Then let’s start today’s exercise calmly. The two (apparent) violations of state law about to be detailed do not portend the approach of a police state in Vermont. Jack-booted thugs are not combing the Green Mountains, nor are undercover agents listening to our innermost thoughts through transmitters placed in our tooth fillings.

Furthermore, the two incidents are in many ways not comparable. In one, nobody got hurt. In the other, somebody did.

Yet neither are they entirely unrelated. The thread that runs through them jeopardizes a free society.

Let’s first deal with the lesser offense. Earlier this year, the Legislature ordered the Education Department to prepare detailed budget-cutting recommendations to each of the state’s 283 school districts, and to have them finished by August 1.

That was Sunday. On Monday, a reporter for the Vermont Press Bureau (Rutland Herald and Barre/Montpelier Times-Argus) asked to see the report detailing the recommendations. Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca refused.

In refusing, he almost surely violated 1 V.S.A. § 318, which states, “upon request the custodian of a public record shall promptly produce the record for inspection.”

Unless one of the 39 exceptions in 1 V.S.A. § 317 applies, and then “the custodian” (Vilaseca in this case) must stipulate which exception he is citing in his refusal.

He did not.

Vilaseca did not dispute that the report was a “public record.” In an interview Tuesday, after the Rutland and Montpelier papers had run the story, he argued that the report “hadn’t been finalized” and was “still in working form.” Furthermore, he said,  the law only “requires me to release (the report) promptly,” a standard he said he would meet by releasing it Wednesday at a press conference.

But according to the Legislative mandate, the report was finished, and the dictionary defines “prompt” as “without delay.” A two-day wait is a rather good example of a delay.

From an administrative and policy perspective, what Vilaseca did made good sense. He wanted to send the report out to the schools to make sure there were no errors in it, as there were, he acknowledged, in a report on standardized test scores his department sent out last year which mistakenly described two schools as among the lowest-scoring in the state.

In other words, he didn’t want to embarrass himself or his Department.

Under those circumstances, what’s wrong with keeping the information secret for another two days?

Only that it was against the law, which in this case has two disadvantages. One is that a law-breaking Education Commissioner does not set a good example for the kids. The other is…well, hold that thought while we describe – briefly, because it’s been in the newspapers – the other incident.

Over Memorial Day weekend, police in Hartford were alerted about a possible burglary at a home. They entered the house (the door was apparently unlocked), and found in a third-floor bathroom one Wayne Burwell, a 34-year-old Dartmouth graduate, athletic trainer, and, perhaps not incidentally, an African-American.

Burwell was naked. He was sitting on the toilet. He was apparently unresponsive, perhaps due to a blood sugar problem that has caused him to lose consciousness on occasion.

Not exactly the picture of a dangerous desperado. But the police unleashed enough pepper spray to make both Burwell and some of the officers require treatment later. Then they handcuffed him, covered him with a blanket, and either dragged or led him outside “to wash his eyes,” in the words of Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg, who acknowledged that “some pepper spray had been discharged.”

While Burwell was still inside, one of his neighbors, Bob McKaig, a 71-year-old retired police officer from New Jersey, had come over to the house to warn the police that Burwell was ill. When Burwell was brought out, apparently under arrest, McKaig tried to tell them that Burwell had not been robbing the house. He owned it.

At which point, McKaig said, a “female officer” threatened to have him arrested for interfering. Burwell was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital where, among other treatment, he needed stitches in his hands where the handcuffs had cut him.

At this point, a touch of uncertainty must be acknowledged. Only the police and Burwell (to the extent he was conscious) really know what happened in Burwell’s house. Rieseberg said when all the facts come out, “there will be some red faces, and they won’t be ours.” Perhaps something happened inside the house that gave the police reasons to be wary of Burwell.

But rarely does a burglar sneak into a house, make his way to an upstairs bathroom, take off his clothes and sit on the toilet in a semi-conscious state. Concluding that the police were  incompetent, or, as the Vermont ACLU director Allen Gilbert suspects, guilty of “racial profiling,” may be premature. Strongly suspecting it is not.

So what’s the connection between the Burwell case and the Ed Department report?

Under the same public records law, Anne Galloway, who runs the VT Digger web site, asked Hartford police for the arrest report. Police Chief Glenn W. Cutting and then Town Manager Rieseberg refused, as they had refused a similar request from the Valley News newspaper. The town argued that it has asked the State Police to investigate the incident,  triggering an exception to the public records law.

Yesterday, with the help of the ACLU, Galloway sued. The ACLU notes that the law specifies that “’records reflecting the initial arrest of a person’ are public and not exempt.”

(Full disclosure: As regular readers may know, the News Guy occasionally writes for VT Digger [see the link to it above] and knows, likes and admires Galloway as a first-class journalist).

The town’s response is that Burwell, handcuffed and pepper-sprayed though he may have been, was never arrested.

“No one was taken into custody. No one was transported to jail,” Rieseberg said. Nancy Sheahan, the Burlington lawyer who will represent the town, noted that “it is possible to detain someone without arresting him. In this particular case, there was not an arrest.”

Obviously, the courts will decide whether it was an arrest. At least some Vermont case law indicates that the Town may find it hard to prevail. Research undertaken out of the goodness of his heart by a prominent Vermont defense attorney found a 1990 Caledonia County case in which the court ruled that “the public interest clearly favors the right of access to public documents and public records (and) the exceptions listed in { 317(b) should be construed strictly against the custodians of the records and any doubts should be resolved in favor of disclosure.”

The lawyer also found a 1992 Supreme Court decision reversing a Chittenden County court decision denying a plaintiff “a list of names and addresses of taxpayers subject to a business gross receipts tax adopted by an ordinance of the City of Burlington.”

Needless to say, every case differs, and this one might have a different outcome. But the legal details really aren’t that important, because, while as acknowledged above, we can not know with 100 percent certainty what happened in Burwell’s house that day, we can know with about 98 percent certainty.

The cops messed up. And they want to keep the details secret because they fear that the details will provide powerful evidence that they messed up. That’s the main – if not quite the only – reason that officials want to keep records secret: to hide their misdeeds, or at least their foolishness. If the arrest report would make the Hartford police look good, reporters would have been invited to read it in comfort with coffee and muffins provided by the town.

And here’s why this is important: If police anywhere in Vermont  can handcuff and pepper-spray Wayne Burwell in his own house with impunity, then police somewhere in Vermont can do the same to you and to me. And the more they can hide the records of what they did, the more are they likely to do the same to you or to me.

Just as – though Armando Vilaseca’s offense was benign by comparison – if a high-ranking state official can ignore the public records law for 48 hours to make sure a few minor errors don’t embarrass him, another such official on another occasion may be emboldened to ignore it for 48 days or 48 weeks in an effort to cover up real malfeasance.

That’s why there’s a public records law to begin with, and why it ought to be enforced.

On the assumption that attention spans and (especially) appetites for solemn matters will be low this semi-holiday morning, the discussion of a rather solemn subject will be delayed until Wednesday, leaving today open for: a couple of updates; a political note or two; the posing of a question.

Update One: The one reporter who was planning to go to the Democratic Party fund-raiser a week ago Sunday ended up not going after all. Neither, as earlier acknowledged, did the News Guy, despite having made a stink about the Dems (subsequently reversed) decision to close the event.

But the point holds. When a public figure speaks at an event open to everyone (willing to pay) at a public accommodation, reporters ought to be given reasonable access because the public figure might say something the public should know.

Update Two: Newport Mayor Paul Monette, apparently aware that his city might become the laughing stock of the whole country (think what Jon Stewart might have done with this) used his veto power to squelch a city council decision banning the use of any French words on signs welcoming visitors to town. (See A Vermont House of Commons, June 28).

Bienvenue, nos amis.

Political Note One: The June 25 post, What the Polls Mean (and What They Don’t) noted that a clear picture of how the Democratic primary for governor shaped up wouldn’t be available until later this month, when WCAX-TV (Channel 3) was scheduled to make public results from a survey by the Research 2000 firm, which has been polling for the station for years.

Don’t hold your breath.

For reasons far too complicated (and legally treacherous) to explore here in detail, Research 2000 may not be polling in Vermont soon, or perhaps ever. After questions were raised about how the firm conducted its surveys, one of its major customers, the liberal web site Daily Kos, sued Research 2000, accusing it of “fraudulently manufacturing phony results.”

In response, Research 2000 president Del Ali (who has been cooperative and candid with the News Guy in the past) called the allegations in the suit “pure lies.” However the legal case gets untangled, the scheduled Vermont polling seems to be on hold. Channel 3 News Director Anson Tebbetts said Friday he was “still looking into it,” and had not been able to reach Ali by phone.

“We’ve used this guy for a very long time,” said Tebbetts. “It’s hard to read what’s really going on.”

Political Note Two—Despite the disinclination to pick on a campaign which is going nowhere anyway, some of the material emanating from Dan Freilich is too tempting to ignore.

As most voters probably do not know, Freilich is challenging the renomination U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy in the Democratic primary. On Freilich’s web site the other day, he proclaimed that one of his “three basic but rarely adhered to political principles” would be “country ahead of party (no ‘automatic caucasing’.)”

“Caucusing?” OK, The News Guy will plead guilty to pedantry here, but this was not an oral slip of the tongue. It was written, and, as one of merely three “basic principles,” should have been checked over.

But that’s not all. Freilich advocates a single-payer, government-run universal health insurance system, a perfectly reasonable position which many Vermonters (maybe even most) share. Interviewed on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition the other day, he said that President Obama and Democrats in Congress, including Leahy, should have held out for such a system rather than passing the health care law which just (partly) took effect.

Even if they did not immediately have the votes for a single payer system, Freilich said (not in these exact words; the News Guy does not take notes while driving, and no transcript is available)  Obama and the Democrats could have held off and arranged a “discussion” with the American people which might have led to adoption of a single-payer system.

They could have? With a well-disciplined opposition party determined to block passage of anything? With a media culture shaped to no small extent by a faction which has slipped the bonds of rationality, if not sanity?

Not hardly. Folks who put themselves forward, however futilely, for major office, ought to behave like grown ups.

Now the question: Can the government of Vermont find its behind with both hands?

The question is inspired, if not required, by recent revelations that high-ranking officials have, quite simply, fouled up. For years, however some Vermonters may have disagreed with Gov. Jim Douglas’s policies, few argued that he didn’t run a tight ship. Of late, that ship has sprung a few leaks.

First, the news that the sex offender registry does not include the names of some people who should be on it, and apparently does include the names of some who should not be on it.

Second, state officials failed to meet a federal deadline for arranging health insurance for low-income people with medical problems.

Third is the continuing failure of the State Hospital for the mentally ill to meet federal standards, a failure that has cost the state millions in federal aid and will cost another $9.7 million this year, according to former State Sen. Jim Leddy.

Ok, there are extenuating circumstances. The Federal Government is not always the world’s most flexible outfit. The sex offender registry is a relatively new operation. Finding an acceptable alternative to the State Hospital situation ain’t easy.

Still, these are the problems state governments are supposed to solve, especially when not solving them costs money.

At the dependably anti-Douglas web site Green Mountain Daily, Julie Waters writes that these mistakes are the result of a government led by “people who don’t believe in government.”

A plausible contention, neither confirmable nor refutable. But Jim Douglas is no Tea-partier, nor did he appoint any to high office. Just as likely is that, as the Douglas Administration heads into its last months, its department heads are tired, perhaps bored, and no doubt looking for their next jobs. It can be distracting.

That’s a possible explanation, not an excuse.

Then of course there’s the simple politics of the matter. The constituencies being ill-served, the poor who are either physically or mentally ill, don’t have much clout.

Especially the mentally ill, who, as Leddy said in the Burlington Free Press column he wrote about the State Hospital the other day, remain stigmatized.

Sometimes — stigmatized, powerless and frustrated — mentally ill people take their own lives. As it happens, in Vermont, perhaps the healthiest state in the union, the suicide rate is higher than the national average.

The somber subject to be dealt with for the rest of the week.

All are invited.

The host will be Sterling President Will Wootten.

The moderator will be…well, ahem, uh, as long as you asked, the moderator will be the News Guy his very own self.

Please do not throw tomatoes as the moderator. He will be doing the best he can. But he could use some help. What would you ask the candidates for governor if you had the opportunity?

Some of the issues that should be brought up may seem obvious – taxes, schools, jobs, Vermont Yankee. Except that they all seem to agree on taxes, schools, and Vermont Yankee. And it isn’t clear that governor can do much about jobs.

Remember eight years ago when candidate Jim Douglas’s slogan was “Jim =Jobs.” Sounded good, but even before the Recession, private sector job growth under Douglas was pretty close to zero.

Not necessarily his fault. Campaign rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, state government policy may be irrelevant to job growth.

Or maybe not. Anyway, if anyone has probing, specific, substantive questions he or she thinks someone should ask one of these folks, here’s your chance to suggest them to someone who is going to do the asking. And who will appreciate the submission whether or not he uses it.

(star break)

MEDIA NOTE—Not censure, this time, but praise. In the continuing discussion about the role of hydro power in the state, Vermont Public Radio did what news organizations are supposed to do – spent some money, sent reporters to cover the news.

VPR reporter John Dillon went 600 miles north of the border who where Hydro-Quebec, from which Vermont utilities just agreed to buy a whole mess of power, has built a huge dam which will divert 70 percent of the waters of the Rupert River to help generate that power.

As Dillon pointed out, the Rupert is just one of three rivers which will be part of a system of four dams, 74 dikes and a new tunnel carved through a mountain, all powering four new generating stations still farther north.

At the same time, VPR’s noon Vermont Edition went to Montreal where host Jane Lindholm presided over a spirited and informed debate between Claude Demers, Hydro-Quebec’s science communicator, and  Daniel Breton, founder of  a Quebec environmental organization.

One angle VPR didn’t deal with, and neither has anybody else. Hydro-Quebec gets criticized from folks on the left side of the political spectrum for those immense dams which have flooded thousands of acres of land, with damaging consequences for both the natural world and the Cree Indians who live in northern Quebec.

Another big corporation abusing the land and indigenous folks in the thirst for profit for the stockholders, no?

No. Hydro-Quebec doesn’t have stockholders. It’s owned by the Province and the people thereof. It is, in short, a socialist institution.

(star break)

More (mostly) good news: Some additional ammunition for the argument made in the post titled Not So Bad (June 4) that life in Vermont is…not so bad.

Maybe even pretty good.

The latest issue of  Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine named Burlington one of the “ten best cities for the next decade.” Praised  for its “creativity and entrepreneurship” Burlington was tagged the eighth best city for both living and working over the next several years. Austin, Texas, was first.

In addition, recently released  (or, perhaps more accurately, hitherto ignored) Census figures confirm that Vermont is one of the most affluent states, with a relatively low poverty rate, and one of the lowest rates of child poverty in the country. The statistics are from 2008, the most recent available.

Only eight other states have child (under age 18) poverty rates in the same low category as Vermont: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Utah, and Wyoming.

For the total poverty rate, Vermont was in the second best category, ranked with 13 other states with rates between 10.2 and 13.1 percent (Vermont’s was 10.4). Seven states, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland, had lower rates.

As is true almost everywhere, Vermont’s under-18 poverty rate (12.8 percent) is slightly higher than its overall rate.  But not everywhere. Chittenden County’s total poverty rate was 9.6 percent, but the child poverty rate was 9.2 percent.

But that was unusual. In the other 13 counties, the under-18 rate was either slightly or not so slightly higher. Even Addison County, which had the lowest total poverty rate (9.5 percent had a slightly higher rate (10.6 percent, for those under 18.

Both the highest rates and the biggest differences between total and child poverty were in the Northeast Kingdom. Caledonia County had an 11.8 percent total poverty rate, with 17.1 percent of its under-18s in poverty. In Orleans County, the overall rate was 14.3 percent, with a 19.3 percent poverty ate for those under 18.

And in Essex County, the poorest in the state, 14.8 percent of all persons lived below the poverty line, but the under-18 rate was 23.8 percent.

That puts Essex at a level comparable with some of the rural counties of the Southeast and Southwest, the poorest areas of the country.

None of this is a big surprise. But it deserves more attention than it has been getting from either officials or observers. That latter, that’s us. More attention will be paid, starting with maybe a few questions to these candidates at Thursday’s debate.

The auditor’s race is no longer boring.

OK, that wording used to describe the primary for governor is a tad grandiose, having more famously been applied to the entire cosmos, next to which the Vermont Democratic Party is an infinitesimal speck.

Still, the phrase is descriptive. The endorsements of Sen. Doug Racine by both the state’s AFL-CIO and the teachers union (Vermont NEA) do not make Racine the front-runner. No one can be considered the front-runner until someone releases an independent, credible poll (and, no, the one being taken by the campaign of Sen. Peter Shumlin, one of Racine’s four opponents, does not qualify).

But the endorsements do give the campaign some shape (form) and heft (voidlessness?). If nothing else, they provide a framework for thinking about the contest. Racine is at the very least having a good week and the other four are scrambling. It isn’t that the boost he got can’t be overcome. But the other candidates have to take steps to overcome it.

By no means do the endorsements mean that all 10,000 or so Vermont members of AFL-CIO affiliated unions or the 11,500 teachers who belong to the NEA are going to vote for Racine. If there was ever a time when rank and file union members automatically voted as their leaders recommended, that time is long gone.

On the other hand, there’s no reason why a union member – whether a teacher or a construction worker – shouldn’t pay some attention to the suggestion of an organization that helps improve his or her life. Especially when there’s not much difference among the candidates, five Democrats swimming straight in their party’s main stream.

Shumlin, who says he’s a “fiscal conservative,” and Sen. Susan Bartlett, who in her formal campaign kick-off Monday called herself a “centrist Democrat,” are trying to paint themselves as slightly less liberal on taxes and spending than the other three. They may be right, but “slightly” is the key word here. For many Democratic voters, any of the five contenders would be acceptable. So why not go with your union’s choice?

But the bigger boost for Racine might be that both the AFL-CIO and the NEA provide built-in GOTV operations. That stands for “Get Out the Vote,” and in what promises to be a low-turnout primary, the only more valuable asset than an existing organization that knows how to operate phone banks, identify supporters, and arrange car-pools to take voters to the polls is two of them. That’s what Racine now has.

The others can build their own, and no doubt are planning to do so. But it will cost a little time and money that he can spend elsewhere.

The candidate most hurt by the Racine endorsements was former Sen. Matt Dunne. He knew it, issuing a statement Monday congratulating Racine and pointing out that he it was his “understand(ing)  that the endorsement decision came down to Doug and me.”

It did. The endorsement would have been even a bigger boost for Dunne, who is less well-known, so losing it is a big blow. Dunne also hastily scheduled a press conference yesterday to announce the support of  seven House members and two Senators, including the fiscally centrist Hinda Miller of Burlington.

The AFL-CIO did not limit its endorsements to the governor’s race. It made choices in some of the other contests, too, and one of them could prove very interesting indeed. The labor organization’s preferred candidate for State Auditor is Burlington policy analyst Doug Hoffer who plans to run in the Democratic primary, and who also has Progressive Party support.

The reason this is interesting is that Hoffer could actually get elected. And if he does, the Auditor’s office might become a very lively spot.

Full disclosure: Hoffer, who knows how to find economic data and who analyses it astutely (if from his own point of view) has been an occasional source for this web site, which he obviously reads because he now and then comments on the posts. On the other hand, he and the News Guy have never met, and what follows is analysis, not an endorsement.

It’s not really a prediction, either. But here’s why he could win. So far, the only other Democrat running is former Auditor (and present state senator) Ed Flanagan. In the interests of both brevity and kindness, this account will skip the details abut Flanagan’s political problems (available on line for the curious). Suffice to say that thanks to some recent bizarre personal behavior Flanagan is all but unelectable.

Meaning Hoffer could win the Democratic Primary and also be on the Progressive line for the November election against incumbent Republican Tom Salmon.

Not quite unelectable, but decided beatable, also thanks to some of his own bizarre behavior, including a drunk driving episode and writing obscene emails to a reporter. Plus, he’s a party-switcher, elected and re-elected as a Democrat before becoming a Republican late last year. Party-switchers have a tough time getting re-elected.

Aside from one unsuccessful bid for town council in Massachusetts years ago, Hoffer said, he has never run for office. He could be a terrible candidate. Furthermore, another Democrat might jump into the race before next week’s filing deadline. Democratic Party Chair Judy Bevans said “a number of candidates have expressed interest” in running.

If Hoffer does win, he is likely to be, based on his work as an economics numbers-cruncher, both aggressive and independent. He’s an unabashed economic liberal who approves of raising taxes on the wealthy rather than cutting social services. But he’s also a dedicated data freak who does not go where the statistics do not lead. Should he get elected, the Sate Auditor’s office might become not just interesting, but also a word rarely associated with auditors of any stripe: fun.

MEDIA NOTE: The News Guy is by and large a fan of (and has written for) Seven Days, Burlington’s sprightly alternative newspaper. So it was discouraging to see, in its on-line version, a sophomoric swipe at the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop Salvatore Matano. Apparently some ex-Catholics who write for a blog called The Plaid Crew and who seem to harbor ill will toward the Church, saw a perfectly ordinary (actually, a rather touching) picture of the Bishop ordaining a new priest on the cover of the Vermont Diocese’s magazine, Vermont Catholic, and gave it the smuttiest possible interpretation.

For whatever reason, Seven Days writer Lauren Ober found it “sort of the most amazing photo I’ve ever seen…this week” (sort of the most?) and for whatever reason, the editors agreed to post the item on the paper’s Blurt blog.

The temptation to describe this as locker-room humor offends those of us who have spent some time in locker rooms and remember that the jokes there usually contained a modicum of wit.

The Ultimate Political Scientist (Machiavelli)

“Why are Eric Davis and Garrison Nelson the only political scientist ever consulted about Vermont politics?” a reader asks. “They can’t be the only political science professors in Vermont.”

The question struck home. Not because there is anything wrong with either Davis (who was quoted in the post on which the reader was commenting) or Nelson (who wasn’t only because he couldn’t be reached). They are both fine fellows as well as respected professors (though Davis is now technically a professor emeritus at Middlebury),

No, the comment struck home because the News Guy, in his earlier, Washington incarnation, was a co-founder and one of the only two members (the name of the other will remain secret to protect the guilty) the IDNCNO society.

The initials stood for I Do Not Call Norman Ornstein.

And what, prithee, was wrong with Norman Ornstein?

Not a thing. Like the above-mentioned academics, a fine fellow. Intelligent, good-hearted, and precisely the person a reporter should call for a story about the inner workings of Congress, about which Ornstein is a rare and thoughtful expert.

What inspired the IDNCNO society was that Washington-based political reporters, which both us co-founders were, had started calling Ornstein for expert commentary on all matters political, including matters about which he knew no more than…well, than the reporter calling him.

What the IDNCNO society was ridiculing, then, was not Ornstein, but: (a) continuation of the outmoded contrivance wherein a reporter had to call a certified expert to provide the analysis the reporter wanted to provide him/her-self; and (b) the creation of a list of “usual suspects” to provide said expertise.

In the case of the post about which the reader was commenting (The Five Musketeers,June 2, available earlier on the VT Digger site), reason (a) above is not relevant. In this case, the News Guy, not having been in Vermont that long, needed the expertise of some folks with more experience in the state. But reason (b) speaks right to the reader’s remark that Nelson and Davis can’t be the only two quotable political scientists in the whole state.

They are not. To begin with, there is Nelson’s University of Vermont colleague, Associate Professor Anthony Gierzynski, who has been quoted by the News Guy in the past. Perhaps the Vermont press corps in general has minimized Gierzynski as a usual suspect (making him an unusual suspect?) because he is unabashedly partisan, having actually run for the Burlington City Council as a Democrat.

But considering that he lost and no longer lives in Burlington, the statute of limitations for that offense might have expired. Besides, he’s probably not the only one. Next time the News Guy needs to quote a Vermont political scientist, he will scour the state college system faculties.

In another recent post (That Unasked Question, May 31 the News Guy noted, in connection with Burlington store owners wanting to get “street people” out of the neighborhood, that “merchants vote; street people do not.”

With some justification, a commenter objected. Merchants, he wrote, “as well as other members of the public who are permanently housed possibly vote in higher numbers (but) it would be untrue to state that the (homeless) ‘do not’ vote…at all.”

Nothing “possibly” about it. Reams of data make clear that voter participation by the homeless is tiny. But it is not zero. The political point of that sentence – that merchants have a lot more electoral clout than street people – was correct. But saying they “do not” vote was overdoing it.

In a generally intelligent commentary on Vermont Public Radio the other day, teacher-historian Vic Henningsen, said that, “in 1968, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite delivered a downbeat report on American progress in Vietnam, public opinion rapidly soured on the war.  President Lyndon Johnson lamented, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

A good story and an old one. Too bad it’s probably not true. As W. Joseph Campbell reports in his new book, Getting it Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, (and reported on May 21 by Jack Shafer in Slate, the alleged remark first popped up in the late David Halberstam’s book The Powers that Be, which was written almost ten years later, and which did not actually quote Johnson.

There is no evidence that Johnson ever saw the program or watched a tape of it. And long after Cronkite’s report, LBJ was still calling for a “total national effort to win in Vietnam.”

Speaking of presidential remarks that never got remarked, Thomas Jefferson never said, “that government governs best which governs least,” or anything like it.

Henry David Thoreau said it some years after Jefferson’s death. But of course he didn’t mean it. Thoreau really hated the Mexican War. He regularly rode or walked the public roads to pick up his mail at the Concord Post Office without ever complaining about the highway system or the mail service.

GOOD COLUMN: Outdoor writer Lawrence Pyne in the Burlington Free Press noted Sunday that the celebrated “Pete the Moose” has been saved (though perhaps not permanently), but at the cost of possibly endangering the state’s wild deer herd.

Pyne also pointed out the legal/legislative travesty involved. Without holding hearings, three lawmakers – Newport Republican Rep. Duncan Kimartin and Democratic senators Bobby Starr of North Troy and Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park – slipped language into the budget bill transferring authority over the animals at the “game farm” where Pete now resides from the Fish and Wildlife Department to the Agriculture Department.

“Worse,” Pyne wrote, “they also essentially transferred possession of those animals to the preserve’s owner, in direct disregard of the long-standing public trust doctrine, which holds that wildlife is a publicly-owned resource.”

Maybe even worse than that. It was legislative (meaning political) interference with legal proceedings, an inverse bill of attainder granting amnesty not just to the moose but to those who broke the law in its behalf.

BAD COLUMN: Last month, Vermont Business Magazine ran a piece based a survey by the Arno Group of Stowe which “asked more than 3,000 Vermont businesses in February to complete a 37-question survey (and) received 254 responses, largely from companies with fewer than 20 employees.”

Not enough response, as the Arno Group knew, calling it “not necessarily representative of the Vermont business community as a whole,” and therefore without “statistical validity.”

So kill it. No doubt. No discussion. No story.

Finally, to a comment which seems to have disappeared from this site, perhaps because of the clumsiness of the fellow running it.

The comment was about the promise in Campaign Kickoff (May 26) to ride herd on statements by the candidates for governor, but “not with a petty, ‘gotcha’ attitude…” bothering about “slips of the tongue” or “the kind of trivial flubs everybody makes in spontaneous speech.”

Before it ended, the post chided Democratic contender Matt Dunne for some improper English on his web site. The reader who commented said, essentially (the comment being lost, it can not be quoted), that making fun of a candidate’s grammar was a good example of petty “gotcha” journalism.

OK, the News Guy confesses to being finicky about the English language, his stock in trade after all. But the error was not a “slip of the tongue” or a “trivial flub” made in everyday speech. It had been written, and presumably edited and read over. Somebody should have caught it.

And check’s Dunne’s web site. They fixed it.

Sometimes the most important questions are the ones that don’t get asked, even by reporters, whose job it is to ask that next question.

Usually this failure to ask is more inadvertent than deliberate, and nothing in today’s post should be interpreted as criticism of any reporter. The first example, in fact, comes from a good story by reporter John Briggs on the front page of last Monday’s Burlington Free Press headlined, “Frustration grows over downtown scene.”

The story was about how panhandlers in and around Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace are harassing passers-by and angering store and restaurant owners who want those passers-by to shop and eat at their establishments.

No one has been hurt, but, Briggs wrote, merchants say the situation has become “unpleasant…and may seem threatening to potential shoppers and tourists.”

If anything, Briggs exercised excessive journalistic caution in attributing that conclusion to the merchants. The panhandling, often aggressive and vulgar, simply is unpleasant, and might well seem threatening, especially to women, children,  the frail or the elderly.

As a result, city officials are considering various steps, including passage of laws against blocking the sidewalks. The city council has already passed an ordinance prohibiting smoking in or near parks or recreation areas.

The story did an especially good job in dealing with the political and sociological tensions surrounding the dispute. The panhandlers, many if not most of them drug addicts, homeless, unemployed and perhaps unemployable, have their defenders and advocates who claim the business owners, and the council members working with them (merchants vote; street people do not) are indifferent to the plight of the poor and dispossessed.

Quite possible. And those poor and dispossessed are their fellow citizens whose humanity need not be belittled. But the needs of the non-poor, non-dispossessed should also be taken into account. Forget the merchants for a minute, who obviously have an economic self-interest here, and just consider all the folks – just regular folks, not particularly rich or poor or influential or even important (except in the sense that everyone is important )– who are walking along the sidewalks to shop, eat, sightsee or just meander.

They ought to be able to do this without being assailed by assertive drifters who clog the sidewalk and shout obscenities. This is not a free speech issue. Anyone has the right to set up a soapbox in the park outside City Hall and proclaim the most unpopular opinion imaginable. To the passer-by offended by that opinion, the only response – or at least the only American response – is: Who cares? Be offended. It’s the price for living in a free society.

But sidewalks are, as their name suggests, for walking, and those using them as they were intended to be used have a reasonable expectation that they will be neither impeded nor insulted. Regular folks have rights, too.

Reporter Briggs also did a good job pointing out that the problem had gotten worse because of the recession and because the local agencies that help addicts, the mentally ill and the homeless were stretched to their capacities and beyond. But now comes the question not asked:

Isn’t this what happens when the state cuts its social service budget?

At this point, that question can’t be answered definitively. It would take a great deal of research to make a direct connection between those budget cuts and the increase in the number of troubled panhandlers in downtown Burlington.

But for the last two years, the Legislature, prodded by Gov. Jim Douglas, has cut the budget of the Human Services Agency to hold down taxes and to maintain spending on schools, transportation, and other functions. They did this despite warnings from, among others, law enforcement officials (including Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling) that the result would be more troubled or homeless people on city streets, creating problems that would have to be dealt with by local governments.

These cops seem to have had a point.

The other question wasn’t asked up at Morses Line.

This was last month, in another perfectly good Free Press story, this one by Matt Sutkoski, about the dispute between the Rainville family and the Department of Homeland Security’s effort (apparently about to be abandoned) to take part of the family’s farmland to expand a little-used border crossing station.

Among the sources quoted was a spokesman for the government agency who explained that no major improvements to the facility at Morses Line had been made for 70 years, and that the crossing station  “fails to provide the tools we need to guard against the threats to our national security.”

The question which should have been asked there was: Our What?

Because officials at DHS and its various sub-agencies have been throwing around that “national security” explanation almost every time there’s any debate about Canadian border policies. But the examples they give are invariably about attempted drug smuggling or foreigners trying to sneak into the U.S. to get a job or find a relative.

Stopping those activities is part of DHS’s job. But they have nothing to do with “national security.” The nation’s security is not threatened by a pot (or even heroin) peddler or an illegal farm worker. “National security” deals with threats to…well, the security of the nation, from foreign powers or – these days – from terrorists.

Since September 11, 2001, not a single terrorist seems to have entered the United States from Canada, and there is little reason to think a terrorist could get into Canada any more easily than he or she could come directly to the U.S.

“There’s lot of misunderstanding on the relationship between borders and terrorism,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Since 2001, Alden said, “there have been about 25 terrorist plots inside the US, involving 58 individuals. Thirty were US-born citizens, 11 were naturalized citizens, one had dual citizenship. Nine were legal immigrants or visa holders. Only six were here illegally and maybe one more, from the Middle East.”

Furthermore, he said, “illegally” meant only that they had overstayed their visas, not that they had snuck across a border.

“For the vast majority of incidents, the border was completely irrelevant,” he said.

There’s no guarantee that someday a terrorist won’t try to sneak over the border from Canada, as Ahmed Ressam, the so-called “Millennium Bomber” tried to do in 1999. He was caught at a border crossing station in Washington State. But that was before September 11, 2001. Since then, Canadian authorities have tightened their surveillance of refugee applicants, which was Ressam’s status at the time.

But like other anti-terrorism experts, Alden said that far more important than watching the Canadian border was working cooperatively with Canadian intelligence agencies.

“The level of intelligence  sharing with Canadian authorities is the best we have with any country,” he said. “It’s a very , very close and cooperative one. The US and Canada are trying to do the same things to keep these people out of North America altogether. They use similar systems to try to screen overseas passengers.”

If, as now seems likely, the Morses Line border station is closed, something will be lost; there will be less coming and going across the border for both business and social reasons.

That’s too bad. It has nothing to do with national security.

She did, she acknowledged, ask Louis Porter of the Vermont Press Bureau  (The Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald) to leave the room one day the week before last while she and the other Democrats “consulted with legislative council.”

Two House members, Democrat Jason Lorber of Burlington and Republican Oliver Olsen of Jamaica, were also asked to leave.

The consultation, Bartlett said, was originally going to be held in the Legislative Council’s offices, but the space there was cramped, and she suggested they’d be more comfortable in the committee room.

“We can do that,” she said.

Obviously they can, because she did. Whether senators may, under their own rules, hold closed sessions inside their committee rooms is less certain. Because an official meeting had not been convened, holding a private session might not have violated those rules.

Or maybe it did. It seems to be a matter of interpretation.

The place to start looking, suggested State Archivist Gregory Sanford, is the Vermont Constitution,  specifically Chapter 2, Section 8, which states that, “(t)he doors of the House in which the General Assembly of this Commonwealth shall sit, shall be open for the admission of all persons who behave decently, except only when the welfare of the State may require them to be shut.”

According to Sanford and others, this section applies to committee rooms as well as the legislative chambers, the exception for “the welfare of the state” refers only to emergencies, and being a reporter is not proof of indecent behavior in and of itself.

That would seem to indicate that the session in the committee room –whether or not it was a “meeting” — should have been open. Bartlett acknowledged that five committee members – a quorum – were present.

Bartlett said the committee was also gong to discuss “personnel” matters, therefore it could meet “executive session.”

It can, but only after voting to do so in open session, by a two-thirds majority, and even then only for certain designated reasons, one of which is to discuss personnel. None of that happened the day Bartlett closed the meeting.

But Allen Gilbert of the Vermont American Civil Liberties Union, himself a strong advocate of open meetings, acknowledged that Senate rules might be unclear as to whether a gathering “is a meeting unless it’s convened.”

At any rate, Gilbert said, there is no remedy for this violation, if it was a violation. The only redress is to “complain to the (Senate) Committee on Rules” because the Senate is “not covered by the Open Meeting Law,” so there is no “statutory violation.”

There also appears to have been no harm done. Privately, some senators from both parties were unhappy about Bartlett clearing the room. But no one suggested she was trying to pull a fast one. She just wanted to meet in more comfortable surroundings.

But in the first place, it’s not certain that under Senate rules a reporter (or anyone not misbehaving) didn’t have the right to be at the meeting no matter where in the Statehouse it was held. Or maybe even if it was held out of the statehouse, though Sanford pointed out that lawmakers have sometimes held closed meetings elsewhere, apparently (though perhaps mistakenly) believing that as long as they were in a different buildings they could bar press and public.

Gilbert said the Open Meeting Law draws no distinction between meetings in official or unofficial venues. Should two members of a three-person school board or select board bump into each other at the grocery store, he said, they are forbidden from discussing board business.

It’s unclear whether the Senate rules are quite that strict, but it would seem that Bartlett at least violated the spirit of Vermont’s open government tradition.

To be sure, a case can be made that the tradition is too strict. Maybe people have to get together in private sometimes to hash matters out. Banning such sessions in public (or even in the grocery store) could just push officials into more clandestine locales, such as the back table of the local saloon. (No, come to think of it, that’s too public). But if the system should be changed, officials should argue for changing it, rather than simply breaking the rules.

If there is any price Bartlett will pay here, it’s political. She’s one of the five Democrats running for governor. Getting a reputation for acting surreptitiously (which in general she does not seem to deserve) is not likely to be a political plus.

But when it comes to tension between public officials and members of the Fourth Estate, Bartlett cannot compete with State Auditor Tom Salmon.

Salmon apparently dislikes Seven Days political reporter Shay Totten. Disliking Totten, an unusually pleasant and easy-going fellow, is not easy, but presumably if a reporter keeps catching a politician doing stuff he shouldn’t do, the pol might start taking it personally.

A couple of weeks ago Totten caught a member of  Salmon’s official staff  sending a political email from a state computer during business hours. The email “welcomed” as an opponent (perhaps prematurely) State Sen. Ed Flanagan into the Auditor’s race. Flanagan, who once served as auditor, is thinking about running for his old job against Salmon, who was elected as a Democrat but switched parties last year.

Responsibly, before writing a story, Totten emailed Salmon for response and comment.

Which arrived promptly and…well, let’s just say bluntly. No, on second thought, let’s say obscenely. This web site, determined to persist in its policy of (outward) respectability, will not quote Salmon’s reply (but here’s the link). Suffice to say that it was as far from respectability as one can get.

There is a term for a politician who not only talks this way to a journalists, but actually puts it in writing, meaning he can’t later claim to have been misquoted.

No, make that two alternative terms: (1) A person of dubious judgment; (2) a dope.

At least one Republican, sort of defending Salmon, suggested in a Statehouse corridor last week that Totten was “nitpicking” because sending the email on state time and state equipment was a minor infraction.

Maybe, but you know what? Reporters are supposed to be nitpickers. The Auditor’s office is about a five minute walk from Republican headquarters, and Salmon’s aide could have gone over there at lunch time or after the business day to send the email all legal and proper on a GOP computer. Campaign finance laws, like open meeting laws, exist for a reason.

For the Vermont voter, the political prospects for the Auditor’s race seem especially dismal. For reasons that will be dealt with another day, Flanagan’s judgment isn’t all that reliable, either. In fact, perhaps the most puzzling political question of the day is why Democratic leaders haven’t by now found an attractive accountant – or at least finance-savvy businessperson – to oppose Salmon, who would seem vulnerable if opposed by a minimally competent candidate.

Like a person, a web site must take a day every now and then to establish its procedures, clarify some confusions, and take note of new information which might confirm (or refute) earlier statements.

This is one of those days.

Last week the News Guy gratefully received a generous donation from an out-of-state political advocacy organization.

And reluctantly returned it.

The alternative was to keep it, but then, when dealing with the subject of this particular group’s interest, insert a parenthetical, “full disclosure” statement.

Nah! That’s no good, and not only because it’s awkward. You either take the money or you don’t.

The News Guy does not. At least not from: elected officials; senior appointed officials (as in, direct appointees of the governor); anyone running for office now (donations from former candidates gladly accepted, even those pondering another run sometimes in the future); political parties; interest groups.

As for individuals who work for political parties and interest groups, let’s use common sense. On the one hand, the News Guy is not about to research every contributor to see where he or she is employed. But then, he doesn’t have to do that with the chairs of Vermont’s three political parties. They should not donate.

If you do not fall into one of those categories, however, and have not sent a donation, you are encouraged to do so. Simply look under “Pages” (in the top right quarter of the page), click “donate,” and contribute as little (or, better yet, as much) as you wish. More revenue does not enrich the News Guy as much as it makes it possible to cover more stories, better.

If and when the site seeks advertisements, ads from any legal entity will be accepted: candidates, causes, defense contractors, tobacco companies, subversive organizations, escaped convicts. Whatever.

Two big differences between donations and advertisements. First, the ads are out there in plain site for all the world to see. Second, the revenue from each one is infinitesimal. In fact, the revenue is zero unless someone clicks on the ad. In that case the revenue is pennies. The News Guy can be bought, because anyone can be bought. But not for pennies.

Similarly, though it doesn’t really do any harm, all Facebook “Friends” (the quotation marks are needed because most of these “friends” remain complete strangers) might save their energies by not inviting the News Guy to be a “fan” or otherwise support (or attend the event of) a political cause, or for that matter a commercial enterprise.

Reporters are not fans, at least not of anything but sports teams, musicians, and actors. Yes, technically, the Facebook page under discussion here is personal, but it is effectively the News Guy web site’s page. As such, there is no point in urging him to become a friend of any business, or a fan of “Let’s Close Vermont Yankee,” VPIRG, the Champlain Housing Trust, “Fight Animal Cruelty.” Or Radio Free Vermont.

Since the December 28 post, “Population Balm” two pieces of information have generally confirmed the point of that post that Vermont’s stable population is a result of who Vermonters are rather than what they, or their state government, does.

One was a new Census Bureau report showing that Vermont was one of several states in which there were fewer young people (under 18) last year than in 2000.

Then there was a report by the Southern Education Fund revealing that a majority of students in public schools in the Southern states were both low-income and minority.

Not, the report said, because of the “white flight” of earlier decades, or because so many whites go to private schools; the South has the smallest percentage of private school students in the country. Instead, black, Hispanic, American Indian and others now comprise more than 50 percent of the Southern public school students partly because of increased Hispanic immigration. But also, according to the report, “Higher rates of birth among the South’s Hispanic and African American populations in recent years explain a significant part of the increase in school enrollment.”

The report does not quite say that whites, and especially affluent, educated, whites, are simply not having as many children as other groups, or as many as they used to. But it suggests that conclusion, which is also found worldwide in other population statistics.

It is one reason Vermont’s under-18 population has declined by 14 percent, faster than any other state’s, though the decline in Maine, Michigan, and North Dakota was also ten percent or higher.

Michigan, which is losing total population, is a special case these days because of the decline of the auto industry. Maine is almost as white as Vermont, but North Dakota is not, and neither is as affluent nor as well-educated.

Whether the drop in the under-18 population is a problem or an opportunity, it is undoubtedly a factor. It’s happening, and therefore should be discussed in connection with whether state policy can, or should, try to: (a) reverse: or (b) encourage and exploit the trend.

And finally today, reluctant though the News Guy is to pick on the poor, pitiful, Burlington Free Press yet again, a blunder in Saturday’s paper can not go unremarked. In a straightforward story with no byline, the Freeps informed us all that the speaker at Burlington’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. remembrance next Sunday would be law Professor Anita Hill, who “earned notoriety during the 1991 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.”

Not exactly wrong. At the time, Hill earned notoriety – that is: infamy, dishonor, ill repute – because at the time most people didn’t believe her allegations of misconduct against Thomas. Later, thanks to new information that backed up her contentions, public opinion turned more in her favor.

But the point here is not to relive the squabbles of 1991. The problem is that like many people these days, the writers and editors at the Free Press seem to think that “notoriety” means “fame.”

Minimally defensible. “Known widely” is the start of the Dictionary definition of “notorious,” but the words immediately following are “and usually unfavorably.”

A great language, English, because it allows nuance and precision. One of the great examples is the distinction among “fame,” “celebrity,” and “notoriety.” Newspapers oughtn’t muck them up.

Not that everything is peachy keen in Vermont, but relatively speaking, they aren’t that bad, either.

From the ever-useful Rural Blog comes word that reporter Bill Bishop of Daily Yonder has performed the valuable service of doing a county-by-county check of the recent growth of poverty in America.

It was disproportionately rural.

Using U.S. Census bureau statistics, Bishop found that while last year’s 13.2 percent nationwide poverty rate was the highest since 1997, it was higher yet – 16.3 percent – in the nation’s rural counties.

“The increase in the number of poor Americans was heavily weighted in rural communities,” Bishop wrote. “Rural counties were home to just over 16% of the nation’s population in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But 33% of the increase in the number of poor Americans from ’03 to ‘08 — more than one million people — was found in rural counties.

As a result, the gap between the poverty rates in urban and rural America widened, doubling between 2003 and 2008.”

During the 1990s, Bishop found, the rural-urban poverty gap actually declined, thanks largely to a growing nationwide economy. The weaker economy of this decade, though, apparently hits rural areas the hardest. There are 50 rural counties where more than 32 percent of the people live under the poverty line.

How many of those counties are in Vermont?

None. In fact, no Vermont county has a poverty rate as high as that 16.3 percent of all rural counties. Essex County in the Northeast Kingdom comes closest with a 14.8 percent poverty rate, closely followed by neighboring Orleans County, at 14.3 percent.

(In case anyone is wondering, Chittenden is Vermont’s only urban country. Franklin and Grand Isle are considered exurban. All the others are designated rural).

On the other hand, no Vermont County was among the least impoverished rural counties, either. And in all of them, the poverty rate was higher than it was in 2003, when the rate in Essex County was 12.3 percent, and 13.1 percent in Orleans.

Here are the poverty rates for the other counties: Addison—9.5 percent up from 8.7 percent in 2003; Bennington–12.2, up from 10; Caledonia–11.8 , up minimally from 11.3; Chittenden—9.6 from 7.6; Franklin—9.9 up from 9.5; Grand Isle—8.4, up from 7.3; Lamoille—10.1 from 8.8; Orange—10.9 from 9.2; Rutland—11.6, up from 10.3; Washington—9.7 up from 8.4; Windham—9.8, just up from 9.7; Windsor—9.3 up from 8.7.

It’s possible that Vermont’s rural counties are lucky in being, in a sense, less rural than the rural counties of many other states. Down South and especially out West, some rural counties take up as much space as four or five of Vermont’s, and are much farther from the nearest town of any size, where most of the good jobs are these days.

What with poverty going up, it’s no surprise that so is reliance on food stamps. Last Sunday’s New York Times reported that one in eight Americans – and one in four children – use food stamps to keep themselves nourished. So widespread is the use of food stamps, the Times reported, that much of the stigma is gone from a program “once scorned as a failed welfare scheme.”

Using both U.S. Agriculture Department and Census Bureau statistics, the Times also provided, on line, a county-by-county breakdown which showed that in Vermont, as in almost every other state, use of food stamps has grown everywhere, especially in some of the more affluent areas.

Chittenden County, for instance, had Vermont’s lowest percentage of food stamp users in June of this year – nine percent. But the growth since June of 2007 was 43 percent, higher than the 33 percent growth in less affluent Essex County, where 17 percent of the residents use food stamps.

The same pattern holds in many other states, at least suggesting that the current recession is plunging into poverty many households and individuals who until recently could be classified as middle-income. Not only are some of those people unemployed, but even more are working fewer hours.

Here are the results for the other Vermont counties, with the percentage on food stamps first, followed by the two-year percentage increase: Addison—9. 61; Bennington—16. 51; Caledonia—16. 41; Franklin—15. 46; Grand Isle—11.52; Lamoille—13. 47; Orange—12. 13; Orleans—20. 42; Rutland—15. 45; Washington—11. 45; Windham—15. 54; Windsor—11. 47

And speaking of statistics, and reluctant though the News Guy is to beat up on the Burlington Free Press yet again, there was a certain amount of innumeracy in its account last week of Fletcher Allen Health Care’s dissent from the recent federal task force recommendation that all women under 50 did not need to get annual mammograms.

“During the last fiscal year,” the paper reported, “the hospital screened about 7,000 women ages 40 to 49…79 women in that age group were diagnosed with cancer.”

But “those diagnoses were not necessarily made through the annual screening process.”

Meaning those figures provide no evidence of the efficacy of the annual mammograms for those women. Neither does the fact that women in their forties “had the second largest tally of breast cancer diagnoses,” after women in their fifties.

They would, wouldn’t they? The disease is less prevalent among both younger and older women.

Reached in Chicago, where she is attending a medical conference, Dr. Sally Herschorn, Fletcher Allen’s attending radiologist, acknowledged that the figures were “not germane” to the factual debate over the recommendations. But Dr. Herschorn said she thought the task force’s study was “flawed,” and that annual screenings by women in their forties could save lives.

She may be right. But the numbers cited by the Freep as evidence for her position, while interesting, were not evidence for anything.

It’s a little early to pronounce State Auditor Tom Salmon politically cooked and ready to have the loser’s fork stuck into his carcass.

But just a little.

Salmon, of course, is the elected Democrat who took the political risk earlier this year of becoming a Republican in a state where that is generally not considered a shrewd career move.

Last week he made the personal and political mistake of driving his car after he’d had too much to drink.

Monday he went on the radio to talk about it and botched things up totally.

Asked the obvious question by Jane Lindholm on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition, Salmon refused to say how much he’d had to drink before a Montpelier cop pulled him over Friday evening. The question, he said, was not “germane.”

This dictionary (American Heritage Second College Edition) defines “germane” as “having a significant bearing upon a point at hand; pertinent.”

Under that definition, what could possibly be more germane than asking an elected official who has had too much to drink just what he had been drinking, and how much?

Especially considering that he had earlier said he’d been drinking red wine.

Asserting that his goal was maximum “candor,” Salmon practiced maximum evasiveness. He wouldn’t say forthrightly that he planned to plead guilty when his case comes to court next month, leaving the impression that he was hoping for some other outcome.

To top it all off, before the brief (maybe five minute) interview ended, Salmon got potty-mouthed. If he thought the vulgarity would mark him as a regular guy, he was wrong. It marked him as vulgar. It also raised the question of…well, to come right to the point…of whether he’s something of a dope.

Maybe he’s the brightest guy around. But the context here is politics, in which appearance often outstrips reality. A candidate who comes across as kind of dense risks getting the reputation as a candidate who’s kind of dense. Once acquired, this reputation is hard to shake.

To be fair to Salmon, he does not appear to have been falling-down drunk. His breathalyzer test measured a blood alcohol content of .086, not far above the .08 legal limit.

Still, above the limit is above the limit. It doesn’t look good.

For two reasons, Salmon could still get re-elected next year. First, it’s early. Assuming there is no repeat performance, voters could forgive even if they don’t forget. A candidate who gets the vote of everyone who has ever driven after a drink too many would probably win in a landslide.

Second, one can never underestimate the facility of Vermont Democrats to nominate a turkey to run against Salmon. The Democratic leadership is no doubt trying to recruit a good candidate. But that leadership has limited power to control events. Anybody can enter the primary, meaning anybody can win it, including a turkey.

Right now, though, the Auditor’s re-election prospects seem bleak.

Oh, the other guy who wasn’t exactly impressive in handling this kerfuffle was Lt. Gov. and Republican gubernatorial candidate-designate Brian Dubie, who had nothing but praise for Salmon at Saturday’s Republican convention. Not a hint that he disapproved of what Salmon had done.

The appropriate response in the family, the fraternity house, maybe the Elks Club. Not in politics.

Enough of that. Now let’s turn to that other kerfuffle, the one about that letter to the editor of the Burlington Free Press, the existence of which the Freep is trying to deny.

The letter, by Ethan A. Sims (apparently the highly respected, much-honored professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Vermont, though the News Guy was unable to reach him for confirmation) which appeared to suggest that, while hunters were out trying to shoot a moose, anti-hunters might want to shoot the moose-hunters.

At least that’s how a great many hunters understood it. Preferring to be predators rather than prey, these hunters and their organizations not unreasonably became upset, deluging the newspaper with so many angry letters to the editor that the editors surrendered.

Abjectly. Not because they apologized, which was defensible if perhaps not necessary. But because they removed the letter from the newspaper’s web site archives.

It became, then, an un-letter, rather the way some one-time associates of Stalin who fell out of favor (and soon thereafter of sight) had their names and photographs purged from the history books, becoming un-persons.

Because no one here was killed, tortured, or exiled, the editors hardly sink to Stalinism, or other aspects of Bolshevism except in their obvious toadiness. Theirs is the spirit not of the independent journalist but of the ever-obsequious courtier.

Besides, this not being Soviet Russia, suppression doesn’t work. Anyone with a desire to see the letter and an Internet connection can find it. Here it is:

On this beautiful day we learn that about 1,251 hunters are taking to the woods with legal permits to “pursue prized quarry.” Certainly the members of various humane organizations do not approve. I suggest that before the next annual killing season, other residents be awarded legal permits to kill hunters who will be out to kill these beautiful, non-destructive animals. Or the government could just rule out all this primitive killing.
ETHAN A.H. SIMS
Shelburne

As another letter-writer noted last Sunday (a letter the Free Press editors, to their credit, printed), Sims obviously didn’t really want anyone to shoot a moose hunter. His letter was Swiftian satire, modeled on Jonathan Swift’s famous Modest Proposal (1729) suggesting Ireland’s poor ease their penury by selling their children to be eaten.

Not that hunters should be blamed for insufficient attention to Dr. Sims’ literary playfulness, which would have alerted them to his motivation. Hunters feel put upon these days because everybody does. It’s the American way to think everybody’s out to get us, whoever “us” may be. In fact, a very small percentage of the American people actively oppose hunting, and they have not been taken seriously by most of the rest of us (the News Guy is a very pro-hunting non-hunter) at least since the anti-hunting group PETA called for New Yorkers to change the name of the Fishkill River, apparently unaware that “kill” is Dutch for “river,” and so the name is not evidence of anti-piscatorialism (though perhaps of redundancy).

The editors could have explained that Sims was not in fact urging the murder of anyone, simply expressing his own anti-hunting views in a sardonic manner and with some literary flourish. Such a rational response, however, does not come easily to courtiers. Instead, the paper apologized for running a letter “advocating for violence against hunters,” which the letter does not do.

(OK, since this site is beating up on the Free Press again, this is a good place to note that Sunday’s package on the Lake Champlain Bridge, with stories by Terri Hallenbeck and Matt Sutkoski, was first class journalism.)