Because it isn’t really guilt, just responsibility.

In the criminal court system, prosecutors do not (or at least should not) win convictions because the defendant’s father, girlfriend, uncle, business partner, or fellow-member of the Lions Club had done something wrong.

But candidates may fairly be judged by their associates, those who give them money and those to whom they give money for services rendered. Voters should know who are the guys their candidates are hanging around with (using, here, the everyday, rather than strictly grammatical, construction), and also who the guys they’re hanging around with are hanging around with.

The Amateur?

Usually there’s nothing improper, much less scandalous, in these relationships. As will be seen below, the Democratic candidates for governor have hired political consultants who work for Democrats, while Republican Brian Dubie is using a firm whose clients are Republicans.

Voters also ought to know who contributes to candidates– not just individual names and addresses, but the specific interests of those individuals, especially the companies for which they work.

Many and varied are the motives of political contributors. Some are simply public spirited and convinced that the candidate to whom they contribute would do the best job. But for others – especially those who work in areas that depend on government spending or are subject to government regulations (most companies) — a campaign donation is also something of an investment.

At the very least, the donor is buying  access. Rare is the governor or legislator who is not more likely to return the call of someone who has given the campaign $1,000, assuming that someone on the elected official’s staff passes along information about the donation with the telephone message.

Someone does.

Alas, Vermont law does not require campaign contributors to disclose their occupations or employers. Perhaps one of the next questions put to all candidates is whether they will urge changing that law so that voters can know which interests are financing their office-holders.

Still, from the campaign finance statements filed by the candidates for governor of Vermont July 15, a few conclusions are possible.

Start with the fact that it is no longer possible to deny that the professionalization of politics has come to Vermont.

Actually, it’s been foolish to deny it for several years, as candidates increasingly raise big bucks, hire expensive consultants, rely on television commercials. But some hope lingered that Vermont could be an exception. Stop hoping. These candidates have hired the top-of-the-line political consulting firms, employees of which are no doubt enriching Burlington and Montpelier hotels and restaurants even as we speak.

With the partial exception of Doug Racine. The Democratic state senator has retained one-time enfant terrible (of Howard Dean’s ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign) Joe Trippi to “do the media,” in the words of campaign manager Amy Schollenberger. But as of July 15, the campaign had paid Trippi’s firm only $5,000. Contrast that to the $10,000 Matt Dunne paid Peter Hart Research Associates or the $18,352 Deb Markowitz has spent for polling by Lake Research Partners.

That’s because, Schollenberger said, Racine is running an “absolutely grass-roots campaign.” This could be an attempt to disguise a disadvantage by calling it an advantage – Racine has had trouble raising money – but he does have more organized grass-roots support than his opponents, having won the endorsement of the teachers union and the state’s largest environmental organization.

(For a brief accounting of which candidate has hired which firm, with some of the firms other clients, scroll down to the end of this post.).

Not that they don’t have grass roots support, too, but the campaigns of Markowitz, who has more money than the other Democrats, and Dubie, who has more money than anybody, are on the other end of the professionalization spectrum.

In addition to her polling firm, Markowitz has spent more than $10,000 with Kennedy Communications, Inc., and her campaign staff, judging from her reported payroll expenses, are larger than those of her Democratic opponents.

But not as large as Dubie’s. In addition to spending $29,150 with Harris Media, the Dubie campaign reported spending $27,905 on polling, $36,322 with OnMessage, Inc. of Crofton, Maryland, for “branding”  and $3,050 with Stormo & Associates of Caledonia, Michigan for “opposition research.”

That’s unusual at this stage of a campaign. Usually, “oppo” research is directed against an identified opponent. But of course Dubie does not yet know who his opponent will be. The firm could be preparing attacks on any of the Democrats, on whoever Dubie assumes the likely winner will be, or on the Vermont Democratic Party in general.

Perhaps simply because he has raised more than anyone else, Dubie’s filing also provides more information indicating the interests that support him. As mentioned in a previous post, Dubie seems to be the favorite of the agribusiness giants of the dairy world. On the same day, February 19, giant dairy producer DFA of Kansas City and Dairylea Cooperative of Syracuse each donated $1,000.

Dubie got $5,000 from the General Electric Corp.’s political action committee, and a $2,000 contribution (actually $7,000 but followed by a $5,000 refund) from Michel Guite, the owner of the Vermont Telephone Company of Springfield.

Dubie also seems to be the preferred candidate of Vermont’s building contractors. Counting only contributions of $1,000 or more, and only from firms or individuals known to be involved in the construction business, Dubie  received at least $20,450 from the industry.

Here is a brief rundown of the major consultants used by the candidates and the other clients those consulting firms have served.

Senator Peter Shumlin: The Feldman Group, based in Washington and headed by Diane Feldman, who once worked with well-known Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. The firm is no stranger to Vermont politics, having been the consultant for Rep. Peter Welch. Among its other recent clients have been Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Al Franken of Minnesota.

(For all the candidates, this post will list only the firm’s recent successful clients; believe it or not, the losers are not mentioned on the firms web sites).

Susan Bartlett: Main Street Communications of Washington. It bills itself as the “political media firm with the best record in the Democratic Party,” but boasts only a few Congressional winners, including Maine’s Democratic House members, John Baldacci and John Olver. Bartlett has also used the Washington polling firm Cooper & Seacrest.

Matt Dunne: Peter D. Hart Research Associates, perhaps the most prestigious of all Democratic polling and political consulting firms. Both of Vermont’s senators, Democrat Patrick Leahy and independent Bernie Sanders, are on the Hart firm’s client list, as are Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Dianne Feinstein of California and Chuck Schumer of New York.

Deb Markowitz: Kennedy Communications, Inc. of Washington, apparently a rather new company. It has been active in state legislative races around the country. Its most high-profile client this year is Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, who defeated Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in the primary earlier this year.

For polling, Markowitz uses Lake Research Partners, which has polled for Senators Mark Begich of Alaska, Ton Tester of Montana, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

Brian Dubie: Harris Media of Austin, Texas, the conservative Republican firm that worked on Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign and helped elect Bob McDonnell as governor of Virginia. Dubie also uses the apparently non-political OnMessage “branding” firm, the Public Opinion Strategies polling firm, perhaps the top-rated Republican pollster, who also did the polling for Gov. Jim Douglas, as well as 15 incumbent Republican senators and independent Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Dubie’s “opposition research” firm,  Stormo & Associates, appears to maintain a low profile, or at least has a hard-to-find web site, so information about its other clients could not be obtained. Yet.

No big deal. Happens to everybody from time to time.

He will return Wednesday with renewed vigor.

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.

A writer of clear prose (not running for governor of Vermont)

The News Guy has been summoned away (though not physically) on other business matters.

(No, they’re not very profitable, either, but can not be ignored).

He will return Friday with substantive (meaning, not just political) information.

But there is just enough time and energy left for one apology and one observation.

The apology goes to Julie Waters, who was called Julie Walters in a recent post. Ms. Waters, in her amusing corrective comment, suggested the News Guy might have gotten her confused with an actual Julie Walters, an actress.

Nope, this was strictly an eyesight malfunction, the existence of actress Julie Walters having been previously unknown in this precinct.

The observation comes after perusing Tuesday’s Burlington Free Press “Comment and Debate” page in which all six candidates for governor answered the question, “What changes, if any, would you make to how we pay for public education, how much we pay and how the public school system is structured?”

Actually, this is one observation in five parts:

–Part One: Is the Free Press aware that no more than 14 people could possible be reading these answers?

–Part Two: As has been mentioned here before, the writing of these answers, simply as writing, is execrable. Any candidate writing these answers him/her self should cease, desist, and hire a professional writer. Any candidate whose answers are already being written by a professional writer should  fire said writer and hire another.

(And Susan Bartlett, or perhaps the Free Press, should hire a proofreader. She said  school costs were rising because of “personal.” Surely she meant “personnel.”)

–Part Three: But to those of the 14 (perhaps eight) who can wade through the stilted prose, all six candidates have some sensible ideas, having to do with consolidation, distance learning technology, bulk purchasing, and other possible efficiencies.

–Part Four: Sen. Peter Shumlin, in his answer as well as on his television advertisements, calls for universal pre-kindergarten education. That can be expensive. Have his four Democratic opponents challenged him as to how he plans to pay for this? If not, why not?

–Part Five: Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie said that “our problem is simple: we spend more than we have.”

No, we do not. The schools are financed from the General and Education Funds, neither of which is in arrears. Obviously, Vermont spends less on schools than it has. Otherwise, it would have nothing to spend on anything else.

Sounds as though Dubie was using evocative language to suggest that the state spends more than it should, more than its taxpayers want to spend, perhaps even more than it can afford to spend on schools. These are all plausible, if debatable, assertions.

But politics ain’t poetry. Its language should be literally accurate, not an experiment in hyperbole.

But give Dubie some credit. That was one of the few simple, declarative English sentences by any of the six.

The top money man

More politics below, but first an update on a post of three months ago (Non-Union Blues, April 28) about the Douglas Administration’s refusal to accept a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for construction of the new Lake Champlain bridge.

Under a PLA, construction unions agree not to strike and to accept cost saving concessions such as surrendering premium pay for late shift work. In return, the contractor agrees to accept workers chosen at union hiring halls in the region, guaranteeing local residents some of the good-paying jobs on the project.

Last spring, New York State and the Federal Government agreed to a PLA for the bridge. Under pressure from the state branch of the Associated General Contractors, Vermont did not, so there was no public PLA.

The top money Dem

But according to a news release sent out Friday by the Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council, Vermont and New York unions have reached agreement on a private PLA with the prime contractor, Flatiron Construction of Colorado.

“The PLA will accomplish what Gov. Douglas was sadly unwilling to do – guarantee local residents an opportunity to land a job on this $70 million project,” Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council President Jeff Potvin said in the press release.

It isn’t clear how many workers from the area will get jobs on the bridge project. Potvin acknowledged that Flatiron will “self-perform a large portion of the project,” meaning it will bring its own workers from elsewhere. But it does seem that the more Vermont workers will get bridge jobs with the PLA than would have without it, and that the cost savings will go to Flatiron, not Vermont’s taxpayers.

It will be interesting to see if whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination for governor tries to use this issue in the general election campaign against Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.

Oh, yes: the governor’s race. Wherein we segue to the significance of the campaign finance reports submitted by the candidates last week.

This significance should not be overstated. The typical voter does not pay attention to which candidate raises more money, being far more interested in which candidate he or she finds appealing.

But neither should the significance be pooh-poohed. First of all, the money itself is important; more is better than less. Second, the reports themselves send signals, however short-lived, that can speed or slow a candidate’s progress. The more money a candidate has, the more seriously he or she is taken by what the eminent journalist Jack Germond called “the political community”—reporters, TV commentators, and, not least, potential contributors, who prefer to bestow their largesse on likely winners.

There is little doubt, then, that last Friday’s headlines provided a boost to Dubie ($943,000 raised, $475,623 cash on hand) and Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the top collector among Democrats ($523,946 raised, $186,756 on hand).

Also coming out ahead in the perception game were Democrats Matt Dunne ($267,861 and $132,959) and Sen. Peter Shumlin ($418,490 and $207,134.).

The news was not as good for Sen, Doug Racine ($210,158 and $63,097) and it was downright awful for Sen. Susan Bartlett, who reported raising only $70,920 from just 232 contributors, leaving her with only $11,146 in the bank.

As last Wednesday’s post noted, a candidate need not have the most money. She does have to have enough money.

Eleven grand is not enough money.

Bartlett insisted she would not drop out, and there’s no reason why she should. She has nowhere else to go for the next month, and there’s always the possibility of a “miracle,” which in this case would require no supernatural intervention, just a fairly even five-way split in which nobody gets much more than 20 percent of the primary vote on August 24 and anyone could win a squeaker.

But it would take something close to supernatural intervention. That isn’t the way multi-candidate primaries usually shake out.

The situation must be frustrating for Bartlett, who is highly regarded in Montpelier. Even as they pronounce her candidacy hopeless, politicians and legislative onlookers keep noting  that she might be a strong candidate in the general election, and a good governor if elected.

But nobody every claimed that politics was fair, or even rational.

A look behind the raw numbers indicates even better news for Dunne, and perhaps even worse news for Racine, who has only raised $107,742 from 491 contributors in the last year. His total includes the amount he raised before last July’s reporting deadlines. Dunne, who did not announce his candidacy until late last year, raised all his money in the last twelve months from 722 contributors.

That’s not as many as Dubie (an impressive 2,724 contributors in the last 12 months), or  Markowitz (1,070), but substantially better than Shumlin (390) who only kept pace with Dunne by lending his own campaign $150,000.  At the very least, Dunne seems to know how to raise money.

As, obviously, do Dubie and Markowitz. They have also spent the most money. Shumlin actually has a bit more cash on hand now than Markowitz, even after paying for the campaign’s first round of television ads. And while Dubie has far more money in the bank than anyone else, he is also spending it faster than anyone else, much of it on professional fund-raising and other political consulting firms.

All the candidates raised most of their money from, and spent most of it in, Vermont. That may not last. It is not unreasonable to suspect that the big out-of-state fundraising starts now, not reportable until after the election. Some voters, it seems think there is something wrong with raising money beyond Vermont’s borders.

But candidates need money, and have to raise it where they can find it. Asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously said, “that’s where the money is.” Campaign money is in Boston, New York, Washington, California, and Texas. Dubie has already raised thousands from Texas, and spent thousands there, on Harris Media an Austin political consulting firm serving conservative Republican candidates.

No doubt researchers from all six campaigns are poring over the filings of the other five, hoping to find either a contribution or an expenditure that could prove politically awkward. Two potential entries: Dubie got a $2,000 contribution from the Ely Lilly Co., the Indianapolis pharmaceutical giant. Drug companies are not universally admired these days.

The lieutenant governor also received $1,000 from Dairy Farmers of America of Kansas City, MO, and another $1,000 from its affiliate, Syracuse-based Dairylea Cooperative, Inc. DFA is the milk marketing cooperative that has been the target of several anti-trust allegations, (and at least one continuing investigation) and some Vermont dairy farmers blame it for keeping their prices low.

Has everybody been keeping up with the campaign websites?

You don’t know what you’re missing.

First, of all, printed out, they are perfect cures for insomnia. Just try to stay awake reading prose such as “Supporting and sustaining Vermont’s businesses will be the first step in an eonomic development strategy” (Deb Markowitz, and, yes, that’s cut and pasted; her web site really says ‘eonmic’) or “I devoted my time to bringing entrepreneurs and business leaders together to develop economic development legislation that would create jobs” (Matt Dunne).

What is remarkable about the candidate web sites is not that they are filled by writing that recalls the late novelist Nelson Algren’s term “dead stick prose,” but that most of them read as though they were written by the very same practitioner of dead stick prose. It seems highly unlikely that there could be four writers who are quite that bad in exactly the same way.

(Four, not six, because the sort-of exceptions here are Sen. Susan Bartlett’s and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s web sites. When Dubie “speaks” in the first person on his site, he does so in plain if uninspired English. On her site, Bartlett is both breezy and specific).

But today’s post is not primarily a literary critique. It is a plea to Vermont’s voters – and especially to its journalists – to read some of these web sites carefully, to note the (often concealed) specifics in the public policy positions, and to insist that all the candidates flesh out their relatively indistinct proposals with real detail.

Specifically, with dollars and cents detail.

The first job of any governor of any state is to be a prudent steward of that state’s fisc, as the public treasury used to be called. So when a candidate pledges, for instance, to take steps to improve the state’s economy, somebody ought to ask that candidate just how much those steps will cost, and just how the candidate intends to pay that cost.

And any candidate who responds, “by making government more efficient,” or words to that effect, is not qualified to be governor.

For instance, most of the Democrats say they will “expand broadband to every last mile by 2012” (Sen. Peter Shumlin on his web site; in his television commercial he says 2013) or “(b)ring the economic development potential of high-speed internet and cell service to all of Vermont’s businesses and to the last mile of every town in Vermont,” (Dunne).

That has to cost money. As Sen. Doug Racine had the gumption to acknowledge, “we cannot rely on the private sector to provide this service.”

Private Internet providers are not going to extend broadband down every little dirt road in every little hamlet unless the state helps pay for it, directly by appropriation or indirectly by giving the companies a tax break.

Either way, that means less money in the ol’ fisc.

(It should be noted here that by and large Racine is the most straightforward candidate when it comes to acknowledging fiscal realities. During the Legislative session, he even suggested a temporary tax increase).

The Democrats also like to talk about “investing.” “In our institutions of higher learning” (Dunne), in “energy efficiency” (Markowitz), in “smart grid and smart metering technology” (Racine), in health care (Racine and Shumlin).

Another word for “investing” is “spending.” It isn’t that the Democrats are being disingenuous here. Those spending proposals are real investments, which may pay benefits in the future. First, though, they cost money.

Even Republican Dubie, who wants to cut taxes and spending, calls for a “strong push to help Vermont students lead the nation in science, math, engineering and technology,” which sounds very much like an investment, or cost as it is sometimes known.

But isn’t it unreasonable to ask these candidates to tell Vermonters just – or at least roughly – what all these proposals will cost and how they will pay for them?

No. Au contraire, as they say just north of here, it’s irresponsible not to ask them. Certainly after August 24 when the Democratic nominee is known, it would be irresponsible not to insist on specifics from that nominee and from Dubie.

In fact — and this is specifically for the political journalists, including this one – it is irresponsible not to ask them for their paperwork. Let’s not take their word for it. When Candidate A says his/her broadband or higher education plan will cost X million bucks, let’s ask how they know. Who’s the high tech or higher ed economist who ran their numbers? Let’s see those numbers (this is especially for news organizations with lots of resources; are you listening Channel 3? The Free Press?) so we can run them past our own experts.

There is here a difference between Dubie and the Dems. Though the Republican, should he win, will propose spending money – every governor does –his campaign centers on his pledge to cut both spending and taxes.

OK, Mr. Lieutenant Governor: Just which programs would you cut or eliminate? Which taxes will you reduce? How much would that cost the state treasury? And precisely how would you offset the revenue loss?

And don’t say, “by reducing waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to note, there is no line item in any government agency budget reading, “waste, fraud and inefficiency.”

Then let’s hope Dubie does not succumb to that national Republican deception of claiming that taxes can be cut without loss to the treasury, that lower taxes will so spur the economy that tax revenue will stay level, maybe even go up.

This is unadulterated garbage, and should be described as such. Lower taxes did not lead to higher revenue under George W. Bush, under Ronald Reagan, or under John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.

Yes, in raw terms, revenues did rise after those presidents cut taxes. But only because the economy grew. Yes, it grew somewhat faster because taxes were cut. But in all those cases, the government would have ended up with more money in the till under the older, higher, rates. The authority here ought to be Gregory Mankiw, the highly regarded economically conservative economist and loyal Republican who was the head of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors: “Lower tax rates might encourage people to work harder and this extra effort would offset the direct effects of lower tax rates to some extent, but there was no credible evidence that work effort would rise by enough to cause tax revenues to rise in the face of lower tax rates.”

The Reagan tax cuts, Mankiw wrote, “did not cause tax revenues to rise,” and he called those who predicted that they would “charlatans and cranks.”

Or, in this context, unqualified to be governor.

Though money and politics is the subject of the bulk of today’s post, those filings will not be discussed here Friday. As regular readers know, the intent of this web site is to cover the stories nobody else is covering, and almost every major news organization will send a reporter to the Secretary of State’s office Thursday afternoon to get the info.

All those reporters can read and do arithmetic at least as fast and as accurately as this one, who is happy to defer to them.

Sen. Bartlett: Enough money?

This one will, however, get copies of the filings, look them over, and discuss them Monday if there is anything worth discussing that the other folks have not already covered.

Speaking of politics and money, a housekeeping note and an appeal. The News Guy, who has a life outside these postings, is going to take some time off in August (exact dates to be determined). Aside from the time off, many of the 39 days and (roughly) ten posts between now and the August 24 primary will be devoted to covering that primary, primarily the contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

This means going to campaign events, which in turn means driving around the state, which in turn means buying gasoline and occasional lunches and possibly a motel room or two if an important event ends too late and too far away to drive home safely.

It means, in short, spending money, and despite those advertisements you see over on the right, the News Guy’s major source of revenue is reader donations. Readers who have not donated are urged to do so.

Just Look over on the right under “Pages,” where it says, “Donate. It’s easy.

Speaking of politics, money, and news coverage, kudos to the Burlington Free Press, which, first of all, did not run last week’s very bad Associated Press story about the race for Auditor as if there were two, not three, major candidates. Then on Monday, the Freep had a front page story centering on the other guy, Doug Hoffer, who is challenging State Sen. Ed Flanagan for the Democratic nomination. (The winner will take on Republican incumbent Tom Salmon).

One of the papers that did run the bad AP story, the Brattleboro Reformer, then used the AP’s corrective (but not correction; it didn’t acknowledge the earlier story) about the Democratic primary, and also had a staff-written story about Hoffer.

But the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus and the (jointly owned) Rutland Herald only appended a semi-correction to a letter to the editor, promising to do better in the future and saying “(T)he Associated Press was in error by not including Doug Hoffer in its article.”

Yeah, but you were in error, too, fellas. Editors ought to know who is running for major statewide office.

Okay, now to those campaign finance reports, even though we don’t yet know who raised how much.

Except that we sort of do.

One may take, as the saying goes, to the bank, that Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the only Republican seeking the governorship, will report having raised more than any of the five Democrats. A couple of weeks ago, one of Dubie’s senior campaign staffers mentioned the figure of $800,000. Sure, he could have been bragging. But that would have been foolish. The exact figure will be known to all the world Thursday evening. The smarter move would have been to low-ball the expectation. Dubie has probably raised more than 800 grand.

As to the Democrats, it’s all but certain that Secretary of State Deb Markowitz will report raising more money, and Sen. Susan Bartlett less, than their three competitors. Markowitz’s campaign aides have not thrown around a number, a la the Dubie camp. But they are obviously operating under the assumption that their candidate will lead the money parade as she did in the earlier filing last summer.

Bartlett effectively acknowledged she’d be last, issuing a statement Tuesday afternoon conceding that after the numbers are in the “conventional ‘wisdom’ will be that my candidacy is in last place.”

But Bartlett argued that “there have been many Vermont elections in which the highest spender hasn’t been successful, I’ve won some of those elections and plan to do it again in August.”

Leaving the three guys, Sens. Doug Racine and Peter Shumlin and former Sen. Matt Dunne, perhaps in that order.

Or perhaps not. Dunne will no doubt have the least of the three, but Shumlin has bought television advertising time while Racine has not, perhaps meaning that Shumlin has more money to spend.

Or just that Racine is biding his time and saving his money for later. Amy Shollenberger, his campaign manager, said the campaign was “working on  a paid media strategy for sure,” and exploring “different options.”

Which could mean that the campaign isn’t sure it will be able to afford much TV time.

“We’re running a really grass-roots campaign,” Shollenberger said.  “It’s different from some of the others. We relying on a lot of volunteer help.”

So say officials of all the Democratic campaigns except Markowitz’s.

“The ground game in this race is going to be very important,” said Shumlin Campaign Manager Alex MacLean. “It’s going to be mail, phone calls, and canvassing, because we’re targeting such a small number of people.”

Kevin  O’Holleran of the Dunne camp had a similar message, saying the candidate who “comes in with the most money and is able to buy a whole bunch of TV time isn’t going to be successful. We’re building up more of a grass roots campaign.”

All that could be the denial and/or desperation of losers.

Or, in this case, it might be true.

Because the turnout really is likely to be quite small. Political Scientist Eric Davis suggests no more than 60,000 voters in the Democratic Primary. And the estimates go down from there, down to as low as 30,000.

Just to put this into some context, in 2008, Democratic candidate Gaye Symington got 69,534 votes finishing third in the governor’s race after running one of the most bumbling campaigns ever. Not just ever in Vermont. Ever anywhere. Yes, that was a general election, Still, her total would have to be considered the rock-bottom Democratic vote, a rock-bottom not likely to be reached next month.

If these low estimates turn out to be accurate, reaching the “masses” (even just the Democratic-voting masses) may be less important than mobilizing committed supporters, appealing to two or three socio-political niches, and getting loyal voters to the polls.

It would be kind of like “the old days”(“old” meaning back about 1980) when primary campaigns worried less about TV ads than about “identifying your ones and twos” (committeds and likelies) and arranging for enough high-school seniors and bored housewives to drive them to the polls.

An old-fashioned election. How Vermontish. It’s the political equivalent of eating local food, fixing up vintage houses, wearing fleece vests to dress up. It might work, Susan Bartlett is right. More money does not necessarily lead to victory.

But not enough money necessarily leads to defeat. The Democrats may be about to find out how much is enough.

The weapon, according to his mother, Ge Wu, a professor in the University of Vermont’s Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Services, was left in the field for Aaron by another Essex High School teenager.

This other boy, Ge Wu said, was both a friend and a tormenter to her son. The other youth, she said, “frequently coerced Aaron, spread rumors about him, and threatened him.”

Essex police would not precisely confirm Ge Wu’s account of where Aaron got the gun, but did not dispute it, either. Captain Brad LaRose of the Essex Police Department said that because the investigation remains “open,” and concerns a juvenile, “the laws are very strict on releasing any information.”

But he did report that “the gun did not belong to (Aaron) or to his family.”

According to Ge Wu, the friend-tormenter actually left two guns, which had belonged to his late father, a State Police officer until his death some five years earlier. The boy also left ammunition for the weapons, she said.

In their grief, Ge Wu and her family did what parents who have lost children often do. They decided to memorialize their son by trying to prevent similar tragedies in the future. In their research, they discovered an ugly little fact about Vermont: its high teenage suicide rate.

As explained in Wednesday’s post (scroll down) Vermont has a relatively high suicide rate for people of all ages. But at least in comparison with most of its sister states in New England and neighboring New York, Vermont’s teen suicide rate is strikingly high.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1987 and 2006,  2.12 of every hundred-thousand Vermonters under the age of 19 shot themselves to death. Maine’s rate was almost as high, but in the other New England states and New York, the rate was substantially lower. New Hampshire’s was 1.71. The others were less than one per  hundred-thousand. The rate in Massachusetts was only 0.42.

Ge Wu thinks she knows why: guns. Not only are they plentiful and all but unregulated in Vermont, but Vermont and Maine are the only two states in New England without a Child Access Prevention (CAP) law, requiring firearm owners to lock their weapons away from children when they know minors might have access to them.

So she decided to try to get one passed. With the help of professionals dealing with youth suicide, she formed Citizens for Safer Vermont Children and drafted proposed legislation labeled “Aaron’s Law.” One of her legislators, Linda Waite-Simpson, a Democrat of Essex Junction, introduced a bill last February, H. 737

It promptly went nowhere.

Well, it went to the Judiciary Committee, from where it went nowhere, and the committee chairman, Democrat William Lippert of Hinesburg, understands why, and how difficult further progress is likely to be.

“It would take grass roots organizing,” he said. When she came before the committee, we heard very powerful and emotional testimony. But I said to her, if and when this is taken up, it’s not a slam dunk. It’s filled with controversy because it touches on the issue of firearms, even though it is not a gun control bill. Those are the political realities as I see them.”

Lippert is right to see powerful opposition to “Aaron’s Law” from the influential gun lobby. Ed Cutler of Westminster, the chief legislative director and past president of Gun Owners of Vermont, said his organization has “serious problems with that bill.”

First, he said, “the lack of suicide and violence in this state” made the legislation unnecessary.

Worse, he said, “even kids should be able to defend themselves,” and passage of a CAP law could prevent people from getting to their weapons if they were attacked in their homes.

The only example he gave was Kimberly Cates, the Milford, N.H. woman who was murdered in her bed last October. Her 11-year-old daughter was tormented and seriously injured. The family had guns, Cutler said, but the woman’s husband, who was away on business, “had (the weapons) locked up and nobody could get to them.”

If this is Cutler’s best argument, he doesn’t have much of a case. According to the story in the Manchester Union Leader, Kimberly Cates was slain in her bed at 4AM by intruders who snuck into the house. There’s little reason to think that had her husband been home he wouldn’t have been just as fast asleep at that hour. Only taking a loaded gun to bed would have saved them.

This doesn’t mean that the case for a CAP law is airtight. In New Hampshire, which has such a law, the teen suicide rate by firearms was slightly higher than in Pennsylvania, which does not.

Furthermore, a case can be made that CAP advocates are overstating the extent of the danger. Nationally, suicide rates declined among 10-to-24 year-old males from 15.43 suicides per 100,000 in 1991 to 11.39 suicides per 100,000 in 2006, according to the CDC.

And while Vermont’s teen suicide rates are high, the actual numbers are small. IN 2007, the last year for which final statistics are available, four young Vermonters committed suicide, at least two of them with firearms.

The question is whether any of them might not have killed themselves had they not been able to get their hands on a gun. The answer, not from gun control advocates but from data-driven scientists, seems to be yes.

Daniel Webster, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said an article that he and others published in the Journal of the American Medical Association “examined effects of CAP  (laws) on teen suicide, and found that they did indeed lower suicide risk for teens.”

It may be true that, as Cutler of the Gun Owners of Vermont said, “if (teens) really want to commit suicide, they’re going to find a way.” But studies show that most suicide attempters decide to kill themselves on impulse, an impulse that often fades before they complete the task. Most of those people don’t end up dying from suicide.

“Given these facts,” an article in New England Journal of  Medicine noted, “access to guns likely turns an impulse into a final decision.”

But those are only scientific facts. They may not prevail in the Vermont Legislature, where power – or perhaps, in this case, perceived power – often trumps mere data.

Note: There will be no post next Monday.

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.

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.