In Praise of Shithousery

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This, friends and acquaintances, is Jamie Vardy, ace striker for Leicester City FC and world-class shithouse. His specialty is the extravagant goal celebration in front of opposition fans. I do believe he’d rather score on the road than at home, just so he can put on displays like this. A former teammate says that Vardy would ask fellow players how to deliver insults in their language so he’d know how to say “Your sister is a whore” to a Portuguese defender.

Shithousery, broadly defined, is behavior designed to get under your opponent’s skin and hopefully disrupt their play. Kicking, grabbing, taunting, egregious overacting in an attempt to draw a foul, that sort of thing. It’s a quality you hate in opposing players but love when they’re on your side.

Which brings us to Vermont politics, especially Democratic politics, which is woefully short on shithousery. You might think we’re better off that way. To be sure, shithousery can be overdone; there are figures on the national scene who are capable of nothing but. (Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, etc.) Vardy, on the other hand, is a topnotch player who once carried his squad to an improbable Premier League championship.

We need us a Jamie Vardy. By “we,” I mean Vermont’s Democrats and Progressives. The closest thing we’ve got is Bernie Sanders, but he’s not active on the home front. We need someone in state politics happy to throw a sharp elbow in the opposition’s ribs, even if they have to suffer the tut-tuts of the chattering class.

Phil Scott, for all his “nice guy” reputation, is an exceptional shithouse. He knows how to fire a sucker-punch when the ref isn’t looking. Say, when he accuses his critics of playing politics or slams the media for creating controversy. Or when he tiptoes around veto threats while refusing to engage with lawmakers.

It’s how he keeps the Dems off balance. They’re always trying to guess how far they can go without triggering a veto, which makes them water down their own legislation. Which results in Democrats looking like fools when they try to convince their voters that really, if you vote for us this time, we’ll deliver on the stuff we’ve been promising for years. Scott also keeps a stable of shithouses in his executive office, just as fellow “nice guy” Jim Douglas did when he was governor. (Names? Jason Gibbs, Dustin Degree, Tayt Brooks. All three have Two have been at Scott’s right hand since day one; Degree joined them eleven months into Scott’s first term.)

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Somewhere, Arthur Laffer Nods His Approval

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Ah, supply-side economics. That oft-discredited relic of the Reagan administration. The failed policy that has done more to create income inequality than anything Sam Walton could dream up. You’d think that if anybody still believed in it, the Sam Brownback crash-and-burn would have convinced them otherwise.

But here we are in the Year of Our Lord 2022, and somebody from the “moderate” Phil Scott administration has the gall to trumpet a policy as “supply-side.” Yikes.

“This is a supply-side proposal to build more homes, literally to subsidize contractors, home developers and builders to build more homes at the price point that working Vermonters can afford,” [Housing Commissioner Josh] Hanford said.

That quote, which didn’t age well from the moment it left Hanford’s mouth, is about Gov. Scott’s proposal to spend $5 million on a pilot program to pay contractors to rehabilitate decrepit housing stock.

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Never Miss a Chance to Hit Your Talking Points, No Matter How Awkward the Context

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Gov. Phil Scott used the occasion of his weekly Covid briefing — well, customarily weekly; he’s missed two of the last three weeks — to do a little bragging. The Omicron numbers are starting to trend downward and Scott was quick to take credit, although he also warned it was too soon for a victory lap.

That’s all fine. Normal for a politician. But on a couple of occasions, the governor took it uncomfortably close to the realm of tastelessness.

First, a reporter asked him to reflect on Vermont’s death toll passing the 500 milestone. He said the right words, most of them, although in an oddly dispassionate tone; but he couldn’t resist referring — not once, but twice — to the state’s relatively low death toll. In other words, he took a solemn moment as a pretext for delivering a political talking point. And later on, he talked of keeping the death rate on the low side in spite of Vermont’s aging population. Yeah, I know, us Olds are so inconvenient.

Details and a few other notes… after the jump.

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Phil Scott Shows His Educational True Colors

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The above was burped out this morning by “National School Choice Week,” an organization that claims to support education but doesn’t know how to spell Phil Scott’s first name. For the record, it’s one-L, as in Ogden Nash’s lama.

“National School Choice Week” is one of those innocuous-sounding labels adopted by a right-wing organization to obscure its true nature. Here’s how they themselves describe what they stand for:

School choice means giving parents access to the best K-12 education options for their children. These options include traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.

Of course, parents already have access to all these options. What NCSW wants is for public dollars to follow every student no matter where they are educated, including institutions that practice various forms of discrimination and religious indoctrination. Such a program inevitably drains resources away from the public school system, which is one of the jewels of American government.

And yes indeed, Scott did issue a proclamation in support of NCSW. It’s couched in the usual language about improving the quality of education and accountability and parental authority. But look: Scott is endorsing a cause put forward by the enemies of public education on the right. That should worry anyone in Vermont who supports a strong system of public schools.

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Tom Evslin Has a Cunning Plan

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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.

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It’s Friday! Time for the Weekly Dan French Disaster!

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One week ago I referred to Education Secretary Dan French as “the Inspector Clouseau of the Scott cabinet.” Today, on advice from our crack legal team, I am unreservedly apologizing to the memory of the good Inspector, his descendants, and especially his lawyered-up estate. Because good God, the man is starting to make Clouseau look like a paragon of efficiency and organization.

The past two Fridays brought us (1) a sudden and complete reversal in school Covid policy, abandoning contact tracing and Test to Stay in favor of A Policy Yet To Be Named, and (2) the unveiling of said policy, “test at home,” in which parents would do the testing instead of school staff.

And only a few days later, as VTDigger reports, we learn that the schools don’t have anywhere near enough test kits to actually conduct “test at home.” Yep, French’s latest policy was a disaster from conception to unveiling to pratfall.

Got a question. How the blue Hell did French’s agency not realize that tests would run out? School officials realized it within a couple of days.

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Wet Arse, No Fish

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It’s not exactly a surprise that legislative leaders have given up on passing a mask mandate bill, but the timing is curious indeed. Last Friday, we appeared to be one single grumpy senator away from committee approval. Now, less than a week later, the white flag is waving.

On Friday (per VTDigger’s excellent Final Reading), Ginny Lyons, chair of the Senate Welfare Committee, asked her members if they were ready to vote on the bill. Sen. Ann Cummings replied that she wasn’t. Which is pretty odd, considering that a mask mandate has been a hot issue in #vtpoli for months now. Had she given it no thought until that moment?

Lyons asked if the committee could vote on Monday, usually an off day. The not-terribly-energetic Cummings responded, “What’s the matter with Tuesday?”

The bill was on the committee’s agenda first thing Tuesday morning. But at that point, Lyons announced an indefinite delay. “Leadership continues to discuss the path forward for that bill,” she said. “It was scheduled for this morning, but we’re going to postpone our work and hopefully it’ll only be until tomorrow morning.”

“Hopefully.”

But the state Senate is where hope goes to die.

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Democrats Like Phil Scott, But Not His Covid Policies

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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.

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Molly Gray Cares Not for Your Stupid “Rules”

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Lt. Gov and wannabe U.S. Representative Molly Gray proudly tweeted out the above photo, writing that she was meeting “with the Central VT Chamber of Commerce on this moment of tremendous opportunity and how we can work in partnership to recover stronger from COVID-19.”

Lovely. Leadership and collaboration in action to tackle a tough issue.

See anything wrong with that photo?

Well, it’s an indoor space, and nobody seems to be wearing masks. Maybe they’re skating by on the technicality that it’s a lunch meeting, but I don’t see anybody eating or drinking. Gray certainly isn’t.

This isn’t the end of the world or anything, and I wasn’t going to write about it until I realized that this meeting was in the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier.

That would be the city with the mask mandate for indoor public spaces.

Such as this conference room.

I believe this is the same Molly Gray who’s called for indoor masking. Oh wait, here it is, from an interview with WAMC Radio: “…we need to continue to encourage Vermonters and Americans to get vaccinated, to get their boosters, and to wear a mask when they’re inside.”

Except when you’re talking to important people, I guess? Potential campaign donors, hmm? Is it harder to make your pitch if they can’t see the anodyne expression on your face?

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Dear Workforce Member: The Definition of “Acceptable Damage” Has Been Escalated

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The news that the University of Vermont Health Network will force workers to use up their vacation and sick days if they get Covid is bad enough. What’s worse is the implicit message about the future of the disease.

“While the UVM Health Network understands that this is a change, as we enter the third year of the pandemic with a realization that COVID-19 will become endemic, UVMHN needed a policy that could be sustainable and offered for the long term,” UVM Health Network spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote in an email.

Worth noting that “this is a change” is a totally vanilla way of saying “we’re sticking it to all of you.” Beyond that, the message is that after pandemic transitions to endemic, the ravages of Covid-19 will be impactful enough to warrant a permanent change in workplace policy. Even when “pandemic” is nothing but a memory, a lot of workers will still get sick enough to use up their paid time off.

For those who believed that we were going to come out of this unscathed — that “endemic” meant our lives could return to normal — this is a chilling concept. Kinda provides a bit of unpleasant context for Gov. Phil Scott’s sweet-talk about the endemic phase. We might be wearing N95s and thinking twice about entering public spaces for a long, long time. Like, indefinitely.

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