(Over the last week, Rep. Warren Kitzmiller of Montpelier has been a punching bag over at Vermont Tiger for daring to speak against the GOP mantra that Vermont is an abyssmal place to do business. I invited him to offer his response here. – promoted by odum)

A recent editorial about me in The St Albans Messenger said, “A Vermont legislator stood before a meeting of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce this week and told attendants that if profitability was their sole concern then, well, that was a pretty “myopic” view of life.”

That is not altogether true. I spoke quietly to a single reporter, unheard by any of the audience. I never spoke to the gathered crowd.

The quote, though, is close to accurate even if incomplete in its context. My actual words as quoted in the original article were, “If the only thing you’re looking at is profit . . . that’s a very myopic view of life.”

Based on that quote, The Messenger’s editorial continued to say, “we have legislators who do not understand the importance of profitability.” Where did that come from? Did any of my words imply that I do not “understand the importance of profitability”? I am amazed that so much can be read into a single phrase, and I’m saddened so many inaccurate assumptions were made from it without speaking to me.

That is not what I speaking about at all. I was speaking to the reporter of the many benefits of doing business in Vermont; the quality of life, the value of community, the strength of our schools, the recreational and cultural opportunities, etc. Then I said that if the only concern of any business was profit, that was a myopic view of life.

I stand by what I said.  

I have been a small businessman my entire life. I have struggled to meet payrolls, suffered through bad seasons . . been there, done that.  I served three different terms as President of the Vermont Retail Association. To imply that I do not know the value of profit is incredulous!

I believe if profit is the only concern of a business, that means the business does not value anything else, not the community in which they work, the schools their children attend or their customers. When business generally whines about the high tax burden, the burdensome regulatory environment, whatever, it concerns me by sending a signal that they care less than they should about being good corporate citizens.

I believe that the vast majority of Vermont businesses are not so myopic in their views, are happy to be here, want to be good members of our communities, and they enjoy the lifestyle that Vermont offers. Certainly, they want to earn a decent profit . . . but profit alone is not what motivates them. They are fully willing to bear the shared burden of life here in Vermont.

A couple of visionary folks with a good idea will find fertile ground here. Vermont understands small business . . we are small . . . and those folks will find it easier to begin a new business and succeed in Vermont than they will in many other spots around the country.

We have a Department of Economic Development that works hard to attract business to Vermont. When people spend their time constantly bashing Vermont’s business climate, they seriously diminish recruitment efforts and run the danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can economic development happen when business is saying, “Goodness, don’t come here! Things are awful!”

I firmly believe that the business climate in Vermont is not awful, and people who enjoy living and doing business here are not wrong . . . we simply have many of the same challenges that every other state has. However, Vermont offers benefits that many others states can’t begin to match, and we should be willing to recognize them.

I challenge each of you to read the article in which I was quoted. It appeared in the Times Argus on December 2, 2007. Get the overall sense of the article from the beginning, and I think you will see what I mean.

Surely we have challenges. I am sympathetic to the needs of our business community. We must work on the challenges, and I will do my part in the Commerce Committee.

Yes, I believe we would have invaded Iraq even with a President Gore. Why? Well here’s just a taste of what can easily be found regarding Gore and Iraq:

For a Man of Peace, Gore has plenty of blood on his CV. Looking back through the 1980s, we find that on every relevant issue, whether it was supporting the contras or Reagan’s bombing of Libya in 1986, shilling for the Pentagon’s latest weapons systems, voting for nerve gas or backing the Reagan/Bush position on NATO deployments in Europe, Gore’s hawkishness was unflagging. In the course of his career he voted for the neutron bomb, the B-2 bomber, the Trident II missile, the MX missile and the Midgetman. He also backed the mini-Star Wars plan. The defense contractors always loved Al, the same way the nuclear plant manufacturers do today.

(The Real Al Gore, The Nation, 10/18/07)

More follows below the fold

So let’s continue a bit more …

When it came to Bush Senior’s attack on Iraq, Gore’s antics astounded even his hardened colleagues in the Senate as they debated the war resolution. Of course he had long since decided to vote aye on war, having been a hardliner on Iraq since 1988. But on January 12, 1991, he spun out his supposed travails in coming to this decision in prime-time posturing, speaking of his “heavy burden of conscience” and the lonely weeks “questioning, probing, searching for the truth.” Saddam, he proclaimed, “has more troops than Hitler did in the early years of World War II.” In the New York Times he wrote, “We can no more look forward to a constructive long-term relationship with Saddam Hussein than we could hope to housebreak a cobra” and that the Iraqi dictator is not “an acceptable part of the landscape.”

In Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign Gore was told to earn his keep with constant pummeling of George Bush Senior for having been soft on Saddam. Gore duly crisscrossed the country yoking Saddam and Bush in fervid denunciation. “The cover-up of Bush’s arming of Saddam was,” Gore shouted, “bigger than Watergate ever was.”

In January 1993 Vice President-elect Gore announced that there could never be normal relations with Iraq so long as Saddam remained in power. He reiterated the call for a coup, if not by the Iraqi military then by the CIA. Vice President Gore was then given authority in the Clinton Administration for Iraq policy. In this capacity he presided over the sanctions that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of them children. The mid-1990s saw Gore as a major voice urging NATO’s bombing of the Serbs. In his 2000 presidential campaign he publicly distanced himself from the Clinton Administration on Iraq policy, reiterating that Saddam had to fall and pledging support for Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

On May 27, 2000, Gore laid out his foreign policy and military strategy in a commencement speech at West Point. It was a neocon manifesto. He said he would pursue a more robust form of Clintonism, highlighted by quicker interventions, less diplomacy and more firepower against the “rogue states…that represent the emerging threat to our country.” He called this approach “forward engagement,” a phrase redolent of his fellow Peace Prize winner Kissinger’s “constructive engagement,” which meant backing brutes like Suharto, Somoza and Pinochet.

Gore also denounced George W. Bush’s recent call for deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, cuts that Bush said the United States should consider making on its own. “Nuclear unilateralism will hinder, rather than help, arms control,” Gore said. “Reductions alone don’t guarantee stability…. If you’re not careful, you could have a reduction of missiles and a more dangerous world.”

(ibid)

This has been crossposted to Daily Kos.  Note: I wrote the diary intended for both audiences, GMD and Kos, so I apologize if I spend too much time explaining Vermont politics or history, but wanted to be thorough enough for both audiences without having a radically different document from one to the other –julie

On Tuesday, I blogged about a breaking story in Vermont: Kiss your 4th amendment goodbye: VT State Police collect medical data.  Since then, a couple things have happened:

1. the press finally hit this, and it’s broken big in Vermont’s Rutland Herald and Times Argus;
2. we’ve done some research of our own, and have learned a bit more;

After the fold, I’ll summarize some of what we at GMD (Green Mountain Daily) have learned, and what we learned from the Herald article as well.

First, a very strange update from the December 6 Mark Johnson show (the url links to downloadable mp3 of the interview).  What I’m transcribing below starts about 1m10s into the audio, from Major Thomas L’Esperance, during which he stumbles through his words quite a few times.  This is after Mark Johnson asks “Major, Anthony says here that there are a number of other pharmacies:”

I’ll have to find out more about exactly what he’s saying… I’ll need to speak with the people that were involved…

Johnson later interjects “you were saying earlier that this sort of practice wasn’t happening and Anthony seems pretty convinced that it is.”  (“Anthony,” is Anthony Otis, a lobbyist for Vermont pharmacists).  Again from L’Esperance:

It’s not happened across the state.  Has it happened at other pharmacies?  Absolutely… it’s not happening… uh… like the article would want people to believe…

Then later in the interview, again from L’Esperance:

Communication is the key and I just want to be sure that your listeners are at ease… Anthony describes two now.  I only have information about one.  It was a communication issue between the trooper and the pharmacist.

This was an astonishing interview.  If you listen closely enough, I think you can hear the guy flailing about in the wind.  In the context of some of the other information we’ve got here, this could get quite interesting.

Next, an update on the story I posted a few days ago, originally posted by John here:

UPDATE: Based on confirmation from law enforcement sources, pharmacies that were approached by the State Police on Friday November 30th and from legal sources representing people affected by State Police conduct last Friday, GMD can add the following to the reporting that has occurred already.

• The Department of Public Safety was planning last weeks pharmacy checks (“Fishing Derby Friday”) for several weeks.




• The State Police visited multiple pharmacies on Friday November 30th.




• At least two pharmacies were told to by the State Police to turn over patient profiles for every patient who received a schedule II prescription from that pharmacy.




• At least one pharmacy was told it would be required to update the patient profile information with the police every two weeks.




• At several pharmacies the police merely introduced themselves to the pharmacist, gave their business cards and asked the pharmacist to call the police officer if they encountered any suspicious behavior such as indications of “Doctor shopping” or prescription fraud.




• Late Friday, due to intense push back and complaints from pharmacists who were concerned about requests from the Vermont State Police that they reveal confidential and federally protected medical information about their customers, State Police management sent an email to all State Police involved with the pharmacy checks throughout the state instructing them to cease the pharmacy checks. After the email went out, Fish Derby Friday ceased (for now).

Kudos to Dan Barlow who published a well-balanced and thorough article about Fishing Derby Friday. – odum

Next, some choice excerpts from the Rutland Herald:

Officers with the Vermont Department of Public Safety appear to have the authority to request and search through pharmacy databases under a 1967 law. But Commissioner Kerry Sleeper told lawmakers last year they would only use that authority for specific criminal investigations.

I’ll add a little context here: with respect to this specific law, legislators actually considered removing the police seek and grab provisions from the law, but were assured in testimony by state officials that the law would never be used for such a broad-based information grab.  It’s that testimony that generated the report referenced in the next paragraph:

“(The law) is not used in an unfettered manner to search randomly through records looking for possible crimes,” according to a Vermont Department of Health report, based on comments made by Sleeper, that was given to the Legislature in December 2006.

This testimony is documented in the VT legislature’s “Report on Act 205, Sec. 3 Relating to 18 V.S.A. § 4218” (link to pdf download per GMD’s archive).  Here’s an excerpt:

Commissioner Sleeper reports that during his 29 years of service at DPS he is not aware of one example when law enforcement used section 4218 as a means of randomly, and without cause, examining pharmaceutical records.²…  he is not aware of any complaints or expressions of concern indicating that the sought information was improperly utilized.

Now, note: that segment comes with a footnote.  Here’s what’s enclosed in the footnote (emphasis mine):

Years ago, diversion investigators did occasionally conduct a general search of pharmaceutical records when they were aware that controlled substances from pharmacies were being diverted into a particular community, but did not know who the source of the drugs was or what pharmacy dispensed the drugs. DPS would argue that such access was with cause. In such cases the investigators were able to review paper records looking for a pattern that would point them to a suspect. Even then however, the investigators began their search with relevant pharmacies (i.e., pharmacies in communities affected or nearby by geographic area of concern). With the demise of paper records and the creation of HIPAA such a search is either no longer possible or extremely difficult to conduct. See… pages 7-9 for a discussion on the impact of HIPAA and the obligation of health care provider to make sure that HIPAA permits disclosure for a particular health record.

What’s on pages 7-9?  Well, this paragraph for one:

In the event the pharmacist determines that HIPAA does not permit the disclosure, he/she is required by HIPAA to refuse disclosure. Since HIPAA would preempt state law in this case, section 4218 of Title 18 would not control and the pharmacist would not be in violation of section 4218 for refusing to disclose.

More from the Herald:

Calls to Sleeper’s office Wednesday were forwarded to the State Police’s criminal division in Waterbury. When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

Okay.

Let’s pause for a moment.

Now let’s try that again:

When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

So let’s think about that again.

He didn’t want to say whether or not it was happening, but he said, quite directly, that there was a good reason for them to be doing it.

I don’t know about you, but that rings a few alarm bells for me.

So where are we with this?  We’re still learning.  My own experience is that it’s common for state agencies who have done something they know is going to cause them grief (even if they’re sure they’re justified in having done it) to release in dribbles.  It starts with “it was an isolated incident” and evolves into “it was a few isolated incidents” and eventually becomes something like “okay, we did come into all your homes and steal your puppies, but it was for a good reason” and, of course, the eventual “oh, no, we never approved the stealing of the puppies– it was something taken on by a few subordinates at the local level.”  

So, really, we don’t know how extensive this was or was intended to be, but it appears as though we’re at the point where we can all take a breath and get this brought in front of the legislature to get some real clarity about the law, the obligations of the state police, their compliance with both federal AND state law and push hard to make sure the legislature takes this seriously in the next session.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m incredibly happy with the work that came out of GMD on this, not because we necessarily stopped or prevented anything, but because we:

1. shined a bright light on actions which may very well have violated privacy rights;
2. scooped a story several days before any other Vermont media did;
3. alerted a lot of Vermonters and people across the country about a potential abuse of rights on the part of the police;
4. did all this with no special equipment, money or resources: we made phone calls and sent e-mails.

In other words, anyone can do this.  

A quick vlog on how Racine has turned the race for Governor on it’s head, and whether or not the Progressives would see fit to judge him a “bona fide” top tier candidate…