I came across a Facebook group I'd never seen or heard of before yesterday. It's called Transform Tobacco, although I really can't tell what they think they're transforming, because it's not hard to figure out that it's an industry front group supported by R.J. Reynolds and the group used to be called nocigtax.com.

Okay, fair enough, they have the right to do what they want to oppose taxes on their industry, and that's exactly what they're doing. Here's what they say on their page:

 Vermont tobacco consumers & retailers: Contact your legislators in the House and the Senate and tell them that raising tobacco taxes is a bad idea!

As you might guess, almost all the comments I've seen on the site are very hostile to their message, arguing that cigarette taxes should be higher, many arguing that cigarettes should actually be illegal, and so forth. I haven't seen many comments pointing out the stark fact that tobacco companies make money by making their customers sick and eventually killing them, which is probably a tribute to the politeness of internet users.

I did notice one guy, apparently an actual human being, defending the tobacco companies. His name is allegedly Andrew Glover, and his Facebook profile indicates that he lives in Barre. I just had to wonder: what kind of person supports tobacco companies? Is this really his honest view?

Here's what I found out. After following a couple of links I found that he apparently joined Facebook in 2007 but may not have actually posted anything until 2013. And why is he all of a sudden posting in support of the cancer industry? (Sorry, I mean the “cancer-COPD-heart disease industry”.)

You guessed it. It turns out that he's  the Director of Marketing at Hibbert & McGee Wholesales, a regional candy, tobacco, grocery and sundries distributor.

Way to astroturf, RJR and Andrew! 

You really should listen to VPR's Vermont Edition every day. Jane Lindholm and the rest of the Vermont Edition staff consistently find interesting, timely, and important stories and present them with knowledgeable and involved guests. The show is one of the best additions to VPR's news coverage in the last few years.

Today's broadcast is an important one because they will be talking about what it takes to help people get out of poverty.

This is especially important today because we're in the legislative end game of a session in which the administration has been trying to cap and limit public assistance even for families who have not been able to find employment and become self-supporting. In fact, as VtDigger reported last week, the administration wants to not only limit benefits, but also to cut the jobs of people who are supposed to be helping get families off the welfare rolls.

Does this make sense to you? Not to me either. 

When you listen today you might want to call in at (800)639-2211 and tell the listeners what you think of the idea of time limiting benefits while slashing efforts to help people out of poverty. 

I generally don't read the Times Argus, but I read it today because they have a story about my son and his new book.

 Still, imagine my surprise when I saw their lead editorial today singing the praises of Henry Kissinger.

It's actually a note about a Kissinger article in The Atlantic, which in the words of the Times Argus, is “a provocative article for The Atlantic describing the greatness of Henry Kissinger as a statesman,” and here's the core of the argument:

Kaplan reviews other Kissinger projects, including intervention leading to the rise of Pinochet in Chile and the withdrawal of support from Ethiopia by the Carter administration, which led to immense suffering in the Horn of Africa.

 Should I repeat that phrase? “The greatness of Henry Kissinger as a statesman”.

I'm not sure what your definition of “statesman” is, but in my view it is not precisely the same as a mass murderer, engineer of coups against democratically elected officials, of an architect of genocide.

For some reason there is always a certain mindset that to be taken seriously in discussions of foreign policy one must always be prepared to shed the blood of the darker races. I think it's supposed to stand for “realism”. Never mind that the history of genocide and support for dictators that the United States has been guilty of has made us demonstrably weaker and more vulnerable, it's all for the good of maintaining balance in Kissinger's bipolar view of the world.

Shame on you, Times Argus. 

This is a quick update on the unemployment that the conservatives in the Senate were pushing to screw newspaper delivery drivers.

The bill came on the floor Tuesday and the first move was a proposal to amend the amendment to do something that would directly help newspaper publishers without hurting the workers. Democratic Senator Mark MacDonald proposed an amendment that would protect the newspapers by not charging their experience rating for claims made by delivery drivers. The experience rating is based on how many claims are paid on account of a particular employer's workers, and it can raise the tax rate the employer pays. Thus, by insulating the newspapers from taking an experience rating hit the amendment protected them against their claim that unemployment payments would put them under.

That amendment failed, and that brought back the original amendment. Even though, as I pointed out Monday, the Democrats and Progressives have an overwhelming majority in the Senate, the Republicans and enough Democrats voted with the bosses to support the amendment.

The honor roll of senators who supported the workers in this fight is:

 Ashe, Baruth, Cummings, Fox, Lyons, MacDonald, McCormack, Pollina, White, Zuckerman.

And the anti-worker caucus:

 Ayer, Benning, Campbell, Collins, Doyle, Flory, French, Galbraith, Hartwell, Kitchel, Mazza, Mullin, Nitka, Rodgers, Sears, Snelling, Starr, Westman. (Bold for the Democrats who voted to exclude newspaper delivery drivers from unemployment.)

Kind of makes you wonder what a majority's for, doesn't it? 

Well, it's the bosses against the workers in the State Senate again tomorrow, and you would think it would be a walkover, right?

After all, the Democrats and Progressives have a 23-7 lead in the upper chamber, which should guarantee their ability to drive the agenda. That, in turn, should mean that where the issue is a very stark bosses vs. workers battle, the workers should come out on top, right?

What will happen tomorrow, though, is still undecided. The issue, once again, is the treatment of the people the newspapers hire to deliver their papers door to door. Over the winter we saw the newspapers mass their efforts to try to block a rule that would make the newspaper carriers eligible for unemployment benefits. As we reported here in February, the Department of Labor had proposed a rule to implement a law passed by the Legislature way back in 2006 to exempt certain sales people from unemployment as independent contractors, but the Douglas administration had ideas of its own and issued an internal policy applying the exemption to newspaper carriers and denying them the protection of unemployment benefits. After seven years and a change of administration organized labor found out about the Douglas administration's secret policy, the Department of Labor looked into it, and a rule was proposed to reverse the exemption.

What's happening tomorrow is that some Republicans and a few of the most conservative Democratic Senators are pushing a bill on the floor of the Senate to enshrine the newspaper carrier exemption in law. It's a proposed amendment to H. 169 and the sponsors are Senators  Mullin, Benning, Flory, Galbraith, Mazza, McAllister, Sears, Starr, Snelling, and Westman, and they're trying once again to push through an exemption they couldn't get through the House in 2006.

  You probably realize that newspapers generally aren't delivered by the iconic paperboy anymore, that eager youth pedaling his bike up and down the lanes, tossing each day's paper on the doorsteps of his neighbors. No, newspapers are now mostly delivered by adults driving motor routes, getting up at ungodly hours, driving for miles in their broken-down cars for meager pay. (As you might guess, this is not exactly a plum job; I've never known anyone who had another option who has done this for a living.)

 I encourage you to hop over to Vermont Digger and read their story. More importantly, read the comments from the hardworking men and women who actually have to do this work and see what it's like to try to scrape together a living driving the daily paper all to hell and gone.

 There are undoubtedly newspaper delivery drivers in every county of the state, and almost every town. I don't think there are any figures of who many in total, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the hundreds. All thrown under the bus if this amendment passes. Low-wage workers all over Vermont lose out if the amendment passes.

And who benefits? A handful of newspaper publishers, not least of whom is John Mitchell, the publisher of the Times Argus and Rutland Herald, who has been stalking the halls of the State House all session  to drum up support for his amendment.

The amendment has only ten sponsors, so that's not enough to pass it without a major pickup. Legislators listen to phone calls, so if you think that the Vermont Senat should not be dishing out favors to business owners at the expense of low-wage workers, let your Senators know about it.

If you think newspaper delivery drivers should have the protection of unemployment compensation, call the Sergeant at Arms and ask them to leave a message for your senators to vote NO on the newspaper carrier amendment to H. 169. That number is 828-2228 and they'll be glad to take your message. 

Even in a legislative session where he's been taking heavy fire, this was an unusual week for Governor Shumlin.

By this point he must be used to the challenges coming from his left. Honestly, I don't think I've talked to a single Democrat who supports his proposals to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit and cap Reach-Up benefits.

It's not surprising, is it? After all, we Democrats define ourselves, among other things, by how we can frame compassionate ideas that recognize the humanity and struggles of the most vulnerable in our society, and that provide an effective means to get out of poverty and to live a decent existence.

This is why Democrats have been fighting so hard to defend both Reach-Up and the EITC. We support the increased child care support that the Reach-Up cuts are supposed to be going for, but it just doesn't make sense to take that money out of the pockets of other working poor and middle-class Vermonters. 

This is why you get things like this. The Caledonia County Democratic Committee has just adopted resolutions opposing both of these cuts.

The Caledonia County Democratic Committee supports recommendations to increase the Child Care Financial Assistance Program (CCFAP) that assists low-income families' access to quality childcare. We reject the Shumlin Adminstration's proposal for the Earned Income Tax Credit to be the funding source.

And:

The Caledonia County Democratic Committee opposes the Shumlin Administration's proposal (and the House Human Services Committee endorsement) for terminating welfare benefits for families who have been on the Reach-Up program for five years or longer.

 Is this a big deal? In my opinion, yes. I've been involved in county and state Democratic politics for years, and I don't think I can ever remember a county committee adopting a resolution opposing the policies of a governor of our own party before. I don't doubt that it's happened, but it's rare.

What happened Thursday, though, is even a bit stranger, and it comes to you straight from the business section of the Burlington Free Press. 

By now we've gotten used to Vermont Democrats calling out the governor and his inner circle. I haven't personally heard any calls for a primary challenge yet, but if things keep going in this direction it is easy to imagine.

So the question I ask is whether the governor's challenges to solid Democratic positions are buying him support from the Right, and today's evidence seems to say no.

Today UVM economist Art Woolf published an opinion piece in the Free Press business section on guess what? The EITC! And surprisingly, since you will pretty much never see Woolf siding with the left wing of the Democratic Party on anything, he does just that here.

Here's what he says about the EITC:

The EITC is an extremely effective and efficient anti-poverty tool. It rewards work, adds to a family’s labor income and is inexpensive to administer.

  . . .

The major benefit of the EITC is that the person who receives the check decides what the family’s greatest needs are and can prioritize them, whether it’s food, housing, health care, child care, education, clothing or anything else. Nearly all other anti-poverty resources are specifically targeted, with someone, somewhere, deciding what the best uses of the funds are. The EITC makes the assumption that the best judge of anyone’s needs is that person.

That is, low-income workers are just like anyone else.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is basically a Republican idea. At the federal level it grew out of Richard Nixon's proposal for a negative income tax, and it really works well at what it's supposed to do: help guarantee that someone who works for a living will not be left in povery despite all their efforts. Like everyone who has studied it, Woolf agrees that it is an effective and efficient program.

Still, if the governor's proposals aren't getting support from the left, and they aren't getting support from the right, where is he going to get the votes to push his plans through? 

 Like I said, strange week for the governor.

In light of the defeat of the background check bill yesterday (or, in light of its inevitable rejection by the Republicans in the House, its premature defeat), it’s worth thinking about what actually happened.

And why? Because I can already hear people saying that this is one more sign that in their view the Democratic Party is useless, Democrats lack spine, Democrats won’t fight for anything.

So let’s be clear. This was not a failure of the Democrats in the Senate, this was a Republican filibuster.

Sure, there were conservative Democrats who voted to support the filibuster, but even if all of them had voted to end debate, the Republicans had enough votes to maintain the filibuster and block the legislation, even though the bill had the support of a majority of the Senate.

Ii have no problem criticizing Democrats when it’s deserved, and I have great contempt for the Democrats who voted with the Republicans yesterday, but they’re not who killed the bill. It was the Republicans.

If you’ve been following the Taser issue, and it’s been pretty important to us here at GMD, you will want to be at the State House tonight.

Ever since Macadam Mason was killed with a Taser last summer mental health and other advocates have been calling for either abandonment or strict controls on Taser use statewide.

Tonight’s public hearing is your chance to be heard.

The House Committee on Government Operations will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, April 17th from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM as part of its consideration of H.225, An act relating to a statewide policy on the use of and training requirements for electronic control devices (also known as tasers).

As introduced, H.225 would limit the circumstances of their use to situations warranting deadly force or involving imminent risk of death through self harm.

Tasers are increasingly being used on Vermont citizens. H.225 was introduced after Thetford resident Macadam (Lee) Mason was fatally shot in the chest with a taser by the Vermont State Police. The medical examiner ruled Mason’s death from cardiac arrest was caused by the taser’s electrical charge.

Read H.225 as introduced:

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/doc…

Written comments can be submitted until April 23rd.

Every week there is another story, or a full week of stories, about the administration's wrong-headed proposals to cut benefits and increase taxes on poor and working poor people in Vermont. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of my colleague Chris Curtis and other family and anti-poverty advocates, the advocates, ordinary people, and even the legislators are standing to oppose those cuts.

For instance, last week the Senate Human Services Committee voted to oppose the Reach-Up cuts the administration has proposed, but the administration isn't taking it lying down.

I have to ask, though, how some ordinarily smart, politically sophisticated people can so consistently hit the wrong note as they make and attempt to justify their proposals.

For instance, here's Dave Yacavone, quoted at Vermont Digger:

 “If something is a good policy and is going to help children and poor Vermonters, process for me does not trump the substance of the policy,” he said.

. . .

 The Senate Health and Welfare’s recommendation, Yacovone said, “is really clinging to approaches that haven’t been working. There is a thin line between being compassionate and enabling people.”

 Do they not realize that hardly anyone outside of the administration agrees that what they are proposing is "a good policy and is going to help children and poor Vermonters"?

 

Or another way to ask the question is, do they not realize that they are losing the PR war, and every time they try to take their case to the public they’re making it worse?

If they want to push their misguided policy they can go ahead and do it, obviously. They’re wrong to do it, but that’s their right. Still, I think they’d be more effective if they would just keep their heads down, stay away from the cameras and microphones, give their detailed, technical rationale in the committee rooms, and stop saying obnoxious* things to the public.

Of course, every time they open their mouths they hurt their case, so I’m not really complaining.

Edited to make the diary a little less, er dickish.