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.

First, an announcement, and a plea: Four of the five Democratic candidates for governor (Deb Markowitz being the absentee) will meet for a so-called debate, more accurately a campaign forum, at 7PM Thursday at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common.

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 Democratic governor’s race is no longer without form and void.

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.