Tag Archives: Phil Scott

The Empire Strikes Back on Qualified Immunity

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It appears that there will be a push in the state Legislature to end qualified immunity for police officers. Qualified immunity makes it almost impossible to sue officers for use of excessive force; it’s become a target for reformers in the post-George Floyd era of, well, at least talking about police accountability.

It has the support of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Sears, the single most influential gatekeeper on justice-related legislation. Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint is also signed on, another big positive.

Michael Schirling, on the other hand, is here to tell you it’ll happen over his dead body.

At the Tuesday Covid briefing, Gov. Phil Scott fielded a question about ending QI by immediately tossing it to Schirling, his public safety commissioner and former chief of police in Burlington.

Schirling, speaking on behalf of the administration, made his position quite clear.

“We are gravely concerned about the impact of that potential legislation, and we’re working with a variety of partners and stakeholders to craft a cogent and comprehensive assessment for the Legislature of the potential impacts and downsides of proceeding in that fashion.”

You don’t usually get an administration official cranking it all the way up to “gravely concerned” at this point in the session. It’s usually something milder, like “we have concerns, but we’ll see where it goes.” In this case, Darth Schirling has been sent forth by Emperor Philpatine to make sure the bill never sees the light of day.

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Phil Scott Really Hates to Admit He Might Be Wrong

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This was the facial expression Gov. Phil Scott pulled when he was asked if his administration got “caught with your pants down” by the Omicron variant. Yeah, he doesn’t like admitting he may have been wrong and he hates it when someone calls him on it. Maybe we can stop with the “nice guy” stuff, please?

Backing up for a sec. In a Friday newsdump at the end of last week, Education Secretary Dan French announced a complete change in Covid-19 policy for the public schools. At the time, I wrote: “There’s only one good thing about this fiasco. It’s the first time anyone in the Scott administration has admitted that their policies weren’t working.”

Well, at his Tuesday Covid briefing, the governor came out swinging against the idea that his now-inoperative school policies didn’t work.

“The process we’ve been using with school nurses acting as contact tracers was effective before Omicron,” he said in his opening statement, “but it no longer is as effective as it once was.”

I’d like to hear him say that to the face of any school nurse in Vermont. They, and other school staff, were overwhelmed by the workload involved in contact tracing and Test to Stay*. It was unsustainable, and the administration did nothing to help. That’s why the Agency of Education struggled throughout the fall semester to get school districts to sign up for Test to Stay. It was more effective than, say, doing nothing at all, but it never came close to being effective.

*Speaking of which, Scott announced that child care facilities will now be able to sign up for Test to Stay. Did anyone else notice the contradiction? “Test to Stay” is now ineffective in the schools, but it’s the latest thing for child care? Huh.

Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to admit that the policy failed to meet the test of the Omicron variant. All he said was the policy was “no longer as effective as it once was.”

Which brings us to the pants question.

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There’s Only One Good Thing About This

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In the Friday newsdump of all Friday newsdumps, Education Secretary Dan French, seen above realizing he forgot to wear pants to the office, has thrown his school Covid policies into the dumpster and promised something new and better… sometime next week.

Holy fucking hell.

In a memo sent to school officials (and quickly leaked to the media), French advised them to stop trying to do contact tracing and PCR surveillance testing because both strategies are ineffective against the impressively virulent Omicron strain. He wrote of an “imminent policy shift,” so after a disastrous first week of the winter semester, our schools will sail blithely into week 2 with no policies in place whatsoever.

Also, the AOE is now trying to supply schools with enough test kits for all their students. Seven Days, which first broke the story, reports that it’s “unclear how many kits each school will get and whether the state already has them stockpiled.”

Yeah, AOE policy is known for its lack of clarity. And substance.

This isn’t the first time French has failed to foresee the eminently foreseeable. The Delta variant was a known threat by midsummer, but AOE didn’t devise new testing and screening policies until several weeks into the school year. And the crown jewel of the strategy — Test to Stay — has had a slow and trouble-plagued rollout because the schools lacked the resources to carry it out and the state offered zero help.

And now he’s done it again with Omicron.

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Still the Luckiest Man in Vermont

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Today’s State of the State Address was another exercise in Repurposed Content. Gov. Phil Scott is still leaning on the usual uncatchy catchphrases and political shibboleths, and recycling the same points he’s been making since 2015.

There ‘s not a lot new to say about this midwinter summer rerun, so I’m going to follow Governor Nice GuyTM‘s example and repurpose some old content myself. Because as Scott’s address made clear, it’s still true.

Last January, I wrote a post called “The Luckiest Man in Vermont,” which noted that Scott has rarely faced a political challenge in all his election campaigns. He floated to the top due to circumstance and his brand of bland, passive-aggressive charm. On top of that, the pandemic has given him a tremendous political gift.

I’m not talking about the credit he’s gotten, merited and otherwise, for his handling of Covid-19. I’m talking about the ever-flowing Niagara of federal relief funds buoying our economy and fattening public treasuries. Today’s speech re-emphasized that fact.

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The Quality of the “Good” News Continues to Plummet

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Am I a little bit relieved that it’s not worse? Yes, I have to admit, I am. I thought we might see the numbers go through the roof by Monday. Instead, they’re only threatening the roof.

And that’s where we are now: an all-time record high daily case count, a rapid rise in Covid hospitalizations, and a new high in test positivity constitutes “good” news.

As for Monday’s “good” news of 245 fresh cases, only 1,313 tests were processed. By my calculation, that’s an 18% positivity rate for Monday. The Tuesday count was 1,727 cases out of 10,572 tests. That’s “only” a 16% positivity rate.

So yeah, Omicron is here and just beginning to hit us hard.

Meanwhile, Gov. Phil Scott is taking a week off his Tuesday Covid briefings. He told us last Tuesday there wouldn’t be one today because he’s delivering the State of the State address Wednesday afternoon.

So… he’s spending 24+ hours practicing? Can you say “I didn’t take a walk today because I was chewing gum”?

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Wow, It Must Have Been a Bad Year for the VTGOP

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Paul Dame, freshly squeezed Vermont Republican Party chair (pictured above in his natural state), has put out an end-of-year best-of list designed to buoy VTGOP spirits. But when you read it, well, it’s kinda sad.

In his latest weekly email blast, which I get in my inbox So You Don’t Have To, he offers the party’s “Top 5 Moments of 2021.” (It was also posted on Vermont Daily Carbuncle because they need all the free content they can get, and you can find it there if you care to.) And I tell ya, the strain really shows. He had to dig pretty darn deep to get all the way to five.

And one of those five had nothing to do with Vermont. At all.

Meanwhile, Gov. Phil Scott’s management of Covid-19 doesn’t make the list. This, despite the fact that Scott managed things quite well for the first seven months of the year and since then, has hewed to Republican principles in refusing to impose new mandates despite the worsening of the pandemic. You’d think that would count for something, but not in VTGOPland. Scott famously has as little to do with his party as possible; apparently the feeling is mutual.

Anyway, let’s get to Dame’s chosen top five.

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Coming to Grips With Gov. Scott’s Covid Policy

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“We don’t know what’s coming.”

Gov. Phil Scott is just as committed as ever to his Covid policy, Omicron be damned. He made that absolutely clear at this week’s Covid briefing, even as he acknowledged that “we don’t know what’s coming.” The thing is, if you accept his point of view, he’s actually doing a good job. So here are some words of conditional praise for the Scott administration followed by a lovely bouquet of caveats.

They have done a good job at getting people vaccinated. They are getting test kits out to people as soon as they get supplies. They are doing their best to add capacity to hospitals and open up beds for Covid patients. They are doing what they can, within their policy framework, to keep kids in schools. They are consistent in balancing the exigencies of public and economic health.

I don’t agree with their idea of balance, but his team is working very hard within the confines of Scott’s policy to prevent a Covid surge that would overwhelm the health care system. They do deserve credit for all that.

Now for the caveats.

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Phil’s Funny Figgers Factory

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Well, if the governor is spouting fake optimism and citing carefully curated statistics, it must be Tuesday. This week, Gov. Phil Scott and his team had to admit that the Omicron variant is about to hit Vermont just as the holidays arrive. The combination will almost certainly trigger another several weeks of high case counts — higher than ever before — and overburdened health care workers.

So, in the face of all that bad news, Scott kicked off the presser by reminding us all of how much better off we are now than in December 2020 thanks to his administration’s wise policymaking and the innate goodness of Vermonters, who can be trusted to Do The Right Thing without any orders from above.

Sure, if you make the comparison right there. No one would dispute that Scott handled the first 15-odd months of the pandemic very well. But his convenient comparison elides the fact that his handling of the Delta variant has been woefully bad. His administration has consistently underestimated the impact of Delta, which has meant policies that have proved inadequate to the task or too little, too late.

There was hardly any mention of last week’s hot statistic: Scott’s claim that only 5% of adult Vermonters are unvaccinated. I’ve previously documented some of the holes in that figure; Middlebury College physicist Eilat Glikman exposed another one on Twitter:

I used the numbers on the Vermont vaccine dashboard to compute the actual percentage of adults >18yo who are vaccinated in the state. The answer is 81% not 95%.

On Monday morning, I emailed Health Department spokesman Ben Truman asking for an explanation of how the dashboard percentages were calculated and what figure they are using for the population of Vermont. I have yet to receive an answer. (Finance Commissioner and Chief Number Cruncher Michael Pieciak may have dropped a hint; he off-handedly referred to Vermont’s population as around 630,000. The latest Census count is 643,000.)

The magic number of 5% got no mention in the administration’s extensive opening remarks. It did arise during the Q&A, when a reporter brought up (in broad terms) the problems with it. Scott responded with an aggressive defense of his favorite statistic. Unfortunately, the reporter didn’t arm himself with enough facts to question Scott’s bold-faced assertiveness. Nor did he or anyone else query Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine on the public health usefulness of that figure: How valuable, in terms of measuring our Covid resistance, is it to count only those over 18? Why count those who’ve received as little as a single dose, when the administration is urging everyone to get the full course plus a booster? How much protection does a single dose offer?

No answers to any of that. No reporter armed themselves with the information necessary to effectively query the administration.

There were, as usual, more statistical follies on offer.

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“Some Call You the Elite. I Call You My Base.”

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It was one of the signal moments of the George W. Bush presidency. The leader of all Americans yukking it up with the rich and powerful, making sport over his assiduous cosseting of The Ruling Class.

Well, it’s looking more and more like Gov. Phil Scott’s heart is in the same place.

On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Lindsay Kurrle sent a memo to the Vermont business community on the subject of the pandemic. I guess she’s proud of it, because her agency also released it to the press. I’m not sure she should be; the memo is a glimpse into the real priorities of the Scott administration, and helps explain his refusal to consider any steps that might interrupt the flow of commerce.

Kurrle’s memo urges businesses to take steps to limit the further spread of the virus. This indicates that despite its public optimism, the administration is seriously worried about the next phase of the pandemic.

The most telling line in the entire thing: “Should we see an influx of positive test results, it could impact your ability to operate.”

Not “it could spread suffering and even death among Vermonters.” Not “it is likely to take an outsized toll on the most vulnerable among us.” Nope. The big concern is that businesses might have to limit operations or even shut down. Oh, the humanity!

Kurrle begins with obsequious praise for business leaders who “stepped up” in the face of the coronavirus. She wrote of “your sacrifices” — not those of front-line workers or the suddenly unemployed or the vulnerable elderly, but the real heroes of the pandemic: our bosses. “You rose above fear and frustration and acted without knowing when you would open your doors again,” Kurrle wrote. “Thank you for all you have done for our state.”

Gag me with a spoon.

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Two Kinds of Leadership

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Last night, the Montreal Canadiens beat the Philadelphia Flyers in an empty arena. Two hours before puck drop, the provincial government of Quebec asked the team to close the Bell Centre to spectators. It was one of a series of measures instituted, in the words of the CBC, “as COVID-19 cases soar.”

Other measures: Reduced capacity in bars, restaurants, theaters, places of worship, funerals, weddings, any indoor public gatherings. Private indoor gatherings are capped at 10. It’s pretty damn serious.

Province-wide, 2,736 cases were reported Thursday, the highest single-day total since January 3. The government expected Friday’s total to be around 3,700.

Wow, that’s a lot of cases.

Wait. How many people in Quebec?

8.4 million.

How many in Vermont?

643,000.

Hmm. Cases per capita in Quebec on Thursday? 3.25.

Cases per capita in Vermont on Thursday? 10.

Ohhhhhhh. So a case rate enough to trigger decisive action in Quebec is less than one-third Vermont’s total for the same day. I’d say we have two contrasting kinds of leadership here.

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