Today is Odum’s!  Happy Birthday, old man.

Okay, not political, but cultural.

For the many who don't know the name, Tom Rush is one of the last men standing from the Great Folk Music Scare of the 1960's. He became famous for recording great songs, by songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and Murray McLaughlin before anyone else had ever heard of them. Tom's also from just over the river in Merrimack, New Hampshire, although he's lived in Wyoming for several years.

Tom has a new album coming out, his first studio album in thirty-five years. You can get a preview of it here. Even though he hasn't been recording in the studio, he's been touring, and he's going to be playing at Lyndon State College on Saturday, March 7, as part of the Catamount Arts series.Maybe I'll see you there.

When I started to write a little, I started looking at Green Mountain Daily.  I said to myself, “Holy crap.  Their site looks cooler than ours.”  But I was too humble at that point to bug Geoff.

Then my writing, although provocative, began to get a few compliments.  All the time I was watching GMD.  You re-did your look.  I said, “Wow!  They are much cooler than we are.”

Then I heard a V-log where John said we’re more connected, but you guys are ahead in tech.  Very perceptive, I thought.  I was encouraged yet eager to tell Geoff we needed to step it up.

Eventually, I just got too arrogant and bugged Geoff too much.  (A few compliments will do that to an ungrounded person.)  Then I noticed that GMD saw the awesome potential of suing for state records.

So, I did, all the while annoying Geoff more because he didn’t believe in the private record search.  Anyway, I used it to help Symington come in third.  But the GOP sees me as a wild man, and they don’t trust me.

This is all kind of like the Zen Master story in Charlie Wilson’s War.

Then I learned a deep, deep lesson from the Internet.   You see, liberals in education had been telling me to pay attention to the underachievers, to seek ways to connect to them.

But for 20 years, I was too arrogant to see it.  Then one day on my conservative website, I got a ping.  It was from a young Christian website.  A young person who had always thought I was a liberal, because, you know, in class I would bend over backward to be fair and balanced.  Now he was confused, because he’d stumbled upon my conservative website.

I knew this student had been someone who didn’t fit.  He’d had a religious upbringing, but I’d feared he’d lost his way. His grades had slipped.  He started hanging with shady characters. I distanced from him.   But I began to understand the awesome power of the Internet.  He didn’t fit in at FHU.  His interests weren’t mainstream (like basketball).  He discovered his talents on the Internet.  He had hundreds of followers across the country.

The Internet is both good and bad.  We have to watch out for it.  Tim Berners-Lee is, like, a God.  He created an awesome web, where everything’s there for a reason.  Kinda like our world.

It was a deeply humbling experience.  So, I’ve been reconnecting with education and with religion.  I hope you guys will wish me well.  I won’t be by here too much, because that would just be annoying for you.

I asked Charity the other day why you guys seem to put up with her.  She thought it was because you guys had met her once face to face.  I want to meet you guys.  First round is on me.  Maybe do shots with Julie, JD and Kestrel?

Meanwhile, I’m not getting along with Vermont Tiger.  

Per today’s Rutland Herald:

Gov. James Douglas is the second highest paid state employee in Vermont, according to payroll numbers, making $68.53 an hour for an annual salary of $142,542.

Douglas is also among the highest paid governors in the country… only 14 other state governors in the United States make more money… He’s also the highest paid governor in New England…

Among the perks of the job Douglas does enjoy are access to a state car – driven by his security detail from the Vermont State Police – and a regular travel allowance.

Also on that list are Secretary of Human Services Robert Hofmann ($58.54 an hour, annual salary of $121,763); Public Service Board Chairman James Volz ($56.10 an hour, annual salary of $116,688); Agency of Administration Secretary Neale Lunderville ($55.58 an hour, annual salary of $115,606); Agency of Transportation Secretary David Dill ($55.58 an hour, annual salary of $115,606); Department of Health Commissioner Wendy Davis ($55.54 an hour, annual salary of $115,523) and Agency of Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee ($52.50 an hour, annual salary of $109,387).

Now… far be it from me to question the wisdom of the Vermont pay structure, but I have to ask what is it that Neale Lunderville does for that $121,763/year?  

I guess I have to seriously ask why any public official in Vermont needs to be paid a six-figure salary.  I’d also like to know if any top Douglas administration employees are slated for cuts among those 600 employees Douglas wants to lay off.  If, for example, we were to lay off Lunderville, we could probably save the jobs of three other state employees, at least one of whom might actually accomplish some form of social good.  

Of course, it’s also important to remember that for some of these individuals, these are not full-time jobs.  If they were, it would be more complicated, for example, the following to be true:

…in addition to her work with the Health Department, Dr. Davis is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont College of Medicine… She has been an attending physician at Fletcher Allen Health Care since 1987…

I don’t begrudge anyone the ability to work several jobs at once (personally, I work three, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging so much lately), but when one’s on the public dime, it does raise questions.

Or maybe not.  Maybe it’s more important to just slash government programs and ask ourselves, really, who cares about the poor when we can make sure that Douglas’ top people live extremely well off of taxpayer’s dollars?