Do you remember Art Linkletter? I sure do. During the summers when I was a kid I would watch Art Linkletter's House Party with my grandmother pretty much every afternoon. One of the features was Art's “Kids Say the Darndest Things”, a segment where he would interview little kids–thousands of them over the years–to share the amusement that their naive, comical insights would provide.

Today we have Vermont's own version, the Secretary of State's Statewide Candidate Information Publication. Not every statewide candidate posted anything, but there are some pretty wacky comments. I won't post everything, but here are a couple.

Cris Ericson: (U.S. Senate and Governor)

Cris Ericson is still looking for investors for her movie script, “Champ the Lake Champlain Monster”, a movie about pirates who come to Vermont and our favorite Vermont lake creature, Champ.

  Karen Kerin (Attorney General):

I will work to have our statutes printed in the books without the annotations or court decisions that are not law. It is inappropriate to include what lawyers call case law, which they and judges cite promiscuously as a substitute for scholarship. Such material may have some minor advisory value, but it does not rise to the level of statutory law. The book(s), which every lawyer owns, gives an unfair advantage to lawyers and deprives persons representing themselves of fairness.

 I'm not sure which is more out there, the Champ movie or the idea that our legal system is going to ditch the idea of precedent that has served us for centuries.

Every other year, Democrats in Washington County bemoan the fact that our liberal county is represented by two Republicans and one Democrat, and we doubly bemoan the seeming invulnerability of Bill Doyle, who has served in the Senate since 1969.

 This year, things appear to be about to change. For one thing, after years of urging, Anthony Pollina entered the Democratic primary and is now one of the three Democratic nominees, and most observers consider him a strong favorite to pick up the seat being vacated by Phil Scott.

But Doyle? Is he really vulnerable? Last week's campaign finance reports show a strong surge for Donny Osman, suggesting that this may the year for a Democratic sweep.  The reports show that in the last reporting period Osman raised $15,140.00, more than all the other candidates combined, and overall has raised almost double what the next most successful fundraiser, Anthony Pollina, has raised. Osman has also reported the most individual contributions.

Doyle reported zero, which means he either just missed the deadline or did nothing–no contributions, no expenditures, nothing. You have to wonder: if he's not doing anything but showing up when a forum is held, but doing no materials, no media, no nothing, how seriously is he taking this contest? Long considered invincible, can we really assume that any more?

Money isn't everything, but Donny Osman has widely been considered the longest shot to pick up a Democratic seat. His success in fundraising, both in dollar amounts and in number of contributors, suggests a surge in momentum that could carry Osman to victory in November.

It's long past time to stop saying Bill Doyle is unbeatable. He's beatable, just like every other politician.

How are we going to beat him? By voting for the three Democratic candidates. By telling our friends to vote for the three Democrats. By not saying we'll accept Bill Doyle because we think he was the guy who put Ceres up on top of the dome or something. We win this the wame way we win every other race: hard work, organization, and votes.  

The money helps.

Sometimes we feel a little lonely around here, thinking, “Doesn't anyone else see what we're seeing?” Today, someone else sees it. The title of this morning's Burlington Free Press editorial speaks for itself: “Regulator's partisanship chips away at credibility”.

I could quibble, pointing out that Dave O'Brien didn't have much credibility to begin with, but the key is that the whole world is now seeing that Dave O'Brien's loyalties are to the Douglas/Dubie administration and their wealthy friends, and not with the people of Vermont. Here's a sampling:

Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien's decision to inject himself into electoral politics strains his integrity as a state regulator who will pursue the public interest free of partisan prejudices.

To dismiss legitimate concerns about a radiation leak at Vermont Yankee with a “It's how many days from Election Day?” shows a lack of respect for those who treat problems at the nuclear power plant with the seriousness they deserve, and are working hard to ensure the safety of Vermonters.

You should read the whole editorial. I'll just say that I'm very pleased that one of our leading daily newspapers is saying what we've been saying all along: We need someone who will be an independent defender of the health and safety of all Vermonters.

I don't do this very often, but because the issue is so important I'm bumping and updating a diary I did two years ago talking about why we need to keep Sally Fox in the State Senate.

 To supplement my points below, I want to talk about how hard Sally worked during this past legislative session for the rights and interests of some of the most powerless people in the state, those who receive mental health treatment at what was the State Hospital until it got flooded out and the other community hospitals. Sally fought hard for patients' rights, both before and after she had to take a medical leave for cancer treatment. Sally is the co-chair of the Mental Health Oversight Committee and a reliably progressive voice on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. 

If you're a voter in Chittenden County, one of your votes should go to Sally Fox.

Sally has a record of thirty years of progressive advocacy. She's been a lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid, representing disabled and impoverished Vermonters. She has served on the boards of the Vermont ACLU, the Vermont Children's Forum, and the Vermont Commission to End Childhood Poverty. Because of her great work on behalf of children, Sally was named Legislator of the Millennium by the Vermont Children's Forum.

Sally gets things done. After leaving the legislature in 2000, Sally became the Director of Family Court Operations for the Vermont Supreme Court and served there until 2002.  She was responsible for the administration of all of the Vermont Family Courts as well as policy development, planning, and grant development.

Sally has served as Policy Director for Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility,as the coordinator for the City of Burlington Offender Reentry Program, and as the legislative liaison for the Vermont State Colleges. She has worked to develop supportive programs for returning offenders, and she helped to establish the Vermont Pre-kindergarten through 16 Council, which will bring stakeholders in education from preschool through college together to develop a plan to increase the number of Vermonters who continue their education beyond 12^th grade.

Sally has a proven record of legislative leadership. She has served in the House for fourteen years. During her time in the House Sally served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Appropriations Committee, and the Joint Fiscal Committee. She was also Assistant Majority Leader. Because there will be so much turnover in the Senate this year, Sally's experience is more important than ever.

Sally is a reliable progressive voice. With some of our strongest leaders in the struggles we care about, like health care and Vermont Yankee, leaving, and extreme budget pressures working against the efforts to serve human needs, we will need someone to keep the needs of the most vulnerable Vermonters, the poor, children, people with disabilities, and working people at the top of the agenda. Sally can be counted on to be that person.

It is rare that Vermont voters have a chance to elect someone as well-qualified and committed to Vermont's progressive values as Sally Fox. When I talk about “more and better Democrats”, Sally Fox is the kind of candidate I'm talking about. I hope you'll do everything you can to elect Sally Fox to the Vermont Senate.

Like most readers, I love books, bookstores, and especially independent bookstores.

Over the years, when I've visited family in Washington, D.C., I've enjoyed visiting Politics and Prose, my sister-in-law's neighborhood bookstore. It's a great place, airy, with a great selection of books. Even if you've never been there you may know about them from the frequent broadcasts on Book TV of nationally known authors reading from their books.

This week we learned that Carla Cohen, one of the long-time co-owners of Politics and Prose, has died. During an era when superstore chains, the Internet and the economy led to the closing of thousands of independent stores, Politics and Prose expanded from a crowded storefront with less than 2,000 square feet to a two-story haven with more than 10,000 square feet, including a downstairs cafe.

If you can't make it to the memorial service at the store when it's scheduled, go out to your local independent bookstore and buy a book in her memory.

There is no question that around GMD, our readers, and some of our front-pagers, are probably more receptive to the messages of the minor party candidates than the electorate as a whole. While the minor candidates generally have no chance of being elected, they can serve the function of airing issues that would be overlooked without them.  

Still, when these candidates resort to frankly anti-Semitic positions, they deserve to be criticized for it.  Such was the case with Cris Ericson, the National Marijuana Party candidate for Senate. According to the Burlington Free Press:

Chris Ericson of the National Marijuana Party questioned whether some members of Congress were dual citizens of Israel, given the amount of money the U.S. provides to Israel.

U.S. policy in the Middle East, and the policies of the Israeli government itself, have earned condemnation, and that kind of criticism is entirely appropriate in a Senatorial debate.

The suggestion that U.S. supporters of Israel are motivated by some kind of divided loyalty that can only be explained by dual citizenship, however, is the rankest form of bigotry.

Cris Ericson should retract this comment and apologize to Vermont’s voters for injecting antisemitism into this year’s electoral season.

It was great to hear Peter Shumlin taking the Entergy issue right to Brian Dubie yesterday. As reported on VPR, Shumlin launched a powerful attack on Dubie's pro-Entergy partisanship:

 "My experience with both you and the governor is that you are an apologist for Entergy Louisiana stockholders and Entergy Louisiana and you won't stand up for Vermonters."

 Dubie weakly claimed that he doesn't work for Entergy, although it would be hard for Dubie or Douglas to prove that.  Meanwhile, Yankee isn't the only Entergy plant pumping tritium into the water. Down in Massachusetts, the PatriotLedger reports that Entergy's Pilgrim plant is doing the same thing:  

After dropping steadily for much of the summer, levels of a radioactive isotope at one of the Pilgrim nuclear plant’s monitoring wells have skyrocketed above federal drinking water standards again.

 And the response of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?  

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said his agency is satisfied that Entergy is taking the right steps to solve the mystery at Pilgrim.   . . .  “They’re following the same protocol that’s been used – and used effectively – at other plants,” Sheehan said of Entergy.

Given that we’re now seeing tritium in the aquifer around Vermont Yankee, is it really a good idea for Sheehan to stick with that line?

And, if you’re in or around Plymouth, Mass., how long before you start seeing Entergy’s “I am Pilgrim” commercials?

From today's Burlington Free Press:  

Radioactive tritium has been detected for the first time in a former drinking-water well at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant  in Vernon, a potential indication that tritium that leaked from the plant has migrated to a deep underground aquifer, state, federal and plant officials said late Friday afternoon.

This new development might be the last straw for Brian Dubie: it’s finally prompted him to pretend to be concerned about the health and safety of the plant. and he says he can’t support the continued operation of the plant beyond 2012 until safety questions can be resolved.

This raises two questions:

First, when we learned that Vermont Yankee was pumping tritium into the ground water, and the rest of us, including Peter Shumlin, were calling for the plant to close on schedule, where did Brian think the contaminated water was going? Uphill?

Second, will the IBEW finally realize that pinning their hopes on a closet reactionary like Dubie was a bad move? And will they engage in a farcical display with a toy knife sticking out of their back at Dubie’s campaign events?

Seriously.

Mitch Wertlieb just did an excellent interview of Paula Routly, publisher of Seven Days, and David Mindich, a journalism professor at St. Michael's, and it is almost beyond belief.

As you might guess, the interview conerns the Dubie campaign's misuse of a survey Seven Days did of State House insiders last year in which they identified Peter Shumlin as the “most ethically challenged” legislator. What's wrong with that, you might ask? How about the fact that Seven Days sent out 400 surveys, got about thirty back, and awarded Shumlin this dubious title based on only twelve votes?

 Oh yeah, and it was all anonymous.

In the interview, Routly is somewhere between totally clueless, wilfully blind to the effects of her actions, or just floundering to get out of a bad situation. For instance, she says that Seven Days can't be held responsible for how people use their news coverage, while in almost the next breath acknowledging that Democrats started complaining to her as soon as the “survey” was published that what has happened–the misuse of the results by the Republicans–was exactly what was predictably going to happen.

Routly's rationalization is that the survey was a good way for the readers of Seven Days to get inside information about what happens in the State House, like Dick Sears's temper or David Deen's environmentalist cred. Does she really expect us to believe that there was no other way to get this information?

Obviously, there are a couple of giant holes with her argument. First, if the survey is invalid, as this one clearly was, how can she credibly claim that it was a valid basis to provide accurate information to the readers? Quick answer: she can't.

Second, Seven Days already knows how to do in-depth, probing coverage of what happens in the State House. Even without getting insiders to go on the record, which is another of Routly's rationalizations,  Seven Days did a very strong story on Ed Flanagan's problems as a state senator; some people argued that the story was unfair, but I haven't heard anyone knowledgeable in what happens in the State House claim that it was inaccurate.

As you listen to the story, and I hope you will, listen carefully to Routly's answers. Even as she admits the small size of the poll, she argues that the “most ethically challenged” rating for Shumlin is “significant” because “he won by 43% of the vote, however small it was” (of their microscopic sample).

More Routly: “I don't think we can plan our coverage based on how information is going to be manipulated.”

Nobody is saying they should. On the other hand, it is entirely appropriate for news consumers to expect that they will plan their coverage based on whether their reporters were able to actually find and report a story. In this case, Routly is totally oblivious to the fact that Seven Days did a terrible job of reporting this. When they essentally got nothing in response to their survey the responsible course would have been to decide that they don't have enough information to report and spike the story.

Now they've become a tool of the Dubie campaign, they have only themselves to blame, but Shumlin and the voters of Vermont may wind up as the victims of what can only be considered a gross example of journalistic malpractice.

Con Hogan may be many people's favorite (or second-favorite, after Bernie) straight-talking, no-bullshit career public servant in Vermont. This is a guy who started out as a corrections officer and ascended through intelligence and hard work to Commissioner of Corrections and Secretary of the Agency of Human Services. His credentials for fighting crime, knowing how government works, and knowing how to make government work are unassailable.  

According to today's Times Argus, here's what he says about Peter Shumlin's plan to reduce Vermont's rate of incarceration:  

MONTPELIER – Vermont's former top corrections official stepped into a heated political debate Friday, saying Democrat Peter Shumlin's prison plan is similar to proposals offered six years ago by a bipartisan commission created by GOP Gov. James Douglas.  

Con Hogan of Plainfield, who served as Vermont's corrections commissioner in the 1970s and secretary of human services throughout the 1990s, said Shumlin's plan to cut prison costs by releasing nonviolent offenders “can be done.”

“What Peter Shumlin is recommending is pretty much the same thing that we recommended in 2004,” Hogan said Friday. “If this is done right, and phased in over several years, it could work. This plan can be done.”

It’s good to hear someone who was basically a Republican all his life explain why Dubie’s attacks are baseless.