Scott Milne borrowed a bucket, and he’s going to clean up Lake Champlain

Leave a reply

The ever-constipated Campaign of Ideas has pooped out another rock-hard nugget… this time, by way of emailed press release without any live contact with reporters.

And no wonder. Even Mahatma has to realize this one’s a clunker.

It’s a two-part plan to clean up Lake Champlain.

I repeat: “two-part.”

And part one is:

Catalyze the cleanup of Lake Champlain without raising new revenue.

Yes, part one is nothing more than a restatement of the overall idea.

Step two is even worse: he wants to raid an existing fund to pay for a tiny fraction of cleanup costs:

Amend the “Vermont Housing and Conservation Trust Fund Act” to allocate the part of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board’s funds used for conservation to cleaning up Lake Champlain.

(Bold type is Milne’s.)

I've got just the idea for you! Low mileage, runs good, new battery & tires. Don't mind the rust.

I’ve got just the plan for you! Low mileage, runs good, new battery & tires. Don’t mind the rust.

The appendix to part two is renaming VHCB as the “Vermont Housing and Lake Champlain Cleanup Trust.”

And that’s it. That’s his entire Lake Champlain cleanup “plan.”

Okay, a couple of small problems right off the bat.

— This would strip VHCB of its ability to do any other conservation work: conserving farmland through the purchase of development rights; helping preserve natural areas, historic properties, wildlife habitat; purchasing land for new parks and wildlife areas; and helping provide public access to conserved land.

— It would provide, by Milne’s own estimate, a measly $7.4 million per year for a cleanup that’s estimated to cost $150 million. In the absence of a comprehensive plan, that money won’t have much impact.

Milne isn’t bothered by robbing VHCB to pay for the lake; indeed, he says there’s no need for VHCB to do any conservation:

Milne said more than half of Vermont’s land is either owned by the state or federal government, or under some sort of easement that prohibits development today.

“I say half of our state being set aside is good enough for the next five years,” according to Milne. “Let’s have this board and these dollars go towards affordable housing and cleaning up the Lake.

Hmm. He thinks there’s more than enough conserved land in Vermont. And this is the same guy who wants to suburbanize a chunk of land off I-89 in Hartford. And who has said he’d like Vermont to take a more New Hampshire-style approach to conservation and development.

Which makes me suspect that Milne wouldn’t like to see any new regulations on farmland or developed areas or wastewater treatment.

Oh, I forgot another small problem with the plan: There’s no way in Hell the feds would buy it. And we’re under pressure from the EPA to do some real substantive stuff. This ain’t it.

I think I see why he slipped this one over the transom and avoided interacting with the media. Even by Milne’s standards, this idea is a real clunker.

(Note: As of this writing, Milne hadn’t posted the plan on his website. I’m sure he’ll think of it sometime.)

 

Freeploid clickbait FAIL

Leave a reply

The Burlington Free Press is allegedly entering the Brave New World of Journalism’s Future: an age with resource-starved newsrooms, reporters scrambling to fill multiple “content streams,” Orwellian job titles like “Content Coach” and “Engagement Editor,” little or no copy editing, and a fixation on “audience analytics,” i.e. clickbait. Stories will be pursued, written, and even rewritten in response to the perceived interests of the audience. And note: we’re not readers anymore. We’re “news consumers” or something.

But if this is indeed the future of the Freeploid, it’s off to a rocky start. Yesterday, we learned the identity of Ebola Guy, the Vermonter who spent most of October in West Africa on a solo mission to fight Ebola.

It’s a big damn sexy story that pushes all the right buttons. It’s got important public policy implications: How did this guy get to Africa and back? How was his return handled by local, state, and federal authorities? What does it say about our Ebola containment efforts?

At the same time, it’s an eyeball grabber. Peter Italia is a full-on nutball who has claimed to use time travel and other “special powers” to cure disease and bring back people from the dead. His Facebook page is chock full of juicy stuff, chronicling his trip to Africa and detailing many of his cherished beliefs.

Also, I’ve heard that there are more dimensions to the story yet to come out — some on the serious policy questions, some in the “WTF” hot zone of audience curiosity.

The Freeploid’s Mike Donoghue managed to get quite a bit of detail yesterday and posted a story online last night.

But did they feature it on the website?

No. The primary slot on the homepage was about a high school soccer game.

Today’s print edition banishes Donoghue’s story to page 3; the front page has a run-of-the-mill piece on Vermont officials preparing to deal with Ebola cases.

And this morning, even after a solid 12 hours of “audience analytics,” the homepage STILL doesn’t feature Italia:

Screen Shot 2014-10-30 at 11.30.31 AM

All I can say is, c’mon, Freeploid. If you’re going to burn your journalistic soul on the altar of “audience analytics,” you could at least do a good job of it.

Postscript. The Freeploid pulls an old favorite trick in Donoghue’s piece: doggedly refusing to give credit to other media outlets. You wouldn’t know it by reading Donoghue, but it was WCAX-TV who first identified Italia and scored a phone interview with him. I’ve said it before, but this is the kind of thing that makes the Free Press disliked by many others in the media world. It’s arrogant, it’s wrong, and in the long run it does nothing to elevate the Freeploid or diminish its rivals.

Meet Dan Feliciano’s uvula

Leave a reply

Well, I think we can stop taking submissions for Worst TV Ad of 2014 (Vermont Regional). Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.32.42 AM

That’s a screengrab from the new TV ad for Dan Feliciano, Libertarian candidate for Governor.

At least I think it’s an ad for Feliciano, not a bit of inspired trollery by the Scott Milne campaign. Because the ad does nothing to advance Feliciano’s cause; indeed, it highlights his status as an underfunded, politically inexperienced, minor-party candidate.

How bad is it? Let me count the ways.

The entire 30-second ad consists of one continuous shot of Feliciano reciting his favorite talking points. His voice is too fast, he’s too brightly lit and uncomfortably close*, his face does a bunch of weird things, his closing smile is off-putting. It was clearly done on the cheap.

*It’s never a good thing if a viewer’s first instinct is to recoil from the screen. 

The script is poorly written; his first line is “Like you, I believe our best days are ahead.” And then, without the slightest pause, he ticks off all the ways our state is going to hell:

3,000 fewer jobs. Out of control spending. Increasing poverty, low wages, high taxes, and government-controlled health care are alarming.

Wait, you just said something about “our best days”. WTF?

The parade of imagined horrors out of the way, he instantly pivots to his pitch:

I’m Dan Feliciano. I have the experience to reverse these trends by taking a fresh look at government.

When you vote, think new. Think better. It’s time to vote for experience and not party. Vote Feliciano for Governor. Our best days can be ahead, and I’ll be there with you.

Queasy smile, fade to black.

Wait, “experience”? Not once but twice?

Most viewers have never heard of this guy or seen his face before. How are they supposed to buy him as “experienced”?

I understand that there’s no time for a resume in a 30-second spot, but you can’t just come in and throw “experience” around as a credential for a virtual unknown. Also, how can you pitch “new” and “experience” in the same breath?

It’s a political truism that TV exposure is a necessity. In this case, the more people see this spot, the fewer votes Feliciano will get.

And now, in case you thought I was exaggerating about his face doing weird things, here are a few screengrabs taken more or less randomly in one viewing.

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.34.14 AM

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.36.39 AM

 

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.33.58 AM

 

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.28.30 AM

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.34.43 AM

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 11.35.48 AM

p.s. That last one is Feliciano’s attempt at a smile. Yikes.

The sad thing is, he really is quite a bit more personable than this. Which makes it even more of an insult to the fine art of advertising.

Scandal! Panic!! Naked Hippies!!! Taxpayer Dollars!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Leave a reply

About five weeks ago, the Vermont Historical Society announced a bit of good news: it won a $117,521 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct research and create exhibits and programs about Vermont’s countercultural movement of the 1970s. (The total cost of the project is roughly $260,000; VHS is responsible for getting the rest of the money.) VHS curator Jackie Calder explains:

“By collecting objects, papers, and oral histories we will be creating a body of information for this pivotal period in our state history, making it available for generations to come. And our project’s community forums and public programs will engage Vermonters in learning about this important time in our history.”

It’s a worthy project. The countercultural movement had a lasting impact on Vermont — its politics, culture, environmental movement, its very active food scene, even its economy. (Ben and Jerry’s, anyone?)  The idea of collecting oral histories is especially pertinent, since the firebrands of the 70s are now, ahem, getting up there in age and won’t be around forever.

So, all good, yes?

Yes, until the right-wing “news” site Vermont Watchdog got wind of the grant — more than a month after it was announced — and predictably headlined it like this:

Taxpayers stripped of $117,521 for naked hippie commune research

Damn dirty clickbait!

Damn dirty clickbait!

Ahh, nothing like a little moral panic to clear the sinuses, eh?

VW’s one and only staffer, Bruce Parker, hit all the high notes in his predictable screed: a “taxpayer-funded” project to study “the hippie commune movement that invaded Vermont” with its “oft-nude, drug-addled drifter colonies,” “idealistic youth dropping out of society,” “free-love vagabond communards,” and a former member reminiscing about how “We shared food. We shared sex. We shared clothing…”

Damn dirty HIPPIES!

This story combines two favored tropes of the far right: exaggerating government-funded activities to make them look ridiculous, and slamming the excesses of the left. Especially hippies. Damn dirty hippies!

But seriously, that 70s stuff — which itself had its roots in earlier back-to-the-land movements, as embodied in the works of Helen and Scott Nearing and pioneering New Hampshire-based food writer Beatrice Trum Hunter — did play a significant role in creating the Vermont of today.

The old Vermont, remember, was an extremely red state, ruled for over a century by the Republican Party. Montpelier was a famously stiff community where the sidewalks got rolled up at 5 p.m.

The transition is striking. And the role of the counterculture movement is definitely worth studying and discussing. Libraries and museums are the places that collect and preserve our past. That’s kind of important, no? We need to understand our past in order to understand how we got where we are.

I think Santayana put that a little better. But you get the point. Museums and libraries are the repositories of our history, our culture. They are the institutions that preserve what is important. And it’s inarguable that the 70s counterculture played an important role in Vermont’s history.

Even if you can’t stand damn dirty hippies.

Neale Lunderville, the shiniest bauble on the public policy tree

1 Reply

Oh, those darn Democrats. They just can’t seem to resist the dubious charms of former Douglas Administration functionary (and campaign hatchet-man, lest we forget, and I bet Doug Racine hasn’t) Neale Lunderville.

Mmmm, what should I take over next?

Mmmm, what should I take over next?

Back in 2011-12, Lunderville started his run as the Dems’ unlikely go-to guy when he served as Governor Shumlin’s Irene Recovery Czar. This summer, he added another layer of plausible nonpartisanship as Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s choice to be interim head of the Burlington Electric Department, tasked with undertaking a “strategic review” of the organization.

Well, unbeknownst to almost everyone outside of the State House inner circle, Lunderville had already scored a public-policy bingo with his appointment to a not-quite-secret committee tasked with nothing less than crafting an overhaul of Vermont’s public education system. VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld got the goods:

The group isn’t a legislative committee per se – not too many people even know it exists. But members of Smith’s education reform group have been getting together since after the close of the 2014 legislative session. And by year’s end, Smith says he hopes they’ll deliver the policy recommendations that will serve as the basis for an overhaul of the state’s education system.

… He says the advance work being done by the group will give lawmakers the early start they need to get a meaningful bill across the finish line.

The committee is dominated by current and former state lawmakers, most of them Democrats, but also including a couple of Republicans, one former Republican turned independent (Oliver Olsen), one Progressive, and Our Man Neale.

Which makes me again raise the question, Can’t the Democrats find anybody else to take on tough policy challenges? Why do they have to depend on a guy who cut his teeth running the dark side of Jim Douglas’ political operation?

And, especially, why in the Blue Hell do they insist on burnishing the credentials of a guy who might very well be the Republican candidate for Governor in 2016 or 2018?

Ulp. Pardon me for a moment…

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 9.10.59 AM

Whew. That’s better. Now, where was i?

Oh yes. Aside from Lunderville’s presence, the committee’s almost total secrecy has to be a concern.

The group’s meetings aren’t warned or open to the public, and minutes aren’t recorded. Smith says the off-the-books arrangement is needed to help members of the group feel more “free” to brainstorm different approaches.

So I guess the fact that this isn’t an official committee exempts it from open-meetings and public-records laws — kinda like Dick Cheney’s infamous energy policy committee. But if the group manages to complete its task, it might well be the most powerful committee in the legislature (even if it no longer exists when the legislature comes back to work). It’ll effectively set the school-reform agenda for the lawmakers who actually have to do their business, inconveniently enough, under the public eye.

Three other things you should know:

— According to one member, the committee is focusing on student-to-teacher ratio. Which might mean mandatory minimum class sizes, or even forced school consolidation.

— Lunderville seems to favor centralizing budgetary authority, which he advocates under the guise of allowing local officials to “devote attention where it belongs: student learning.” Their ability to do anything about student learning without the power of the purse would be sharply constrained, of course. Lunderville would like to “go to more of a model like the state has, where there’s one agency, one department on a regional or state level handling those.” Which would be kind of a radical move.

— Finally, as Hirschfeld reports at the top of his story, “public education – not single-payer health care – will be top of mind for House lawmakers.” Not good news for Governor Shumlin, who continues to insist that single-payer is Job One in the new biennium.

Dean Corren puts the pedal to the metal

Leave a reply

The Secretary of State’s office has been blizzarded by Mass Media spending reports from the Dean Corren campaign in the past eight days, representing a strong home-stretch advertising blitz for Phil Scott’s challenger.

Since October 20, Corren has reported spending a total of $60,961, with almost two-thirds of the money going to TV advertising. Going into the campaign, Corren had a fixed budget of $200,000 because once he opted for public financing, he couldn’t take any further donations.

The rundown:

  • $38,980 for TV (broadcast and cable)
  • $8,095 for radio
  • $5,387 for newspapers
  • $4,000 for campaign consultancy by State Rep. Chris Pearson’s firm
  • $2,385 for graphic design work
  • $1,542 for online advertising
  • $572 for printing (The campaign had done a lot more printing earlier in the season.)

All in all, it’s a nice healthy push. Earlier, I’d wondered if Corren was hoarding his money too long. Now, I think he was right to keep his powder dry until the campaign’s closing days. Most voters don’t pay much attention until right before the election. Except for those who don’t pay any attention at all.

Also, the recent TV ads have good production values and strong messaging. I don’t know that it’s enough to knock off Phil Scott, but full credit to the Corren team for a sound strategy.

Endorsement or Recommendation? Seems to be no difference.

Leave a reply

A few days ago, Phil Scott and Right to Life raised a bit of a stink about a TV ad from Dean Corren’s campaign, which sought to draw a distinction between Corren’s solid pro-choice record and Scott’s, which is mostly but not entirely pro-choice. And it pointed out that Scott had the backing of RTL.

The issue raised by Scott and his kinda-sorta friends at RTL is that the group has not “endorsed” the Lieutenant Governor, but merely “recommended” him.

“Recommended” does sound a bit less formal than “endorsed,” but is there really a difference?

Well, on Sunday, the Burlington Free Press issued its predictable endorsements of Governor Shumlin and Phil Scott. But it didn’t use the verb “endorse” anywhere on its editorial page.

In fact, the first sentence of the gubernatorial editorial says…

“The Burlington Free Press editorial board recommends Peter Shumlin for governor.”

The Scott editorial begins with…

“Vermonters should return Phil Scott to Montpelier as lieutenant governor.”

By Phil Scott’s standards, neither he nor the governor have been endorsed by Vermont’s Largest Newspaper. I hope he doesn’t claim otherwise.

Also, earlier today, my email inbox was graced by a missive from Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger on behalf of State Sen. Phil Baruth. I’ll have more to say on this later, but for now I’d simply like to note the wording:

“I want to put in a strong recommendation for… Phil Baruth.”

Hm. Guess that’s not an “endorsement” either.

Or, alternatively, Phil Scott has no basis for complaint about Dean Corren’s ad.

Hack’s retreat

Leave a reply

The conservatives really thought they’d gotten hold of a hot one.

They’d suddenly “discovered” a Shumlin Administration plan to “take over” Medicare, and began furiously stoking fear among Vermont seniors. Or at least trying their best to do so. As if they really gave a damn about Medicare, considering that their party is actively trying to kill it for future enrollees. And that their favored candidate, Dan Feliciano, is a Libertarian and presumably doesn’t believe in relying on the gubmint for anything.

It took a few days for the Administration to put together a coherent response, perhaps because they were incredulous that anyone would take this seriously. But their response did come, and it was simple and categorical: There is no such thing.

First word actually came from VTDigger’s Anne Galloway, who reported that the pertinent clause in Vermont’s health care reform law had been amended last spring, and that the law no longer mentioned anything like a takeover.

Which, as I predicted, didn’t stop the anti-reform crowd from pushing the idea. Here’s a Twitter exchange between Agitator-in-Chief Darcie “Hack” Johnston and Yours Truly, beginning with a Johnston link to a fear-stoking radio ad produced by the Ethan Allen Institute:

Funny, I didn’t get a response to that last one.

Meanwhile, El Jefe General John McClaughry leaped into the fray with a partial retreat, posted as a Comment under Galloway’s story. In it, he tried to muddy the legal waters before concluding that apparently there would be no Medicare takeover — but instead of admitting the whole hoopla had been pointless, he posited that the Administration was “trying to squirm out” of their alleged intent to take over Medicare. He further congratulated Dan Feliciano, the one who first tried to peddle this bill of goods, for supposedly uncovering the Shumlin plot and forcing the Governor to abandon it.

Like I’ve said before, sometimes I think ol’ Jefe doesn’t really mean the stuff he writes; he’s just trollin’ us.

Later in the day came another VTDigger story, amplifying Galloway’s initial post. This time, Administration officials had joined the chorus.

Robin Lunge, director of Health Care Reform, said unequivocally Monday that it won’t happen.

“Federal law does not permit us to get the cash,” she said.

Reporter Morgan True then explained that the troublesome portion of Act 48, the 2011 health care reform bill, called for the state to pay for all health services “to the extent possible under federal law.” And as Lunge stated, federal law doesn’t permit such a move.

Further, True reported:

That portion of Act 48 is what’s known as session law, or the legislation as passed before it is written into statute.

It provides guidance for writing the statutes, and while it is still law, the portions that don’t make it into statute are often temporary and meant to provide guidance.

“In 2011, we asked the administration to entertain lots of things, but it was in the context of ‘tell us whether you can do this,’” said Rep. Mike Fisher (D-Lincoln), who was on the House Health Care Committee when it drafted Act 48.

And after all that, remember that this year’s Legislature repealed that section of Act 48.

Johnston, of course, was prepared with a fallback position: “if the state is allowed” to set payment rates for medical services “and determine the type of payments, it will be bad for seniors on Medicare.”

Please note the first word: “if”. The whole argument is based on her own assumption.

From there, it’s just a quick hop and a step to the conservatives’ favorite bugaboo: rationing!!!

Scary

It’s a quick, and nearly complete, comedown for Johnston and her ilk. From frightening stories of a Shumlin plot to take control of Medicare and screw around with seniors’ benefits, to a maybe-possibly-perhaps shift in reimbursements. So sad when a good conspiracy theory gets thoroughly blown up by the facts.

The ironic thing about all of this is the notion that hardcore conservatives are suddenly the Protectors of Medicare. Don’t I recall Mr. McClaughry, just a few weeks ago, pining for the good old days before we had all this Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid crap that was draining our independence and sucking the lifeblood out of the private-sector social safety net that somehow, magically, took care of everyone’s needs?

If you’re interested in protecting federal health insurance, I’d advise you that Governor Shumlin is a much better ally than the likes of Darcie Johnston.

And the first one bites the dust

1 Reply

The seasonal slasher flick that is the Burlington Free Press has claimed its first victim. Reporter Lynn Monty has been kicked out the door for refusing to go through the “degrading and demoralizing” experience of “interviewing for a job I already had.”

Last week, Freeploid staffers had to re-interview for newly-defined jobs as part of Gannett’s Newsroom of the Future initiative. Seven Days’ Paul Heintz reports that Monty had an interview scheduled, but at the last minute she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it.

“I opted out of the interview process and they laid me off. …I loved my job, but I don’t love Gannett. I will make a new way for myself that doesn’t compromise my integrity.”

… According to Monty, Gannett plans to pay her the difference between unemployment insurance compensation and her full salary for six weeks — one for each year she spent at the paper.

Ooooh, six whole weeks! That’ll take her right into… mid-December.

Merry Christmas!

One other note that strikes me as extremely convenient:

An internal document obtained two weeks ago by Seven Days indicated that final decisions from Gannett were due this week, though Monty said she expected them next week.

Yeah, we’ll expect you all to work your asses off through Election Night, but no guarantees after that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

Leave a reply

Audio accompaniment to this blogpost:

Well, good ol’ “Bitter Bob” Hartwell, outgoing Republicrat Senator from Bennington, has left his fellow Senators a parting gift: the op-ed equivalent of a flaming bag of poo, entitled “What Senate Democrats Must Do.”

Hartwell’s public statements have shifted to the right in recent months, starting with his infamous skepticism about climate change and continuing through his comments to VTDigger last week that the Democrats have gone too far to the left:

“There’s too much spending, there’s too much social engineering, going on. Our party is getting out of line,” he said.

His opinion piece is more of the same. It reads as though it comes, not from the moderate Democrat he claims to be, but from somewhere to the right of Phil Scott. Indeed, it’s a big fat sloppy wet kiss to the Republican Party, delivered one week before Election Day. I’m sure the timing is coincidental, cough, hack, choke.

Bitter Bob, doing research for his opinion piece.

Bitter Bob, doing research for his opinion piece.

He accuses the Democratic Party of becoming “more ideological and, therefore, less effective and more poorly focused on the real issues.” By which he means, the “real issues” that concern Bitter Bob Hartwell.

He then slaps around Democrats and the Shumlin Administration for the “poor rollout of Vermont Health Connect” and says “The Legislature must determine to put an end to the single payer scheme unless it can clearly show significant savings…”

A reminder: There are two goals in advancing single-payer. One is to bend the cost curve, and the other is to provide universal access to health care. If Bob is only interested in the former, well, I’m glad he will no longer represent the Democratic Party in the new biennium.

Then he gets to property taxes and school funding, which “inexcusably, the Legislature has done virtually nothing to control…” Remind me: wasn’t Bob Hartwell in the Legislature himself?

Also, in one badly-written sentence, he appears to endorse Scott Milne’s proposal for a freeze on property taxes.

Then he takes a dump on the Senate Education Committee for “a most unacceptable performance” in failing to address the issue to Hartwell’s satisfaction. He’s talkin’ to you, Dick McCormack, Don Collins, Phil Baruth, Bill Doyle and David Zuckerman.

Somehow I don’t think Bitter Bob was talking to his colleagues this way when the Senate was still in session and his words could have had some impact. Indeed, it’s hard to tell from this essay that Hartwell was a fairly influential member of the Senate majority instead of an innocent bystander.

He then slams “Vermont’s intoxication with large scale renewable energy,” which fits in with his doubts about climate change. It also buttresses his self-congratulatory impulses, as he upbraids the Senate for refusing to pass his bills to create new obstacles in the path of renewable energy.

After that, it’s on to the core Republican talking point: “Vermont continues to spend too much money,” especially on social services programs, and bitches about “throwing money at problems” in a way that’s straight out of the Angry Jack Lindley playbook.

Hmm. Angry Jack and Bitter Bob. The worst Vaudeville act ever.

And then Hartwell rants about something that’s only a major issue in his own mind: the legislature’s failure to repeal the Bottle Bill, which, he says, wastes money, contributes to carbon pollution*, and “shoves businesses… into New Hampshire.” And he takes a gratuitous slap at VPIRG — or, as Hartwell puts it, “one so-called ‘research’ group.”

* Which, according to Bob himself, isn’t really a problem.

The “get off my lawn” ranting continues for several more paragraphs, in which he bemoans the fact that nobody in the Senate is as wise as Bob Hartwell and unleashes a bunch of howlers, including:

— The Senate fails to act “as a team,” and instead pursues “the interests of each committee with little understanding of the effect… on the state as a whole.” Considering his hijacking of the Natural Resources Committee in pursuit of his favored hobbyhorses, that’s pretty rich.

— Vermont should be more like New Hampshire.

— Our economic doldrums have nothing to do with national trends, “but rather by policies internal to Vermont.”

— Dean Corren is a liar.

Yeah, that’s one huge stinking flaming bag of poo. Thanks, Bitter Bob, for giving us a farewell gesture that reminds us all how lucky we are that you’ve decided to get outta Dodge.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.