VTGOP chair Paul Dame is out with his weekly rumination, which appears every Monday in your inbox if you’ve given the party your email address. (I gave them one that I only use for mailing list.) The latest installment is entitled “Donut Democrats & Gun Control.” The joke, see, is that the Democrats don’t have a middle, only two extremes! Just like a donut!

Yeah, I get it. But…

It’s not really accurate, izzit?

I mean, in a donut there’s a continuum of delicious, fatty, sugary pastry on all sides. What Dame has in mind is something more like a pair of parentheses. Now, there’s a hole in the middle.

Also, too. Dame’s conceit is that the Democratic Party (well, he says “Democrat Party,” but I don’t) has lost its moderate side. That’s not a donut; it’s more of a crescent roll.

I’m getting hungry.

Now, let’s see how Dame defines “moderation.”

I’ve read a lot of damaging political reportage in my time, but rarely have I seen a single piece as devastating as this.

In the latest installment of VTDigger’s ever-unfolding saga of EB-5 corruption, Anne Galloway and Paul Heintz have poured gasoline on the tattered remains of former governor Peter Shumlin’s reputation, tossed in a match, and stood back to watch the flames soar to the sky.

The story, based on FBI interview notes released by a federal judge, shows that Shumlin acted recklessly, flouted ethical standards, ignored the rising tide of evidence that the investment projects run by Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger were deeply fraudulent, and ignored the counsel of close advisors that he was flying far too close to the EB-5 sun.

I have said before that Shumlin must have been either “complicit or stupid” about the scandal and I’m not sure which would be worse. Well, it’s looking more and more like complicity driven by the unmediated gall of the man.

The story is so rich with damning detail that it’s tough to know where to start. I’ll hit a few high points, but I urge you to go and read the whole thing.

Tom Evslin, the very active Vermont technology guru, has a brilliant idea for climate action. It’s quite simple, not unlike abdominal surgery with a broadsword.

Here it is: Buy up all the dairy farms, close ’em down, and plant trees on the land.

That’s it.

In an op-ed posted by VTDigger, Evslin says that move alone will more than meet the Global Warming Solutions Act’s 2025 emission reduction targets. So we don’t have to do anything else.

Well, we’d have to carry out his complicated, politically fraught plan within a mere three years, but.

Let’s pause for a moment and remind ourselves that this is the Tom Evslin who was a founder of NG Advantage, a natural gas distribution company. Yep, fossil fuels.

Would it surprise you to hear that Gov. Phil Scott remains overwhelmingly popular among Vermont Democrats? Our Bernie-inspired reputation for red-raggery notwithstanding, the Duke’s Mayo VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll once again shows that Democrats have a strong preference for Scott’s brand of plausibly moderate Republicanism. This, despite the fact that they strongly support the tougher pandemic measures that Scott has resisted.

WTF, Democrats? Is it just the NICE GUY Effect?

Numbers! According to the Famous Idaho Potato VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll, Democrats approve of Scott’s Covid performance by a whopping 77-14 margin. At the same time, 82% of Democrats support a statewide mask mandate, 76% would be fine with a state of emergency, 84% favor a vaccine requirement for eligible schoolkids, and 68% favor a vaccine requirement for indoor public spaces.

Here’s another oddity. Democrats like Scott’s Covid policy more than they like his overall job performance. It’s 77% on Covid and 71% overall, per the VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll Presented By TaxAct.

There is not a rational explanation for those results. Well, maybe it’s that Scott’s recent performance hasn’t sunk in yet. His policies worked before the Delta variant, but he’s stumbled badly since then. Maybe the public simply hasn’t caught up yet.

The Vermont Public Utilities Commission is considering GlobalFoundries’ application to break away from Green Mountain Power and form its own utility. The proposal may or may not be taken up; there’s a question about whether the PUC has statutory authority to consider the plan. That must be resolved before the PUC can fully consider the plan itself.

But it looks as though the Scott administration has a backup idea. Its officials, who occupy eight seats on the 23-member Vermont Climate Council, are trying to slip the basic tenets of GF’s proposal into the Climate Action Plan being developed by the Council.

As a reminder, GF wants to set up its own utility and save money by buying its power on the regional wholesale market. Its proposal would exempt the bespoke utility from the Global Warming Solutions Act as well as a variety of other state laws and regulations and a gross receipts tax levied on power providers.

The busybodies at the Conservation Law Foundation, which is arguing against the GF plan, has filed a comment with the Council that describes a very permissive carve-out for “Semiconductor Manufacturing in Vermont,” a.k.a. GlobalFoundries, that administration officials are trying to insert into the Climate Plan.

According to the CLF memo, the carve-out is generous indeed to GF.