This is the letter I submitted to the local Islander paper, but was turned down because it was “more than one letter on the same topic”.

Dear Editor,

I’m very thankful to VTran’s Secretary Neale Lunderville and Senator Dick Mazza for answering the questions I posed.  It was refreshing to see government officials take time to inform the Grand Isle County community about what is going on with their drawbridge.  I sincerely hope this openness and dialogue continue into the future.

I was glad to hear “there are no plans at this time, so there is nothing as of yet to report.”  This means with things in the early stages, there is plenty of opportunity to involve the islands community in the planning process.  After all, who knows their bridge better than the residents of Grand Isle County?  County residents see beyond the structure of the bridge, to all that it represents and could be.  

I personally feel that if there is to be a reconstruction, some sort of handicapped fishing access would be a good addition.  With the little access road on the north side this would not be a far stretch, and surely help some good folks out.  I’m sure Island residents have other insightful ideas of what could be done to the drawbridge during reconstruction.  That’s why VTrans needs to have their engineers and planners hear Islanders speak before planning begins.  Then good ideas can be incorporated into the plans from the start, not worked out as revisions, or worse too late.

The next ten to twenty years leave plenty of time to involve the residents of Grand Isle County in the future of their bridge.  Engaging communities is what democracy is all about.  I implore all members of the Grand Isle County community to contact VTrans immediately, and ask them to sponsor meetings for public input prior to planning.  Talk to your governor, neighbors, selectboard members, and state representatives.  Contact Secretary Lunderville and Senator Mazza, and hold them to their pledge that “as engineers concept what might be next for this bridge, Islanders and their local government officials will certainly be involved.”  

Best regards,

Jason M. Brisson

North Hero, VT

The VT Democratic Party released this video today slamming Whinin’ Jim’s stimulus plan… Has he stimulated you yet?

It's been a frequent observation here on GMD and elsewhere about how much Jim Douglas is really one of the worst spokespeople we currently have to promote the state of Vermont, simply because he seems to never miss an opportunity to let everyone know how awful it is to live here. It seems that not a day goes by where he's complaining about the tax burden, the regulatory climate, and a plethora of other things. I often joke that even though things are pretty decent for me personally, I'm thinking of moving away just because Douglas' blather is rubbing off on me, and maybe things are pretty bad for me here and I just haven't figured it out yet. I can't think of a better way to attract businesses and skilled workers than to tell them how bad it is here, can you?

In yesterday's Seven Days, Jon Margolis took a look at this phenomenon echoed by Douglas and his allies, and came to the conclusion that it's a big lie. Go below the jump for more.

Margolis op-ed' piece is called “What's So Bad About Vermont?”  Like many of us, he's made that same observation:

You’ve no doubt noticed how awful life is here in Vermont. Awful and getting worse, what with wages so low and prices so high — especially the sale price of a nice house, or the rent on a decent apartment. You’ve noticed because the newspapers and the radio and television keep telling you. Across the political spectrum, important people keep proclaiming our woes, especially Gov. James Douglas, who has made “affordability,” or lack thereof, the dominant theme of his tenure.

Then there are all these fancy reports concluding that Vermonters are in a terrible fix, barely able to survive after paying their bills or — increasingly — unable to pay their bills. These reports come from prestigious organizations. They are artfully bound and printed, and have well-designed graphs and full-color illustrations. They are chock-full of statistics. They have endnotes. Ergo, they must be true.

Or so seems to be the assessment of Vermont’s news media, which transmit the conclusions of the reports, usually on the front page or at the start of the broadcast, as though they were unassailable truth.

They are not. They are politics.

He then points out the falsehoods in the myths, such as that we have an ever-shrinking population, or the BIG doozy we hear all the time: we're the most heavily taxed state in the nation. The latter is a good example of how out-of-touch Douglas is (as he was last year when he was complaining the legislature “spent too much time” on global warming while at that very same time his own commission on climate change was practically screaming how important it was and the challenges and opportunities it presents). Once again, the state's very own Joint Fiscal Office's tax study (h/t to Doug Hoffer) last year blew that one out of the water. From page 7:

Summary Findings – Individual Taxpayers
The individual taxpayer case studies suggest that among the 12 comparison states Vermont as a highly progressive overall state tax structure. This is largely the result of relatively low taxes on lower-income taxpayers and relatively higher taxes on upper-income taxpayers in Vermont. Driving this finding is the individual income tax, which comprises a majority of the overall tax liability calculated for most taxpayers. Although many of the other comparison states have progressive tax structures, Vermont’s tends to be the most progressive. Washington and Florida demonstrate the most regressive traits of state tax systems among the comparison states. The trend for some states is less obvious, most likely the result of mixed tax policy goals and actions. The difficulty in drawing unambiguous conclusions when analyzing comparative state and local taxation is among the most important findings of this study and is illustrated by the fact that for each of these conclusions, outliers among the case studies contradict these assumptions. Key findings are summarized below:

• Total Tax Liability – For 19 of the 24 individual tax case studies, Vermont ranked ninth or lower in total tax liability among the 12 comparison states. The highest Vermont rank was sixth out of 12 for three of the cases.
• Income Tax Liability – Income tax levels for Vermont taxpayers ranked in the middle or lower half among the comparison states for nearly all of the case studies. Vermont ranked sixth or lower among the 12 states in income tax liability for 20 of the 24 case studies. Theonly cases where Vermont ranked higher than sixth are those where most of the states
have tax liabilities that are nearly identical, and the rankings are not indicative of significant differences between the states compared and analyzed.
• Sales and Use Tax Liability – Vermont ranked ninth among the 12 comparison states in sales and use tax liability, up from 10th a decade ago. Although Vermont’s tax rate fell in the middle of the 12 comparison states, its low actual liability is due in part to a relatively smaller tax base and limited use of local option sales taxes.

More than likely he was too busy complaining to bother reading it. Not only are we not the highest, we have one of the most progressive tax structures in the country (which will always give the folks at VT Tiger something to whine about). Hardly sounds awful to me,

Now, back to Margolis. He's not dismissing the fact that life is not increasingly harder for a number of Vermonters. But the point he makes is that it's getting that way everywhere in this country, and for Douglas and his ilk to pass it off as some problem unique or more prevalent in Vermont is a lie:

Asked for evidence that Vermont is less affordable than other states, Jason Gibbs, the governor’s spokesman, obliged with emailed links to several government and private studies about health care, taxes, housing, utility rates and the economy. The information was interesting and informative. It did indicate that some necessities cost more in Vermont than in much of the country. But not all of them, and these costs are usually not higher than elsewhere around our region.

The Northeast is generally more expensive than most of the rest of the country. It’s old. It’s cold. It’s crowded. Its people believe in, and insist on, a fairly high level of public services. Nothing in the information Gibbs sent me provided a persuasive case — much less conclusive proof — that Vermont is unusually unaffordable because of anything the state government does or doesn’t do.

In fact, the preponderance of the evidence — the statistics on economic growth, median income, poverty rates, health coverage and education levels — suggests that Vermont is one of the more prosperous and livable states.

There' definitely an agenda here, but it's not about “affordability”. As Margolis reveals, its about loosening regulations. It's either always about that or lowering taxes, consequences be damned. No wonder Douglas is endorsing John McSame… his economic plan is more of the same-ol' same-ol' GOP groupthink that's helped decimate the middle-class for the last 20 years. 

Now, regardless of the prospects of the next guv's election, we need to keep hammering these points home. Jim Douglas is out-of touch (except, of course, with certain business interests), pushing the same old failed policies from the GOP playbook, is creating horrible PR for the state, and at the heart of it, cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

In yesterday's Times Argus there is an intriguing drama between the Secretary of Administration and State Treasurer developing in the economic stimulus proposal.  Interestingly, it's on a topic of directed investments of state pension funds, which has been discussed here on GMD in heated debates.

I'm all for directed investments so long as they meet fiduciary requirements.  And this is where the battle line is drawn.

I think we're all familiar with Jeb Spaulding's headshot.  Here's one of Mike Smith:

Secretary of Administration and former Deputy Treasurer, Mike Smith.  He was appointed Deputy State Treasurer for the State of Vermont under Treasurer James H. Douglas, serving from 1995-99.

My letter to the Times Argus below the fold.  Your thoughts, business/finance experts Doug Hoffer, Curtis Cairn, SPS, et al?

Editor:

I appreciate Peter Hirschfeld's report, “Stimulus Investment Plan Decried” in Wednesday's Times Argus, as well as State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding's attention to Federal law requiring prudent investment of state pension funds.

The stimulus proposal to require a $17 million investment in VHFA bonds from the pension fund would have been in violation of fiduciary law under ERISA.  The discussion about rate of returns between Treasurer Spaulding and Secretary of Administration, Mike Smith, seems to miss a more relevant point when it comes to a question of prudent investing.  That is, for the administration to require a specific investment at a specific moment in time for any reason other than for the benefit of pension fund investors is a breach of fiduciary responsibility and against Federal law as written in ERISA.

What is most surprising about this discussion is the argument made by Secretary Smith, who has served as Deputy Treasurer in the past.  His comparison of the requirement to buy VHFA bonds during a mortgage crisis to a broad investment policy excluding general types of securities, such as tobacco related companies, demonstrates Smith's fundamental misunderstanding of fiduciary law.  Additionally, his statement, “The governor isn't going to allow people to not have access to these programs,” as a rationale for purchasing VHFA bonds suggests that Smith has forgotten that the state pension fund, just like private pension funds,  must be managed for its beneficiaries and not for the benefit of either a sitting governor nor VHFA home buyers.  In the same way that a CEO cannot force corporate pension administrators to buy a particular investment for the benefit of the company or its customers, the Governor cannot require the State Treasurer to buy VHFA bonds because it may help the state's economy and first time home buyers.

Conversely, the Treasurer may draft broad policies allocating a percentage of investments in the state of Vermont.  It happens that Treasurer Spaulding is already at work in this area.  This kind of investment practice is acceptable because it allows the pension to purchase types of securities based on geography, as versus requiring an investment in a specific bond offering.  It is one thing to allocate a percentage of the pension fund in a broad range of Vermont investments; it's entirely different to require the pension to invest in VHFA.

It is an unfortunate precedent when leading state officials attempt to overstep the Treasurer's fiduciary responsibilities as appears to be the case in Governor's stimulus plan.  It is even more disconcerting when it appears that the fundamental concepts of ERISA are not understood by someone who has served as Deputy Treasurer not so long ago.

Among people that I talk to, one of the main reasons they give for supporting Clinton over Obama is his lack of experience. They reason that she's been around the block a time or two and he barely has. Another part of it is that she's had a lot more experience with hardball political campaigns, which should also make her more electable than he is. One example of why people are continuing to support (shall we say “clinging to”?) Clinton is this clip from a diavlog in which Glenn Loury explains his positions, including his view that she is just more competent.

Many of us Obama supporters, however, tend to question the relevance of her experience, or argue that his cross-partisan appeal, combined with the deep wells of Clinton hatred across the country, make him more electable than she is. Not only that, part of his appeal is that he has the ability to be a transformational leader in a way that Clinton does not. 

Now we have some more data points from recent weeks, and I'm afraid they don't seem to look very good for Obama. We do have the Jeremiah Wright thing, and we also have the clinging to guns and religion thing (which probably doesn't look as bad if you know what was going on when he said it), but these things still seem to demonstrate a political tin ear, which probably makes him look like a weaker candidate than he originally did.

In addition, some of his complaints about the Clinton campaign seem to be in the “Mom, she's being mean to me!” vein, which aren't much fun to listen to coming from your three-year-old, and are much worse coming from a professional politician.

Then, yesterday, he probably did worse than we were expecting. Clinton started out 20 points ahead, he chipped away at her lead, last week people were saying he was going to come within five points or so, and yesterday she won by almost ten. 

I will concede that the long hiatus since the last primaries, and the fact that Pennsylvania was the only game yesterday combined to make yesterday look bigger than it otherwise might have. Still, though, if anyone has momentum now, it's not him. (Remember back in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 lead in the playoffs to beat the Yankees? It was a big deal even when the Red Sox won their first game, even though they had to win three more in a row.)

So where are we? Obama is still the leader, but there are certain defects appearing that we hadn't seen before. We also know that the R's are going to be ten times as mean and dishonest as any Clinton can be, and they're going to make up as many lies about Obama as they did about Kerry four years ago.

I still hear people say that it doesn't matter, McCain just can't win. I think those views are clearly wrong. I think he can potentially win, and I am thinking more and more that the D's can boot this one.

So what do we do? Is anyone thinking that it's time to jump off the Obama band wagon? 

And, in an inside-baseball kind of way, does the deflation of Obama provide the justification of the superdelegate system that people have been criticizing all primary season?