The Markowitz campaign reports:

BURLINGTON-Former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin will endorse Secretary of State Deb Markowitz on the same day (TODAY) EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest financial resource for women candidates, will announce their support for Markowitz’s gubernatorial bid. Both endorsements come nearly a year before the election and will mean a major resource boost for the campaign. It is also the first EMILY’s List endorsement of any gubernatorial candidate in Vermont history.

Big news/game changer, or old news/status quo? Maybe both? Consider this a gubernatorial open thread.

UPDATE: How does the other Democratic pro-choice woman in the race feel about her unequivocal dismissal by EL finally becoming official? Here’s the statement from Susan Bartlett’s campaign:

“I believe this race is going to be decided by Vermonters, not by big out-of-state special interest groups.  Vermont voters will be more influenced by ideas and experienced leadership than by out-of-state donations by single-issue groups.

From a recent hearing focused yet again on the Republicans’ ACORN obsession. Rep. Alan Grayson shows how this issue should be handled (are you watching, Rep. Welch?).

Talk about anything and everything.

FYI — From Judy at Central Command:

Bernie & Jim Hightower speaking together:

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and author Jim Hightower will discuss building a progressive grassroots movement to defeat the big money interests that dominate the economic and political life of our country.

FOR YOU FOLKS IN THE BANANA BELT:

Friday, October 30 @ 7:00 PM

Brattleboro Union High School

$10.00 Admission

AND FOR THE FOLKS IN THE HILLS OF CENTRAL VT:

Saturday, October 31 @ 10:30 AM

Montpelier High School

Comes w/Brunch!!!

$15.00 Admission

Jim Hightower, often described as America’s #1 Populist, is a national radio commentator and author of the recently released “Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow”. Tickets can be purchased on-line at www.bernie.org, or checks can be sent to Friends of Bernie Sanders, PO Box 391 Burlington, VT 05402. Tickets can also be purchased at the door.

Shumlin’s in:

Senate President Peter Shumlin says he’s planning a gubernatorial campaign that will make Vermont’s energy future one of his top priorities.

4 down 5 to go? Is Dunne next?

What do you think?

As of today, FAHC is currently treating at least one confirmed case of H1N1 flu. For anyone who just returned from Mars, the U.S. is suffering from an N1H1 pandemic or as FAHC refers to deadly pandemics: “the expected outbreak of flu this fall.”

With months to prepare, you would think that FAHC would be ready for its H1N1 patients.  You’d be wrong. Let’s just say they are off to a really bad start.  

One of the most basic precautions – as basic to H1N1 as, say, fill up the tank and put the key in the ignition is to driving a car – is to stalk up on masks.  Heck, even the hospital’s website says people entering rooms of H1N1 patients need to wear masks, gowns and gloves.  The mask required for an infectious disease such as H1N1 is the N95 mask.

All healthcare personnel who enter the rooms of patients in isolation with confirmed, suspected, or probable novel H1N1 influenza should wear a fit-tested disposable N95 respirator or better. Respiratory protection should be donned when entering a patient’s room.

True to this basic requirement, FAHC does require that health care workers and those dealing with the H1N1 virus must don an N95 mask. Problem is,FAHC is not so concerned about whether its health care workers are wearing a sterile N95 face mask before entering or after leaving isolation areas with H1N1 flu patients are kept.

Is FAHC experiencing a Katrina moment? We all remember when George Bush complained that no one could ever predict that a big hurricane might strike and the levies in New Orleans might breach. With months of predictions about the scope of the N1H1 pandemic, is FAHC prepared? Melinda “Mindy” Estes, CEO and her prescient infectious disease administrators seem to be blissfully unaware of what is hitting FAHC right now. And the problem is not a lack of resources, lack of beds (yet) lack of technical skill.  This is sheer incompetence by FAHC administrators who are cutting corners by ignoring the well documented safety needs of the community.

Does someone need to tell the CEO and her crackerjack staff what happens when the airborne H1N1 virus starts floating around the family members, patients, staff, patients, health care providers and anyone else unlucky enough to be standing around when the Doctor McSwine says “hey, hold this mask for me until I get back from lunch, I’ll need it again for this afternoon’s rounds.”

There’s more . . .

FAHC has a few of these N95 masks.  

Health care workers who are treating N1H1 patients are being fitted with “a” mask and that is the problem. FAHC isn’t prepared, as of October 5, 2009, to supply its workers with sufficient N95 masks.  

FAHC administrators were apparently on the ball enough to realize they needed to order the masks, which physicians, nurses and other health care officials warned them were critical. Unfortunately, no one responsible for patient, staff and community safety bothered to read the directions and make provisions so that enough masks would be available to the health care workers treating H1N1.

Because of this shortage, health care workers are being told by the FAHC administration that they can’t throw their disposable masks away because “there may not be another one to replace it” and they need to “reuse” the contaminated masks that they have already worn.

You read that correctly. Health care workers who are treating H1N1 flu in an isolation area of the hospital are specifically being told by the FAHC administration to “reuse” disposable masks. Feel safer?

So to recap, the U.S. is in the midst of the most widely publicized pandemic in U.S. history.  Luckily for Vermont, our State is late in the game receiving confirmed cases of the deadly N1H1 disease, and luckily for Vermonters, its hospitals had MONTHS to prepare. So why does FAHC not even have basic masks needed to treat N1H1 patients and to protect the public and its medical care staff? Anyone?  Anyone?  Mindy? Bueller? Anyone?  .  .  . .

Is this type of “Flu, what flu?” awareness by Mindy Estes’ crackerjack flu team any indication of what is in store for N1H1 patients at FAHC as Vermont moves from the outskirts of the pandemic into the mainstream?   Let’s hope not.

Earlier this month, our Republican State Auditor Tom Salmon said

Not surprisingling for someone being told by the right people that he’s gubentorial material, the RIGHT PEOPLE’s well handled auditor took back his statement.  In the Saint Albans Messenger, our Republican Auditor said:

I made the suggestion that the consequences of further inaction could be cutting the maximum benefit from $427 per month down to $300 per month to make the fund solvent. While this would not be my choice or the choice of most other public officials, this could be one of the outcomes if legislative leaders continue down the path they are on.

There are a couple of things happening here.  

First, the Republican Auditor, in the space of a few days, forgot that he advocated cutting workers insurance benefits and remembered (despite the written and recorded accounts of his testimony), and claimed instead that he was not an advocate of this insane policy.  At GMD, we are glad that our Republican Auditor has at least forgotten what he said last week and has remembered an approach that is far less ridiculous.

Second, Apparently one of the “right people” responsible for pulling his strings whacked him on the nose for that comment.  His reactionary handlers don’t necessarily oppose his position, they are just opposed to their puppet jetisoning his stupid filter along with his former party identification.

Mr. Salmon’s flip-flopping and backtracking is not the big problem. What is troubling is the total failure of Mr. Salmon, since he became a Republican-American, to understand the policy basics of unemployment insurance benefits.

At the outset, our Republican-American Auditor

   The good worthy keeps talking about “businesses” footing the bill.

   The fact is, unemployment insurance is paid by workers’ labor.  It is a built-in cost of employment, it is reflected in worker’s wages and it is the workers’ toil that generates the revenue to fund the INSURANCE in the first place.  This is “insurance” not welfare.  These workers have already paid for this benefit.

   The unemployed are the very people who paid for their unemployment insurance with their labor.  The unemployed are the ones who originally paid the unemployment insurance “premiums.” Had the dollars generated by workers’ productivity not been available to their employers for UI premiums, the employers would have otherwise been able to pay their workers higher wages and/or the employers could have had more people on the payroll in the first place.  UI insurance is not a “business tax,” it is a wage tax AND it is one that has ALREADY BEEN PAID!

   Cutting the insurance benefits that workers have already paid for and earned, after the fact, is like a health insurance company slashing your reimbursements after you have paid your premiums for years and are now suddenly sick and need to go to the hospital.

   Salmon’s argument shows a complete lack of understanding of the underlying economics and basic contractual philosophy underpinning the entire program

Time for a Friday end-of-week what is known and unknown about Lt. Governor Brian Hamlet “Lite Flight” Dubie.

First the KNOWNS:

Lite Flight has consulted with at least two (2) out of state political consulting firms to plot strategy for a gubernatorial campaign.

Lite Flight, despite being caught flat-footed by Jim Douglas’s wise read of a near impossible reelection year, has been receiving significant pressure to run for Governor.

Lite Flight makes a really good living right now as a full time private citizen pilot leveraging his taxpayer funded flight training and only part time Lt. Governor.  As Governor, he will need to take a big pay cut.  He does not relish this scenario (GMD, for the record, doesn’t actually blame the guy on this front. Seriously, who wants to work five times harder than they are currently clocking for the privilege of a 60% more/less pay cut?)

Also: Dubie has, of course, been in contact with national R’s who have made it clear they would like him to be their guy.

More knowns, unknowns and unknown unknowns not now knowable, below:

KNOWN UNKOWNS  There are two camps working the strings of the GOP primary nomination right now.

Camp one revolves around a few party leaders and social big government conservatives who want the State involved with everyone’s personal lives. They want an empty suit to dress their radical social agenda and Lite Flight is their man.

Camp two revolves around a collection of conservatives who are more concerned about the typical GOP agenda. For them, it is all about class warfare, low wage jobs, enabling corporate give-a-ways (VT Yankee/Walmart/Developers) and otherwise mortgaging Vermont’s future to score a short term gain at everyone else’s expense. This camp is also looking for an empty suit to dress up an ugly continuation of their failed Douglas-style economic policies. However, the difference here is that Camp Two is pressuring Dubie NOT to run.  This camp knows that Dubie can’t win and they have been “grooming” (not that you’d notice) Tom Salmon to run for them.  Tom Salmon says “I could be Governor tomorrow if I had the right people behind me.” What the good young man doesn’t realize is that the “right people” who’ve been whispering in his ear are some of the same people who have already pegged him for an empty suit puppet whose best qualification is that he will loyally carry water for those same “right people.”

We know about the two camps grooming/pressuring (pressing?) their suits.  It is unknown whose suit will be coming off the rack in the next few days.

KNOWNING the UNKNOWNS

Right now, Camp One has the upper hand.

Dubie wants to be Governor even if he doesn’t want to campaign for the job, give up his current cushy lifestyle, take the paycut, or quadruple his workload.

What is unknown is whether Lite Flight is going to make the leap and whether it will come before the middle of next week.

As of this posting, it is looking like Tom Salmon or Brian Dubie will be running for Governor before the end of the first week of October. Dubie’s awkward reticence would almost certainly mean “I’m out” for any other politician. But the ground work he has already laid, people pressuring him, the folks he has already brought in to sketch out a campaign, as well as those who are doing early work for him, all point to Dubie running for Governor.  

UNKNOWN UNKOWNS

To be discussed in the comments —

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By now, you probably have read that last week the Winooski school district’s thought-police enforced their their own democracy-repression agenda on taxpayer’s schoolchildren. Pretty shitty behavior for bureaucrats under any circumstances. This turns out to be worse.  The Board Members kicked the children’s President out of the classroom until those same Board Members could determine whether the President supported the Board Members’ subjective, individual political agendas. That crosses the line to subversive.

From Board correspondence, it looks like the flat-earthers running the Winooski School Board are a more unhinged, more inherently anti-democracy then first reported.

Out of step.  The Winooski School Board, as far as we know, is the ONLY school board in the State of Vermont to order its school superintendent to enforce total censorship of a speech by a sitting U.S. President.

Paranoid.  According to public documents circulated by School Board members and released to GMD, the Winooski School Board is just plain paranoid as well as unpatriotic. Through its Chief Politburo henchman, James Ticehurst, the School Board last week told schools that the President’s address to American students may not be seen by “the students until it should first be reviewed by the board for content.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one.) By the high command of the school board, no teacher may “air the President’s speech to the students on Tuesday.”

Ticehurst also wrote that no student may see his or her President’s speech, directed to America’s students, unless he and other Board Members reviewed the content of President Obama’s speech and “approved it for distribution to the student population.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one, or MORE!)

James Ticehurst thinks that Barack Obama needs to go through him first, for his “approval,” before Winooski students can have their President available for discussion, leadership, inspiration or uncensored.   What a paranoid asshole.

Blessed by birthright, Lil’ Tom has well-fared.

But for prime time, he’s seemed ill-prepared.

With Jim’s other good boys,

He’s tried hard to make noise

But in the end, turns out nobody cared.

Jim Douglas will not run for reelection.

WHY – No one likes to end their political career with a concession speech on a Tuesday evening in November. Particularly after spending almost four decades in public life. Douglas has already spent thousands of the dollars he’d raised for a re-election effort on polling this year, and he obviously did not like what those polls told him.

WHY ANNOUNCE NOW — If he did not, whichever Republican loses to Deb Markowitz or Doug Racine (or possibly another Democrat for that matter) will complain that Jim Douglas did not give the GOP enough time to ramp up a campaign.  Now Mr. Douglas has insulated himself from criticism from whichever Republican looses the race next November.

Mr. Douglas had extremely low reelect numbers going into last year’s election. He was reelected because he was effectively unchallenged, not because his leadership – such that it is – had been reaffirmed by voters.

 The Symington campaign (3+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

   mataliandy, kestrel9000, itzik shpitzik

was the absolute worst campaign I have ever witnessed. It somehow managed to be awful without being in the least bit amusing; that is hard to pull off.

The weak in courage is strong in cunning-William Blake

by beltane on Thu Aug 27, 2009 at 11:54:26 AM EDT

We can’t afford it. There is no excuse for anything less than a decisive victory this time.

Open Thread starts now.  Let’s hear it.

Vermont Talk Open Thread

Today’s question:  Are you the “right person?”

Via Ross Sneyd:  From an interview on VPR’s Vermont Edition, re-presented by way of reporter Sneyd, Vermont Auditor of Accounts Thomas M. Salmon CPA humbly noted that “I could be governor tomorrow with the right people around me. But my message has always been: New thinking required.”

Cool!

It’s good to know that we have someone who can be Governor “Tomorrow.”

Maybe if the Auditor decides he is too busy to be Governor this week, he can share the names of the Right People with Senators Bartlett or Racine or Secretary Markowitz. I’m sure they could put the Right People to good use. Just imagine, Mr. Salmon has been hoarding the secret to ousting Jim Douglas all this time?  Who knew!

For those of you who are not familiar with Governor in waiting Salmon, you can visit his website welcome page where he’ll tell you, from a message dated Feb. ’07, that “we will work to improve the web site in the next few months, please let me know your thoughts and suggestions.”  Since this is the same message that has been up there for two and a half years, he could probably use a few of the “right people” contacting him.

This is an OPEN THREAD.

Please comment on any and all topics. What’s on your mind today?

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