[Crossposted to Broadsides.org]

Please, can anyone out there other than the fawning Vermont media think anything other than “loser” when the name Anthony Pollina is mentioned? I can’t. And for good reason, too. He’s a loser. He loses elections (many of them). He loses in his issue efforts (many of them). And he even loses in court when – oddly – he challenged his rare victory with campaign finance reform. I guess it must have felt weird for him to actually win something so he went to court to fight it. Good for you, Tony. Keep that record clean.

We all know about Pollina’s electoral losing. He’s something like 0-for-5. But Pollina seems to get energized by losing the way most politicians are energized by winning. The average politician, for example, begins with a lower office, wins, aims higher, wins and so forth. Not Pollina. He aims high, starting with a run for Congress, loses, and then just keeps aiming high for jobs like governor (a couple of times) and keeps losing. What’s worse is that each time he loses – and loses big – Pollina acts like he won. “Wow, I’m up to over 20% of the vote! Wait’ll next time!”

I’m guessing that when Pollina secures his next, great loss this November he’ll be so damn energized by it that he’ll probably launch a bid for the presidency in 2012. And that could be the best thing that could happen to Vermont’s Progressive Party. Because, let’s face it, Pollina’s been sucking a lot of energy out of their movement with all this losing. Worse, it’s preventing a whole new breed of Progs from stepping up and taking a fresh shot at one of the offices that Pollina keeps sacrificing to the Republicans.

It would also be nice if Pollina would stop “saving” Vermont’s dairy farmers. Because let’s look at that track record. In the 1980s, when Pollina started saving them, there were more than 3,000 dairy farmers in Vermont. Today, after more than 25-years of Pollina fighting for them, there are about 1,100 of them left. Thanks, Tony! Sure, it’s totally and completely unfair to blame him for the dramatic drop. But it’s certainly fair to ask him why – given these facts – he’s so proud of his dairy work?

About the only real progress made in the dairy industry in Vermont over the last 25 years has been the advent and growth of organic dairying. And – as if to protect his losing record – Pollina has had NOTHING to do with it. Pollina’s new Vermont Milk Company, for example, even shuns organic. Oh yeah, feel the progressive vision. And pass the pesticides…

Today, a group of so-called Democrats are gathering in Burlington to launch a skimpy little website called “Democrats for Pollina.” It’s a not-so-veiled attempt to “prove” that Pollina is getting gobs of support from mainstream Dems in his Prog bid for the governorship. The group is officially launching a “write-in” campaign for Pollina in the Democratic primary in September. Since Pollina will be on the Prog’s primary ballot, he can’t be on the Dems’. But he could – if he won as a write-in – don both labels in the general election. If, that is, the Dems let him get away with it. Fat chance.

This all kind of reminds me of the announcements last week by Hillary Clinton that she would welcome Obama to be her running mate. It’s the kind of thing that forces that cocked puppy head look that says: Huh? And I’m not sure if it’s more arrogant or ignorant for a person running behind to offer a lesser job to the front-runner.

In Vermont, of course, the early polls show Pollina being in the place he’s always in: third amongst three. Or, for those of us outside Pollina’s groupie shadows, it’s usually called LAST. What’s worse, Pollina was a good distance behind what the pollsters only identified as a “Democratic candidate” since a Dem hasn’t announced – yet. Look Mom, I’m literally losing to a no-name! Good job, Tony. Now get to your room and re-arrange your Buffalo Bills memorabilia….

But that won’t stop Pollina and his groupies who can’t stop losing to think that they’re somehow entitled to a Dem Party primary endorsement via a write-in campaign. Chris Pearson, a Prog who has actually gotten elected and a Pollina sidekick, told the Free Press that Pollina won’t enter the Dem primary officially because “that’s what Peter Clavelle did and it didn’t work.” But then Pearson goes on with this: “People know (Pollina) as a Progressive and for him to suddenly run as a Democrat doesn't pass the straight-face test.”

Well, yeah. But it also doesn’t pass the smell test for Pollina and his fumble-fingered handlers to think Vermont voters are stupid enough to fall for this write-in nonsense. Let me get this straight: It looks funny to have Pollina get the Dem primary endorsement by earning it with his name on the ballot but it’s fine for him to be sneaky by coordinating the write-in effort for it? Give me a break.

And there we have it: The mush that is the Pollina political spine. If he believed his and his party’s own rhetoric, he’d be announcing that he doesn’t want the Dem’s endorsement – no matter how it came. Instead, he’s taking us all for fools as he skips down this silly little write-in route.

Of course, there’s one way to put an end to all of this: A true progressive needs to challenge Pollina in the Prog Party primary so his followers will have to focus on their own party’s efforts rather than soiling that of the Dems.

And I think I know someone who’s interested. Stay tuned.

Friday, on Bob Kinzel’s VPR show VT Edition, the last caller asked Congressman Welch “How could you vote for a Homegrown Terrorism Bill that (targets) people like me who speak out (against the war)”.  His response? “There’s no such bill.”

The problem is, it seems that Welch is either voting for Bills in the House without knowing anything about them, or he just straight-up lied to the caller (and the rest of us).

The Bill, HR 1955, is very real.  And Peter Welch did vote for it.  Here’s a pretty good, level-headed take on what HR 1955 is and isn’t, and why organizations like the ACLU are very much against it.

Lowe’s seeks to fill wetlands; opponents object

Published: Monday, March 10, 2008

By Candace Page

Free Press Staff Writer

In one of the largest such requests from a private business, Lowe’s Home Centers is seeking state permission to fill in two wetlands and a wetland buffer to build a four-acre home improvement warehouse and garden center in St. Albans Town.

Crossposted to Daily Kos.

As part of a comprehensive package to control the costs of prescription drugs and regulate inappropriate marketing tactics, Vermont recently passed legislation that provides strong privacy protections by limiting the use of personally identifiable prescription information for marketing purposes unless doctors and other health care providers explicitly agree to waive the protections. The law, S.115, includes a physician opt-in provision at the time of licensure or renewal. This provision, managed by the state’s professional licensing board, allows a prescriber to choose to have his or her identifying information used for marketing and promotion of prescription drugs. The Vermont Medical Society supports the measure.

Taken from a fact sheet from the Prescription Project (link to pdf file)

That legislation’s just been pushed back.  

The reason why?  

Read on.

Previously, regulars at Vermont’s Green Mountain Daily have written fairly extensively on Pharmacy Phishing, the practice of the Vermont State Police doing fishing expeditions of pharmacies statewide to scan for information that might tie people to patterns of illegal drug use, even though it would give them illegal access to the personal data of a great deal of innocent individuals as well.

This article isn’t directly about the pharmacy phishing scandal, but it is about the practice of treating medical and prescription data like something to be shared readily and easily.  This time it’s not directly about patient data (though there are some risks of that being released) but the prescribing practice of doctors and the ability of sales people and other entities to use those practices to inappropriately influence and assail doctors.

So let’s start with Friday.  A group of us at GMD received a copy of the following e-mail.  I apologize for the size of the quote, but I can’t find it online anywhere, so I’d like to include the whole context.

VERMONT ENACTS ‘TEMPORARY REPEAL’ OF

PRESCRIPTION DATA RESTRAINT LAW

MONTPELIER, VT, March 6, 2008 – Vermont Governor Jim Douglas yesterday signed into law what he described as a “temporary repeal” of a law passed last year that restricts the collection and use of provider-identified prescription data. The new law defers the effective date of Vermont’s data restriction law until July 1, 2009. Prior to that date, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston is expected to rule on an appeal by New Hampshire of a federal district court decision that found comparable New Hampshire legislation unconstitutional.

Notwithstanding the change in the effective date, a lawsuit filed by IMS Health, Verispan and Wolters Kluwer Health challenging Vermont’s data restriction law is scheduled to be heard in federal district court in Brattleboro Vermont on July 28, 2008. In legislative hearings, the Vermont Attorney General’s office has described the chances of successfully defending the law as an “uphill battle.”

The New Hampshire law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal district court in April of last year and the state has sought to appeal the decision. Oral arguments before the First Circuit Court of Appeals were held in January, and a decision is expected by mid-year.

“We are pleased that the effective date of Vermont’s data restriction law has been deferred. These types of laws serve neither to improve healthcare nor lower healthcare costs,” said Robert H. Steinfeld, IMS senior vice president and general counsel. “This kind of legislation is inconsistent with the fundamental constitutional values that protect the free flow of information. It’s also contrary to the current national movement toward more information and greater transparency in our healthcare system to enhance patient welfare and outcomes. It doesn’t serve the public interest to impair the free flow of important, accurate information to the healthcare community.”

In a separate legal action, Maine’s Attorney General is now seeking to stay proceedings in that state’s appeal to the First Circuit of a Maine federal district court decision issued in December 2007 preliminarily enjoining the enforcement of a similar data restriction law in Maine. He is seeking the stay pending the First Circuit’s decision in the New Hampshire appeal.

Other states, which have considered their own data restriction laws, have moved away from these proposals upon closer analysis of their merits, and in light of the two previous federal court decisions invalidating such laws on First Amendment grounds.

IMS Health, Verispan and Wolters Kluwer Health are health information companies that collect and analyze provider-identified prescription data and then sell information, analytics and consulting services to government agencies including the DEA, FDA and CDC, departments of health, academic researchers, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and generic drug manufacturers.

The three companies and others maintain that provider-identified prescription data has great public health value. The data is used to study prescribing trends, monitor the safety of new medications, support safety-oriented risk management programs, prevent prescription drug abuse, expedite drug recalls, recruit for clinical trials, and study treatment variability and outcomes.

Provider-identified prescription information is completely patient de-identified and patient privacy is fully protected by federal law under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. In addition, IMS Health, Verispan and Wolters Kluwer Health add further safeguards, including encryption, to ensure that patient privacy is vigilantly safeguarded.

The source of this message is a press release from IMS Health, Verispan and Wolters Kluwer Health.  These are companies which make a practice of collecting data from doctors and using them for various purposes, but primarily information collection for the purposes of aiding salespeople.

So let’s be clear about this.  When Robert Steinfeld, Senior IMS VP, claims that  “this kind of legislation is inconsistent with the fundamental constitutional values that protect the free flow of information,” he’s trying to pretend that this has something to do with the constitution.  When the government of Vermont capitulates to these corporate opportunists, he’s giving them support for a practice to which they have no claim to advance as a right.

In fact, here is the specific part of the legislation which has been nixed:

A health insurer, a self-insured employer, an electronic transmission intermediary, a pharmacy, or other similar entity shall not sell, license, or exchange for value regulated records containing prescriber-identifiable information, nor permit the use of regulated records containing prescriber-identifiable information for marketing or promoting a prescription drug, unless the prescriber consents . . .   Pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmaceutical marketers shall not use prescriber-identifiable information for marketing or promoting a prescription drug unless the prescriber consents as provided in subsection (c) of this section.

(You can see the full text of this legislation here)

Now, there are open question as to why Gov. Doglas may have chosen to nix the above language.  It could be that he’s trying to avoid a costly lawsuit by getting ahead of the curve.  If so, he’s failed.  The companies involved are ready to proceed with the lawsuit, regardless of the executive order.

To me, the more likely scenario under this administration is that it simply doesn’t give a damn about privacy rights.  If you look at the  history of this administration and medical data, you can see a pattern of complete and utter disregard for privacy with respect to prescriptions.  What’s more, as I wrote last month, Republicans have been trying to scuttle this aspect of the legislation.  They failed (miserably) at the attempt, but where they failed, Douglas has been able, with the stroke of a pen, just delay the roll out of it.

A final sidenote: I don’t know if I’m just looking in the wrong place or if I’m just not good at navigating the State of Vermont’s web site, but I can’t find anything on the Governor’s site indicating his temporary restriction.  

I wonder if this is something he doesn’t want getting a lot of publicity.

It’s March. The election is in eight months. That’s about 36 weeks. This from vtbuzz:

I’m sure many politically tuned-in Vermonters are surprised that we are sitting here in March without a known Democratic candidate for governor, but it indeed we are…

…What should the good voters of Vermont make of that? “You’re to make nothing of it,” Vermont Democratic Party Chairman Ian Carleton said.

I’m not sure who Carleton is talking to here. If his statement is a directive, he knows as well as anyone that rank and file Dems do not take directives well. If it’s simply face-saving rhetoric, a no comment would be better, as we’re rapidly entering the world of self-parody.

We’re past the point where the suggestion that concern – even panic – over the lack of clear candidates for the top two slots is somehow only for the small handful of political insiders or hobbyists, and that the greater population doesn’t care. First of all, that’s not true anymore, as I’m hearing the question from an ever-widening range of people.

Second (and most important), it has been going on long enough to begin setting in as a narrative among one subset of Vermonters that truly matter in this process – the press. Today’s media doesn’t bother with the pretense of not having opinions. They embrace opinions – wallow in them, really – so long as those opinions can’t be pegged as “partisan.” And the Democratic Party is flirting with a “keystone kops” narrative among the media that will dog them throughout the campaign season if something doesn’t change soon.

Some argue that none of this should be discussed without also discussing the lack of a GOP candidate against Peter Welch. That discussing the gubernatorial – and now the lieutenant gubernatorial – race, without discussing that lack is somehow engaging in a double standard. Not so.

Truth to tell, the Dems should dread the day when they are spoken of together. The fact is, the Vermont GOP looks like a disaster. Dems solidly have the House, the Senate, and 7 out of 9 statewide offices, if you count Bernie Sanders. The Republican Party in this state has, under its previous Chair Jim Barnett, all but abandoned the local races in it’s myopic focus on the re-election of Douglas, and as a passing thought, Dubie and the occasional other statewide race. As a result, it maintains little resemblance to a functioning major party.

The fact is that people aren’t talking about the GOP lack of a candidate, because – well, what do you expect? Try a free association test: see how many Vermont Dems you can name in a few seconds that could be competitive against Jim Douglas. You know the list; Leahy, Welch, Markowitz, Spaulding, Sorrell, Racine, Shumlin, Symington. Those are the easy ones. The ones that would make it a battle royal. You may have easily come up with others.

Now try the same game with Republicans versus Welch.

Crickets, right?

I mean, you have to really reach for any names at all – Brock? Walt Freed (remember him?) Skip Vallee, for pities sake?

Dems should stop complaining about the hand wringing over Governor. The fact is, people expect more from what otherwise looks like a healthy political party. The task now is to show them that they should.

And the task for us? Clearly, the time is coming to force a reaction. If Galbraith is to be the candidate, it’s time to shake him from what is clearly a subjective certainty that he has plenty of time until it becomes necessary to announce. One assumes that this assumption is based on an electoral clock nearly 30 years out of date. If he is to be a candidate – and a viable one – he needs to be capable of losing dyed-in-the-wool preconceptions that are no longer reflective of reality. Now is the time. Many months ago was the time. For my part, I have allowed him some leeway because of recent history. Galbraith told me, as he has told many others, that, during their 2007 meeting, Pollina told him that he would opt NOT to run for Governor if Galbraith did indeed get in the race.

In January, he apparently contacted Pollina again to both indicate he was moving towards a run and to re-confirm this verbal agreement. Pollina apparently informed him that he had, er, changed his mind.

For that reason, I’ve been loath to rush the Ambassador, given the seismic shift in the likely makeup of the arena. But the grace period is clearly over.

As far as Lieutenant Governor goes, Jim Condos has flirted with interest, as reported here. There is attempted recruitment behind the scenes, but again – it’s unclear at this point as to whether anyone is really serious. And it’s way past time for seriousness.

Boy, do we need some seriousness.

I think it’s safe to assume that Galbraith is in this thing. But he needs to truly get in this thing. If he’s not in it… well, whatever. I’m rapidly losing faith that there’s any real shot at taking out Douglas, given the totality of the tableau before us. A real shame given Douglas’s softness between the polling lines.

Lieutenant Governor? That’s more complicated, and in a Democratic wave year, Dubie is also vulnerable – especially given his do-nothing reputation. My sense is that, by a date certain, if there still is no sign of a candidate, we at the netroots should threaten to run a candidate, leaving the powers that be to decide for themselves which scenario they’d find more embarrassing – continuing an empty candidate slot well into election season, or having some nobody blogger or netroots activist as the only one willing to step in and fill the gap.

…”It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position,” Daschle told “Meet the Press.”

Sounds like the Clinton plan is to skip third base in a run for home plate. 

More on the subject at “Clintons Push a Hillary/Obama Ticket.”