Awww, some bruised fee-fees over at Campaign for Vermont, the “nonpartisan” policy shop that’s obviously and blatantly conservative to anyone with a brain who spends five minutes reading their website or listening to their radio ads.

It seems that those dastardly folks at Vermont Digger committed an act of journalism. It took a long hard look at CFV and its founder/funder Bruce Lisman, and published a story pointing out the obvious: that CFV is conservative, that its policy positions are closely aligned with the Republicans’, that all its attacks are against the Democrats, that Lisman is spending a whole lot of money and nobody knows what his real ambitions are.

And that gave Tom Pelham a sad.

Pelham is the main source of nonpartisan lipstick on the CFV pig, having served in Democratic and Republican administrations and as an independent state rep. He read VTDigger’s Lisman article and wrote a piece castigating Digger for “poor journalistic technique.”  The writer’s offenses included (1) failing to report what a nice guy Bruce Lisman is, (2) focusing on the political angle of CFV and interviewing political figures, and (3) pointing out that Lisman was a big-time financier at a time when Wall Street had its biggest meltdown since 1929.

Horrors!

There were a few factual errors in the original Digger story, but the thrust and the main points are completely inarguable — if inconvenient for CFV’s public image. So let’s take Pelham’s complaints one by one, shall we?  

1. Bruce Lisman is a nice guy. Pelham complains that the story didn’t touch on Lisman’s broad charitable activities as evidence of a man who simply wants the best for Vermont.

Sorry, Tom, but this was an article about Lisman and CFV as emerging political players in the state. When writing a story about political impact and implications, you don’t touch on the Vermont Symphony or the Boys and Girls Club. Lisman’s charitable activities are as irrelevant to the story as his hobbies. Does he collect stamps? Vermont needs to know!

2. CFV is nonpartisan, but Digger portrayed it as conservative. Pelham blames this on the writer’s dependence on political sources who evaluated CFV in partisan terms.

Well, Christ on a cracker, it doesn’t take Jake Perkinson or Kevin Ellis to point out that CFV promotes conservative causes. As I said earlier, all it takes is a brief perusal of CFV material.CFV may be an independent group, but there’s a nearly total overlap between its priorities and those of the VTGOP. If it was a Venn diagram, it’d basically be two circles on top of each other.

(In the process, Pelham sullies the reputation of Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis as an “armchair observer” who has “never met Bruce Lisman,” which we at GMD will not stand for. Eric Davis is a Vermont institution, harrumph, and criticizing him is akin to pissing on the Ethan Allen statue in front of the Statehouse.)

3. Bruce Lisman was a saint of Wall Street. Or, as Pelham puts it, “there is nothing to be found that taints Bruce’s career in financial markets.” Which reminds me of an old Calvin Trillin piece about a scuzzy politician who should use the campaign slogan “Never Been Indicted.”

I have no reason to believe that Lisman was involved in collateralized debt obligations or credit swaps or mortgage merry-go-rounds or any of the other hyper-caffeinated financial products that almost killed the global economy. What I do know is that he was immersed in that world for virtually his entire adult life, and he is very much a product of Wall Street. This is the real issue with Lisman: not that he himself was responsible for the crash, but that his views are a product of a fatally flawed system.

Two pieces of evidence, previously reported on this site, from Lisman’s 2010 speech in Burlington.

Lisman referred to the Wall Street meltdown of 2008 as “this thing that happened,” this “Darwinian asteroid,” this alien force that came out of nowhere and hit without warning, and was obviously nobody’s fault. This is complete horseshit that could only come from a Wall Streeter.

Lisman also referred to “capital at risk,” i.e. money invested in a business, as “the most precious thing in the galaxy.” Which is just plain obnoxious. He further asserted that because capital is so precious, we must cut taxes on capital gains and corporations. And, he later said, we should raise income taxes on poor and working-class Americans because “you’d want everyone to pay something in.” (Ignoring the fact that poor people pay lots of taxes, just not income taxes.)

If that isn’t the world-view of a Wall Street lifer, I don’t know what is.  

In sum, Mr. Pelham, the Digger story may portray CFV in a way you don’t like, but that doesn’t mean the story is wrong. It just didn’t serve your agenda. And I shed no tears for Lisman or CFV; they can buy all the good publicity they want.

And they have. And they will.