Journalistic malpractice, Freeploid-style:

That’s how the ‘Loid headlined an article about Speaker Shap Smith appointing one additional Democrat to the Health Care Committee.

One.

Singular.

Headline: “Seats.” Plural. Nice little thumb on the scale, Mr. (or Ms.) Freeploid Headline Writer. What’s the matter, wasn’t there room to write “one more seat” instead of “more seats”?

As for the story itself, there’s nothing much wrong, aside from it coming out three days after Peter “Scoop” Hirschfeld had the same story in the Mitchell Family Organ. (Not paywalled.) And, well, Hirschfeld had a fuller explanation for Smith’s move.

As for the move itself, Smith offloaded Republican “Not That” John Mitchell* in favor of newly appointed Democrat Kathy Hoyt, leaving the 11-person panel with only two Republicans. (The rest: 7 Dems, Independent Paul Poirier, Prog Chris Pearson.)

*Watergate reference. You young ‘uns can Google it.

Smith has two solid reasons for tilting the committee even further.  

First, Hoyt has impeccable credentials. She was Secretary of Administration in the Kunin and Dean administrations, and she served on a panel that examined Vermont’s tax structure. She knows government finance and tax policy, which will be the keys in implementing single-payer. She will be a valuable addition to the committee.

Second, even though the 2013 committee had a solid Democratic majority, it was occasionally troublesome. Poirier, Pearson, and the Republicans often acted as a Coalition of Mutual Convenience. As Smith put it, “It’s a 6-5 committee right now.” And as Hirschfeld reports:

That narrow margin led to some very public setbacks last session for the committee’s Democratic chairman, who saw his committee go against him on at least one high-profile vote.

The strengthening of the Dems’ partisan edge is a bit of a slap at Republicans, and also at Pearson and Poirier, who willingly made common cause with a party that’s staunchly opposed to health care reform. It’s a power play by Smith to be sure, but it’s well within the purview of a Speaker with a super-majority. Can’t say I blame him, what with health care reform being the signature issue of the Shumlin Administration.

The maneuver prompted the customary partisan bleat from the other side:

House Minority Leader Don Turner, however, said the shake up amounts to partisan maneuvering designed to undermine the influence of the GOP as the Democratic supermajority prepares to face tough questions over the troubled roll out of the new health insurance exchange.

Uh, well, yeah. But I’d say two things to Mr. Turner.

One, “the influence of the GOP” was pretty much nonexistent already.

Two, if you don’t like it, go win some elections.  

Oh, it’s just one piece of bad news after another for our “trouble-plagued” Vermont Health Connect.

Well, you’d think so if you got all your information from certain media outlets. Seven Days’ Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz apparently spent a good chunk of last week foaming at the mouth about the deceptively rosy picture painted by Governor Shumlin in recent months. And he ended the week by grudgingly listing VHC as a “winner” (although he added a big, only partly relevant, caveat) while listing the Governor as his top “loser” for having, in the mind of Heintz, “lost any remaining credibility he might have had with the press corps.”

Over the top much?

We will return to the Huntsman, but now we skip on to the Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen, who penned an article allegedly covering the ups and downs of VHC. The story, of course, spent very little time on the ups while painstakingly lingering over the downs. Roughly one-quarter of the entire story recounted, blow by blow, the bad experience of one single Vermonter. This, after briefly mentioning the news that VHC enrollment numbers are climbing steadily and that, in Shumlin’s words, “We are making great progress.”  

But for those fortunate enough to have access to the Mitchell Family Organ, Peter “Radio Killed the Newsprint Star” Hirschfeld provides a balanced overview of the state of health care reform:

Much has been made of all the tumult surrounding the rollout of the federal Affordable Care Act.

But for a significant swath of the Vermont population, the arrival of the new law has brought with it the solution to many of their health care problems.

Revised income eligibility limits mean that about 40,000 residents of the state have become newly eligible for Medicaid… for many of the clients served by advocates like Peter Sterling, executive director of the Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security, the changes will mean the difference between having insurance or not.

And there’s the real point, and the real victory of reform: a whole lot of people will now have health care security. Many will have access for the first time, and everyone will have access to insurance plans that meet solid standards. Those good things, and more, are happening regardless of the temporary troubles of the VHC website.

Indeed, as I’ve previously reported in this space, Vermont has been the most successful state in the country — and it’s not even close.

But let’s go back to Paul Heintz, the Huntsman who’s gone to sea and morphed into Captain Ahab, pursuing the Great White Whale of VHC “disaster” and Shumlin deceptiveness.  

The Huntsman’s high dudgeon was triggered by a gubernatorial press conference at which Shumlin claimed he’d been open and honest about the state of VHC.

Which is, of course, not true. Shumlin spent most of 2013 as VHC’s #1 salesman, accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative — or at least doing his best to sweep it under the rug.

This is where Shumlin’s worst qualities shine brightest. He always acts like a salesman for his own policies, often transparently so. And he refuses to admit that he’s ever wrong, or that he failed to tell the whole truth. Which bit him in the ass at last week’s presser, as he endlessly parried reporters’ questions and narrowly parsed the meaning of words, phrases, and reports. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s often cringe-worthy.

So yeah, Heintz is right: Shumlin did a sales job on health care reform, downplayed any problems, and refused to admit he’d done anything wrong.

But that’s not an impeachable offense. It’s what politicians do.

Shumlin does it more brazenly than some others. But Heintz’ Captain Ahab act is an extreme overreaction. Governor Shumlin has lost some credibility. But he’ll gain it back and more, if health care reform continues to progress.

Heintz ends his tirade with a reference to VHC as a “train-wreck,” which is farther from the truth about health care reform than anything the Governor has said. And while Heintz has dutifully chronicled the missteps and problems, he has written little or nothing about the positive side of the story.

Which dramatically outweighs the negative. And that ain’t spin; it’s the simple truth.  

So Chris Christie has come and gone. Vermont Republicans feel a sugar-rush of energy and hope unfelt since the salad days of Jim Douglas. They also received a much-needed infusion of cash from their first successful high-profile fundraiser in at least two years. Otherwise?

The evening was an opportunity squandered.

The party could have gotten so much more out of the evening — in money, and in free publicity.

Money first. It was reportedly a capacity crowd, which begs the question, “How many more tickets could have been sold?” The event was held at the Champlain Valley Expo, which has a large and flexible events facility. (Banquet capacity up to 2,000, according to its website.)

I don’t know if anything else was going on last night at the Expo, but ticket sales had been brisk from the moment Christie’s appearance was announced. Could the party have requested a larger space? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps after the dismal performance of the Scott Brown fundraiser in Rutland (50 attendees, a net loss for the event), party leaders may have been understandably gun-shy.

Okay, so the VTGOP failed to maximize its investment. The bigger failure, by far, was the limited publicity due to a complete news blackout. The media were banned from the event — and even banned from getting anywhere near the event. And by all accounts, nothing controversial was said! No “legitimate rape,” no “lazy 47-percenters,” just an evening of uplifting messages about broadening the party’s appeal. Republican Rep. Patti Komline Tweeted, “NO partisan trash talking. Loving it!” And former Democratic Burlington City Councilor Ed Adrian Tweeted, “No ‘red meat’ … Still wondering why media shut out.”

Me. too.

(Even a clueless Tea Partier like John “MacGoo” MacGovern realizes that his party missed an opportunity. He posted this comment today on VTDigger: “Though I agree that the Vermont media does not, generally, give Republicans a fair shake, the idea of keeping the media out of an event like this one strikes me as utterly foolish and counter-productive.”)

This morning could have brought an avalanche of positive press for the VTGOP: energy, enthusiasm, money, a validation of Phil Scott’s alleged new direction. Instead, we get dribbly little write-arounds (Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen resorted to quoting a Christie speech from last month, since she couldn’t get even a transcript of his remarks at the Expo) and complaints about lack of access (Paul Heintz and Anne Galloway). All festooned with dismal photos of a cold, dark parking lot and a forlorn “GOP GALA” sign.  

Not only were the media kept out of the event — they were blocked from getting anywhere near the frickin’ building! An understandably cranky Galloway:

Party officials, security and police officers refused to let us anywhere near the doorway to the Blue Ribbon Pavilion at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds and relegated us to the chain link fence on the edge of the property. So we stood for about an hour and a half outside the entrance gate, jumping up and down to keep warm and waving at the GOP attendees driving past.

At one point, we took our chances and wandered in, only to be chided by security who were backed up by several young police officers who looked as though they relished the thought of carting us off.

It appears as though Christie’s team requested the ban on coverage of his speech, but this blockade of the entire site seems like absolute overkill. And the blame for that has to go to the VTGOP.

The Christie team was also, as far as I can tell, guilty of overkill, in a way that reveals a lack of respect for the VTGOP. Christie himself jetted in and out of town; his stay was as brief as possible. State party officials were even afraid he’d miss the $10,000 “policy roundtable” because his schedule was so tight. His office couldn’t be bothered to return calls from multiple Vermont reporters.

And if the Christie team ordered the media ban, well, they don’t always do so. Remsen reports that the media were welcome to a Christie fundraiser last week for Idaho’s Republican Governor. Why can Idaho reporters do their jobs, while Vermont’s finest have to freeze in the dark?

No press conference, no access to the speech. Not even a brief photo opportunity!

No, Christie gave the VTGOP the absolute minimum of his time and effort. And the VTGOP, being what it is, was grateful for the crumbs from his table.

(Admittedly, that’s a whole lotta crumbs. …Thank you! I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.)

Christie reportedly promised to return to Vermont when hell freezes over if Vermont gets “great candidates up and down the ballot.” I think he’s fully aware that that’s a check he’ll never have to cash.  

You might have heard: tonight’s the night. New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie will be sneaking briefly into our state for a very private fundraising event on behalf of the woefully underfunded Vermont Republican Party. The VTGOP hopes to gross $200,000 to $300,000, which would be a nice first step toward solvency. And would be a marked improvement on their last two high-profile events: last June’s appearance by ex-Sen. Scott Brown, which reportedly lost money (he spoke to “a party of nearly 50,” according to VTDigger), and the 2012 hit-and-run by Maine Gov. Paul LePage, which created more bad headlines than bucks for his host Randy Brock.

Christie will not interact with reporters or any of us Great Unwashed during his brief touchdown; he’ll only rub elbows with paying customers. This was apparently at the Great White’s request:

Though it has been widely reported that the Vermont GOP banned the press, sources say it was the Christie people who insisted on exclusivity for the event.

That, from VTDigger’s Anne Galloway, who then goes on to recount some of Christie’s abundant run-ins with his home state’s media. (She also informs us that former Burlington City Councilor Ed Adrian will be attending, and will be live-Tweeting the Christie speech. @CounselorAdrian or hashtag #gccvt, for those interested.)

Okay, here I am in paragraph 5 and that’s not what I planned to write about.

What I want to say is this: we in Vermont have our very own Chris Christie, and he’s the one and only Republican currently on the scene who (I think) has a chance to be Governor someday.

It’s not Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, nor is it Brian Dubie or Wendy WIlton or even Bruce Lisman.

It’s Thom Lauzon, Republican Mayor of Barre.  

I don’t expect him to run in 2014 or even 2016 because, well, he’s a max donor to the Shumlin campaign. But when Shumlin runs for Senate or simply gets tired of being Governor — say, maybe in 2018 after the projected implementation of Shumlin’s lodestar, single-payer health care — it just might be Lauzon Time.

I call him “our Chris Christie” because, well, obviously, he has a temper. But he also shares with Christie a willingness to leverage the power and resources of government for the sake of his constituency. Which implies an acceptance of government as a force for good that’s uncommon in today’s GOP. And that makes him, relatively speaking, a moderate.

Like him or not, Thom Lauzon has done a whole lot of good for Barre. He’s made more progress than anybody else in that long-benighted city. He’s done far better than anyone in Rutland or Saint Johnsbury, for sure.

As one of the city’s major real-estate holders, Lauzon has certainly profited from Barre’s rebound. But so has the entire community.

I’m not endorsing everything he’s done, nor am I saying I’d vote for him. But he has established a track record of success that’s unmatched in the VTGOP. He’s crafted a moderate, can-do profile that’s the party’s best chance to grow beyond its base. On the other hand, his tough-guy persona should help him connect with hard-core Republicans.

Chris Christie has enjoyed great success in an otherwise solidly blue state, in spite of his temper and his raw conservatism on many issues, by “getting things done.” Thom Lauzon has the same sort of profile. I have no idea if he’s interested in statewide office; but if he is, I believe he’s the VTGOP’s best hope for someday reclaiming the governorship.  

In the category of holiday gifts nobody wanted, we have this:

Gannett said Wednesday it will begin inserting a condensed edition of USA TODAY daily into 31 additional newspapers early next year, a distribution strategy aimed at both beefing up local publications’ content and widening its national paper’s reach.

Oh, Lord. Last time I “read” USA TODAY (Gannett insists on ALL CAPS), when it was left for free outside my hotel room, it took me about five minutes. And I regretted wasting the time. The paper is bland, boring, bottom-feeder stuff that’s pitched for probably a fifth-grade reading level.

Gannett isn’t saying which 31 papers will be first in line for the insert. But the New York Times says that eventually, all 81 Gannett papers will be “enhanced” with USA TODAY filler. Inclluding your beloved Burlington Free Press!

The reason? Ad sales, of course. The Times reports that Gannett “experienced a deep dip in third-quarter advertising revenue this year” and:

By incorporating USA Today into local papers, Gannett is able to increase the national paper’s circulation by roughly 1.5 million readers during the week and 2.5 million readers on Sundays, and then try to sell advertising against these larger numbers.

Hey presto! Instant doubling of your official circulation! As for the readers, well, they’ll take it in the shorts:

Asked whether prices would rise for subscribers receiving the extra USA Today content, a Gannett spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said, “As we introduce enhanced products, consumers tell us they are willing to pay for the added value we’re bringing them.”

In other words, yes, it’ll cost you more to subscribe.

Y’know, print is declining for many reasons. But the business practices of Gannett and other big chains are part of the problem, not part of the solution.  

Oh, so I see how this is going to go. Health care reform makes substantial, measurable progress, and its opponents respond by redefining success. Or to use a football analogy, we’re driving the ball down the field, and the likes of Darcie Johnston are moving the goalposts.

The latest bit of good news — couched by our media, as always, in references to the “trouble-plagued” Vermont Health Connect system — came on Monday, when state officials announced that nearly 75% of small-business employees are already enrolled in a VHC insurance plan. And Health Care Access Commissioner Mark Larson says the state is on track to ensure that no one suffers a lapse in coverage on January 1.

Wait, wait — I thought small businesses were the failure point of Shummycare, with business owners swamped in confusion and employees threatened with lapses in coverage. And now you’re telling me that the vast majority are already good to go?

There is a caveat. A lot of small businesses opted to deal directly with insurers, rather than enrolling online through VHC.

But the bigger point is, health care reform is working. Small businesses may not have used the website — but they’ve chosen insurance plans that are defined and regulated by the state. Those plans aren’t riddled with exclusions and high deductibles. Pre-existing conditions are covered! That’s the real substance of reform. The website is simply a tool. A tool that didn’t initially work as it should, and is now being fixed.  

The response of reform opponents, natch, is to redefine failure.

Randy Brock, after his initial (and highly touted) judgment that “the system doesn’t work,” has apparently shut his piehole on the subject*. Good ol’ Darcie “Hack” Johnston, on the other hand, can still be relied upon to issue strident statements every damn time.

*Which might be a hint that he’s abandoned any thought of a second run for Governor in 2014.

She’s just as strident these days, but the substance keeps getting thinner:

”The best thing that Vermont Health Connect did was they got out of the way. Remember, businesses wouldn’t have been in this mess if it hadn’t been for their spectacular failure,” she said. ”They’ve still forced businesses to make decision and choices that may or may not be what they wanted to do and may or may not be the best for their business or their employees.”

Aha. She can no longer claim that the system is doomed to collapse, or that thousands of Vermonters will be stripped of coverage; now, her definition of failure is that businesses have been forced to make decisions “that may or may not be what they wanted to do.”

Well, exCUUUUUUUSE MEEEE!

Don’t we all, every single day, have to do things that “may or may not be what [we] wanted to do”? I have to wear a sweater because it’s cold. I have to carry the firewood. I have to wait for the traffic light to change. I have to pay my phone bill. I have to pay my taxes, in support of a civil and fair society. And some of us have had to choose a health plan that might not have been exactly what we “wanted to do.”  

(Hell, under the old “system” a lot of us had to settle for overpriced, lousy health insurance — or go without. Even if it wasn’t what we “wanted to do.”)

Johnston’s predictions of disaster continue to recede into the future as well. Earlier this fall, she said that Vermonters were being “forced off a cliff” and would suffer “irreparable harm.” As recently as last week, she was predicting large numbers of people would suffer lapses in coverage on January 1. Well, now she’s retreated to April 1, when she warns that “the state will see a spike in the rate of uninsured Vermonters” because “these are not affordable plans.”

Okay, so now if anyone is either inconvenienced, or has to pay more for insurance because they can’t buy super-crappy high-deductible exclusion-ridden plans anymore, then health care reform will have been a failure. In spite of the fact that many more Vermonters will be insured than before, that all insurance plans will at least be halfway decent, and there will be some prospect of controlling runaway costs.

Hey, if that’s a “failure,” I want more.

p.s. I also look forward to how Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz will manage to declare reform a “loser” or Johnston a “winner” in his weekly “Winners and Losers” column, as he’s been doing every damn week. Maybe someday he’ll actually declare Johnston or Brock “losers” for their inaccurate, overblown predictions of doom.

… who is — or thinks he is — responsible for the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Apologies for my third Lisman post in the past 24 hours, but damn if he isn’t just the gift that keeps on giving.

Earlier, we brought you news of Lisman’s search for a pair of bobbleheads to help advance Campaign for Vermont’s legislative priorities, whatever the hell they are. Well, a Freeploid article covering the CFV job search included some absolutely choice comments from Lisman and/or his hacktastic publicist, in which Lisman tries to take credit for every recent development in Vermont politics that bears the slightest resemblance to the ever-vague CFV agenda.  

Lisman contends Campaign for Vermont is already affecting policy debate in Vermont. Elected and appointed leaders, he said, are starting to sound like they’ve been reading Campaign for Vermont’s policy papers.

… He notes that Shumlin has shifted his rhetoric and is talking about shared economic prosperity and making changes to the property tax system that pays for Vermont schools.

He notes that Education Secretary Armando Vilaseca talks of consolidating schools.

He points out that House Speaker Shap Smith is talking about “results-based budgeting.”

… On its Facebook page, Campaign for Vermont has posted several notes in which it blatantly claims credit for influencing the debate. One recently said of an article on pension reform, “We thank Treasurer Pearce for responding to our call for action on this important issue.”

Shumlin has “shifted his rhetoric”? Hell, he hasn’t made a public appearance during his entire governorship without saying “jobs and economic prosperity” at least a dozen times!

And Beth Pearce responding to CFV’s call for pension reform? Complete nonsense. Pearce has been a green-eyeshade number-cruncher for years.  

Lisman takes credit for all this and more, even though — as Freeploid scribe Terri Hallenbeck points out — these issues have been booted around Montpelier since the days when Lisman was still a Wall Street kingpin, and long before CFV was even a gleam in his cloudy eye.  And she quotes State House lobbyist Todd Bailey as noting that “it looks like Campaign for Vermont is more interested in self-promotion than actually getting things done.”

Here’s a couple of helpful hints for Lisman and his planned lobbying effort under the Golden Dome:

— Don’t try to take credit for things you didn’t do.

— If you really want to Win Friends and Influence People, don’t even try to take credit for things you did do.

In either case, be generous with praise and avoid upstaging the people you hope to build relationships with. All those people still remember CFV’s gangbusters debut, with its endless series of radio ads decrying “the leadership in Montpelier.” They know you were talking about them. They see through your pathetic glory-grabbing. They don’t appreciate it. And it won’t make them receptive to future blandishments.

If Bruce Lisman really wants to build support for his agenda, he needs to learn just a little tiny bit of diplomacy. Otherwise, his lobbying expenditures will be just as useless as his flood of TV and radio ads have been.  

Ah, Vermont Public Radio. Home of the Endless Fundraising Buffet, and of the abundant (by Vermont media standards) newsroom workforce Your Pledge Dollars help pay for. Well, apparently VPR’s having some trouble finding news on its own. Of itself that’s not surprising, since VPR newscasts and long-form pieces are often reheated versions of stuff already reported by other media outlets.

But now it’s sunk to a new low by turning to Vermont’s newest, weakest, and most astroturfy “media outlet,” Vermont Watchdog. As previously discussed in this space, Vermont Watchdog is one of a nationwide string of cookie-cutter news operations paid for by the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, a North Dakota-based organization that’s part of  the Koch Brothers/Americans for Prosperity/ALEC collection of far-right advocacy groups. And that frequently partners with journalistic disgrace James O’Keefe to train a new generation of plausibly journalistic propaganda artistes.  

VW’s sole staffer is one Jon Street, although the lion’s share of VW postings are actually written by some guy who lives in Vienna, Austria.

Well, VPR has begun to pick up and echo some of Watchdog’s meager and misleading offerings. It’s only happened twice so far; but that’s twice in the last few days, and it shouldn’t go any farther.  

It began with Street’s maiden voyage as VW’s Vermont Bureau, an odd little story about Vermont’s ban on “happy hour” promotions at bars and restaurants. I say “odd” because, as far as I know, this story kinda came out of nowhere*. And, well, also “odd” because Mr. Street is a graduate of the very, very Christian and very, very dry Missouri Baptist University, which don’t allow no drinkin’ or smokin’ or foolin’ around or hand-holdin’.

*The idea of lifting happy-hour restrictions has previously been floated by free-market slash libertarian-oriented “advocacy groups.” I’m guessing Mr. Street trolled through the Cato Institute archives in search of something he could apply to his new gig.

But apparently Vermont’s getting to him, because his first VW article boosted the idea of cheap, readily available alcohol. Yes, happy hour as an economic stimulus program.

It should have ended right there, but apparently VPR is hard-up for ideas: Street’s artificially created “controversy” was the basis for an extensive interview on Monday’s Vermont Edition with state Liquor Control honcho Bill Goggins, who’d represented the state’s side in Street’s article.

VPR then continued its bout of Vermont Watchdog dumpster-diving with a piece entitled “National Group Flunks State for Court Justices’ Financial Disclosure.” It reported on a study by the Center for Public Integrity, which is an honest-to-God actual public-interest nonprofit. Last week, CPI released a study of financial-disclosure requirements for judges in the 50 states, and found the vast majority sadly lacking. To be precise, 43 of the 50 states got an “F” grade.

Maybe VPR got the story from a CPI press release, but the study’s first appearance in the Vermont media was, yep, at Vermont Watchdog. Its Mitteleuropean correspondent, Yael Ossowski, left off the part about Vermont tying for last with 42 other states and simply reported that “Vermont gets a big, fat ‘F,'” and that Vermont “ranks one of the worst in the country.”  

Yeah, one of the 42 worst.

Well, five days after Ossowski’s post, here comes the VPR piece. Which tells the story more fairly than Ossowski, noting (in the fourth paragraph) that “Vermont and more than 40 other states received an ‘F’ grade.” I guess it was easier to say “more than 40 other states” than it was to simply say “42.” That’s what they pay all them editors for.

Unlike the happy-hour story, the CPI study is actually worth reporting. (Although I’d argue it has more impact when reported as a national story, and would have been better done by NPR.) But it’s troubling that VPR is resorting to the likes of Vermont Watchdog in search of story ideas.

I hope VPR doesn’t become a convenient echo chamber for VW’s concern trolling; it can, and should, do much better than that.  

The faint whiffs of a new legislative session are emanating from Montpelier on the wintry breezes. Committee meetings pick up the pace, gubernatorial news conferences become more frequent… and Bruce Lisman’s vanity proj public advocacy group, Campaign for Vermont (Prosperity) is looking to make good on its threat promise to launch an active lobbying effort under the Golden Dome.

Bruce Lisman, CFV co-founder, said a full time executive director and a manger of advocacy and outreach would be added to take the organization to the next level and mobilize its partners to advocate for its policy proposals in the Legislature.

Let’s assume he meant to say “manager of advocacy and outreach.” Either that, or it’s beginning to look a lot like a CFV Christmas. Maybe Bruce can hire himself a proofreader too, as long as he’s whipping out his wallet. (He’s already spent somewhere close to a million bucks on CFV, and that figure seems certain to climb rapidly with a paid staff on board and campaign-season advertising to be bought.)

The qualifications, for those eagerly stroking your résumés:

Lisman said the ideal Executive Director candidate would be an experienced manager, a capable fundraiser and familiar with public policy development and advocacy in Vermont. Similarly, the Manager Advocacy and Outreach would be someone who has advocacy experience and can sustain the steady growth in membership the organization has enjoyed in its first two years, he said.

Presumably the first one in line will be Jason Gibbs, the ex-Jim Douglas staffer who’s currently an underemployed consultant and sometime adviser to the Lisman Gang. The hiring process should give a good indication of exactly how highly Lisman values Gibbs’ skills. On a broader note, it’ll also indicate how seriously Lisman is trying to maintain an appearance of bipartisanship.

CFV is still claiming to be “the fastest growing grassroots advocacy organization in the state,” which means exactly nothing since it hardly even existed two years ago. Doesn’t take much of a growth rate when you start from square one.  

The press release also claims that Lisman wants CFV to “be an effective and self-sustaining advocacy organization,” which’ll be a lot harder to achieve, considering that the whole megillah is completely underwritten by Lisman’s Wall Street fortune. (Some of which, I cruelly note, was filched from your pension plans and mortgage values in the crash of 2008. Maybe that’s what Lisman means by “grassroots”: paid for by All Of You. It certainly can’t mean “emerged from the bottom up,” since CFV was entirely the creation of one very wealthy retiree and a handful of cronies.)

Lisman closes his job posting by patting himself on the back for seeking to “provide a voice of reason in Montpelier,” which presumes a certain level of incoherence and insanity among our current officeholders. Which hearkens back to the early days of CFV, when it ran wave after wave of ads lambasting the unnamed Lords of the Capitol, Democrats one and all. Which led some people to unkindly conclude that Lisman was a conservative in moderate’s clothing. (I made the same conclusion on different grounds: the policies CFV was promoting, and the things on public record about Lisman’s own views.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the fox is hiring. And he wants to guard your henhouse.

______________________________

Annotations:

“Gonna find me a horse”: Gratuitous Frank Zappa reference.

Oh, here comes putative centrist Bruce Lisman with another load of warmed-over Reaganite crapola. In one short opinion column, he manages to misdiagnose the problem, misidentify the remedy, and prove, once again, that his thought process was forged in the free-market foundries of Wall Street.

Vermonters have spent billions on the war on poverty – the budget for AHS has grown from $863 million to $2.2 billion over the past 14 years (nearly 7 percent per year), comprises 42 percent of all state spending, and, this doesn’t include the earned income tax credit or property tax relief programs.

Vermonters have invested generously – better supported now than in past decades – but, our highest goal of lifting our neighbors out of poverty remains unmet.

Ol’ Brucie appears to be laboring under a buttload of false assumptions here. Let’s try to straighten him out, shall we?

— Anti-poverty programs are not solely designed to eliminate poverty. As Our Lord and Savior once said, “The poor you will always have with you.” To be sure, we’d like social service programs to give a hand up as well as a handout. But equally, their goal is to mitigate human suffering for those in poverty. Lisman, lifelong Wall Streeter that he is, refers to social service funding as an “investment” that hasn’t brought the desired return. Well yeah, if you expect the elimination of poverty. What I expect is that we help lift people out of poverty, but also keep the most unfortunate among us from freezing or starving to death.

— Anti-poverty programs are battling very powerful economic forces. By all measures — wealth, income, purchasing power — the poor, working class and middle class have been taking it on the chin for the last 30-plus years. Even people in the 50th or 60th percentile of income aren’t that far from poverty. And it’s almost impossible for someone at the bottom to escape from poverty, no matter how much assistance they get from SNAP, LIHEAP, EITC, and other alphabet-soup offerings. That’s why anti-poverty spending has grown so much: free-market capitalism keeps creating more and more victims.

— If you’re judging anti-poverty programs a failure, you have to do the same for capitalism itself. Free enterprise is supposed to create bountiful wealth, which redounds to the benefit of all, no? Apparently not. And we seem to create more poverty whenever the free-market system is given sway, from the Gilded Age to…

— The Reagan prescription of low taxes and deregulation has been especially abysmal. Cut taxes on the rich, unshackle American business, and the resulting growth will take care of everyone. That’s what Uncle Ronnie said. Well, it’s been 30-plus years, and things just keep getting worse for the poor, working class and middle class. Everyone, in fact, except for the super-rich and corporations. By Lisman’s own standard, it’s past time to end that experiment.

After the jump: pretty charts and graphs to prove my points.

Lisman provides statistics to “prove” the ineffectuality of anti-poverty efforts.

The 2012 U.S. Census best articulates the situation: 11.2 percent, or 70,100 Vermonters, live in poverty, and 15.7 percent, or 98,300, live at or below 125 percent of poverty (equals $14,363/individual and $29,438/family of four). The 2000 Census informs us that 10 percent (60,900) of Vermonters lived in poverty and 14.6 percent (90,175) lived at or below 125 percent of poverty. While I’ll acknowledge that poverty rates move up and down with the economy, it’s clear that efforts over the past 10 years to move Vermonters out of poverty have failed.

Lisman blames the public sector for this. Which is to be expected, I suppose, coming from someone who spent his entire adult life on Wall Street. Myself, I wonder why poverty has continued to expand from the inauguration of Reagan through two terms of George W. Bush.

Lisman’s favored fix for social services programs? It looks to me like a reheated version of Challenges for Change, the failed Jim Douglas experiment that remains the shining star in the firmament of Lisman’s right-hand man, Tom Pelham. He wants “performance-based measures” to evaluate human services programs. Just like Challenges for Change:

Rather than using an axe to make the budget fit the revenue available to pay for it, Challenges proponents said, government can change the way it does business in a way that trims expenditures without impacting programs.

Lawmakers used a number of terms to sell the idea, including “performance-based budgeting” and “outcomes-based budgeting.

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Douglas’ budget for FY 2011 called for $38 million in CFC savings; it only saved about $8 million in state operations. And in the process, it did damage to human services operations that have required a lot of time and money to repair.

“It was smoke and mirrors. That phrase has been used way too much to describe it, but it’s true,” Rep. Patti Komline, last year’s House minority leader, said last week.

And lest we forget the source of this new round of “smoke and mirrors,” I’ll again remind you of Bruce Lisman’s own economic views, as stated in his 2010 speech “Finding Skin.” Which I keep bringing up because it’s just about the only occasion where Lisman has expressed his own opinions on the record, rather than hiding behind the “nonpartisanship” and strangely-opaque “transparency” of his Campaign for Vermont.

Lisman advocated for lower taxes on capital gains and corporate earnings, because investment capital is “the most precious thing in the galaxy.” He asserted that “economic growth… is the ONLY answer for what might ail [Vermont]. And he characterized the Wall Street crash of 2008 as “this thing that happened to us.” Rather than, oh, “this thing we caused through our greed and hubris.”

(Still waiting, BTW, for someone in the media to pin down Lisman on his own political and economic beliefs, instead of giving him platforms to puke out his faux-centrist CFV pablum.)

And now for some charts and graphs that will show why social service programs have “failed” to end poverty, and some of the real causes of continuing poverty in the US.

1. The rich people have all the money. The bottom 80% have a tiny proportion of all US wealth. That includes the poor, the working class, the middle class, and even the upper middle class. When you have to reach the 80th percentile to get a decent share of the pie, what chance is there to get out of poverty — even with generous public assistance and powerful self-motivation? (Chart from the Economic Policy Institute)

2. The rich are earning all the money. The bottom 80% have seen stagnant income gains over the last half century. Again, how can you hope to reach economic security when you can’t get out of the rut? Also, how much longer do we have to wait for “trickle-down economics” to start working? (Figures from Census Bureau, graph from Mother Jones)

3. Reaganomics only works for the Republican “base,” as George W. Bush once put it. Still waitin’ for that trickle-down. And, again, this is the economic force that anti-poverty programs are trying to work against. How can they hope to lift people out of poverty, when more and more people are being pushed into poverty? (Graph from Congressional Budget Office)

I’m sure that Lisman’s answer to all of this is that taxes and regulation are still too high. Which fits Einstein’s definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over again (or in Lisman’s case, doubling down) and expecting a different result.

I’m sure there are ways to improve social service programs. But I wouldn’t trust anything Bruce Lisman (or Tom Pelham) has to say on the subject.