Tag Archives: VTDigger

Bill Sorrell gets religion

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There was some welcome news from Vermont’s Eternal General about a month back. Bill Sorrell had begun a series of public hearings on the subject of incarceration — specifically, whether Vermont is putting too many people behind bars. Sorrell and others are gauging public sentiment on the question, and considering whether the Legislature should “adopt a resolution to steer Vermont’s criminal justice system away from incarceration,” according to VTDigger’s account.

Sorrell being Sorrell, he cautioned that nothing much would happen anytime soon.

“It would be like moving a battleship through thousands of individual decisions by prosecutors and judges, and in no small part on the decisions by corrections personnel on when the individual is released,” Sorrell told VTDigger.

Still, if this is how Sorrell plans to spend a chunk of his final year in office, then bully for him. We’ve been imprisoning more and more people for the past three decades, with no appreciable effect on public safety. Our prison population is aging and getting more expensive. It also features an appalling over-representation of Vermont’s teeny-tiny black population.

African-Americans make up just 1 percent of the population of a state that is 95.3 percent white, yet they make up 10.3 percent of Vermont inmates. Put another way, a Vermont inmate is more than 10 times as likely as a resident at large to be African-American.

So if Vermont’s top law enforcement official is on board with reducing incarceration rates, that’s a really great thing. More power to him.

One question, though.

Where the hell was Bill Sorrell all this time?

ICYMI, for the past two decades of our mass incarceration binge, he’s been Vermont’s top law enforcement official. So, welcome to the party, Bill. Sorry it took you so long to get here.

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The victims shall be the perps, and the perps shall be the victims

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(From “The Redacted Beatitudes,” The Book Of Mitch, Chapter 12, verse 17.)

Someone’s getting a wee bit tetchy down Windham way. VTDigger:

Vermont State Police are investigating a “chilling” anti-Semitic voicemail left for an official whose company is seeking to build a large-scale wind farm in southern Vermont.

… Company officials requested the name and position of the employee, who is Jewish, not be released, and he declined to be interviewed.

Good to see that the anonymous perp did her due diligence. It’d be embarrassing if she left this little turd in, say, Clive MacGregor’s inbox:

“You ______ are a Jew and you cannot wait to drive 28 stakes through a town full of free, white Christian men with guns, and unfortunately the way to attract free, white Christian men with guns to you is to try and take their homes.”

“So, why don’t you go to Palestine ______ where you can shoot the feet of Palestinian soccer players, you can burn babies alive, you can rape Russian sex slaves and really overtly enjoy yourself rather than this covert activity in Vermont where you think no one knows you’re a Jew because you’re going to find out that they do. Bye-bye.”

Nice.

You’d think this would be a clearcut case of crossing the line, right? Nobody could possibly defend this, could they?

Hahaha, we’re talking about the anti-wind brigade here.

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Whistling past the graveyard, Franklin County style

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When last we left the Norm McAllister saga, he was threatening legal action against the State Senate if it suspends him from his official duties. He claims that a number of his constituents have talked of filing suit. As I noted, this would just prolong the agony for Senators, for Republicans, and especially for Franklin County Republicans, who are stuck with this tar baby.

Well, VTDigger’s Jasper “Son of Jay” Craven spent a few happy hours getting in touch with the county’s other lawmakers. And all of them, shockingly, denied that a court battle was in the works.

“Nobody has expressed a plan or a desire to take legal action,” said Rep. Carolyn Branagan, a Republican who represents Franklin’s first district. “I think it’s exactly the opposite, the people with whom I know and have spoken to want this over.”

… Franklin Republican Reps. Albert Pearce and Larry Fiske, Independent Barbara Murphy and Democrat Kathleen Keenan also said they hadn’t heard anything about a lawsuit until McAllister’s remarks Wednesday. Nor had Claude Cheralier, the Highgate chair for the Franklin County Republicans.

Rep. Corey Parent joined the chorus, and expressed the increasingly forlorn hope that McAllister would come to his senses and resign.

Well, see, here’s the problem.

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The circus is coming to town, and I don’t have a ticket

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This Just In… New caboose on the trainwreck:

 

It should be entertaining in a trainwreck sort of way, when the State Senate Rules Committee gets together Wednesday afternoon to discuss The Curious Case Of The Predator Senator. Regarding Norm McAllister, Our Most Senior Deliberative Body has been acting like anything but. Opinions are scattered in every direction, there’s no hint of a consensus, and in less than one month we could be treated to the spectacle of the accused sexual felon McAllister taking his honored seat in the Senate chambers.

As a blogger with a vested interest in chaos, all I can say is oh please, please, let it be so.

The Rules Committee is a curious construct, presumably born of President Pro Tem John Campbell’s unique leadership style: a mix of moderation, obfuscation, and inertia. I mean, look: the Democrats have 18 seats out of 30; there are three Prog/Dem/Indy hybrids, all representing the left side of the spectrum; and a mere nine Republicans.

So how is it that the Rules Committee includes two Republicans and a conservative “Democrat” who’s actively supporting Phil Scott, Republican candidate for governor? Plus the Pro Tem himself, who has supported Scott in the psat and is known as one of the least liberal members of his caucus. The Furious Five:

Republicans Joe Benning and Peg Flory; Republidem Dick Mazza; Democrats John Campbell and Phil Baruth.

For a strongly liberal body, that’s an awful lot of conservatism and institutionalism. Plus, Campbell installed himself as Rules Committee chair, so he clearly wanted to have his own hand firmly on this particular tiller.

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Climate incoherence, stage right

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Very sorry to have missed Thursday’s carbon tax debate, featuring the Good Guys (Paul Burns of VPIRG and UVM’s Jon Erickson) against the Death Star Duo, Rob Roper and John McClaughry of the Ethan Allen Institute.

Oh yes, fair and balanced shall I be.

I’m sure the DSD walked away believing they’d won, because they are dyed-in-the-wool true believers whose outlook is hermetically sealed against the intrusion of actual evidence. Also, lest we forget, they’ve received hundreds of thousands of dollars from out-of-state conservative donors with ties to the Koch brothers.

The really striking thing about their presentation was the difference between Messrs. McClaughry and Roper. McClaughry is an out-and-out denier. Roper acknowledges climate change but says there’s nothing we can do about it, so we shouldn’t even try.

Yeesh.

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With friends like these

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With apologies to Mr. Harwood.

Early front-runner for Sound Bite of the Campaign Season is former Governor Jim Douglas. He had given a hearty endorsement speech at Phil Scott’s campaign launch; afterward, VTDigger’s Mark Johnson asked him what issue Scott is identified with.

Douglas’ short answer: “Uh, you’ve stumped me.”

That’s bad. The actual audio is worse. You can hear it at VTDigger, but here’s a transcript:

Johnson: So what’s the issue you identify him with?

Douglas: The issue I identif — ? Dunno if there’s a specific issue, um, we talked about some today, but uh [pause] uh, you stumped me. Again.

[facepalm]

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Phil Scott, miracle worker

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Phil Scott’s proto-campaign for governor has, so far, been a matter of personality: Phil Scott is the nice-guy leader that Vermonters have been looking for. On the issues, nothing but vague hints and bromides.

Well, he gives it another go in an essay posted on VTDigger.

Sadly, it’s kind of an incoherent mess. He calls for a moratorium on all tax and fee increases, a tight rein on state spending, and expansion of several state programs.

And he claims he can do that “without cutting off services to Vermont’s most vulnerable populations or weakening environmental protections.”

Oh, yeah?

Whatcha got in that basket, Phil? Five loaves and two fishes?

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The Phil Scott conundrum

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Two truisms at war:

1. Vermont faces big challenges, and Vermonters are hungry for a new direction.

2. Phil Scott is the apparent front-runner for governor.

Does anybody else see anything wrong with this picture?

Just about everyone agrees that we face a bunch of big problems. Some solutions are in process, more or less successfully (Lake Champlain, school reorganization, health care reform) and others lie squarely in front of us (the annual budget gap, an outmoded tax system, soaring Medicaid costs, bad demographics, wage stagnation).

Vermont Republicans offer an apocalyptic vision of a Vermont bankrupted by Democratic mismanagement and prodigality. Democrats and Progressives acknowledge a long list of challenges we face.

And yet Phil Scott, a man who’s made his political bones by being inoffensive, and whose “platform” so far is about as radical as a bowl of oatmeal, looks to be leading the field. And those Republicans, who view Vermont as teetering on the brink of disaster and in need of far-reaching, fundamental change, would be perfectly happy to elect good ol’ Phil.

Er, that’s the same Phil Scott who happily served in Governor Shumlin’s cabinet and worked with the administration on a variety of issues. At least, he happily did so until he got the gubernatorial itch himself, and started distancing himself from the incumbent.

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The Chamber’s selective complaint

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My neighbor Betsy Bishop, head of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, is pushing something she calls an “impact list” of all the burdens placed on Vermont businesses in recent years — “as well as those that could be considered in 2016,” which is a big fat asterisk in itself. Given the state’s budget situation, a whole lot of potential revenue enhancers “could be considered.” Almost all of them will never get off the floor. (The carbon tax, already sidelined, is on her list.) Many are mutually exclusive. But all of ‘em, real or imaginary, make the “impact list.”

And, as VTDigger political analyst Jon Margolis points out, more than a third of the Chamber’s list of tax hits from the 2015 session were actually tax increases on affluent Vermonters, not on businesses.

Generally, the Vermont Chamber is a reasonable actor in Vermont politics. It hasn’t followed the rabid conservative path of the national Chamber. But this is a major step into partisanship for the Vermont Chamber.

And as you might suspect, the Chamber’s “impact list” tells only one side of the story. Margolis helpfully recounts many of the ways that public expenditures and tax breaks directly benefit businesses. It’s quite a list. But it’s arguably the tip of the iceberg.

You can make a strong case that most government expenditures benefit business. Infrastructure spending? You can’t do business without it. Education? You need educated workers, and there’s a big emphasis these days on STEM and workforce-oriented two-year programs. Law enforcement? One of its primary missions is protection of property rights.

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Bruce Lisman has some stuff to sort out

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Well, our very own Wall Street panjandrum has formally launched his gubernatorial bid with a bold, perhaps unprecedented, first move:

He okayed a campaign logo without a speck of green in it.

Instead, he bravely opted for a sky-blue field, backing what appears to be the label from a long-lost brewery: Lisman Lager, the beer that claims to be different from all the others but tastes oddly familiar.

That’s the bold move. The rest of his launch was a pastiche of mixed messages and same-old same-old.

Let’s start with his Jeb! problem. As a presidential candidate, Jeb Bush had to decide how to address the legacy of George W. Bush. And he hasn’t. He’s tried to present himself as his own man, but that effort is undercut every time he rushes to W’s defense. He winds up talking much more than he should about 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lisman’s “George W. Bush” is his Wall Street career.

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