Red-state Republican lawmakers, always looking for new ways to prove what complete assclowns they are, have come up with a new one:

South Carolina lawmakers voted Wednesday to withdraw about $70,000 in funding from two public colleges that included books with gay themes on their freshman reading lists.

The Columbia State reported that state House budget writers took away $17,000 from the University of South Carolina Upstate for teaching “Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio,” a book about the state’s first gay and lesbian radio show. They also withdrew $52,000 from the College of Charleston for teaching “Fun Home,” which describes the author’s growing up with a closeted gay father and her own coming out as a lesbian. Those amounts were based on the amount of money spent on the required-reading books last year.

Yes, “Fun Home,” the graphic memoir by Vermont’s own Alison Bechdel. The book that was a surprise best-seller, was mentioned on numerous lists of the best books of 2006, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and multiple Eisner Awards, and, as its Wikipedia entry notes, “has been the subject of numerous academic publications in areas such as biography studies and cultural studies.” And inspired a successful Broadway musical.

That’s the book deemed unworthy of college students’ attention by the literati of the South Carolina legislature.

Assclown-In-Chief Garry Smith, the state representative who pushed for the defunding, said:

“I understand academic freedom, but this is not academic freedom. … This was about promoting one side with no academic debate involved.”

Well, actually, sir, you just proved that you DON’T understand academic freedom. But hey, the dynamics of red-state Repubicanism boil down to this: the bigger ass you make of yourself, the better for your career. If the good citizens of South Carolina ever come to their senses and remove Rep. Smith from office, he can probably get a nice gig commentating for Fox News or, failing that, maybe World Nut Daily or Breitbart’s Corpse.

I’m glad I live in a state that reads books instead of trying to ban them.  

This week’s opinion pages bring us the latest emanations from two of our most frequent — and most mockable — opinionators. Coming up, Art Woolf Looks At A Chart. But first…

Tom Pelham Is Full Of Himself.

I know, it’s a shocker.

Pelham, the consummate ex-insider who now finds himself an outsider because the In Crowd won’t have him, has produced another 800 words of fulsome praise for the financial wisdom of his former boss Jim Douglas and, er, himself.

(Side note: How smart is it for the #2 man in the putatively nonpartisan Campaign for Vermont to keep yammering about how the policies of Jim Douglas are the cure for all that ails us? Doesn’t that make CFV seem, oh, just a tad Republican?)

Pelham bemoans the state of Vermont’s economy and public finances, and offers up the same tired solution he offers every single damn time:

In 2009, as the Great Recession squeezed Vermont’s economy and state and family budgets, the Legislature smartly initiated Challenges for Change, a program to identify reforms in state government to both preserve vital services while saving money. The Douglas administration complemented this effort with Tiger Teams, comprised of capable state employees who volunteered to research and make recommendations to improve state government effectiveness.

… Unfortunately, along with Challenges for Change, the Legislature in 2011 shelved the Tiger Team reports… The easy but short-sighted path of one-time stimulus money flowing in from Washington trumped the political difficulties of enacting program reforms.

It’s funny. What I’ve heard about Challenges for Change is that Governor Shumlin’s functionaries have spent a goodly part of the last three years cleaning up the wreckage left by CfC. As for Tiger Teams, in my experience they’re mostly a punchline in Dilbert cartoons.  

But in Pelham’s eyes, if only Shumlin had heeded the wisdom of Jim Douglas (and, ahem, Tom Pelham), Vermont would be strong, prosperous, and efficient.

Here’s a thought. Even if you posit the effectiveness of CfC — which I do not — then why did Douglas wait until the dying days of his Administration to launch the program? Why didn’t he start it back in 2003 when he still had a goodly number of Republicans in the Legislature, and when he had a relatively strong economy and stronger state finances? Like in the Bible, save up in the fat years so you can live through the thin ones. It’s almost as if Challenges for Change wasn’t so much a real good-government initiative as it was a big “F*ck You” to state government as Douglas was heading for the exit.

Okay, now let’s turn our attention to Art Woolf Looks At A Chart. In which Our Hero, Vermont’s Laziest Economist, spends roughly 750 words stating the obvious and about 50 making a tepid conclusion.

(Side note: I sure hope his monthly Vermont Economy Newsletter — subscriptions $150 per year! — offer a lot better material than his weekly Freeploid column.)

Woolf’s latest dribble is entitled “Vermont immigration trends differ dramatically from U.S. picture.” This should clue you in that you’re about to experience an avalanche of the obvious.

He begins by recounting a recent visit to New York City, whose diversity he found “overwhelming,” which led him to helpfully conclude that “The difference between Vermont and New York — and Vermont and the U.S. as a whole — is striking.”

But wait — there’s more!

He kicks it up a notch by quoting statistics showing that Vermont is overwhelmingly white, while the U.S. is much more heterogeneous. Hey everybody, the rest of the country has more blacks, Hispanics, and Asians than we do! Stop the presses!

Art’s not done, either. Best be sitting down for this one:

Vermont’s immigrant population is mostly European or Canadian.

…The country that sends the most people to Vermont is Canada. In second place is Germany, and third is the United Kingdom. For the U.S. the top three sending nations are Mexico, India and China. Take a trip to New York, or any major city, and that fact becomes obvious very quickly.

Oh, Art. That’s not the first fact to become obvious very quickly.

Finally, he gets to a question that might provoke thoughtful conclusions. Unfortunately he has no space to ponder them because he squandered virtually his entire column letting us know that Vermont is awfully darn white.

What does all this mean for Vermont? First, our state does not look at all like the rest of the U.S.

Okay, yeah, Art, we got that. Anything else?

That demographic difference makes many comparisons between Vermont and the U.S-in terms of income, health, education, and more-highly skewed.

Ah. Do you mean the kinds of comparisons Art Woolf makes on a regular basis? Like when he finds our taxes too high compared to other states, and our public spending too generous? Good to know that Woolf’s comparisoins are “highly skewed.”

Second, it means that one solution to Vermont’s stagnant population is to hope that more immigrants and more non-white people move to the state. Not only would that provide additional workers when the state’s labor force is declining, but it would make Vermont a much more interesting place to live.

Well now, there’s a teensy tiny skosh of daring at the bottom of this giant vat of oatmeal. Art’d like to see “more immigrants and more non-white people move to the state.” Wow.

And if those immigrants come from troubled parts of the world, so much the better. It’ll increase the competition for minimum-wage jobs and make Vermonters grateful for any crumbs that fall off the table.

Art Woolf. What would we do without him?  

Ah, the bitter fruits of the Bush Administration continue to fall on our fair and pleasant land.

The Vermont State Police (VSP) is one of over 160 law enforcement agencies across the nation that recently acquired an armored tactical vehicle through the Defense Department’s national military surplus program. …This particular vehicle is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle; that can provide lifesaving support to local, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies across the state during armed confrontations or other critical incidents.

Well, it’s hard to be against “lifesaving support,” but really: does Vermont need a vehicle designed to resist land mines and foil ambushes? Under what scenario does VSP expect to encounter land mines? Did I miss the declaration of World War V?

These are pretty fearsome battle-wagons. The Los Angeles Times describes them as “V-hulled 16-ton armored behemoths.” At the height of the Iran and Afghanistan quagmires, the Pentagon rush-ordered some 27,000 of the things. And they saved a lot of lives.

But as our foreign entanglements wind down, we’ve suddenly got a behemoth surplus. In fact, over in Afghanistan, the military is turning a couple thousand of ’em into scrap. It’s cheaper than shipping them home. And besides, we’ve got too many of the damn things here, so the Pentagon is offering them to local law enforcement for pennies on the dollar.

The cost to the VSP includes the initial transportation of the vehicle from Mississippi, which was under $8000; along with the cost of necessary customization such as, lights, painting; and vehicle maintenance. …The MRAP is not yet operational; pending the completion of customization and maintenance.

Such a deal.

We get a slightly used, million-dollar assault vehicle for a few thousand bucks. Plus the unspecified cost of rendering it “operational.” Plus the ongoing “maintenance” of a vehicle designed to thwart land mines and ambushes.

And Lord knows, we’ve got way too many land mines and ambushes in Vermont.

The State Police say the MRAP is “similar to the Bearcat tactical vehicle…which is housed at the Williston Barracks.” (The Bearcat was purchased with a Homeland Security grant. Those funds have been doled out generously to just about any police agency that gets a hard-on for up-armor.) The New Toy will be based in Windsor, from whence it will be rapidly deployable to your southern Vermont war zones.

My problem with all of this — aside from once again showcasing the utter waste of the Bush Wars — is that when you acquire a capability, you start looking for reasons to use it. Like, for instance, a 2012 incident that turned a tiny Vermont town into a demented Steven Seagal wet dream:

A summer scene befitting a Norman Rockwell portrait was spoiled Monday morning when more than a dozen police cruisers, an armored vehicle and the big box truck that houses Vermont’s equivalent of a S.W.A.T. team set up shop in Washington to take what proved to be one unarmed man into custody.

Police described the operation as a “success,” which, yeah, but did the good people of Washington (population 1,047) really need or want a full-on invasion by a fleet of cop cars plus an up-armored war machine?

Well, now we’re gonna have two war machines in the VSP’s arsenal. And, whether or not we’ve got any minefields or armed terrorist gangs roaming our countryside, the cops will be looking for reasons to use their new toys.

So whatever you do, don’t start any trouble.  

The good citizens of Burlington won’t go to the polls for another couple of weeks, but one candidate has already bitten the dust. Per Alicia Freese of Seven Days:

Ryan Emerson, the Democratic candidate for a city council seat in Burlington’s Ward 2, has withdrawn from the race. Emerson announced his decision Tuesday afternoon, the day after Seven Days inquired about past allegations of domestic violence brought against him.

On two separate occasions in 2005 and 2006, a Chittenden County judge issued relief-from-abuse orders against Emerson, after Sarah Hart, the mother of his child, complained of allegedly violent behavior.

Eeps. A couple of points before I get to the main event.

First, Freese and Seven Days are, rightly, getting pummeled by commenters for naming the victim and going into extensive detail about the case. Did 7D need to publish her name and all the particulars? Not really. I’m sure she hoped this episode was safely behind her; now it’s all been brought back, in living color. Seven Days did allow Hart a fig-leaf of privacy; she has since married and they didn’t reveal her new last name. Gee, thanks, Seven Days.

Second, Emerson must have known this could come out during the campaign. He should have put it out there himself at the beginning of the campaign. If he thought he couldn’t overcome the stigma, he shouldn’t have run in the first place. I believe in second chances, but these incidents happened less than ten years ago. He should have waited longer.  

Okay, now for the main event — from the viewpoint of a political blogger.

How did this happen to come up exactly two weeks before Election Day? The timing is suspiciously perfect if one’s intention is to torpedo a candidate. Long enough to let the scandal set in, too short for the candidate to overcome it.

Freese doesn’t say how she came across this tidbit. One possibility is that Seven Days decided to do criminal background checks on all the candidates in Burlington. I don’t think so, because they would have done it sooner.

Which leads me to ratf*cking. Somebody tipped off Seven Days in hopes of derailing Emerson’s campaign. And somebody succeeded.  

Who stands to benefit from Emerson’s implosion? Well, most obviously, incumbent Progressive Councilor Max Tracy, who gets to run unopposed. Take a load off, Max; your work is done.

I’m not saying he was the leaker. I am saying that the most likely culprit is someone in the Progressive Party. The Progs will keep one of their precious Council seats, having rid themselves of a well-connected Dem with a lot of campaign experience. (He was on Shumlin’s team in 2010; managed T.J. Donovan’s near-miss in the AG primary in 2012; and headed Beth Pearce’s triumphant campaign for Treasurer that same year.)

Second suspect, deliciously devious: The Republicans. Prog/GOP alliances of convenience are common in Burlington politics. With the GOP in danger of being entirely shut out of City Council, it’s in the party’s interest to maximize Prog representation. They also wouldn’t be at all sorry to kneecap Emerson’s political career; at age 27 he’s already a well-established politico with a track record of success. You’d have to call him a rising star — well, you would have before this revelation.

This conspiracy theory becomes even more plausible when you recall that the chair of the Chittenden County GOP is one Jeff Bartley, last seen winning a lawsuit against former U.S. Senate candidate Len Britton. I recapped Bartley’s dismal career in a previous diary, but one item is worth mentioning in this context: When Bartley was only 20 years old, he was hired by the Rich Tarrant-for-Senate campaign, where he was responsible for a phony political blog called VermontSenateRace.com. It was designed to look legit, but it was just a front for pro-Tarrant (and anti-Pat Leahy) propaganda. Unfortunately for Bartley and Tarrant, Peter Freyne uncovered the scam.

Again, I’m not saying Bartley was the leaker. But his party indirectly benefits, and he’s got a track record.

In any event, whoever the leaker was, congratulations to Max Tracy on a hard-won victory.  

VTDigger’s hit-or-miss political columnist Jon Margolis served up a home run this morning: a generous smorgasbord of hints, rumors, carefully worded statements, and (probably) feints on the number-one subject of pointless political speculation of The Year 2014:

Who’s running for Governor on the Republican ticket?

Margolis starts out by saying it’s “a mystery man. Or perhaps a mystery woman.” But even so, having given away the ending right off the bat, he still manages a column that’s both informative and intriguing.

Heading the Intrigue Parade is Don Turner, the House Minority Leader, who says there is a person, identity TBD, who has “made a commitment to run for governor.” Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott wasn’t quite as singular as Turner, but he says he’s been informed that “there will be a candidate.”

Well, duh. It’d be awfully damn embarrassing if there was a blank on the GOP line. But it’d be almost as embarrassing if the party had to resort to the likes of John MacGovern or Jack McMullen or… hmm… Wendy Wilton. (“Hey, look! We got a lady candidate!”)

Or, good God in Heaven, party treasurer Mark “Acorn” Snelling (the nut fallen from a mighty oak), who told Margolis he is considering a run for Gov. Considering all he hasn’t done to rebuild the party’s finances, he’d be only a slight improvement on the retread losers named above. His only asset is the distant echo of name recognition from his father’s time in the corner office — which ended almost a quarter-century ago.

Next hint:

Both Turner and Scott (and a few other Republicans who didn’t want to be identified) suggested that the mystery person does not now hold public office, and is more likely a business person.

Hmmm, a “business person.” That leaves out those two free-market stalwarts who’ve ensconced themselves firmly in the nonprofit sector, John “El Jefe General” McLaughry and Rob Roper. It could be one of a number of former Jim Douglas functionaries who skedaddled to the private sector. Neale Lunderville? David O’Brien? Tom Evslin?

Seems unlikely.

I’ll add a couple more qualifiers of my own. It has to be someone self-deluded enough to think s/he can defeat Governor Shumlin, and deep-pocketed enough to self-fund a competitive campaign.

Rich Tarrant or one of the Webgrocer Tarrants? Perhaps, but my money’s on another guy. Here he is, suitably disguised to preserve the mystery.

In case you haven’t got it, the reveal… after the jump.  

Didja guess?

Our old friend, Skip “The Gas Man” Vallee. Stalwart Republican donor, past candidate for office, possessor of a goodly fortune, narcissistic enough to have pondered a challenge to Bernie Sanders last time around.

Considering all the fuss Skippy made over Bernie’s “high gas prices in Chittenden County” expose, I’d say he has to be itching for another chance to take on a high-profile Democrat. And itching badly enough to open up his wallet for a campaign.

If he’s interested, I’m sure the VTGOP would be happy to let him have the top spot. At the very least, he’d make it an entertaining — even though uncompetitive — campaign.

C’mon, everybody! The Gas Man for Governor!

The most frequently read article in the February 5 issue of Seven Days was a story of a long-simmering neighborhood battle. On one side is instrument maker Adam Buchwald, who crafts mandolins and guitars in his Burlington home studio. On the other is one of his neighbors, Barbara Headrick, who claims the noise from his workshop is affecting her quality of life and property value. Three points argue against her:

— No other neighbors are bothered.

— One neighbor admits she sometimes plays really loud rock music with the windows open, and Headrick has never complained.

— The neighborhood is near the UVM campus, and a lot of noise and litter is generated by “drunk and screaming college kids” who are “a regular feature of life there.”

But still, Headrick believes the noise of Buchwald’s power tools is uniquely impactful. And who are we to doubt her?

Well, in this case she seems a far less sympathetic figure than her woodgrained neighbor. But how is her case any different than those of, say, the Therriens or the Nelsons, the two most renowned victims of “Wind Turbine Syndrome”?

I put it in quotes because there is no scientific evidence for such a syndrome.

The Nelsons and the Therriens appear frequently as spokespeople for the anti-wind movement, telling their harrowing tales of turbine noise inside their homes. Somehow, though, the noise is never apparent whenever a reporter visits either home. And the wind farm near the Nelsons’ home passed its most recent noise tests with room to spare.

And, like Barbara Headrick not minding a blast of Led Zeppelin or a puking frat boy, the Therriens live near Interstate 91 but the freeway noise doesn’t bother them. Not even the notorious Jake brakes on big semis. That’s no problem, but the turbines threaten to drive them from their home.

I can’t explain the targeted sensitivities of the Nelsons or Therriens. But, as on Prospect Street, they seem to be uniquely afflicted; we haven’t heard similar stories from any of their neighbors.

What I do know is that whenever scientists look for evidence of an actual Syndrome caused by the somehow singular noise from wind turbines, they find no evidence.  

Wind Turbine Syndrome has been identified by a single doctor, Nina Pierpont. She happens to be a pediatrician who claims to have discovered an adult illness. She happens to be married to a prominent anti-wind activist. And the study “proving” Wind Turbine Syndrome, according to Popular Science Magazine, “had a small sample size of phone interviews with no control group or proper peer review.” The sample size: 38 people from a whopping ten families.

Ten.

Pierpont’s selection process was flawed; she included only families that had at least one member with symptoms who lived near a recently built turbine. This, as any scientist would tell you, guarantees an association between turbines and illness. An association created by the study’s inherent bias, not by actual evidence.

Okay, I can hear the Windies saying “Hardy har har, why should we believe a popular magazine, even if it has the word ‘science’ in its title?”

Well, there have been at least ten independent scientific reviews of the available evidence on the subject. Each of the ten has concluded that noise complaints have “far more to do with social and psychological factors in those complaining than any direct effect from sound or inaudible infrasound emanating from wind turbines.”

Some passages from the tenth review, conducted by the British Acoustics Bulletin:  “the degree of annoyance is only slightly related to noise level”; “the fact that someone was complaining was mainly determined by the personality of the individual”; “fear of the noise source can increase annoyance”; and “adverse feelings . . . were influenced by feelings of lacking control, being subjected to injustice, lacking influence, and not being believed”.

The review found two factors that tended to enhance the likelihood of a person claiming to be a sufferer: Being able to see turbines and not liking them; and whether the person derives any financial benefit from the turbines.

And then there’s a 2013 study by Simon Chapman, a public health professor from Sydney University. He found a curious geographical quirk about claims of Wind Turbine Syndrome:

The report… found that 63% [of Australian windfarms] had never been subject to noise or health complaints. In the state of Western Australia, where there are 13 windfarms, there have been no complaints.

The study shows that the majority of complaints (68%) have come from residents near five windfarms that have been heavily targeted by opponent groups.

In other words, when anti-wind activists start spreading tales of Wind Turbine Syndrome, people start feeling its effects. Without the tales, the Syndrome is amazingly absent or ineffectual.

Many of the wind-noise studies, having been written by notoriously cautious scientists, conclude that “there is insufficient evidence” that turbine noise causes health problems. Wind opponents seize on this wording — just as creationists bray about the “theory” of evolution — and say that more research will find new evidence. However:  

Chapman said that if wind farms did genuinely make people ill there would by now be a large body of medical evidence that would preclude putting them near inhabited areas. Eighteen reviews of the research literature on wind turbines and health published since 2003 had all reached the broad conclusion that there was very little evidence they were directly harmful to health.

A panel of independent experts, assembled by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health, conducted a study of the scientific literature on the health impacts of wind turbines. Its report was released in January 2012. One of its conclusions:

There is no evidence for a set of health effects, from exposure to wind turbines that could be characterized as a “Wind Turbine Syndrome.”

No evidence. That’s the conclusion reached over and over again, whenever experts examine the issue. It’s just like the “debate” over climate change: a huge quantity of evidence and the vast majority of experts all on one side, and a tiny minority of both on the other.

I don’t doubt that Don Nelson is truly bothered by the nearby wind turbines, just as Barbara Headrick is bothered by her neighbor’s woodshop. But all the evidence suggests that the culprit isn’t the turbines or the power tools; it’s the immense power of the human mind. And just as I believe Adam Buchwald should go on making guitars, I believe Vermont should continue to approve and construct wind farms.  

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that the bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Heidi Scheuermann, is a “founding partner” in Campaign for Vermont. This doesn’t qualify as an ethical breach, strictly speaking; but she’s clearly using her official position to promote an organization in which she is a prominent member. I think her CFV membership should be noted when she seeks to promote its agenda within the Legislature.

There’s a bill before the House to enact new ethical guidelines for state lawmakers, statewide officeholders, and appointed officials. H.846 would also create a state Ethics Commission and prohibit former public officials from lobbying the Legislature for two years after leaving state government.

The bill is modeled after Campaign for Vermont’s own widely-touted ethics reform plan, and is co-sponsored by 24 Representatives. Fourteen are Republicans, nine are Dems, and one is listed as a D/R. The lead sponsor, per VTDigger, is Republican Heidi Scheuermann of Stowe.

Governor Shumlin has yet to take a public stance on the bill; he has issued carefully-worded support for ethics standards on elected officials only. Which would leave a big fat hole for gubernatorial appointees and other unelected types to slide through, as some of his former officials have done.

But our esteemed Governor doesn’t have a monopoly on convenient omissions in this sphere, not by a long shot. Today, a goodly percentage of the tiny Republican caucus is lining up behind ethics reform, but the Patron Saint of Vermont Republicanism had a very different view:

I don’t think we need a new bureaucracy to monitor the performance of our public officials. I think Vermont is a state where we can be proud of  the people that serve in all branches of government, people who for the most part are above reproach, people of integrity and people who follow the constitutional  edict of serving the public and acting in the public interest.

Yes indeed, those words came from the maw of then-Governor Jim Douglas, as quoted by the late great Peter Freyne back in April 2007.  

Douglas was in favor of a code of ethics; he just didn’t want a new body dedicated to, ahem, enforcing the code. His Administration set the bar very high for potential ethical conflicts, as many state officials crossed back and forth, and most of ’em fled state government in Douglas’ final days for cushy posts in the private and nonprofit sector, many of which involved contact with state government.

So I ask this question of Heidi Scheuermann and her fellow Republicans eager for ethics reform now that the Democrats are running the roost:

What would Jim do?  

Last August, I wrote a diary entitled “How green is Vermont, really?” In it, I argued that Vermont’s reputation as a stalwart protector of its environment was vastly overblown — that our actual track record is a decidedly mixed bag.

My central point was that our two biggest environmental advantages have nothing to do with our earthly stewardship; it’s a simple matter of low population and lack of exploitable resources. As examples of poor stewardship, I pointed to our clean-water record (recurring toxic algae blooms on Lake Champlain, inadequate treatment of storm and sewer water, and a complete lack of effective oversight of our smaller bodies of water), the amount of particulate matter we pump into the air via residential woodstoves, decades of complete non-regulation of junkyards (only corrected four years ago), and our addiction to driving, particularly in low-mileage trucks, SUVs and all-wheel drive vehicles.

Well, a couple of recent items in the news have confirmed — indeed, amplified — my views. Our traditional Vermont ways are often harmful to the environment, and only our small population saves us from being a blight upon the earth. And even with our current population, we are inexorably degrading our environment.

The first item is from the January 22 issue of Seven Days. In an article on potential regulation of woodstoves, Ken Picard reported that Vermont has “the highest rate of adult asthma in the country – 11.1 percent of the population suffers from it.” And, as I noted last August, the vast majority of small particulate emissions come from woodburning. In short, our air quality would improve overnight if we got rid of every woodstove and outdoor wood boiler in the state and replaced them with an equivalent number of biomass plants with up-to-date emission controls.

It’s doubtful that Vermont would tackle this festering problem on its own. Instead, the EPA is proposing tough new standards for woodstoves and other wood-fired heaters. Even if those rules go through, it’ll take decades for our current stock to be replaced by products that don’t pollute the air.

The second item was, of course, Wednesday’s come-to-Jesus meeting between lawmakers and the US EPA, in which we were lectured on our abuse of Lake Champlain and warned that we will have to make serious (and costly) changes to avoid federal sanctions and mandates.

This is a development you’d expect in Texas or West Virginia. But solidly green, crunchy-granola Vermont as an environmental outlaw? We ought to be ashamed.  

And, frankly, the state and our advocacy groups ought to make this our number-one environmental priority. But we probably won’t, because it’ll be difficult and expensive. And it will impinge on a core Vermont tradition: small-scale agriculture. The big sources are pretty much under control.

As Environmental Commissioner David Mears noted, “Most of the pollution that’s going into the lake comes from the landscape.” More specifics from the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck (Gannett paywall warning):

Cropland accounts for the single largest share at 35 percent with pastures adding another 4 percent. Development accounts for 14 percent, as do forests. Erosion of unpaved roads brings in 5.6 percent.

… As a result, efforts to reduce phosphorus will likely include requirements for road and bridge construction and regulations on farms, requiring small farms to be certified as medium and large farms are and ensure that they follow standard manure management and other practices.

The shoreland protection bill currently making its way through the Legislature will also play a part. But this isn’t going to be easy, especially when the largest problem, by far, is agriculture. The festival of circular finger-pointing has already begun, and it’ll get a whole lot worse.

And I haven’t even mentioned how we’ll raise the money to pay for all of this.

Champlain pollution, like our belching chimneys and high asthma rates, is mostly a product of our current Vermont lifestyle, not large industries or overdevelopment. Yes, parking lots and rooftops play a part. But we have relatively few of both. It’s what we’ve been doing and are doing now that’s turned Lake Champlain into a petri dish for toxic algae blooms.

In order to become the Good Stewards we like to think we are, we cannot be satisfied with trying to preserve our current status. We have to make significant changes in how we live and how we use our landscape. Some of our Vermont traditions will have to go — or will have to change substantially. Like, for instance, our addiction to low-mileage trucks and FWDs and the quantity of miles we drive: the solution to that problem is a switch to electric-powered vehicles and the widespread construction of renewable energy sources. Yes, even wind turbines.

Last August, I wrote this about our environmental movement:

The unspoken guiding principle seems to be this: If it’s old, traditional, familiar, or small, it’s good (or at least acceptable). If it’s new, shiny, different, or (gasp!) corporate, it’s bad and we need to resist it.

And there’s where our self-satisfaction becomes counterproductive. Not everything old, traditional, familiar or small is good; not everything new, shiny, different, or even corporate is bad.

I believe that more than ever. The much-protested new and shiny things, like ridgeline turbines, solar farms, biomass plants, and even that natural gas pipeline, are less of a threat to Vermont’s environment than simply continuing to do what we’ve been doing. And on our own, we have clearly lacked the political will to make meaningful changes. That’s why our water and air problems are being tackled, not by good-heated Vermonters, but by bureaucratic regulators from the federal government.

Environmentally speaking, Vermont needs to get its shit together. It needs to stop being so smug and self-satisfied. And it needs to stop reflexively defending the familiar and rejecting the new.  

Oh, looky here: according to Talking Points Memo, the most successful state in implementing health care reform is…

… Vermont.

Yes, Vermont, the state where spectacularly unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock insisted that the system didn’t work and wouldn’t work, and was “a story of incompetence and hubris.” But somehow, in spite of all that, Vermont has managed to enroll a higher percentage of Obamacare-eligible people than any other state.

According to TPM, Vermont has enrolled 52.4% of its eligible population. It’s the only state over 50%. TPM arrived at estimates of eligible populations using figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute. Details at the above link.

And there’s good news on the other end of the system as well:

Vermont’s largest health care provider has had few problems with patients using health insurance provided by the state’s new health care exchange since coverage began Jan. 1, an official said Wednesday.

… Shannon Lonergan, director of registration at Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care, said only a small percentage of the thousands of patients the hospital and its affiliated offices see every day have been covered by insurance provided through Vermont Health Connect. Still, they expected more problems than they have seen.

”Surprisingly, it’s gone well,” she said.

Here’s the thing that’s often been lost in the shuffle: the website, the software — those things are not health care reform; they are tools to achieve reform. What’s becoming very clear is that while the tools didn’t initially work as they should, the actual process of reform is doing quite well, thank you.

Maybe that’s why the dead-ender opponents of reform, like Sore Loser Brock and Darcie “Hack” Johnston, have pretty much stopped talking about the health care exchange; instead, they’ve turned their fire on single-payer. Because they know opposing the exchange is a lost cause.

After the jump: That Newsweek report, and the Huntsman’s obsession.  

Well, they still harp on the flaws in the initial rollout and make wide-ranging accusations of misconduct or corruption or stupidity or whatever. But they’ve stopped saying “the system doesn’t work,” because it does, and even they realize it.

And speaking of the initial rollout, let’s take a moment to dispose of the investigative report from the formerly-substantial journalistic entity known as Newsweek, now a mere shadow of its former self. Last week, Newsweek reporter Lynnley Browning wrote a lengthy “takedown” of last year’s exchange rollout, which asserted that state officials had “glossed over ominous warning signs and Keystone Cops-like planning.”

Er, that oughta be “Keystone Kops,” but whatever.

I’ll confess I didn’t read Browning’s opus. When I saw that the most notorious charge — that a July demonstration of the exchange website was faked by contractor CGI — was based on a single anonymous source, I’d had enough. Using a single anonymous source is a big fat journalistic no-no. Browning leans awfully heavily on this single unnamed person, as we see in this key passage:

In the demonstration, “a lot was left to the imagination,” says a person familiar with the event who declined to be named…  Some state staffers that July 26 thought it showed “live” registrations and enrollments by hypothetical consumers, when in fact static, premade screens were displayed. “People weren’t technologically sophisticated enough to understand what was actually going on,” this person explains.

CGI, the source adds, had one goal in that demonstration: It “wanted the state of Vermont to keep its faith.”

Everything in those two paragraphs is credited to a single anonymous source. Maybe this little reportorial transgression explains why Browning has taken the unusual career path of going from the New York Times, the nation’s leading newspaper, to Newsweek, a business that’s barely hanging on, and was famously sold in 2010 for the princely sum of $1.

In this week’s “Fair Game” column, Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz gives Browning and her story a thorough fluffing. Perhaps that’s because he, himself, has spent quite a bit of time waving the red flag over the exchange rollout, and, well, confirmation bias.

The other day I was chatting with a State House reporter who told me that this “faked demo” tale had been widely flogged to in-state political reporters by opponents of reform. The local scribes didn’t bite because they were well aware of who was selling this bill of goods, and they knew there was no corroboration or documentation of any of the charges.

So instead, somebody from outside the state, presumably clueless of the levers and gears of Vermont politics, swallowed the tale hook, line, and sinker.

Heintz reports that he was contacted by another anonymous source who also had doubts about the July demo — although how he knows that his source and Browning’s are actually different people is a mystery to me.

If the two unnamed sources are actually two people, which we have no way of verifying, I still question the ethics of Browning and Heintz in writing stories that were each based on a single anonymous source. Heintz had no way of verifying the bona fides of Browning’s source, so his story depends entirely on a single mystery guest. And again, those two anonymi could well be the same person.

Heintz (and Browning and Brock and Johnston et al.) still believes there’s a scandal waiting to be uncovered, and he chides the Vermont press corps for failing to uncover it. Not sure if he includes himself in that score; he’s one of them. And while he has repeatedly drawn attention to unanswered questions, he hasn’t done much to provide answers.

As for his unanswered questions and Browning’s unsupported allegations, to me it’s less likely a scandal and more likely a reasonable consequence of trying to launch an extremely complicated new system. Every major new government program has gone through growing pains. For that matter, a whole lot of private-sector launches have initial difficulties — or bomb completely. (New Coke, Edsel, the World League of American Football.) Yes, the exchange had a troubled beginning. But it’s working better every day.

And, the most important thing: it’s providing health insurance for thousands of Vermonters who couldn’t get it before.  

There have been some major changes in Vermont’s media landscape in recent months. I thought it was time for a scorecard of sorts: who’s doing what, and how well they’re utilizing their resources.

A couple of caveats: My focus here is on media that cover (or claim to cover) state politics and government. And I’m leaving out the TV stations because, frankly, I don’t watch them very much. (I will note that, for all their shortcomings, both WCAX and WPTZ are much better at covering substantive news than most big-city TV operations, which are obsessed with violent crime and produced as if their audiences have ADD/ADHD.)

The new year has seen the emergence of a clear Big Three, and they aren’t the ones you’d expect. After that, there’s a big newspaper on the decline, a smaller paper hanging in there, and a rare throwback to the golden age of radio.

Still the champ: VTDigger, which continues to maximize its limited resources and provide an essential stream of news and information. In the Desert Island scenario, if I had to choose one media outlet, it’d be VTDigger. Anne Galloway has built (is building) something really remarkable. And it’s not easy being the Tampa Bay Rays of Vermont media: constantly losing reporters to bigger outlets and developing the next crop of talent.

Number 2 is Seven Days. Its newly beefed-up reporting staff is knocking out three or four can’t-miss stories every week. At a time when many free weeklies are falling apart — mainly thanks to corporate ownership — we’re lucky to have local ownership at Seven Days, who are investing their healthy ad revenues into a vibrant news operation.

Close behind, and poised to overtake, is Vermont Public Radio. VPR was a sleeping giant for a long time; most of its longer-form stories were rehashes of whatever was in the morning papers (or on VTDigger), and I never felt the need to catch VPR’s local news segments or listen online. That’s changed since the first of the year. Now I try to visit VPR’s website at least once a day, and there’s usually at least one story (often by Peter Hirschfeld) that hasn’t been reported elsewhere.

I downgrade VPR somewhat because it has so many resources, it could do even better. VPR has a huge staff and top-heavy management, and it’s such a fundraising powerhouse that it sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the nonprofit environment. Which means VPR should meet very high expectations; lately, it’s begun to approach them.  More, please.

Those are the new Big Three. Together, they provide a healthy amount of news coverage, especially given our current age of media decline and unpredictability. They’re not perfect, and a lot of news goes uncovered; but we’re hella lucky compared to many other, larger markets.

After the jump: kudos to Steve Pappas and Mark Johnson; another raspberry for the Freeploid.

Haven’t got to the Freeploid yet, have I? Nnnnnope. After the Big Three, in this order:

— The Mitchell Family Organ. The Times Argus and Herald are sadly underfunded, and the MFO’s capital bureau is again reduced to a single reporter. But hell, I give the Mitchells a lot of credit for just continuing to publish a daily paper in two small markets. And, more often than not, the MFOs deliver at least a couple of good stories every day. I’m a Times Argus reader, and its editor, Steve Pappas, is one of my Heroes of Journalism: he has a tiny budget to work with, he deals with constant turnover on his news team, and he produces a lot of copy himself while also riding herd on the entire operation. I hope the Mitchells realize how fortunate they are to have him. And if he ever leaves, any other news organization would be wise to snap him up ASAP.

— Ah, the Burlington Free Press. Doubly enfeebled by declining ad revenue and its money-hungry corporate owner Gannett. It’s also become less relevant to anyone outside Chittenden County due to its obvious diminishment of State House and statewide political news in favor of purely local content. The Freeploid has two State House reporters, but they don’t produce as much as the MFO’s one (now Neal Goswami; formerly Peter Hirschfeld). I can’t say that’s their fault; I suspect it’s a matter of editorial priorities. The Freeploid is now the most underperforming player in our media landscape (performance compared to resources), now that VPR has upped its game.

— And finally, but this is no disgrace, WDEV. Its news service is mainly rip-and-read, but it is dedicated to local programming. In itself, that’s a big plus in this age of mega-media. But its crowning jewel is The Mark Johnson Show, an invaluable platform for public discussion and debate. While VPR has a swarm of producers around everything it puts on the air, Mark single-handedly gets the most important guests and asks the key questions. If VPR wasn’t so timid about breaking the modern public-radio mold (nothing longer than 4 minutes), it could do Vermont a huge service by giving Mark a daily platform to engage a statewide conversation.

Yes, I know, Vermont Edition. That’s nice, but it’s limited. I’d like to see VPR — and other public radio stations elsewhere — step out of its comfort zone and fill a couple of daily hours with local conversation. The midmorning and midafternoon ratings aren’t that strong anyway; why not take a bit of a chance? And in the process, do more to justify your place in the nonprofit world and the media landscape?

VPR produces more local programming than most public radio stations, but even so, the vast majority of its broadcast day is spent airing programs produced elsewhere. Many of those programs are worthwhile, but if you look at where the hours and resources go, VPR is no more a “local” station than any of the commercial talk or music stations that are basically repeaters for national programming.  

So there’s my State of the Media report. Your thoughts are welcome, as always.