Tag Archives: David Goodman

News You Should View: Support Your Local Newsroom Edition

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Before we get to the best of Vermont media, a reminder that many organizations have begun their end-of-year fundraising campaigns. In these uncertain times there are numerous causes clamoring for a share of your generosity. But please make room in your list for the news outlets you depend on, by subscribing or making a donation. They keep you informed about critical issues. They provide information you couldn’t get anywhere else. They connect us to our communities and to each other. Vermont is blessed to have a lot of local and statewide news operations, and all of them could use your help. Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

Two sides of the immigrant story. From The News & Citizen, two very different pieces, both by Aaron Calvin. First, he covers a “chaotic and violent” action by Customs and Border Parol — this time at a Jeffersonville gas station, where seven people were detained. And as usual, federal officials provided virtually no information about who the detainees were, what they had allegedly done, or where they were taken. Your tax dollars at work.

Second, Calvin writes about Tony and Joie Lehouillier, owners of Foote Brook Farm in Johnson, who have depended on Jamaican migrant workers for years. Those workers helped the farm recover from the July 2023 floods; the Lehouilliers paid it back this month after Hurricane Melissa wreaked havoc on the workers’ communities in Jamaica. They raised enough money to send each of their four employees home with $1,600, and will continue to send food and relief supplies as they are able. Gee, maybe migrant workers aren’t a nameless, faceless threat after all.

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News You Should View: What Podcasts Are For

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The gaggle of 50s throwbacks pictured above, tightly bunched around a single print newspaper, would have no idea what a podcast is. But in these days, when The Burlington Free Press‘ readership is not much more than the… 14?… avid readers in this image, podcasts have become a vital part of the Vermont media scene. We have two worthy entries atop this week’s roundup, followed by some worthwhile stories from Vermont’s doughty local outlets.

Liberal lawmakers speak out against H.454. The latest edition of “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee*,” the newish podcast from former state senator Andy Julow and Joanna Grossman, chair of the Chittenden County Democrats, is an insightful interview with two Democratic lawmakers who voted “No” on H.454, the education reform bill that split the Dem caucuses and won the support of almost every Republican. Rep. Erin Brady and Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick, both professional educators, barred no holds as they spoke of their disappointment bordering on betrayal. “A gut punch” is how Brady described the maneuverings on the House floor that left many lawmakers feeling hornswoggled by leadership. Gulick’s verdict: “Some serious harm has been done with the public education community.” My only disappointment is that the hosts didn’t take my suggestion that they ask Gulick why she got swindled out of chairing the Senate Education Committee. So maybe a few holds were barred, after all.

*The podcast issues new episodes on Mondays, so there’s likely a new edition available by the time you read this. But I close the books on this feature every Sunday night. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Four perspectives on civil unions. David Goodman of The Vermont Conversation devoted the latest episode of his weekly pod to the 25th anniversary of the passage of civil unions in Vermont. He had previously interviewed former state representative Bill Lippert, who played a key role in getting civil unions through the Legislature. This time, Goodman wrapped three interviews into a single program. Most memorable were Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck, two of the six plaintiffs in the court case that prompted the enactment of civil unions. Goodman asked them if they feared for their safety during the overheated Statehouse debate, and Jolles replied “Okay, well, we’re both martial artists,” and laughed.

Other moments weren’t so funny. Both women said that when civil unions became law they felt defeated, because it was a halfway measure that didn’t provide anywhere near the full legal protections of marriage. They didn’t celebrate until full marriage equality became state law nine years later. And Jolles believes her rights are unlikely to survive the Trump presidency. “I think it’s going to get very bad, and I’m going to be active until the very last minute I can be active,” she said. “We’re going to have to fight harder than we have before.”

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News You Should View: Worth a Thousand Words Edition

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I’m starting this post with a tip o’the hat to Glenn Russell, ace photographer for VTDigger. His thankless task is to get good images out of the Statehouse, that notorious den of tiny rooms and bad lighting. Seriously, it’s a terrible place to be a photographer. But Glenn got one hell of a shot for Digger’s story about the state Senate’s unfortunate education reform bill passing a key committee. For those in the know, the image was a masterful piece of reporting. It showed Gov. Phil Scott’s right-hand man Jason Maulucci talking to Senate Education Committee chair Seth Bongartz on a bench in the hallway. Not that I’m saying Democrat-in-name Bongartz colluded with the Republican administration on a bill that seems to lean decidedly to the right, but Russell’s image definitely paints that picture. Fair or unfair, I loved it.

Not that our next entry doesn’t deserve top billing. Journalist David Goodman devoted his latest edition of the “Vermont Conversation” podcast to an interview with freed detainee Mohsen Mahdawi. Apparently, Mahdawi consented to the interview only if Goodman conducted it during a walk in the woods near Mahdawi’s home in the Upper Valley. You come away from the hour with a clear picture of this alleged threat to national security as a devout Buddhist whose activism is purely nonviolent. Also with a clear picture of a real Vermonter — a person with a deep love for, and profound connection to, the Vermont landscape. Beautiful piece of work, not to be missed.

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News You Should View: Trump-Free Edition

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Well hey now, got us a bumper crop of content worth your time without mentioning the big ol’ manbaby in the White House. Yes, It Can Happen! And we’ll begin with not one, but two stories from VTDigger. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be without Digger, what with the decimation of the rest of our news media. So let’s celebrate the things Digger does well and encourage them to do more.

Official misconduct in the Fern Feather case. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I want to shine a spotlight on Peter D’Auria’s deep dive into the prosecution of Seth Brunell for the murder of Fern Feather — a prosecution that ended with a defendant-friendly plea bargain triggered by police misconduct. D’Auria’s story chronicles all the ways in which this case was mishandled by police and prosecutors. You come away from it feeling mad as hell, and wondering if Feather’s gender identity played any role in how authorities screwed this thing up six ways from Sunday.

Exiting prison is a “bureaucratic morass.” In an example of the routine Statehouse coverage that no other media outlet provides, Digger’s Ethan Weinstein reported on a role-playing simulation of the process of exiting prison and re-entering society. The system “forces individuals to jump through hoops that many of us in this room would struggle through,” said none other than Corrections Commissioner Nicholas Deml, the person in charge of administering the system. I saw no other reports on this simulation which, in a just world, ought to trigger a thorough overhaul of a system that surely must contribute to high recidivism rates. Probably could also apply to social service programs designed without any input from those who have to jump through an obstacle course’s worth of officially-designed hoops to receive the help they need. “Lived experience,” anyone?

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News You Should View: Mostly About Trump Again, Sorry

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Well, I thought I had a nice varied collection of stories for this week’s Vermont media roundup. But heck, five of the eight nominees have something to do with how the excesses of Donald Trump are reverberating here in our B.L.S.

Apologies, but that’s the world we’re living in and my starship is on the fritz.

A stark warning about Trump from someone who’s been right more than most. Journalist David Goodman hosts “Vermont Conversation,” a blandly-named weekly show on Radio Vermont/WDEV available afterward as a podcast under the auspices of VTDigger. This week’s guest was author and Dartmouth prof Jeff Sharlet, who has spent years chronicling the dark corners of the far right. He has foreseen the persistence of the Trump phenomenon, its return to power, and its authoritarian intent. He told Goodman that he and his colleagues have “all been surprised by the speed with which it’s happening,” and said that the opposition has a lot of work to do.

Sharlet said he’s seen “a lot more people tuning out than in the first Trump administration. And I want to say to people, you don’t have that privilege.”

Echoes of fascism in a small rural library. In the latest installment of her podcast “Rumble Strip,” Erica Heilman takes us to the Haskell Free Library in Derby Line, VT and Stanstead, QC for an audio accounting of authoritarianism’s jackbooted footprint. The feds’ crackdown on the security-imperiling cross-border traffic at the library, announced after a deliberately provocative visit from dog-killer and Trump functionary Kristi Noem has left both communities shaken. For no reason whatsoever except that our federal government feels compelled to act like a bully.

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Dr. Levine Says the Quiet Parts Out Loud

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America’s Tallest Health Commissioner* stepped out on a limb earlier this week by agreeing to a long-form interview with David Goodman of WDEV and VTDigger. David is an accomplished journalist and skilled interviewer, and the results were predictable: the good doctor kinda spilled the beans.

*Citation needed –Ed.

Dr. Mark Levine acknowledged that the Scott administration’s Covid policies are not based on public health science. He used the word “hope” an uncomfortable number of times He implied that the administration welcomes a spike in Covid cases because it would build immunity in the population. He actually said that the admin is trying to “distract people from case numbers.” He admitted that the long Covid consequences of the Omicron variant are unknown. And he said his own behavior is substantially more cautious than the administration line.

Let’s start with “hope.” He said “hope” or “hopefully” a total of eight times. That’s an awful lot of conditional optimism for a set of policies that’s drawn heavy criticism from many experts, including Levine’s two immediate predecessors.

Levine was hopeful of a smooth transition from pandemic to endemic. He was hopeful that more people will get vaccinated. He hopes to “minimize serious illness and death.” He hopes that widespread shortages of test kits will be a thing of the past. He hopes that long Covid won’t be a major issue because of our high vax rate, and he hopes long Covid will be less of a problem after the Omicron wave than it’s been for other variants.

All that hope validates my view that the administration is taking substantial risks, essentially betting they can get through the pandemic without too much damage.

Other points…

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The Phil Scott Twitter Account is gettin’ stupid

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A small part of the yesterday’s Tweetfest between Yours Truly and some of Phil Scott’s hardcore fans was about my persistent bird-dogging of Scott’s official Twitter account. Which I suspect is written by others, considering that it often refers to “Phil” in the third person.

And yeah, I frequently Retweet @PhilScott4VT with my commentary attached.

Don’t like it? Stop sending out mass quantities of Tweets that are inaccurate, insipid, or both.

And boy, this afternoon brought a prime example from the “both” category.

(Phil’s ghost-Tweeter has but a distant acquaintance with the proper deployment of the apostrophe.)

Ooh! Rough, tough manly man, tossin’ trash in the pickup. Hands callused and creased, fingernails packed with the crud of honest labor. Bet he uses Lava Soap with “millions of particles of volcanic pumice.” A true Man of the People.

And the only candidate in the race “who knows what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck.”

What bullshit.

What complete, utter, USDA Prime, phoney-baloney, ROFLMAO bullpuckey.

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Sue Minter is building herself quite the resumé

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Rockin' the hard hat.

Rockin’ the hard hat.

Deputy Transportation Secretary Sue Minter is usually the first female in otherwise male-dominated lists of Democratic politicos on the rise. (ANR Secretary Deb Markowitz, who finished a strong #3 in the 2010 gubernatorial primary, deserves mention as well; but the grapevine says she’s unlikely to make another run for elective office. That could change, of course.) She briefly broke through the GruberGruberGruber wall of news noise this week, with the announcement that AOT Secretary Brian Searles is retiring and Minter will take his place.

This is notable enough. But what I hadn’t realized until I read media accounts of her promotion is that she is building a very strong political resumé, putting her in a good position for a future run at statewide or Congressional office. Let’s look at some highlights, and my apologies if I missed anything:

— Four-term state representative who served on the Appropriations Committee as well as the Transportation Committee. Generally considered a key member of the Democratic caucus. That’s eight years of legislative experience.

— Named Deputy Transportation Secretary at the onset of the Shumlin Administration, so there’s four years of administrative experience in a big, sprawling, crucial agency. Plus, since a lot of transportation funds come from the feds, four years of experience dealing with our Congressional delegation and the D.C. crowd.

— Named Irene Recovery Officer in December 2011, replacing Neale Lunderville. Had to deal with the tough slog of rebuilding infrastructure — which also involved a lot of work (and facetime) in Washington, D.C.

— Member of the White House Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. More credibility and connections in Washington.

— Now being elevated to full Cabinet status, and a high-profile Cabinet post at that. Speaking purely politically, lots of opportunities for ribbon-cutting and other feel-good news, making connections with local officeholders, and looking tough and managerial when something bad happens. (AOT is much better for this kind of stuff than, say, Human Services.) Nothing like wearing a hard hat and reflective vest to counteract stereotypes about women in politics.

Transportation’s mission also enjoys broad tripartisan support: nobody’s against roads and bridges.

— Married to David Goodman, writer, broadcaster, and brother of progressive radio icon Amy Goodman. I’m not falling back on the tired trope of defining a powerful woman by her marriage; in this case there’s some relevance.

(Also, her teenage son Jasper is a sportswriter for the Times Argus and sportscaster for WDEV Radio. Good grief.)

That’s an extremely impressive list in a period of about ten years. It’s a crying shame there aren’t more Vermont women moving upward in liberal politics, but if we only get one, Sue Minter’s a damn good one.