulates his own views.

Not a good look for a man claiming to offer “leadership.”

Best get crackin’, Mr. Milne. You’re on stage, you’re fumbling it, and you’re losing the audience.

The Milne Transcripts, part 4: The Great and Terrible Doug Racine

Leave a reply

Yet another instlalment in my epic series of posts from Scott Milne’s horrific appearance on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show on July 25. It was his first long-form interview since formally opening his bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and it was bad on so many levels… 

One of the many intricate dances Milne was trying to perform was projecting an image of moderation without alienating the GOP base. A difficult task, given that some prominent GOPers are already talking up Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian candidate.

During an attack on the Shumlin Administration’s alleged managerial failings, Milne went off on a tangent about the 2010 campaign. As you may recall, after Jim Douglas bowed out of the race, five Democrats jumped in — and Peter Shumlin eked out a win in the primary, with Doug Racine finishing a close second. Take it away, Mr. Bunny…

I would have loved to have seen a Brian Dubie/Doug Racine governor’s race. I think Doug Racine is an accomplished state public servant, a man of great integrity, and I would have loved that governor’s race. I would have supported Dubie in that, but I thought that would have been a good governor’s race with two very different, um, paths forward for Vermont. But where I would have felt like both people were just being totally candid about what they thought, and not trying to read polls and figure out what they needed to say to get elected.

Got that? Liberal Democrat Doug Racine, man of integrity, “accomplished public servant,” and quality gubernatorial candidate, unlike the unprincipled opportunist who won the nomination, and who shall remain nameless because Milne has declared that his campaign will not “vilify” anyone. (Just as I am not vilifying Scott Milne, a fine businessman who possesses many fine qualities — political skill being conspicuously absent from the list.)

But this remark was preceded by a direct attack on poor management at two agencies: Natural Resources, and Health and Human Services. The latter helmed, of course, by none other than Doug Racine. Just before this, Milne had slammed Governor Shumlin’s so-called “Team of Rivals” cabinet that included some of his adversaries in the 2010 primary. Milne said “I don’t think those were good management choices.”

Okay, so I guess the “accomplished public servant” Doug Racine would be a crackerjack candidate for Governor, but he has no business heading a state agency?

Of course, Milne made it clear that he, personally, wouldn’t have voted for Racine, but still: making Racine the Democratic nominee is putting him in line to run the entire state government, when you think he’s not even capable of running a subset thereof. It’s like saying Sarah Palin was a darn fine candidate but would’ve made a lousy Vice President.

It was a very poor way to make a very weak point. Milne apparently wanted to have something good to say about a prominent Democrat in order to burnish his bipartisan credentials. In the process, though, he managed to compliment and crucify the same person in the space of two paragraphs.

Stay tuned for more installments of The Milne Transcripts, coming soon to this space. But first, I gotta do some weed-whacking. 

The Milne Transcripts, part 2: The accusation

Leave a reply

Early on in Scott Milne’s epic appearance on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show last Friday, the Republican gubernatorial candidate unleashed a tough accusation against Governor Shumlin’s team — basically accusing them of bringing political pressure to bear against Republican donors.

Johnson had asked Milne about fundraising, and specifically about his relatively paltry take of $20,000 so far. Milne asserted that things were going according to plan, and said “I’m not all that actively pursuing money yet.” Johnson was surprised by this, and asked “You’re not actively pursuing money?” And Milne responded:

We’ve got a strategy for fundraising. I’ve got a fundraiser on board and she knows what she’s doing. But I’m not going to spend eight hours a day on the phone begging for money, and I’m clearly not going to call people up who donate to my opponent and ask them why, which is a widely known fact about this administration. 

Emphasis mine. Johnson was a bit incredulous, and followed up: “They do that? To people who contribute to you?” Milne’s response:

No, not me. But in the past. Get people on the show and ask them. But that’s clearly part of the Shumlin agenda.

Milne didn’t directly present this as a case of political blackmail, but that was the clear intent. A pretty damning accusation, presented completely without evidence. Yeah, “get people on the show and ask them.” As if victims of political pressure would freely own up to it on the radio.

Well, I ran this by Erika Wolffling, Shumlin campaign staffer this year and in 2012, which would seem to be the year Milne is hinting at. (A pressure play would have been ineffective in 2010, when Shumlin wasn’t even Governor yet.) Her very concise response:

That’s a bizarre statement, and it’s absolutely false.

So there. Ball’s in your court, Mr. Milne. If you have people willing to substantiate your accusation — on or off the record — I would be happy to speak with them. If you’ve read my stuff for very long, you know that I’m a liberal but an honest broker, willing to criticize members of any party if they’re in the wrong. And if there’s evidence that this accusation isn’t “absolutely false,” I’d consider it newsworthy and I would report it in this space. You know where to find me.

The Milne Transcripts series will continue very soon. 

The Milne Transcripts, part 1: An inauspicious beginning

Leave a reply

On Friday July 25, Scott Milne sat down for his first extensive media interview since launching his Republican candidacy for Governor. He was a guest on The Mark Johnson Show on WDEV Radio; Mark has archived the interview as a podcast. 

It’s a rich vein of material, and I’ll be rolling it out in sections over the next couple of days. I’ve transcribed the first 15 minutes so far, working my way through dense overgrowths of verbiage and sudden shifts of topic, delivered in a quick, stumbly, nervous monotone.

Let me pause here and say that I have a lot of respect for Scott Milne the businessman, and I appreciate his courage in taking on the thankless task of challenging Governor Shumlin. And just as he doesn’t mean to “vilify” Shumlin by referring to him as brazen, bullying, headstrong, radical, and ultra-progressive, I don’t mean to vilify Milne when I say that his performance was so inept as to be almost unlistenable, or that his campaign is off to a terrible, horrible, really bad start, or that any chance he had of mounting a serious challenge to the Governor has already evaporated like the mist of a midsummer morning. Nor when I call him the political equivalent to the 1962 Mets.

Nope, no vilification here.

He came across as a — well, here’s a choice quote:

I’m more interested in the campaign, making sure I’m out meeting Vermonters and reconfirming the reason I got into the race, which is a real fear of the direction the Shumlin Administration is taking the state, and the need for a, hopefully what the people will judge me as an articulate voice of opposition to that. 

Emphasis mine. “Articulate voice of opposition,” my Aunt Fanny.

Milne is a novice to the big political stage, and it may seem unfair to criticize his first sally. But good grief, he put himself in this position by jumping into the race at the last minute. He has no time for missteps, and he surely has no time for on-the-job training. He needed to hit the ground running with a coherent, convincing narrative. Instead, he’s hit the ground face first.

Want more? Oh Lord, there’s more.

There are some real problems with the economy in Vermont, there’s some real lack of leadership from the Shumlin Administration over the last four, or I would argue six years, ’cause he spent his last two years as President Pro Tem of the Senate really running for Governor. So he’s got six years into this, he still can’t even tell us too much about how he’s going to pay for VHC, to say nothing about taking accountability for the total mismanagement of it.

“Six years.”

Peter Shumlin’s been Governor since January 2011. Three and a half years. I don’t know what Milne is hoping to pull off with this six-year bit — which he also hammered home in a media scrum after his campaign launch. It’s transparently phony and unconvincing.

Milne then pivoted to another talking point, delivered with the same skill and grace.

Secondly, we’ve got this big problem with the school system, and we’ve got a Governor who, between vacations in Bimini or wherever his Caribbean vacation home is, and flyin’ all over the country to raise money from special interest groups, he found all kinds of time to do that during the Legislative session, but didn’t find the time or the need to roll up his shirtsleeves, walk across from the Pavilion fifth floor to the Capitol, sit down with House and Senate leaders and get something on the table that’s going to restructure property taxes so that, you know, you’re talking about my announcement in Barre, I stopped at Central Market, which has been there for at least two generations, I stopped in there for a coffee on my way over to my announcement on Wednesday at the Aldrich Public Library, ran into three people all of whom supported me emotionally, all of whom live in Florida and don’t live in Vermont anymore.

You can practically smell the smoke when he shifts mental gears from one talking point to another. He sounds like he’s been stuffed full of briefing notes and hasn’t had time to digest them. They just come spewing out in raggedy chunks whenever he opens his mouth.

Again, I am not vilifying Scott Milne, whom I respect as a person and businessman.

That’s enough for part 1. Coming up in the second installment: Milne makes a striking accusation against Governor Shumlin, the man he is not at all vilifying. And he provides not a speck of evidence.

Stay tuned, and getcha popcorn ready.

Sweet deals, or no deals?

Leave a reply

The 2015 legislative session looks to be big and contentious, including the likely rollout of Governor Shumlin’s single-payer health care plan and a serious debate over public-school organization and financing. We can also expect a new battle over campaign finance reform, VPIRG’s #1 issue for the year.

And there will be a new fight over taxing sugar-sweetened beverages, a measure that has failed twice in recent years. But a new year, a new push, and a new guy taking leadership: Anthony Iarrapino is leaving the Conservation Law Foundation to head the Alliance for a Healthier Vermont, the coalition that spearheaded the sugar-tax fight in 2013. Iarrapino told VTDigger, in the words of Bullwinkle T. Moose, This time for sure.

“We’re going to have the resources this time around to really mobilize and educate the public and policy makers on the wisdom of Vermont once again leading the nation in an important policy area,” he said.

The Alliance claims to have $200,000 to bankroll its campaign and counter the efforts of Big Food and the ever-vigilant Vermont Retail and Grocers’ Association. It also seeks to piggy-back on health care reform, by offering a short-term revenue boost from the tax and the longer-term cost reductions from lower rates of sugar-induced illnesses.

It’ll be interesting to see how Governor Shumlin plays this. (Yes, I’m assuming his re-election. Aren’t you?) He can surely use every bit of money he can find for single-payer; but he’s opposed this tax in the past, and his campaign is getting heavy support from the likes of Coca-Cola.

But I would be Shocked, Shocked, if there were any quid pro quo involved.

Jim Harrison of the Retail Association is dusting off his talking points, including the hardy perennial “a tax would hurt retailers near New Hampshire.” Yeah, well, it might hurt big supermarkets within shouting distance of the border, since a 2-cent-per-ounce tax adds up if you’re buying a 30-pack of Mr. Pibb. I doubt it’ll impact our cherished Mom and Pop enterprises; hard to see too many folks driving across the border if they’re just stopping in for a quick Gatorade fix.

But Harrison’s biggest laugh line was this:

Nothing has changed since previous efforts to pass the tax, adding that it’s still regressive and “goes down the path of government trying to decide what’s best for consumers through tax policy,” Harrison said.

Bwahahahaha. Stop it, Jim, you’re making me shoot coffee out my nose.

You kiddin’ me? Government uses tax policy ALL THE TIME to “decide what’s best for consumers.” Take the mortgage interest rate deduction or the charitable contributions deduction. Take any stinkin’ tax deduction, break, subsidy, or exception. Take the capital gains tax rate, which decides it’s better to be a rich investor than a working stiff.

And if you just want to talk about sweeteners, well, that’s the mother lode of government using tax policy to “decide what’s best for consumers.” Agribusinesses that produce sugar and corn benefit from extremely generous subsidies, price supports, and free “insurance.” The result is lost tax revenue for the public till, a farm system that’s heavily skewed toward the biggest producers and commodity crops that go into junk food of all kinds, and — pay attention, Jim — higher cost for consumers because of artificially high sugar, corn, and soy prices.

So please don’t insult our intelligence with that “government shouldn’t decide what’s best for consumers” nonsense. That ship sailed a very long time ago.

Anyway, it should be an interesting battle. I expect legislative leaders to trot out the old reliable “too many other issues on our plate” line, in an effort to put off consideration of the sugar tax. It’ll be up to the likes of Iarrapino to make it a fight they can’t postpone. As we saw with the GMO labeling bill this year, it’s possible to build momentum behind an issue that lawmakers might prefer to duck, but it takes a concerted effort.

And it’ll require a softening of Shumlin’s hard-line stance. Not an easy thing to accomplish.

School consolidation: It’s coming

Leave a reply

Interesting sidelight from Saturday’s meeting of the Democratic State Committee. Various candidates for statewide office spoke to the Committee, seeking its endorsement… including Governor Shumlin. He delivered an energetic stem-winder of a speech, citing accomplishments and goals and thanking the party faithful for making it all possible.

There was one glaring omission from his list of issues: Public school funding and organization. Not a word.

Then he took a few questions, and longtime committee member Bill Sander asked directly about school consolidation. He’s not a fan.

The Governor’s answer was a masterpiece of pointillism, the technique in which, sez Wikipedia, “small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image.”

The image that emerged: School consolidation is on the way.

He first credited legislative leaders for their “courage” in bringing up the idea earlier this year. Of course, they showed equal amounts of the opposite of courage in ditching the idea when the negative reaction came in waves.

That negative reaction in mind, Shumlin offered a “collaborative” approach which, boiled down to essentials, consists of “We’ll convince you that our plan is right.”

“I’ve asked my Education Secretary to sit down with local schools and show them the math,” he said, “and let the local communities discuss how best to proceed.” He calls this “a partnership, especially with schools that are becoming too small.”

He spoke, not of saving money or centralizing decision-making, but of educational opportunities. He pointed to schools too small to field a football team or cast a theatrical production; of a lack of “a critical mass to provide an educational experience” in classes with only a handful of students.

“Take it from that perspective,” he concluded, “Providing a quality educational experience, plus cost, and we’ll work through it together.”

Yes we will. We’ll work through it to a preformed conclusion.

I’m not necessarily against consolidation, but let’s be honest: as far as the Governor is concerned, the debate on the big question is fundamentally over. Now, it’s a PR blitz and detail work.