Rumor Central: Can you be the Comeback Kid if you never left?

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A juicy little rumor is making the rounds in Democratic circles. There is absolutely no confirmation, and it may simply be a case of wishful thinking on the part of certain Dems. But even so, I’ll invoke Blogger’s Privilege and put it out there.

The rumor: House Speaker Shap Smith might run for lieutenant governor.

At first, I was dubious. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

For those just joining us, Smith launched a bid for governor last summer. But he pulled out in mid-November, citing his wife’s battle with cancer.  He also announced he would not run for re-election to the House, which also meant abandoning the Speakership at biennium’s end. However, he left the door just a teensy-weensy bit open.

He told reporters that even if the treatments go well, it was unlikely he would re-enter the race.

“Unlikely.” He didn’t completely dismiss the idea.

All right, here’s where we turn to pure speculation.

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Fantasia on a Theme by Bill McKibben

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Last night I had the strangest dream… 

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VTGOP Reverses Course On Carbon Tax

At a hastily-called news conference at the Statehouse, Republican leaders announced a sudden change of position on climate change: they are endorsing a carbon tax proposal that’s been languishing in the Legislature.

“It’s the right thing to do, and now is the right time,” said Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning.

“We’ve all been kidding ourselves,” added House Minority Leader Don Turner. “But the longer this winter went on, with so little snow and such high temperatures, well, we just couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

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A closer look at the “reasonable” Republican candidate

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Ohio Governor John Kasich is offering himself to the good people of New Hampshire as a pragmatic, optimistic, kinda-centrist manager: a guy who can Get Things Done and Work With Others. His campaign schtick even convinced MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who called him “real and reasonable-seeming and relatable-seeming.” And:

If some voters up here are looking for authenticity in their candidate, well, just as a political consumer, a political observer who’s been up to New Hampshire for a lot of primaries and seen a lot of these events, I can see how New Hampshire voters see authenticity in John Kasich.

Yeah, well, not so fast. John Kasich is a veteran politician. He is presenting himself as relatable and reasonable, but his actual record in Ohio tells a very different story. His administration has been nearly as hard-right dogmatic as those of Michigan’s Rick Snyder or Kansas’ Sam Brownback. And just about as successful, too. When you open the attic of Kasich’s Ohio, there’s an awful lot of spiders up there.

“Out-of-state media are oblivious to the disgrace at the Ohio Department of Education.”

Those words are from the keyboard of Toledo Blade columnist Marilou Johanek. She’s writing about Kasich’s scandal-plagued education reform effort, which centers on that favored right-wing nostrum, school choice. His (ahem, former) school choice director, David Hansen,

… engaged in a fraudulent scheme to boost the evaluations of some charters. Mr. Hansen, whose wife worked as the governor’s chief of staff until she left to manage his presidential campaign, admitted scrubbing data on failing online and dropout recovery-charters to improve their standing in the state.

Wonderful. If charter schools aren’t working, then cook the books!

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A respected politician is making a fool of himself

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One of the unfortunate traits of Vermont’s Political Media is their tendency to kinda-sorta protect officeholders and officials. Keep a discreet distance when it comes to things they have decided It Is Not Our Business To Know. There’s a certain dignity in it, but they take it too far.

Please understand, I’m not asking them to start checking the sleeping arrangements at the Capitol Plaza or devise spreadsheets of politicians’ liquor consumption. But there are times when the private does touch on public interest. You’d think this would be perfectly clear in the Norm McAllister era. But it still happens; I have heard rumors of an affair between a citizen and the state official responsible for overseeing the state-funded activities of said citizen. That would seem to be something we have a right to know, since it directly impacts public responsibilities.

This week, the media silence was broken on one such issue: State Senator Bill Doyle simply isn’t up to the job anymore.

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Interlocking investments: a mockery of “free markets”

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One of my core principles here at theVPO is:

There is no such thing as a “free market”

This is my response to conservatives who natter about how the “free market” will fix anything, from health care costs to poverty to global warming. It might be true in the pages of Ayn Rand, but nowhere else.

I’ll get to my reasoning in a while. But first, a People’s Exhibit to present, courtesy of those pinko fellow-travelers at The Economist.

In the January 23,2016 issue, there’s an article about the effect of low-low oil prices on airfares. The surprising conclusion: don’t expect any bargains in the Unfriendly Skies. This is true despite the fact that domestic carriers are raking in the dough.

On January 19th Delta kicked off the results season for the airlines, announcing record fourth-quarter profits and forecasting that first-quarter margins in 2016 would be twice as high as in 2015. Analysts also expect its rivals to report bumper earnings for the most recent quarter.

Prices went up when oil shot through the roof. Why aren’t they coming down now?

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A tale of two troubled campaigns

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Over the weekend, when I realized that much of the Vermont political media corps had decamped for Iowa, I jokingly Tweeted an alert to politicians: this would be an ideal time to dump some bad news, because it would likely be under-reported by our depleted media corps.

Well hey, turns out I was right. Because not one, but two Democratic candidates for statewide office took the opportunity to fire their campaign managers: gubernatorial hopeful Sue Minter, and Rep. Kesha Ram, running for lieutenant governor. (Technically, Minter reassigned her campaign chief, but that’s so transparent it fails the laugh test.) The news was broken by one of the only political scribes who didn’t decamp to Iowa, Seven Days’ Terri Hallenbeck.

I think we’ve just achieved a great deal of clarity on the likely Democratic ticket. I don’t know for a fact that the Minter and Ram machines are in the ditch, but I do know that this is something that only happens when a campaign is in deep trouble.  It’s like a baseball team going into a new season with a new manager — and then firing the poor bastard on Memorial Day. It doesn’t happen unless there are exigent reasons, such as a 12-30 record and dead last in the standings.

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Look who the VTGOP is honoring tonight

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The Vermont Republican Party is holding a fundraiser tonight at the Barre Elks Club. They’ll have speeches by candidates, a silent auction, and generally fun, food and frolic as only the Republicans can do.  (Think disco-era David Bowie with a whole lot of American flags.)

And oh yeah, they’re continuing their tokenistic Salute to Our Vets with a round of applause and a few parting gifts for three Actual Veterans!

(As usual, the proceeds of the event aren’t going to vets’ causes, or even a small portion thereof. It’s all going into @VTGOP’s coffers.)

And one of the three vets rang a faint bell in my mind: Paul E. Gibbs, Jr., of Springfield. After a bit of Googling, I discovered that Mr. Gibbs is a spectacularly unsuccessful two-time candidate for the legislature. He ran as a Republican for the House in 2010, and for the Senate in 2012. Got thoroughly trounced both times.

Sheesh. Not only are the Republicans using our brave veterans as window-dressing for a political fundraiser, they’re recycling old candidates from their Fail Pile and presenting them as randomly selected stand-ins for the defenders of our freedom.

That’d be shameful enough. But then I put on my Wellies and took a stroll through the muck and mire of Mr. Gibbs’ Facebook page, which is full of rabid archconservative propaganda.

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Bully for Bernie

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Nice showing for our 74-year-old “junior” Senator in Iowa. And boy, does he have more stamina than most people ten years younger. I loved the footage of him addressing a crowd of hundreds at FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING as he arrived in New Hampshire.

Anyway, my take on Iowa. I begin with my customary mea culpa when it comes to Bernie; I’m one of those who has underestimated him all along. And somehow, he’s doing quite well in spite of me. However, allow me to be consistent: I still think Hillary Clinton is the favorite.

On the Democratic side, the results were a victory for both candidates. Clinton got to claim the victory; Sanders did better than expected, and continues to ride a seemingly unending wave of momentum. He’s likely to win New Hampshire; after that, the going gets tougher. Bernie  still has a very long way to go.

He has a momentum advantage. He’s also got a surprising asset for an insurgent: a healthy campaign fund and the closest thing to a perpetual-motion fundraising machine. Clinton won’t be able to outspend him into irrelevance.

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The fish in the coal mine

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Truly disturbing news in today’s VTDigger feed. (Oh, Digger, why must you spoil my Monday mornings?…)

A significant majority of Missisquoi River’s male smallmouth bass bear eggs, a characteristic known as “intersex.”

… A report published this fall, the most comprehensive of its kind, found 60 percent to 75 percent of male smallmouth bass in the Missisquoi River carry eggs.

Yikes!

Sixty to 75 percent???

That’s overwhelming evidence of an ecosystem ravaged by outside forces.

Okay, that’s the scientifically disturbing fact of the day. Now for the politically disturbing fact.

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Bernie wins a round

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Well, I was wrong.

Recently, I was critical of the Bernie Sanders campaign for endangering a possible New Hampshire debate by insisting on a further expansion of the debate schedule.

And last night, the Democratic National Committee capitulated. 

“Our Democratic candidates have agreed in principle to having the DNC sanction and manage additional debates in our primary schedule, inclusive of New Hampshire this week,” [DNC Chair and Representative Debbie] Wasserman Schultz said in the statement.

Mighty white of her, considering that she had stubbornly resisted any changes to the previously agreed debate schedule. I don’t know if it was Jeff Weaver’s persuasive charm, or party leaders finally realizing they’d shot themselves in the foot with a minimal and weirdly-scheduled slate of debates.  But something finally penetrated the DNC’s shields.

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