It turns out that the savings and other beneficial outcomes promised by the administration if they are allowed to cap and time-limit Reach-Up benefits might not be all they first appear.

Who says so? Would you believe a report put out by the administration a year ago?

Here's a press release from my colleagues Chris Curtis; Sheila Reed from Voices for Vermont's Children; and Karen Lafayette from the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council addressing the proposals for Reach-Up. It's kind of long, but it's worth reading the whole thing.

ADMINISTRATION REPORT CONTRADICTS PROPOSED CAP ON REACH UP BENEFITS

Tomorrow at the State House there is an easily overlooked hearing that deserves some attention.

One of the committees that meets all year long is a joint committee called the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules. It meets to review proposed regulations from state agencies, and is the last step before a regulation becomes final and goes into effect, and the job of this committee is to evaluate whether proposed regulations comply with the intent of legislature in passing the law on which the regulation is based. Usually it's attended by someone from the agency and a handful of advocates either supporting or opposing the regulation, but, as I say, most of what they do doesn't get much public notice.

One of the rules up for review tomorrow is a proposal to include newspaper carriers in the protection of the unemployment compensation system. 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.)

There are a couple of things of interest about this regulation. First, it's based on a change to the unemployment statute that was adopted way back in 2006. Why, you might ask, are they just getting around to making regulations now? Well, back when this particular change was passed, a change that exempted door to door sales people from unemployment coverage, the Douglas administration informally decided that they would consider that newspaper delivery people would be included in this exemption, regardless of the fact that their job is delivering newspapers, not door to door sales.

The current administration, headed by Governor Shumlin and Labor Departent Commissioner Annie Noonan, has reviewed this policy (it was never publicly adopted as a regulation) and decided that newspaper carriers aren't in the door to door sales business but the newspaper delivery business, so it's only fair to cover these people in the unemployment system. It's about time.

The second very interesting aspect to this hearing is the lineup of supporters and opponents of the legislation.  

As you might expect, most of the witnesses against the rule are newspaper publishers. After all, they make their money by having people deliver newspapers, and if those employees are covered by unemployment the newspapers will have to pay the unemployment tax and might wind up being dinged for some unemployment benefits.

Testifying in favor of the regulation are Michael Sirotkin representing organized labor and Warren Kitzmiller, who was chair of the House Commerce Committee when the law was passed.

Who's the wild card here? Someone identified as  “Vincent Illuzzi, Resident, Derby”. You know, the lifelong Republican who has been praised for his good relations with and support for the working man, the little guy against the bosses.

Vince is testifying against this rule, against the little guy, and in favor of what the bosses want. He must be doing it on his own time, because his paying job right now is lobbying for the VSEA.

 We know that Illuzzi has had good relations with organized labor, and over the years he has run for office with the endorsement, if not the active support, of some of Vermont's biggest unions. Still, in these pages we have seriously questioned VSEA's judgment in hiring someone whose pro-worker bona fides may not be all they seem. (See our November 29, 2012 diary “Is VSEA Crazy?“)

Maybe he'll surprise us, although I know he didn't support the regulation in its progress through the Department of Labor. You have to wonder, though, what one of the lobbyists for one of our biggest unions is doing siding with the bosses and against the workers. 

UPDATE: I just came across an article from just about a year ago talking about this same gun manufacturer and quoting the Komen people as saying they had nothing to do with them.  Good news. I hope they can come up with a copy of a cease and desist letter, since they seem to enjoy handing them out pretty liberally to charities they don't like.

Just a quick note. After earlier reports to the contrary, posts later today have indicated that the Susan G. Komen Foundation had nothing to do with the pink gun with which a three-year-old boy, apparently thinking it was a toy, shot himself last week.

According to The Atlantic, a company called Discount Gun Sales had advertised a Komen tie-in for a pink gun they were selling. The Komen Foundation is maintaining that it never had anything to do with the gun promotion and never received any funds, as the ad had promised.

I hope this is true. After their problems last year with Planned Parenthood it would be unconscionable for them to be doing something like this. On the other hand, after their problems with Planned Parenthood it would also be inconceivable for the public to accept the Komen statements at face value. If they're smart, or at least smarter than they were a year ago, they will throw open their files and release everything they have that proves they had nothing to do with the pink gun promotion, and I hope they do exactly that.

Ed Koch has died at age 88 and after all his changes hardly anyone will remember when he was a liberal congressman from the Silk Stocking District in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but I have a particular reason to recall it.

In the late 1960's Koch gained a lot of prominence as an opponent of the Vietnam War. Because my high school, Regis, was in his district, he came to speak at our school one day. I think it was probably the spring of 1970, and many of us were demonstrating and organizing against the war so we were pretty excited about hearing him speak.

From conversations I've had since his death I know that I was not the only member of the audience to be bitterly disappointed with his speech. It's over forty years ago, but I remember clearly that literally the only thing he objected to about the war was the negative impact it had on the Americans who were being sent to die there. Nothing about American imperialism, nothing about killing the Vietnamese, nothing about My Lai, although Seymour Hersh had broken the story the previous November. 

No, In Koch's view the biggest problem, the only problem he chose to talk about, was that the war was bad because it was bad for Americans. This is not to say that the effect of the war on Americans was irrelevant, but it was not by any means the most important reason to oppose the war.

As you know, Koch went on to follow his Silk Stocking District predecessor, John Lindsay, to the mayorship. Many people will remember his move to the Right, his involvement with corrupt officials, or his failure to respond to the AIDS crisis, but what will always stick in my mind is how he could be wrong about being right about Vietnam. 

I don't know about you, but I'd have to say it's Cory Booker's body man.

Look at the last few months.

In April, Booker ran into a burning house and rescued a woman trapped inside. 

 Last week Booker rescued a freezing dog and yelled at the owner for leaving the dog out in the cold.

If I were working for the mayor I would be hoping he doesn't spot a beached whale: how far out to the ocean do you think he'd swim towing a whale? 

You've probably heard that Tom Harkin has announced that he will not be running for reelection to the Senate in 2014. 

You may think of him as a reliably liberal and pro-union voice in the Senate, and you'd be right. What you might be less aware of is that he's also one of the best friends of quacks, health scammers, and the antiscientific mindset in Congress.

He was one of the main sponsors of the law that in 1994 removed all regulation for dietary supplements sold across the country.  Among other things, what this law does is allow manufacturers to avoid almost all regulation and testing for their products while using code words to pretend that they will cure health conditions (e.g. “promotes normal cholesterol levels”, “slow down the doubling time of your PSA (male prostate) levels when cancer is present”). 

Does this make a difference to people? Well, when a dietary supplement called ephedra was killing people that would seem to be kind of important, wouldn't it?

 But that's not all. Harkin was also behind a measure to force the federal government to spend money on the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  In 1992 Harkin slipped a line in the report accompanying the NIH appropriations bill that created the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine with $1 million in seed money. (Bonus question: What do they call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine.)

And in 2009 Harkin was able to slip a provision into the Affordable Care Act allowing for “alternative practitioners to be  treated as health care workers. This despite the fact that the claims of “therapeutic touch” have been soundly disproven and exposed as fraudulent.

 I kind of like Tom Harkin, but I won't miss Senator Woo.

Did you see this tiny story from today's Free Press?

 Police say Trooper Eric Jollymore was driving south on Interstate 91 in Hartford when he lost control on a curve in icy conditions at about 2 a.m. Friday. The vehicle exited the highway, struck a rock and landed on its roof.

Given the fact that the Staties have been going ticket-crazy in recent winters, making it clear that they will ticket anyone who loses control and goes off the road, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Did Trooper Jollymore get a ticket for driving too fast for conditions? 

I, for one, am sorry and disappointed that Philip Baruth has withdrawn his gun control bill. I don't know if I would have supported every provision, but shouting him down because a small segment of society doesn't like what he has to say doesn't seem like a good way to do things. (Technically I don't know if it's even possible to “withdraw” a bill, but if the only sponsor withdraws his support and says he doesn't want the Senate to take it up that's pretty much the same thing.)

 Still, some substantive debate is called for right now, and I don't think it's going to happen. Knowing that it's not going anywhere in the Legislature doesn't stop me from throwing out a couple of ideas and questions that have been rolling around in my brain for the last month or so.

First off, I don't take it as a fixed, settled principle that the Second Amendment creates or was intended to create an individual right to own firearms. Nobody, almost literally nobody, thought that until the Supremes decided that it does a few years ago. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, but you have to be suspicious when it's thugs like Scalia, Alito, and Thomas who decide they've discovered a new individual right in the Constitution. As far as I know, it's the only individual right they think the Constitution actually protects.

Like I say, suspicious.  After all, these are some of the same guys who decided Bush v. Gore on a one-time-only, never mention this again application of the Equal Protection Clause that applies only when necessary to keep a Democrat out of the White House. Suspicious.

Second, we have the fact that even the most extreme of gun rights people seem to accept the principle that some level of restriction on gun ownership is permissible under the Second Amendment, but I have never seen a single principled basis by which they think the Second Amendment would allow for any lines to be drawn.

Lawyers and courts like to look for limiting principles and you just can't find them in this debate. Once they say that “shall not be infringed” means what they think it says you can wait all day for them to say why the Constitution allows them to have an AR-15 with a thirty-round magazine but not a .50 caliber machine gun, a bazooka, a Stinger missile, or a rocket-propelled grenade launcer. Forget tanks and thermonuclear devices, how do they know that the Framers intended the line to be drawn precisely where they want it and nowhere else?

Isn't that worth discussing? 

And beyond that, if the Constitution does allow for lines to be drawn, isn't it legitimate to have a discussion not just about what is permissible but what makes good sense, and what is needed to protect the public?

Or how about this one: we hear over and over that there are only a few hundred murders committed each year with rifles and shotguns, and the thousands more are committed with handguns. Why does this lead to the conclusion, “Therefore, do nothing”? Doesn't that raise the obvious question that handguns are what we should really be looking at and regulating? If not, why not, especially since, except in few circumstances, the idea that your handgun is going to protect you from the scary stranger or the scarier jack-booted thug is mostly a pipe dream?

And if we have the discussion, could we get the people on both sides to focus on the substance? For instance, if you are in favor of gun rights, saying, “It's not a clip, it's a magazine” is not an actual response to a question about how many bullets a person should be allowed to load into a gun at one time. Mocking the term “assault weapon” as an aesthetic concept is not a substantive response to the question of whether there are some weapons that by their design, concealability, portability, or ability to be modified to be full-auto that are too dangerous to be out in public.

And if your response to magazine limits is that it means that your hobby of shooting at targets isn't as much fun if you have to change magazines more often, explain to me how having fun while you engage in your hobby is an important constitutional principle.

This is an area where I would like to see some more law enforcement. Isn't it obvious that every time someone who is prohibited by law from purchasing a firearm tries to do that he or she has committed the crime of attempted illegal possession of a firearm? Why aren't they prosecuted?

And can't we at least eliminate the gun show loophole? You know, the one that 92% of your fellow Americans support? Would it be okay to do that in Vermont even if Congress won't do it?

I think all of these questions and a whole lot more are legitimate questions for debate, but now we're not going to have that debate, at least not here. 

Maybe my title is all wrong. Maybe we were never going to have a good discussion, no matter what else happened. 

The wrong side of history looks like.

It's been a couple of days, and I continue to think that President Obama's second inauguration speech was as inspirational as the first, although in different ways.

The first was inspirational in large part because it actually happened, and we still had that element this year. You couldn't watch the television coverage without seeing interviews of black people who just had to be there because they never imagined that in their lifetime they would be watching the inauguration of a president who looked like them. It's impossible to overstate the power.

Still, to me, the most inspiring part of the speech, the part that really demonstrated how far we and the president have come, was when he spoke of the heroes of Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall in the same sentence, and with the same honor.

Again, even after all the changes we've seen in recent decades, for the president to publicly recognize that the struggle for women's rights, for civil rights for racial minorities, and for equal rights for gays and lesbians are the same struggle, and it is a struggle that we all share and must honor is a huge step. In years to come, this will be what people remember of the speech.

And here's where the wrong side of history comes in. A sidelight of this story is that President Obama had originally invited a minister named Louie Giglio to give the benediction only to have it come out that Giglio had written about the evils of homosexuality and gay marriage, saying that legalizing gay marriage would risk “absolutely undermining the whole order of our society”, and asked his listeners to “lovingly but firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” of gay activists.

After some negative reactions to his selection, recalling the choice of Rick Warren to speak at the 2009 inauguration, Giglio withdrew from the ceremony.

Oh, you should have heard the right-wing Christians scream! Or should I say whine?

A post in the online publication “Christian Post” refers to the withdrawal as the result of the power of “Tolerance Tyrants,” and an evangelical blogger who apparently took an OD of his umbrage-enhancing substances (doesn't anyone screen these guys?) said, apparently without a hint of irony,

“January 21, 2013 may go down in history, as the day Americans lost their most important freedom—their freedom of conscience.”

As I say, this is the sound of people witnessing their power over mainstreamm society slipping away.

Monday's events showed where American society is going. The struggle isn't over, not by any means, but we can look forward to the time when the anti-gay forces will be sitting around with the “South's gonna rise again” crowd.

And they won't be missed. 

Congratulations to Chittendn County Senator and fellow blogger Philip “Phil” Baruth. 

Paul Heintz at Seven Days is reporting that this morning Philip was elected Senate Majority Leader by his fellow Democrats.  

Hometown boy makes good, going from a simple novelist and UVM prof to a VPR commentator and blogger, a State Senator, and now this.

 We've supported Philip's political rise over the years, and I can say that I'm glad he'll be in this leadership position.