Wimpy (with Olive Oyl)

Oh the weeping, the wailing, and the gnashing of teeth.

Barely begun though it may be, the campaign for governor already threatens to become among the more petty, petulant, and pettifogged on record.

Not to mention one of the more…well, this isn’t easy to say in these super-sensitive days, and the News Guy does not want to appear unenlightened…but let’s just come out with it, especially because almost everyone involved is of the male persuasion: the campaign shows signs of being cursed by a lack of manliness.

Not in the sense of strutting about and threatening to punch somebody in the mouth. In fact, there’s altogether too much of that, and – here’s what some of these guys don’t understand – that isn’t manly. Keeping one’s cool under pressure is manly. (which is not to say that it is not also womanly, but today’s exercise deals with guys).

Let’s start, because they are by and large the lesser offenders here, with the Democrats.

Whose first reaction (well, OK, maybe whose second reaction) to the first television commercial promoting Republican Brian Dubie was to whine that it was no fair because it was against the law.

It may be. The ad, “Vision for Vermont,” narrated by Gov. Jim Douglas, is a product not of the Dubie campaign but of the Republican Governors Association, making it an “independent” expenditure, legal only if it is truly independent, meaning not coordinated in any way with the Dubie campaign.

Impossible, said the Democrats, in a complaint filed with the Vermont Attorney General’s office. According to the complaint, the commercial “includes footage of Lt. Governor Dubie at private campaign events. Since Lt. Governor Dubie does not publish a public schedule, it would have been practically impossible for the Republican Governor’s Association to know where Dubie would be and schedule a film crew to film him without coordination and collusion.”

That would violate the law. If the Attorney General concludes that the Dubie campaign and the RGA colluded, the ad would be deemed a contribution from the governors association to the campaign. An illegal contribution considering that the ad cost far more than the $2,000 contribution limit under Vermont law.

Everyone – but especially governors and would-be governors – ought  to obey the law. Furthermore, the combination of Vermont Republicans and the RGA do not come to this discussion with clean hands.  Six years ago, Attorney General William Sorrell ruled that the RGA violated state law by failing to register as a political action committee before spending some $300,000 to help Douglas’s re-election. A similar finding against Republicans in the next few weeks would provide a day or two of stories that would hurt the Dubie campaign, a prospect that might explain why the Democrats filed the complaint.

On the other hand, the complaint is based on more conjecture than evidence. The Democrats effectively concede this by saying, “The numerous scenes of intimate, private and staged shots contained in the campaign commercial reasonably infers that Lt. Governor Dubie must have consciously taken action to facilitate or approve the creation of the advertisement.”

First of all, whoever wrote that doesn’t know what “infer” means. In English, the ‘numerous scenes’ suggest or imply; those observing the scenes infer. (Oh, and the grammar’s wrong. One scene infers; two infer.) But forget that. What’s important here is that in that sentence, the Democrats acknowledge that their case is based on a certain amount of inference. Regardless of the outcome of the Attorney General’s investigation, this little spat is unlikely to do the Dubie campaign any lasting harm. Evidence that the average voter gives a hoot about this kind of staff ranges between sparse and non-existent.

But if the Democratic reaction to the Republican ad was whiney, the Republican reaction to a corresponding Democratic ad was downright wimpy.

Like the Republican ad, the Democratic commercial was financed largely if not entirely by the national party’s Governors Association. In this case, though, a separate entity, Green Mountain Future, actually paid for the ad and bought the air time. Green Mountain Future is not a political action committee. It’s a non-profit which may neither endorse nor oppose a candidate.

So the Democratic commercial does neither. It doesn’t mention Democrat Peter Shumlin. It does mention Dubie, but only to say that he supports relicensing the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which most of the ad criticizes. Then it urges viewers to tell Dubie he’s wrong. This way the ad follows the letter of the law while effectively opposing Dubie.

Well, from the campaign’s reaction, one might have thought that the ad accused Dubie of heinous crimes, moral turpitude, or not liking maple syrup.

“Peter Shumlin and his team recognize his jobs-killing record of taxing and spending is a loser…so they have no choice but to make negative ads,” said Corry Bliss, Dubie’s campaign manager. “Instead of talking about his ideas – or lack thereof – for fixing Vermont’s economy, Peter Shumlin and his team would rather spend thousands of dollars attacking Brian Dubie.”

Oh, poor little Corry-Warry. Somebody doesn’t agree with his boss. So he’s going to lie down and stomp his feet on the floor.

Fer cry-ey, as Harry Vernon would have said, what will Bliss do if anybody really attacks Dubie? Get hysterical and run home to mother? Doesn’t he know that it’s Democrats who are supposed to be “The Mommy Party,” complaining about every real or imagined slight? Republicans are supposed to be the tough guys. Suck it up, fella.

(Harry who? A literary reference. Check it out if you wish)

Beyond the hyper-sensitivity, there were two factual errors in Bliss’s screed. First, in this case there being no evidence at all of collusion, that was not Peter Shumlin’s ad Bliss was talking about. It was Green Mountain Future’s. Or maybe the Democratic Governors Association. But there’s no evidence it was Shumlin’s.

Second, it was not the least bit negative.

Well, OK, it wasn’t positive. It was meant to cost Dubie votes. But by Dubie’s own standards, it didn’t insult him. All it said was that he favored long-term relicensing of the power plant. He does. He’s proud of it. Describing a candidate’s policy position is not negative, at least not if the description is accurate. In this case, it is.

A smarter reply to the ad might have been to question whether its creators were really so sure that most Vermonters oppose relicensing Vermont Yankee, and would therefore be likely to hold Dubie’s support against him. And maybe, rather than accusing the Republicans of breaking the law, the Democrats might have been better off questioning the assumption behind the GOP ad – that Jim Douglas’s endorsement is all that helpful these days.

Well, what’s done is done. But there are 50 days of campaigning left. Ladies and (especially) gentlemen. Could we have a little adulthood? Even, though one is not supposed to talk this way any more, a little manly adulthood these next seven weeks?

Claire's restaurant in Hardwick

Don’t look now, but there’s a whole book about Hardwick.

Yup, that Hardwick. The one in Caledonia County, population 3207 (quasi-official 2008 estimate) median income on the low side for Vermont, home to no celebrities known to Hollywood or Broadway.

But worthy of its own book as The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, by Ben Hewitt, a 38-year-old writer-farmer who lives in Cabot. The book was published last March by Rodale Press.

Vitality in local food? Hmmm. There’s a concept that transcends one little town and even one little state. But it certainly seems to be important to the little town of Hardwick, and it may become increasingly important to Vermont. Over the last few years, local small-scale agriculture has been one of the few sectors of the Vermont economy that has expanded and created jobs.

Some see it as an important part of the state and even the national economy in the years ahead.

And some do not. The cover of the current issue of The American Prospect magazine proclaimed, “The Local Food Revolution Doesn’t Stand a Chance.”

Such a conclusion might be expected – and easy to dismiss — from many an establishment journal, especially one close to the corporate world where big commodity farms,  agribusiness processors, their lobbyists, and the lawmakers who direct billions of dollars in subsidies their way feel at home.

But The American Prospect (TAP to its friends) is a highly regarded and generally left of center magazine, not likely to be carrying water (and in this case that would be irrigated water financed by the taxpayer) for “industrialized agriculture.” (Full disclosure: it is also a magazine for which the News Guy has written in both its print and on-line incarnations).

So why does TAP say the local food movement is doomed?

Actually, it doesn’t. Not for the first time in publishing history, a magazine’s cover headline seems to have overstated the findings of the cover story itself. In the article, “Slowed Food Revolution,” writer Heather Rogers does point out the difficulties facing non-establishment agriculture, but never quite proclaims its situation hopeless.

The problems she catalogues are real.

(H)olistic and organic growers,” she writes, “shoulder far higher production costs than their conventional counterparts when it comes to everything from laborers to land. Without meaningful support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, their longevity hangs in the balance. In the meantime, the USDA showers billions on industrial agriculture. Growers who’ve gone the chemical, mechanized route have ready access to reasonable loans, direct subsidy payments…, and crop insurance, plus robust research, marketing, and distribution resources. Whether organic and holistic growers raise crops…or grass-fed, free-range livestock, they must contend with circumstances made harder by a USDA rigged to favor industrial agriculture and factory food.”

True, or at least true enough, though there are signs that the Obama Administration is moving, if ever so slowly, to help the local food movement. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack even attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association gathering in Burlington last winter, where he said, “like it or not, for better or worse, the organic market has become mainstream.” Last month, the Administration proposed new rules “seeking to increase competition and rein in potentially unfair practices by large meatpackers and poultry producers,” according to a story in the New York Times, which said the move was “aimed at helping small livestock and poultry farmers.”

Besides, not all local agriculture is organic or holistic, whatever that may mean, and some of Rogers’s examples seem extreme. One organic farmer’s eggs, she wrote, cost $14 a dozen, making them tough to sell. But it can be reliably reported that in the Northeast Kingdom one can get locally raised  (though not organic) eggs, laid by chickens who wander around a barnyard, for $2.50 a dozen. That’s more than at the supermarket, but it isn’t outlandish.

Whatever happens to local food production in the future, there is little doubt that it has “saved” Hardwick economically, though Hewitt himself now says he didn’t really think Hardwick had to be “saved,” except, he said,. “economically speaking.” It had, though, “an interconnectedness, where people were able to do for themselves and each other.”

Still, it didn’t have much in the way of jobs or business opportunities until the opening of cheese maker Jasper Hill Farms in nearby Greensboro, Vermont Soy, and Claire’s, a “community supported restaurant” (CSR) which is largely financed by local investors and uses many locally-grown products.

Not that Hardwick has turned into Scarsdale. There’s still at least one boarded up big storefront on the main street. And many if not most of the town residents, it is safe to say, can rarely if ever afford to dine at Claire’s. But so far, Hewitt said, “these businesses are all growing and hiring and have been through the teeth of the recession,” and the town shows definite signs of economic vitality.

Nor, he said, is Hardwick alone. There is the Intervale Center in Burlington, a Rutland area “farm and food link” is coordinating similar entrepreneurship in that area, and “scattered throughout the hills are small scale producers,” clearly more of them than just a few years ago.

Now, in Vermont at least, the local food movement may be about to get some of the official help it needs. Next month, the Legislatively-created Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, after a year of study and discussion, will “put (its) draft proposals on what the farm and food sector might be like in ten years, out for public comment,” said Janice St. Onge, its deputy director.

St. Onge doesn’t think Vermont will ever be able to “solely feed ourselves,” not as long as Vermonters want orange juice for breakfast. But, she said, “some components can move toward being self-sufficient,” and that self-sufficiency could be economically valuable for the state.

The localvore advocates try to be careful not to over-promise. Hewitt said there were more important advantages to producing and consuming locally grown food than to see local agriculture as a “fantastic engine of economic growth,” which it may not be.

But it could be as solid (if not fantastic) an engine of such growth as any of the other business bonanza ideas thrown around. The conventional wisdom supports subsidizing (bribing?) out-of-state companies to move in. But statistics show that rather few companies move from one state to another, and it is not at all clear that the jobs created are worth the subsidies paid, or the tax breaks granted (which usually end up raising everybody else’s taxes in the town which hosts the new company). So far, at least, local growers aren’t asking for money, just some changes in regulations.

And as Hewitt said, it’s at least as likely that industrial agriculture, for all its government subsidies, is as close to doom as are the small producers of meat and vegetables raised to sell nearby. Certainly in Vermont, the big mass commodity crop, dairy, will continue to decline, in numbers of producers if not in gallons produced.

In 1947, Hewitt rattled off (he obviously has the number in his head) there were 11,206 Vermont dairy farms. There are now about 1,000. There will be fewer next year and fewer yet the year after. But there are likely to be more farms producing cheese from their own animals, raising vegetables to be sold at a nearby farm stand, and supplying local restaurants like Claire’s or the Bees Knees in Morrisville.

It’s hard to believe that there will be enough of these farms and restaurants to help lead a state to prosperity. But until this year, it was hard to believe anyone would write a book about Hardwick.

Kind of high for Vermont, though, The previous year’s rate had been 2.1 per hundred-thousand, based on eight murders. Thing haven’t changed much since. In fact, except for 1993, when for some reason there were 21 murders in the state, the number of homicides fluctuates between the high single digits and the mid-teens, allowing Vermont to uphold its reputation as a safe, healthy, state where, compared with most other states, people do not kill.

A reputation not entirely deserved. Vermonters rarely kill someone else. But they are quite a bit more likely than other Americans to kill themselves.

That same year of 2006 (chosen because it is the most recent year for which reliable suicide statistics are available), when only a handful of Vermonters killed another person, 80 committed suicide, a rate of 13.1 per hundred-thousand, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. Here, Vermont’s statistics are worse than the nation as  whole, where 11.1 people per hundred-thousand population killed themselves that year.

For whatever reason, suicide seems to be a worse problem in Vermont than in the neighboring states. New Hampshire’s 12.2 per hundred-thousand is slightly lower, and still above the national average. But in Massachusetts (7.2 per hundred-thousand) and New York (6.7), the rate is far lower than in most of the rest of the country,

From 1995 through 2006,  the SPRC reported, Vermont had a 13.7 per hundred-thousand suicide rate, with an average of 1.5 suicides a week, making suicide the ninth leading cause of death in the state. It is eleventh nationally.

“Things have not changed that much,” since those statistics were compiled, said Elana Premack Sandler, a Prevention Specialist at SPRC’s Boston office. Vermont remains one of the states where a person is more likely to kill him or her self.

Probably himself. As in most other states, the vast majority of Vermont suicides – 82 percent — are men, meaning that 23 of every hundred-thousand Vermont men take their own lives, making suicide the seventh leading cause of death of Vermont men. The rate for women was 4.8 per hundred-thousand.

As might be expected, older people were most likely to take their own lives. In Vermont, the rate for those over 70 was 19.6 per hundred-thousand (43 for males over 70). But suicide experts in Vermont and elsewhere are increasingly worried about teenage suicides. The SPRC reported four youth suicides in Vermont in 2006, a slightly higher rate than the nation’s as a whole.

As might not be expected, there does not seem to be a correlation between suicide and either income or education. Nationally (this hardly applies in Vermont), non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are blacks or Hispanics.

“Income and socio-economic class does not really enter into it,” said Brian Remer, project manager for youth suicide prevention at the Center for Health and Learning in Brattleboro.http://www.healthandlearning.org/

“There’s a myth out there that people who are poor and down on their luck might be more inclined to take their own lives. It’s more a combination of a lot of different factors.”

The most important of these, he said, is probably “social isolation,” which helps explain why, in Vermont and around the country, suicide is more common in rural areas. Nationally, New Mexico (19.8 suicides per hundred thousand population from 1995 through 2005), Alaska (21), and Montana (20) are the states with the highest rates, Elana Premack Sandler said.

In some of these states, the rate might be affected by the one exception to the general rule that non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are members of a minority group. Not if the minority group is American Indians or Alaska natives. In Alaska, the suicide rate for these two groups is a frightening 45.9 per hundred-thousand.

In these cases, poverty and other pathologies such as alcoholism might contribute to the suicide rate. But Premack Sandler said most experts still regard isolation as the biggest problem.

The same holds in Vermont, said Remer. The suicide rate in rural Essex County in the Northeast Kingdom is higher than Alaska’s – 24 per hundred-thousand. Essex County residents are poorer and less educated than most Vermonters, but Remer said, “suicide rates are probably higher in rural areas because of isolation and the difficulty receiving or getting to mental health services” than to income or education levels. Mental health, he said, “plays a part in about 90 percent of the suicides.”

And while there are no statistics about rural attitudes as such, suicide experts are convinced that the stigma attached to mental illness, which seems stronger in rural areas, prevents some people from dealing with the problems that can lead to suicide.

“The stigma is a big thing,” Remer said. “If a son or daughter exhibits unusual behavior, parents often think, ‘maybe they inherited this condition from me,’ or ‘I’m a bad parent, or people will think I’m a bad parent.’ We know this is not true. Mental illness often has a chemical or genetic base, and people can get real help from therapy and medication.”

Bill Lippert, the Democratic State Representative from Hinesburg who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted that though there were “twice as many suicides as murders in Vermont” (actually, more than twice as many), every murder garners a massive headline, but the issue of suicide is generally not receiving the same level of public awareness because there’s still the stigma attached to mental illness.”

But mental illness is only one aspect of the suicide discussion that many experts and activists are reluctant to discuss. The other is the method, though the data are clear. People can take their lives using all kinds of devices including poisons, knives, and suffocation. But in Vermont and nationwide, more than half of all suicides shoot themselves.

That’s what Aaron Xue did last year. He was 15. He apparently was given a gun (or perhaps guns) by another youth, who took them from his home in Essex, where Aaron also lived. Aaron’s mother thinks it should be simple to pass a law that would make it less likely that teenagers could take loaded guns from home. She may be wrong.

The old bridge

Thanks to a decision made by the government of the state of Vermont – mostly the Douglas Administration but with the support of leading legislators – the new Lake Champlain bridge will cost Vermont taxpayers somewhat more than it might.

Thanks to that same decision, no Vermont worker is guaranteed to get one of the 150 or more jobs – some paying more than $47 an hour including benefits – on the $61 million project, the largest construction project in the state in some time.

Finally, thanks to the decision, strikes, labor jurisdictional disputes, or other work stoppages could interrupt progress on the new bridge, scheduled to be completed by July of 2011.

The decision was the state’s refusal to participate in a Project Labor Agreement (PLA). Under a PLA, construction unions agree to certain concessions, such as surrendering premium pay for late shifts and allowing flexibility in computing overtime. This holds down the price of the project.

They also agree not to stage strikes, slowdowns or other work delays, a provision especially important when officials – and the public – are impatient to finish the job.

In return, most of the workers are selected from union hiring halls, meaning union members get priority, though non-union workers are commonly chosen also, simply because the job requires more workers than there are union members in any area.

In this case, the federal government signaled its approval of using a PLA. The state of New York agreed. The unions made the necessary concessions.

Vermont said no.

To recap: The PLA would (1) Not cost anyone a penny; (2) Save the state and its taxpayers some hundreds of thousands of dollars according to the one study devoted to the question; (3) guarantee scores of Vermont workers high-paying jobs for 15 months.

And the state said no?

“It’s a philosophical opposition to unions,” said Sen. Vince Illuzzi, the Orleans County Republican who supports the PLA.

Not so, said John Zicconi, the spokesman for the Agency of Transportation, who said Vermont officials “didn’t think one (PLA) was necessary.”

Zicconi said Transportation Secretary David Dill told New York officials Vermont would consider the PLA if “nonunion shops were treated completely equally with the union shops,” a condition that he said was not met.

“Our non-union shops should have been on a level playing field,” Zicconi said. “That was the key issue to us.”

It was the key issue, Zicconi acknowledged, because the Agency was subject to “strong lobbying” by Vermont’s construction firms, organized as the Associated General Contractors of Vermont. Almost all of Vermont’s contractors are non-union shops, and obviously intent on staying that way. Both Zicconi and AGC officials said that under a PLA no non-union Vermont contractor could possibly get chosen as a subcontractor to do any work on the bridge.

But according to the “Due Diligence” report on the advisability of the PLA done by Arace & Co. consulting firm of Warwick, N.Y., non-union contractors win at leas”t 30 percent of all (contracts) under PLAs.”

The report also concluded that a PLA on the bridge “has the  potential to produce cost savings for the Federal government and the taxpayers of New York State and Vermont.  We estimate potential savings of approximately $1,756,032.”

Vermont’s share of that would presumably be several hundred-thousand dollars.

Besides, there do not seem to be any Vermont firms that could possibly win a subcontract for any of the work that would have been covered by the PLA. Zicconi and AGC sources said they hoped Vermont firms might get subcontracts for line-striping the road, installing the guard rails, or providing concrete.

But according to Michael Morelli of the Ironworkers union and other union officials, the less expensive contracts for line-striping and guard rails were not part of the draft PLA. And the concrete material, which is likely to be handled by a non-union Vermont firm, is considered supply, not construction contracting. It isn’t part of the PLA, either.

In fact, so many of the arguments in opposition to the PLA are so demonstrably incorrect that Illuzzi’s contention that state officials are motivated by “philosophical opposition” can’t be dismissed out of hand.

For instance, both builders and state officials repeatedly told lawmakers and reporters that the PLA would force non-union Vermont workers to “join a union.”

It would not. The workers would have to pay union dues while on this particular job. But they would not have to become union members, and they could stipulate that none of their dues money go for political activity. In the meanwhile, they and their families would enjoy the generous health benefits of the union plans.

And in disputing the consultant’s estimate of $1.7 million in savings, Zicconi said that would depend on whether the unions made concessions, and on the report’s assumption that union workers were more efficient, “and I don’t buy that.”

But the unions have already made the concessions. And the efficiency issue, according to Ed Acer of the consulting firm, based on findings that union workers are “more likely to be more productive and safety-conscious” because they are “graduates of rigorous state-certified apprentice programs,” accounted for $112,000, or .005 percent of the projected savings.

“That’s a rounding error,” he said.

A PLA would not have cost Vermont contractors a penny. All workers on the job will have to be paid the New York State prevailing wage, which is much higher than Vermont’s. A Vermont laborer, said, John Donahue of the Laborer’s union, earns about $12 an hour, usually with no benefits. The New York prevailing wage, he said, is $37 an hour, $23 in pay and the rest benefits. Even after deducting union dues (about $2.22 an hour) the worker earns a lot more under the New York system.

That, of course, could reveal a practical, rather than a “philosophical” reason Vermont contractors oppose the PLA. They may not want their workers to get a taste of the higher wages and benefits that unionization brings.

Labor leaders could be exaggerating when they say that without the PLA no Vermont worker might be hired. The general contractor, Flatiron Constructors of Colorado, is not likely to bring all 150 or more skilled workers with it. But Morelli of the Ironworkers said Flatiron was known for “self-performing” a great deal of its work and bringing some of its work force with it.

Efforts to reach Flatiron were not successful.

And Donahue might have been bluffing when he threatened labor unrest.

“We’re not going to stand by,” he said. “There could be picket lines and everything.”

But they are correct when they say that without the PLA there is no guarantee either that Vermonters will get any of these good-paying jobs or that there will be no delays because of labor squabbles. Under the draft PLA, 84 percent of the jobs would have been apportioned through local hiring halls in New York and Vermont, though non-union contractors could “drag-along” their own employes to make up the rest.

The final irony here is that there could be a PLA after all. Vermont’s refusal only scuttled plans for a public PLA. But the unions and Flatiron could negotiate a private agreement. Flatiron has operated under PLAs in the past. It was the general contractor for the replacement of the Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007. That jog was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and it was conducted under a PLA.

A Flatiron official was in the Albany area yesterday,  perhaps negotiating.

Under a private PLA, though, the taxpayers will not save the money. Flatiron will add it to its bottom line.

As of yesterday, the Census Bureau web site showed that Vermont had a 65 percent rate of returning 2010 Census forms. That was better than the 56 percent recorded April 6. But it still lagged behind the national rate, by the same four percentage points.

And this is supposed to be the most educated state in the union?

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The late Sen. William Scott

Thanks (or perhaps more accurately, no thanks) to missed phone calls and the varying schedules of both parties, the News Guy’s report on the wisdom, or lack thereof, of stocking Vermont rivers with “put-and-take” adult trout (Taking Stock, April 9) lacked the key information of how much the Fish and Wildlife Department spent on this activity.

Tom Wiggins (inexplicably called “Wiggin” in the original post; apologies to him) reports that the total cost of the program this year will be approximately $4.57 million, $2.85 million to staff and operate the hatcheries, and $1.72 million for to administer the actual stocking.

This money does not come from the taxpayers. Wiggins said about 75 percent of is from federal funds obtained from the excise tax on fishing gear, and the other 25 percent is from the money anglers pay for their fishing licenses ($20 for a Vermont resident).

Still, every penny the Department spends on stocking is a penny it can not spent on habitat protection, which all the biologists agree is the best method for providing healthy fish populations in the long run.

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Ken Page is a mentsch.

Page is the high school principal — indeed, the head of the Vermont Principals Association – teased (if not downright ridiculed) in last Monday’s post (“Three for Monday,” April 12 ) for ungrammatically saying “less students” instead of the correct “fewer students.”

A lesser man might have been resentful, or at least have ignored the attack. Not Page, who sent an email with the subject line “guilty as charged.” He was wrong, he knew it, and he said so.

And for whatever it’s worth, Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education of the entire United States of America, made the same mistake last week.

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Last Thursday was, of course, Tax Day, a day Americans have been conditioned to revile even though about 80 percent of all tax filers got or will get refunds, according to IRS figures. Furthermore, almost everyone is paying less in federal income taxes this year than last year.

That includes Vermonters. According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, 99 percent of Vermont working families and individuals “received a much-needed average federal tax cut of over $1,100 for 2009.” In addition, he said, “14,000 Vermont families were able to receive an expanded tax cut to send their kids to college last year (and) nearly 60,000 Vermont small businesses received tax cuts to purchase new equipment and other things.”

For those who find Sanders a less than reliable source, everything he said checks out, except calling the tax cut “much-needed” which is of course his assessment, but one that will not be disputed here.

Speaking of federal taxes, another reason Vermonters ought to temper their displeasure about them is that they got back more than they pay out to the feds.

According to the latest tabulation by the Tax Foundation, Vermont’s individuals, businesses, and governments get $1.08 for every dollar Vermonters pay to the feds (that’s total federal taxes, not just the income tax).

That puts Vermont right about in the middle – 26^th – of the rankings, which, truth to tell, might not mean much. The states that get back the most – Alabama led, getting back $2.03 for every dollar – tend to be the poorest, while those at the bottom – New Jersey got back only 61 cents – are generally the wealthiest.

Actually, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

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Some years ago there was a U.S. Senator named William Scott, a Virginia Republican. In 1974 New Times magazine published an article noting that Scott had been named “the dumbest Congressman” by an organization affiliated with Ralph Nader.

Since New Times had little clout in Washington and less in Virginia, Scott’s best option was obviously to ignore the designation. He did not. Instead, he called a press conference to deny the description, thereby confirming it.

An incident brought to mind recently when the Rutland Herald ran an editorial titled “Prism of Paranoia” arguing that Republicans were motivated largely by “festering anger.”

Like all editorials, this one was rebuttable. Alas, in his letter rebutting it, Steve Larrabee, the Chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, displayed no small amount of…well, anger.

The assertion that “all we have to offer is anger is false and misleading,” not to mention “reprehensible and unjustifiable,” Larrabee wrote, adding, “I can only conclude that this is intentionally so.”

Larrabee’s letter did not rise (or perhaps sink) to what we might call Scottian levels. He did provide some factual evidence to support his argument that the GOP has more to offer than anger.

But here’s some free advice to political operatives responding to condemnation: when criticized for being angry, respond with wry amusement, biting sarcasm, sardonic satire or the like. Not with anger. He may not be a model Republicans want to follow, but Robert Kennedy’s advice remains sound: “Don’t get mad. Get even.”

*                                                      *                                           *                                               *                                             *

And finally (and again, for what it’s worth) from Vermontbiz.com , the online version of Vermont Business Magazine, comes word that the folks at U-Haul International found that many more people are moving into Vermont than out of it.

In fact,  said U-Haul President of Phoenix Operations John “J.T.” Taylor, “for states with 5,000 – 20,000 families moving, Vermont had the highest (in-over-out) percentage, with a growth rate of 16.67 percent in 2009, moving Maine to second place after two years of ranking first”

Obviously, the U-Haul folks count only those who move in and out with U-Haul vehicles, and the statement read more like an advertisement than a data-based research report.

Still, for what it’s worth…

Too bad. Almost all the poll results are interesting, and at least one of them might have  immediate consequences.

Not, though, the one about the governor’s race, with which Channel 3, foolishly, led its poll coverage on its six-o-clock news last Wednesday

Foolish not because there was anything wrong with the report, done by the always-capable Kristin Carlson, but because when it comes to the governor’s race, the poll had…well, not quite nothing to say, but not much.

Certainly not much about who is likely to win the election, the subject of the report. In fact, the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the results is that neither Republican Lt. Gov. Brain Dubie or whichever Democrat wins the right to run against him is in the lead.

Neither is any one of the five Democrats over the other four, though one of them may be a bit behind the other four, a tentative conclusion considering that pollsters did not ask respondents about their preferences in the primary.

So the gubernatorial results require some intricate (meaning debatable) interpretation. Not so the results Channel 3 revealed the next day about what the state’s voters think about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. They want it gone.

Not tomorrow. But just about half of the 400 respondents do not want to allow the plant to keep running beyond the expiration of its original license in  2012.

The important figure here, though, is not the 49 percent that answered “no,” to the question, “Do you think Vermont Yankee should get another 20 year extension to operate in Vermont?” The important figure is that only 27 percent answered the question with a “yes.” The other 24 percent? They said they were “not sure.”

Politically speaking, though, the result is not 49-27-24. Politically speaking, the result is 76-24.

That’s because the State Senate is scheduled to vote on Yankee relicensing Wednesday, and it’s reasonable to assume that the senators took a look at the poll to see what might be the political consequences of their votes.

No, the News Guy is not so cynical as to suppose that Vermont lawmakers cast their votes according to nothing but the public’s whim. Still, at some point in their decision-making cogitation, lawmakers are bound to wonder, for instance, what the political price might be for voting against Yankee’s re-licensing.

Now they know: Little or nothing. Because most of the pro-Vermont Yankee responders were Republicans, 57 percent of whom said they favored relicensing. Presumably those Republicans vote for Republicans, anyway. So the 68 percent of all lawmakers (and 75 percent of senators) who are not Republicans don’t worry about them anyway.

The bottom line: whatever the merits of the case, voting against Vermont Yankee is the politically safer option.

That’s because, politically speaking, the “not sure” answerers can be lumped in with the “no” answerers, leaving only the 27 percent who answered “yes” for “no”-voting senators to worry about.

Now to the somewhat more complicated interpretation of the poll’s findings on the election.

On its face, the poll was good news for Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the only Democrat who finished ahead of Dubie. But it was barely ahead — 43 percent to 41 percent – which really means the two are tied. With only 400 respondents, the margin of error is plus or minus four points.

And remember, that’s not plus or minus the two-point spread between Markowitz and Dubie. It’s plus or minus each candidate’s support. Markowitz could “really” (meaning if all voters were polled) be ahead by 48-36, or behind 38-44, and the poll still wouldn’t be wrong.

The same holds for Dubie margin over Sen. Doug Racine who gets 38 percent to Dubie’s 43 percent, a five-point lead for Dubie, but still within the margin of error.

The other Democrats are farther behind. Against former state Senator Matt Dunne, Dubie leads 44-36. He leads Senate President Peter Shumlin 45 to 35, and Senator Susan Bartlett 48-30.

All of which means that…..(Tah Dah!)…more Vermonters have the foggiest notion of who Deb Markowitz and Doug Racine are than are familiar with the other three, Only 24 percent of the respondents had “no opinion” favorable or not, of the long-time Secretary of State. Thirty-two percent had no opinion about Racine,  a former lieutenant governor who has run for governor in the past, while the “no opinion” response for Dunne and Shumlin was in the mid-40s and for Bartlett a whopping 63 percent.

Some political observers were surprised that so few voters seemed familiar with Shumlin, who is, after all, the Senate leader. Some political observers keep forgetting that while they and their friends and colleagues follow the doings of the State Legislature, they are in a small minority, in Vermont and elsewhere.

It’s early. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will, by that very accomplishment, become far better known, and therefore probably competitive with Dubie.

Unless, of course, they start sniping at one another. Voters, especially middle-of-the-road swing voters, don’t like intra-party bickering, and the danger to the Democrats is that they will squabble like alley cats, leaving the winner scratched and scarred.

Perhaps aware of this danger, the Democrats have been polite toward one another until…well, perhaps until last night, when Bartlett released a statement opposing the scheduled Senate vote on Wednesday.

The timing, she said, is “more political theater than making good public policy,” a not too subtle swipe at Shumlin, who scheduled the vote.

A bit of a gamble on Bartlett’s part. She might win by calling attention to herself, which, as the least known contender, she has to do. She might lose by seeming to agree with Gov. Jim Douglas, an association not likely to please Democratic primary voters. To be sure, she only agrees with Douglas on the timing; Bartlett is as opposed to re-licensing Vermont Yankee as Shumlin. Still, it’s a gamble.

And we probably won’t know how well it worked until July. That’s when Research 2000, the respected outfit which did the survey, will poll Vermonters again. This time, company president Del Ali said, the sample would be 600 voters, with an “over-sample” of 400 Democrats.

When those results come in, we might have some idea of who is really ahead. Right now we know only that Vermont Yankee is not.

More exceptional statistics for Vermont, though not the kind one wants.

As you may have heard, fewer people are buying and reading newspapers all over America. As you may not have heard, the fewerness in Vermont exceeds the national average, which was about 10.8 percent in the third quarter.

A few Vermont papers did better. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (that’s the outfit that does the counting) circulation was down “only” six percent at the Bennington Banner. But daily circulation at the Brattleboro Reformer, and the Barre/Montpelier Times-Argus dropped by more than ten percent, and on weekdays, the Rutland Herald circulation was down 12.5 percent.

Sunday circulation at the T-A and the Herald, both owned by the same company, was down somewhat less. Still, nothing went up.

But then, nothing went down like the state’s biggest paper. Weekday circulation at the Burlington Free Press dropped a whopping 14 percent, to 33,489 copies. At the Freep, too, the Sunday decline was somewhat smaller, down “only 9.7 percent, to 42,180.

Let us be charitable. These results do not prove that the newspapers are not doing their job. To begin with, many readers now choose to get their news on the Internet, but they do it on the newspaper web site. So in theory, the Freep and the other papers could be reaching as many readers, but on pixel instead of newsprint.

But that’s true all around the country. Vermont circulation was still down by more than the national average. (Though some papers did worse; circulation at the New York Post, a journal some of us would pay a daily fee not to read, has plunged almost 30 percent in the last 30 months).

Then, too, circulation went down partly because the price went up, to a dollar for the Rutland and Montpelier papers, to 75 cents in Burlington. Basic economics: the higher the price, the lower the demand.

Especially if, as the price goes up, the quality goes down, a description which, alas, fits.

Meaning there is opportunity to get that circulation back up again, and toward that end, the News Guy herewith offers a daring suggestion to Vermont’s general circulation newspapers. Considering the tenor of the times, this suggestion might seem bizarre, beyond the comprehension of today’s editors.

But with that warning…here goes!

You might try to…uhhh…well, let’s just come out with it—COVER THE NEWS.

Which was decidedly not done last Saturday when four of the five Democratic candidates for governor (and an articulate representative of the fifth) spoke to a bunch of environmentalists in Randolph.

In other words, they held a major political event, and nobody showed up.

Well, among daily newspapers, nobody but (assuming the News Guy’s Internet search was adequate) the Valley News, published in Lebanon, N.H., but covering Vermont that day better than any paper published in Vermont.

Shay Totten was there for Seven Days and so was Anne Galloway for her new vtdigger web site (and thanks to the folks at Green Mountain Daily for alerting the News Guy to her contribution). Want to know what the candidates said? Vtdigger has some YouTube from the event.

No, the News Guy was not there, partly because he assumed the event would be widely covered, and one purpose of this site is to cover what others do not. Who woulda thunk this event would fall into that category?

Continuing to be charitable, an editor might have thought: It’s Saturday. My good reporters don’t want to spend part of the weekend working. If I send one I have to give him/her a compensatory day off when I might need him/her more. Beside, we all know what Democrats are going to say to enviros; they’re gonna pander to them.

As they seem to have done. Still, no excuse. Four candidates for governor in one room on one day with a bunch of activists is news, dammit. Cover it.

You never know: folks might decide to start buying your paper again, over-priced though it may be.

By John W. Mashek

WASHINGTON–Not even six months into the Obama administration and Republican  wannabes are already lining up to run against the president in 2112. If the economy does not improve by next year, Obama will be in trouble although the GOP”s potential field is hardly a potent one for now.

The lineup so far is: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour  and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. There must be something in the water in Hoosierland. (My apologies to anyone I’ve missed.) Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada were two other potential candidates but they had other things on their mind. Doubt we will see them in Iowa or New Hampshire any time soon as they reportedly try to repair their marriages. Their reputations are already ruined as holier than thou lawmakers.

Romney rates as the current favorite. He was the last man standing against John McCain in 2008 and Republicans admire those challengers who have been through the fire before. Those names include Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and McCain. Romney has the money, the organization and the burning ambition to earn the favorite’s spot. After all he won election  as governor In Massachusetts a shining blue state. (Perhaps some Republicans would like to see one strand of Romney’s hair out of place in public but that is Mitt’s persona).

Huckabee ran in 2008 and got a bunch Southern votes. But the former governor of Arkansas goes overboard with his corn pone appeal and Republicans are already a regional party so why look to Dixie?

Palin’s surprise resignation as governor of Alaska only reinforced her strange brand of politics. While she has a host of right wing believers, Democrats must be praying that the GOP will nominate her. They would only have to weigh the votes, not count them. Gingrich, the former House speaker, has several strikes against him including unethical behavior while in office and cheating on two wives. Family values seem to escape the fellow from Georgia.

Barbour is a nice guy, but the Mississippi governor  is a former big time lobbyist in Washington and the state’s racist history isn’t helpful.  Fair or not, Barbour would have to deal from  the home state of Theodore Bilbo, Ross Barnett, Jim Eastland and other racists.

Further, the party’s leadership in Congress is charismatically challenged. Even Republicans in Congress are disappointed with them. In a National Journal magazine survey of GOP insiders, unnamed fellow party members were critical of the performances of Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, House minority leader and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader.

Perhaps the name of Obama’s ultimate challenger is still a relative unknown. In the other party, Sen. Barak Obama of Illinois was a rookie senator when he announced his bid on a freezing winter day in Springfield. Journalists questioned his wisdom against a field of veterans, including then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is now enjoying the view of the Rose Garden from the Oval Office.

(Mashek covered politics in Washington for four decades and is a long time friend of the vermontnewsguy.)

He will return Monday, June 22.

President Reagan

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get me re-write. This is real man-bites-dog stuff.

Douglas calls for tax hikes?  Rush Limbaugh praises Obama? Boston fans root for the Yankees?

Maybe more amazing than that. And it all happened right here in little old Vermont, in the State Capitol.

On Wednesday afternoon, in a small room on the second floor of the Statehouse, Ernie Shand, who is a Democratic House member from Windsor, but who at the moment was speaking simply as a veteran volunteer firefighter and one-time deputy fire chief, sat in front the House Judiciary committee and told its members that….(Everybody sitting down? Or at least holding on to a fixed object? What follows can be shocking)…he and people like him did not need any special privileges.

He said the provision in a bill that exempts people like him from the law was not needed. He said that if the law let him and other firemen off the hook, they would be more likely to make a mistake, and to get away with it.

“Somebody else is going to pay for my mistake,” he said.

What is this guy? Un-American? In this country, you take whatever anyone will give you and yours. If his philosophy spreads, the livelihoods of several thousand lobbyists could be endangered, perhaps sinking the entire economic/political/social structure.

Maybe we don’t need to stop the presses. Maybe we need to call the authorities. Is there some successor to the House Un-American Activities Committee? Shand’s attitude is downright subversive.

Specifically, what Shand objected to was a provision in H.147 (discussed here on April 14 in the post entitled Doing What We Wanta) that would ban use of hand-held cell phones or two-way radio microphones by drivers. The bill exempts police officers and firefighters.

Shand, who said he has done his share of high-speed fire truck driving while clutching a two-way radio microphone in his hand (and occasionally dropping it), didn’t see why it should. Firefighters, he said in a short interview after his statement to the committee, “are required to obey all the laws of the state of Vermont,” and could obey this one. Hands-free equipment for fire truck communications system is available.

Forget for a moment who has the better of the argument. What’s important here is that somebody actually told a legislative committee not to treat his folks better than anyone else.

Granted, there’s no money involved here. It isn’t as though Shand were a hedge fund manager asking Congress to repeal a tax break specifically designed for his industry, testimony that would shake the very foundations of the Republic. But Shand did dissent from tribal loyalty. Firefighters act rather like a tribe, with an “ethnic” pride that includes confidence that a “real firefighter” can zoom down the road at 80-miles-per-hour and talk through a hand-held mike at the same time. Shand was saying, in effect, ‘maybe we need to follow the same rules everybody else follows.’

In modern America, this is simply not done.

Relax, everybody. The system is safe. The Committee kept the exemption in the bill, though it did add a provision directing the  Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the Firefighters Association, and the Department of Public
Safety to report by July 1. 2011, on “progress toward utilization of hands-free communications technology.”

With that amendment, the bill passed by a vote of 104-40. It now goes to the Senate, where its prospects seem uncertain if not dim.

Both in comments below that all can read and in private communications to your humble agent, some readers objected to the assertion in Wednesday’s post (Protest Left and Right)that conservatives were once “tolerably good at governing.” Some critics demanded examples.

Fair enough. Exhibit A:  Ronald Reagan.

The year Reagan was elected, 1980, it was hard to get through more than a few weeks without reading a newspaper column or magazine article wondering whether the country has become “ungovernable.” Along came Reagan and governed it. He got his proposals through Congress. He worked out agreements with major allies (and, later, with the Soviet Union).

A lot of people didn’t think those proposals were productive or enlightened. Maybe they were right. But whether or not his policies were wise, he was at least tolerably (and probably better than that) “good at governing.”

So, come to think of it, was George H.W. Bush. He was a bit clumsy on domestic policy. But after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bush acted ably. With the help of two very capable appointees, Secretary of State Jim Baker and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, Bush put together an extraordinary international coalition to fight the Gulf War.

On the national level, conservative governing skills in more recent years have been…well, let’s say hard to find. Some liberals are certain they know why: George W. Bush is a dope.

No, he isn’t. So the decline in the quality of conservative governing requires a more complex analysis.

Too complex for this exercise, but here’s a thought.  One difference between Reagan and his successors is that they take everything he said and they say literally. He didn’t. It isn’t that Reagan was insincere. But he had been an actor. He knew that some dialogue and some scenes were mostly used to move the plot along.  It was not necessary to parse the details of every line.

So while he sometimes spoke like an extremist, he rarely governed like one. He made deals, even with partisan and ideological foes such as Speaker Tip O’Neill. If he made a deal, he kept his part of the bargain. He forced through a big tax cut in 1981, but accepted a big tax increase a year later,” the largest peacetime tax increase in American history,” according to conservative economist Bruce Fein. Reagan wasn’t happy about accepting it; or at least he claimed not to be happy about accepting it. But accept it he did.

To Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, young conservative Congressmen like Eric Cantor, and many conservative commentators, negotiating with liberals and making deals is downright immoral. Like real ideologues, they take everything they say quite literally. With that attitude, it’s hard to govern

Some conservatives have also been tolerably good governors of their states.  Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho (later Bush’s Interior Secretary) was widely praised in his state, as is John M. Huntsman of Utah today.

What about Jim Douglas? For most of his career, he’s been considered less conservative than all those Republicans mentioned above, more in the centrist Republican tradition of governors such as George Pataki of New York and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. He also has a reputation for competence. The state government has gotten its job done, kept its high credit rating, and avoided scandal.

But now we learn that, supposedly to save money, the Douglas Administrations wants to cut jobs that don’t cost the state money because they’re paid for by the federal government, or, as reported Thursday by Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau , by a fund established by the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

And Shay Totten of Seven Days revealed that the Education Department had to forego $450,000 in federal school nutrition money because the state’s Child and Adult Care Food Program was understaffed.

These could be signs of governmental incompetence. On the other hand, they could be deliberate decisions based on ideology. In that case, Douglas might be more conservative than most Vermonters have thought.

And finally, apologies to Fox News Channel for calling it Fox News Network. And thanks for Fox anchor Megyn Kelly for proving the assertion in yesterday’s post that the channel had dropped any pretense that it was engaged in straight news coverage. Speaking of the conservative “tea party” demonstrations of April 15, Kelly said Fox was the only news outlet that “gave it any publicity or P.R.”

News coverage is not P.R.