(Note: a couple of hours after I posted this diary, it was reported that Elizabeth Murray, the reporter who wrote this story, had been laid off as part of a companywide cutback at Gannett. She’d just been hired a month ago. Harsh!

My diary still stands; my complaint is with the Freeploid’s editorial choices, not the reporter’s work.)

It’s pretty obvious that someone in the Burlington Free Press hierarchy has a very Catholic bug in his/her bonnet. As I’ve chronicled in the past, our Freeploid went (forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin) absolutely balls to the wall with its coverage of Pope Benedict’s retirement and, later, with its even more comprehensive coverage of his successor’s election.

Well, the Freeploid — or is it the Burlington Catholic Reporter — has done it again, with its front page devoted to Vermonters’ reactions to Pope Francis’ comments about gay people. No actual Vermont news, then, I take it?

The headline is pretty much all you have to read:

Wow. What a shocker. “Mixed views,” huh? Never saw that coming.

The story begins at a small midweek Mass at the Cathedral of the Buggered Altar Boy — er, I mean, The Immaculate Conception. Handy spot to gather comments from devout Catholics, for sure. And one member of the flock, Caroline Rood, supplied the reporter with a fervent endorsement of Pope Frank. (And posed for a very touching front-page picture of herself at prayer.)

(At least I assume she posed; the alternative is that the reporter was actually taking pictures during the Mass, which would be impolite and irreverent. And we can’t have that.)

There followed a recap of the Pope’s astoundingly non-Medieval “Who am I to judge?” statement, and then Vermont Bishop Salvatore Matano throwing a bathtub’s worth of cold water on the whole thing:

“As priests, we are expected to fulfill the virtue of chastity… Young persons are called to realize the intimacy reserved to those who are married is not a prerogative to be assumed by others in extramarital relationships.”

In other words, NO SEX FOR YOU, HORRIBLE GAY PERSON.

And only after all of that — the celebration of Mass, the comments of a devout Cathollic, the recap of Francis’ statement, and Bishop Matano’s ruler-smack across the knuckles — do we finally hear from a non-Catholic.

In the twelfth paragraph of the story.

After the jump: a celebrant’s intolerance.

There we find Kim Fountain of the RU12? Community Center, who expressed doubt that the Church was going to actually change any time soon. Again, not exactly Pulitzer Prize stuff here.

After that, we return to Caroline Rood, our earnest Catholic, who turns out to have shared some amazingly regressive (and inaccurate) views on homosexuality:

Rood said she honors the fact that homosexuality exists, but she thinks much of it is an experiment, and people should not act on a same-sex preference – especially gay priests, who have taken a vow of celibacy.

“I think personally that the entire gay/homosexual movement is very trendy, and I think it has attracted an enormous amount of people who are not at all gay,” Rood said.

Bwahahahahaha. Yeah, sure. I’ve been straight all my life, but this morning I read a lifestyle article on The Gay Wedding Boom and now I can’t wait to suck a cock.

Somehow the Freeploid decided to bury Rood’s ignorant bigotry deep in the article, while it happily trumpeted her faith on the front page.

By itself, this article wouldn’t be worth commenting on. But it’s part of a trend: the Freeploid providing acres of skewed coverage of Catholicism by resorting to the old cliche “Vermonters React To…”

Somehow, though, we don’t see big front-page stories on Vermonters reacting to the Syrian Civil War or the Middle East peace talks or Anthony Weiner’s wiener or anything else under the sun. The Freeploid seems to reserve this ploy for only one particular institution.

I ask again, why does the Burlington Free Press — the biggest, if not the best, newspaper in an extremely liberal and secular state — devote so much attention to the Roman Catholic Church?  

Hey, remember John MacGovern? Hopeless Republican challenger to Bernie Sanders in 2012?

Well, he hasn’t gone away. He’s still out there, desperately trying to raise money to pay off his lingering campaign debt.

And he’s failing.

So far this year, MacGovern has actually lost ground on his quest — managing to spend more than he raised between January and June, according to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission.

More on that in a moment. But first, his latest plea for money, as forwarded to me by someone on his e-mail list:

Battling Big-Government Liberals

The Obama Administration is perhaps the most corrupt administration in recent history — they have more scandals than any President in recent history.  And the scandals are more serious than before.

As Americans we are facing an unprecedented expansion of government and an intrusion into our private lives like never before.  George Orwell couldn’t have imagined what Obama has already done.

We need to hold the Washington establishment and Obama accountable.

Help me send them a message, that we oppose their intrusive big government agenda and won’t take it any more.

I am preparing to take the fight to Washington, but I still have some campaign debt I need to pay down from when I challenged Bernie Sanders.  Will you help so I can continue the fight against big government establishment liberals?  Every contribution counts as we get ready to wage our next battle for freedom, and liberty!

Notice that the real aim of his message is buried way down near the end: “I still have some campaign debt.” That’s right, friends, your money won’t go to the next fight against the dastardly liberals — it’ll defray the cost of last year’s losing battle.

Well, actually, it won’t even do that. It’ll merely help pay the cost of keeping the comatose “MacGovern for Senate” enterprise on life support.

The dismal numbers, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission: MacGovern started 2013 with $35,650 in debts. (And cash on hand totaling $2,542.) From January through June, the once and (in his dreams) future candidate raised $11,324 — and in the process, managed to spend $13,454.

Yep, somehow he managed to increase his debt by more than $2,000. Not while campaigning for office; while trying to pay down his debt.

I don’t know what’s sadder: this embarrassing postscript to a hapless campaign, or the fact that some poor schnooks are falling for his sales pitch.

After the jump: a Miss Daisy cameo, and a mysterious link to a far-right Kansan.

To finish this post, a few miscellaneous notes from the fine print of MacGovern’s campaign filings.

Notable among his scant roster of contributors this year: MacGoo received $1,000 apiece from Joyce Rumsfeld (that’s right, Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld) and the Patron Saint of Lost Conservative Causes herself, Lenore Broughton!

MacGovern’s most frequent expenditure is — surprise, surprise — repaying himself for campaign-related expenses. During the first six months of this year, MacGovern’s campaign paid John MacGovern a total of $9,680.

That’s right, 83% of the money raised by “MacGovern for Senate” in 2013 has gone straight into John MacGovern’s pocket. Nice work if you can get it.

Somehow, though, the campaign still owes John MacGovern roughly $8,400, because MacGovern has continued to rack up expenses almost as fast as his campaign can reimburse him. Even though he’s not, y’know, actually campaigning any more.  

John MacGovern is one of his campaign’s four major debtors. The other three include $3,663 to JC Image, a Vermont company that manufactures logo wear and campaign materials; $4,500 to Paul Dame, who ran for State Representative in 2012 and lost badly to two Democrats in his Essex Junction district; and the big kahuna, $15,000 to the Magellan Group of Hays, Kansas.

That last item is a real headscratcher. As is the Magellan Group itself, as a matter of fact.

The Magellan Group is a shadowy outfit. Google it, and you’ll get little or nothing relevant. (There are other Magellan Groups, such as a California real estate firm, but nothing much on the Kansas entity.) According to a four-year-old post on “Right Kansas,” a currently dormant conservative blog, the Magellan Group operates out of the home of Marilyn Wasinger, the aunt of Rob Wasinger. That home was listed by Rob Wasinger as his residence for voting purposes. The Magellan Group was founded in August of 2008.

Who is Rob Wasinger? Well, he used to be the top aide to then-Senator (now Governor) Sam Brownback. And during the year 2008, while he was earning salaries as Brownback’s top aide AND manager of Brownback’s spectacularly unsuccessful Presidential campaign, Wasinger also “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group.

But wait, there’s more.

In 2010, Rob Wasinger ran for Congress in Kansas, and lost. He is currently chief of staff for Congressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-Michigan). Bentivolio may ring a bell for those with eidetic memories for obscure Tea Partiers. He’s the reindeer farmer from the Detroit suburbs who backed into a Congressional seat when incumbent Thaddeus “Guitar Hero” McCotter bungled the routine petition process for ballot access, thus deep-sixing his candidacy just before the Republican primary.

And leaving the rightfully obscure Bentivolio as the only Republican candidate on the ballot. And since the district is solidly Republican, Bentivolio was elected in November in spite of his, ahem, colorful background:

Bentivolio, a former teacher, raises reindeer on a farm in Milford, moonlighting at events as Santa Claus with real reindeer – and he once said in a court deposition that he didn’t know who he really was: himself or Santa Claus. His brother Phillip Bentivolio gave an interview where he called him “mentally unbalanced” and predicted he’ll eventually spend time in prison.

Okay, so that’s the guy Rob Wasinger is now working for. Having, in the past, worked for far-right Christianist nutbar Sam Brownback. And having, somehow, “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group while also working for Brownback in two separate capacities.

Now riddle me this, Batman: Why in hell does the John MacGovern campaign owe the Magellan Group $15,000?

Of course, one might equally well ask why in hell the John MacGovern campaign exists at all.  

The departure of Andy Bromage as news editor of Seven Days, everybody’s favorite “alternative” newspaper, creates a decisive moment for the future of the paper. At least I think so. And I shall explain…

When Bromage was shifted from “Fair Game” columnist to news editor, and Paul Heintz ensconced in the Peter Freyne Memorial Chair, I saw the potential for the paper to become a real force in Vermont political journalism, possibly on the same level as VTDigger. But that potential has only been sporadically realized. For every hard-hitting story on a subject no one else has touched (see Ken Picard’s recent piece on Vermont’s terrible wastewater treatment and reporting system), there’s been even more irrelevant, tangential stuff and (often ill-considered) attempts at being edgy or different (Heintz’ notorious piece on huntin’ with the Guv).  

During the most recent legislative session, Seven Days too often forswore coverage of issues under the Golden Dome — or presented them solely in horse-race form, rather than exploring the real merits of the issue. The paper’s political coverage often strayed to our D.C. delegation, something better done when the legislature is in adjournment.

The edginess, which used to have a real bite during the days of Peter Freyne and Shay Totten, is usually confined to the occasional expletive or Heintz’ habit of recycling Freyne’s old nicknames, like Ho-Ho and Ol’ Bernardo. He can deploy Freynisms, but has he ever created a nickname of his own for a current politico? I can’t recall any.

And there have been complete misfires, such as the “series” called “Kill This Bill,” which was itself killed after one unfortunate installment in which Bromage bemoaned the Legislature’s wasting its time on ceremonial bills to create the Official State Something-or-Other.

Yeah, real groundbreaking stuff.

Not to say that Seven Days is a journalistic dry hole. They often produce really admirable journalism. But that only makes the fluff and ersatz edginess even more annoying.

And, with talented reporters like Heintz, Bromage, Picard, and Kathryn Flagg, I’d expect them to consistently produce top-quality stuff.

But too often they don’t. They fail to fulfill their potential.

What’s wrong over there? I’m purely an outsider; I trade barbs, usually good-natured, with Heintz, and I had a beer with Bromage once. Never met the co-owners. But from my perspective as a reader, it looks like an institution in the grips of a midlife crisis. The paper isn’t sure what it wants to be.

Or should I say, its owners aren’t sure what they want it to be. Not that I know them… but it’s their paper, and their vision. Or lack thereof.

Seven Days is an established institution. From the look of the ad-stuffed paper edition and the healthy roster of reporters, I infer that it’s a financial success. It’s been around long enough to have a place in Vermont’s power structure. And, perhaps, to fear the loss of its place should it offend the wrong people too often.

So maybe they pull back the reins on political coverage, or try to create “balance,” ugh. The result is inconsistency, false edginess, and a blandness that can be roughly measured by one noteworthy fact: Every week on page 3, the paper lists the five most-read articles on its website. When Freyne or Totten wrote the political column, it was a fixture in the top 5 — and often the #1 most-read story. Under Bromage and Heintz, it rarely appears in that list. I’m not blaming the writers; I suspect it’s editorial direction that’s blandified the column.

And I daresay, if Peter Freyne were alive today and looking for a job, there’s no way in Hell that Seven Days would hire him.

After all, remember the last writer who really tried to be edgy and different? Lauren Ober? She (cough) “left” the paper after an ill-tempered blogpost about one of Vermont’s sacred cows — Phish — generated a lot of blowback.

I’m not defending Ober’s post, which was overly juvenile in tone (but not without some insight). But I am saying this: Lauren Ober was an edgy writer — and a young one, who was still growing into her considerable innate talent. Her superiors knew she was an edgy writer, and presumably they wanted her to be that way. They knew she was a work in progress in need of some development to reach her potential. But when she got in trouble with the Phish phans, her bosses pretty much pulled the rug out from under her, appending this disclaimer to Ober’s apology blogpost:

Opinions expressed on our staff blog do not necessarily reflect the views of editors or staff at Seven Days. Many of us are longtime Phish fans, and all of us appreciate what the band, and its fans, are doing for our state.

In journalism, if a reporter screws up, it’s standard practice for the editor and publisher to lend public support — even if they’re privately tearing the reporter a new one. You just don’t leave a reporter out to hang. Especially since nothing a reporter writes will see the light of day without an editor (or three) reviewing the copy. If a reporter goes too far, it is with the direct or implicit assent of his/her superiors. The Ober incident revealed a management that was more concerned with its image than with its integrity.  

The same revelation can be seen in Seven Days’ frequent blandness, its inconsistency, and its faux edginess.

Look, I’m a fan of Seven Days. I read every issue, and I visit its website several times a week. I want it to be the real force for the public good that I know it can be. I criticize because I see the potential for Seven Days to be so much more.

And so, as the paper searches for Bromage’s replacement, my plea: Find somebody good and strong. Someone with a commitment to alternative journalism in the finest sense: journalism that is truly without fear or favor, that takes no prisoners, that isn’t afraid to make judgments or even have a point of view.

Find that person, hire them, and then get our of their way.  

This whole “motels for the homeless” issue continues to reverberate, months after the Legislature took a (then little-noticed) meataxe to the motel budget, which then caused the Department of Children and Families to issue some extremely tight rules about who gets a free room.

Rules that, given our shortage of shelter space, were certain to leave a lot of homeless people without a place to stay.

The latest: after a tsunami of complaints from homeless advocacy groups, DCF has backtracked — substantially easing the rules. VTDigger:

The previous plan would have cut from the program 70 percent of people who previously qualified, according to the department’s estimates. The new plan would cut participation by about 20 percent, according to DCF’s estimates.

Which is nice, except that I recall DCF Commissioner David Yacavone appearing on VPR’s “Vermont Edition” on July 10, issuing a calm, measured, and slightly smug defense of the rules. Guess he changed his mind. Also, the new rules threaten to blow a hole in the DCF budget. And key lawmakers are cold to the idea of paying the extra freight. Claire Ayer, chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, told VTDigger that the motel “money was being spent in the wrong places.”

Yes, well, I think everybody agrees that $50-per-night motel rooms are a poor substitute for a decent shelter program, good transitional support, and an adequate supply of affordable housing. But lawmakers haven’t exactly rushed forward to fund those better alternatives; they simply whacked the motel budget.

This issue takes up a lot of real estate in this week’s “Fair Game” column in Seven Days. Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz takes a dig at legislative “lefties” who’ve ben critical of Governor Shumlin’s tightfistedness, but who are now out-toughing the Gov on the motel issue. And yes, he’s got a point, but a couple things come to mind:

After the jump: A certain Dem/Prog takes the stage, repeatedly.

— The Legislature was forced into cutting programs by Shumlin’s complete intransigence on taxes and his inclusion of some even worse choices, such as the draconian cut in the Earned Income Tax Credit.

— State spending on motels was a favorite hobbyhorse of Heintz’ own paymasters. I seem to recall at least two very large articles in Seven Days about the motel program. The second included flashy graphics detailing the “Cost to Taxpayers” of temporary stays at certain Vermont motels. The kind of thing I’d expect from WCAX-TV, or Vermont’s Worst Newspaper™, the Caledonian-Record.  

So if “lefties” are “dishing out the tough medicine,” as Heintz puts it, then Vermont’s maverick “alternative” newspaper certainly did its part to foster that particular prescription.

Now here’s a funny thing. When you go back and read Seven Days’ coverage on this issue, one name pops up over and over again: Senator Tim Ashe, Democrat/Progresssive (or is it Progressive/Democrat?). In December, 7D quoted him as saying the motel program is “skewed toward crisis management and not crisis prevention.” Which is a nice sentiment, and presumes you’re adequately funding crisis prevention.

In the January article festooned with aforementioned graphics and entitled “Leaders Question Program that Puts Vermont’s Homeless in Motels,” the following “leaders” (all Senators) are quoted as “question[ing the] program”:

Tim Ashe

Tim Ashe

Tim Ashe

Tim Ashe

Sally Fox (not quoted; simply mentioned as a co-sponsor of an Ashe bill)

Tim Ashe

Tim Ashe

Tim Ashe

Jane Kitchel

Is it just me, or does one name stick out on that list?

Oh yeah, Tim Ashe, mentioned in this week’s “Fair Game” as having “crusaded against the motel program for years.”

Tim Ashe, subject of Seven Days’ multitudinous disclaimers: “Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly.”

Y’know, when Ashe ran for Mayor of Burlington, I thought Seven Days did a fine job of playing it straight. In this case, when it lavishes attention on an Ashe hobbyhorse, I have to wonder. (Maybe this is why one journalism type told me that 7D’s newly open News Editor position was “fraught, to say the least.”

Or maybe not.)

I also have to wonder what kind of game Our Leading Elected Progressive is playing. HIs argument, as quoted in his favorite weekly, is that the program is “skewed toward crisis management and not crisis prevention.”  Which is a lovely rationalization, but for three problems:

— You can never prevent all housing crises, especially in an economy where the middle class has been decimated and many of our citizens live perilously close to the poverty line. You’d better fund crisis management AND prevention.    

— If you’re going to cut funding for crisis management, you’d better concomitantly beef up the prevention side. This session, the Legislature did the easy half and left it to DCF to figure out the rest.

— Ashe has not only blasted the short-term nature of the motel fix, he’s also leveled some dog-whistle criticisms of the program. He asserted, without citing evidence, that it’s drawing homeless people from out of state. And he’s implied that the state’s being taken for a ride by profit-minded innkeepers. But, as Seven Days itself reported, the average per-night cost in Burlington was $56 in FY 2012. That’s about as cheap as you can get.

I conclude with a bit of complete speculation, which is one of our House Specials at the GMD Cafe.

This isn’t the first time Tim Ashe has tacked toward the middle. Is he aiming for a future statewide race, and hoping to position himself as “the tough, responsible Progresive”?

(Or, in supermarket terms, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Shumlin”?)

If you think that’s overly conspiratorial, then I remind you of last year’s race for Senate President Pro Tem, which resulted in John Campbell’s re-election in spite of numerous grumblings about his leadership. Ashe was one of those supporting Campbell, and his reward was the chairmanship of the powerful Finance Committee. After which he told the Vermont Press Bureau’s Peter Hirschfeld that he was “eager to help Gov. Peter Shumlin fulfill a pledge not to raise broad-based taxes.”

He seems to be “eager” for something, that’s for sure.  

If you answered “Ten percent less than we thought,” you’d be correct. At least, Entergy Nuclear hopes so. VTDigger has the story, along with an accompanying photo of 2007’s cooling tower collapse (ah, memories):

Entergy Corp., which owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, is preparing to cut back its labor force in an effort to reorganize the company.

… A source inside the Vernon plant says managers are telling workers that the company could lay off 10 percent of the facility’s roughly 650 workers.

The Vermont cuts are part of a company-wide “human capital management strategic imperative,” which is how the people who have sold their souls for a corporate PR gig refer to FIRING WORKERS. That’s right, Entergy is following the IBM path to prosperity.

The move comes after a disappointing second-quarter earnings result. Entergy places most of the blame on large increases in income tax payments, due to a one-time quirk; 2012’s second quarter saw a big write-off of storm-damage cleanup costs in Louisiana, Entergy’s home state.

But you’d think, if the earnings drop was really a one-time thing, it shouldn’t cause a company-wide retraction. And you’d be right; Entergy is whistling past the graveyard.

After the jump: “Economic reality has slammed the door on nuclear power.”

Again, VTDigger:

Mark Cooper, a senior economics fellow at Vermont Law School, published a paper Wednesday titled, “Renaissance in Reverse: Competition Pushes Aging U.S. Nuclear Reactors to the Brink of Economic Abandonment.”

… “Economic reality has slammed the door on nuclear power,” Cooper concluded. “In the near-term old reactors are uneconomic because lower cost alternatives have squeezed their cash margins to the point where they no longer cover the cost of nuclear operation … In the long term new reactors are uneconomic because there are numerous low-carbon alternatives that are less costly and less risk (sic).”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Entergy is trying to find out how few Vermonters it takes to run a nuclear power plant.

Now, it’s good fun to chortle at Entergy’s dire straits, but it does beg the fundamental question, as posed in VTDigger’s comments section by one Moshe Braner:

We should get more money from Entergy into the insufficient decommissioning fund before they go “poof.”

Yeah, if Entergy was shedding crocodile tears over the need to set aside hundreds of millions when their bottom line was healthy, how eager do you think they’ll be to restock the decomm fund now that the whole company seems to be circling the drain?  

Here’s a nice little Christmas-in-July surprise: the dispute over Gov. Shumlin’s purchase of his neighbor’s property is headed to a quiet resolution.

When Jeremy Dodge’s family hired Brady Toensing to represent them, I wouldn’t have predicted a deal would come so quickly, and so completely out of public view. Toensing is the junior partner in a conservative D.C. law firm known for taking on political hot-button causes; his mother, Victoria Toensing, is a frequent conspiracy-slinger on Fox News. Given Toensing’s background, I thought sure he’d try to inflict maximum political damage on Shumlin.

Instead, we have an agreement in principle which would allow Dodge to retain ownership of his family homestead. He’d be given five years to pay back the money Shumlin had put into the deal — an estimated $30,000 — at a low but unspecified interest rate. (“The lowest allowed by the IRS,” according to Shumlin’s attorney M. Jerome Diamond.)

Assuming the deal goes through, it’s a nice moment for all parties.

Toensing will have acted in his client’s best interest instead of his own political interest; Shumlin will have realized that the Dodge deal was not worth the political embarrassment and offered good terms to undo the sale; and Dodge has a chance at a fresh start. According to Seven Days’ Paul Heintz, Dodge’s children are taking an active part in helping him pay off the debt and restore his home.

Some details remain to be worked out, but it sounds like a reasonable resolution for all concerned. And one blissfully — and unexpectedly — free of politics.  

Oh, here we go. IBM was legally required to tell the state how many employees were laid off in the latest round of job cuts at Essex Junction. And it did so.

But it doesn’t want you to find out.

IBM has provided the state with details about the number of jobs cut at its Essex Junction plant, but it wants the state to keep the information from the public.

The company claims that releasing the number could harm it.

Aww, poor widdle IBM. If we find out how many people lost their jobs in Vermont, the competitive position of a global behemoth will somehow be harmed. The potential injury is so huge that IBM’s claiming an exemption from the Vermont Public Records Act.

Yeah, I don’t buy it. This is just a continuation of IBM’s nondisclosure policy, intended to minimize the PR impact of domestic job cuts.

Sounds like the state’s not buying it either:

[Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan] says the state isn’t convinced the law applies to the job cuts number and citing requests to make the figure public, the department is telling IBM it needs to make a stronger case for withholding it.

Let’s see if Big Blue can come up with a more compelling pretext. As for the truth, we turn to the union that’s been watchdogging IBM’s reign of terror:

Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM, said Tuesday IBM has been “stonewalling” on job cut numbers nationwide for years.

“They’ve not been transparent at all,” Conrad said. “They don’t release the U.S. figures any more. Frankly this doesn’t surprise me. The citizens of Vermont should be outraged that IBM is thumbing their nose at them, saying ‘We’re not going to tell you our figures.'”

We don’t know exactly how many people still work at Essex. But it’s estimated that employment has fallen from 8,500 in 2001 to less than 4,000 today. Probably a lot less, according to this comment from a laid-off IBMer, posted on the Freeploid’s website:

Not surprised at all about the IBM moves to keep the numbers confidential; they are much bigger than expected and Big Blew doesn’t want the folks to know that the end of this plant is near. My estimate… is greater than 600. Of course us older folks that were “pushed” to retire will not be in the final released number even though we were really layer off (sic). That coming from a company that is wondering why there is distrust.

If that estimate is correct — 600 layoffs plus forced “retirements” — then the workforce at Essex Junction is not much more than 3,000. And, per industry insider Robert X. Cringely, IBM will continue to aggressively downsize its American operations for at least two more years.

And given IBM’s recent track record of corporate citizenship, I won’t be sorry to see them go. I’m very sorry that we’ve already lost the IBM that used to be, but that ship sailed long ago. The current IBM isn’t worth the trouble.  

Oh boy, here we go:

PITTSFORD – Neighbors of the site proposed for a solar farm that would be owned by a Waterbury company are voicing their discontent about the project that would be on town land behind their homes.

This story — available only behind the Mitchell Family Paywall — is exactly the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the segment of Vermont’s “environmental” community whose agenda is a toxic combination of NIMBYism, denialism, and Tea Party-style Know-Nothingism. Stuff like this:

“Why can’t the industrial solar be in the cities?” asked George Clifford, who lives across from the site. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t pay thousands of dollars to have industrial crap in my backyard.”

And this:

[Amy] Moriglioni, who said she heard about the meeting only when Clifford mentioned it a couple of hours beforehand, said there are pros and cons to solar farms, especially in how they are made.

“We are not fond of them in our house, at least not here,” she said.

Makes me grind my teeth. Which four out of five dentists do not recommend.  

To answer Clifford’s nonsensical question, you can’t put large-scale solar in cities because THE BUILDINGS BLOCK THE SUNLIGHT. Just like you can’t put wind turbines in Lake Champlain because the winds aren’t strong enough. But really, Clifford doesn’t care about the question; he just wants no solar farms anywhere near his house. That’s all. Same with Moriglioni, who wants the field kept open so she and her kids can walk across it.

This is not environmentalism. Indeed, since our biggest environmental threat is climate change, this is the exact opposite of environmentalism.  

If we are going to do our part to limit climate change, then we’re going to have to find places to site renewable energy facilities. If we’re not going to do our part, then we are no better than the Koch Brothers or Exxon Mobil or Jim Inhofe.

And despite our pure-hearted efforts to preserve Vermont as some kind of turbine-and-panel-free Eden, the effects of climate change will come barreling across our borders and turn our state into something profoundly different.

Vermont’s climate will be similar to that of southern Tennessee and northern Georgia by 2070 if CO2 emissions continue to climb, the Union of Concerned Scientists reports.

And please don’t tell me that the answer is small-scale, community-scale, Vermont-scale renewables. That’s part of the solution, to be sure; but it can’t possibly provide all the energy we need or anything close to it.

(Straying off topic for a moment: if you’re concerned about bird and bat kills at large-scale wind turbines, how many critters would die in the blades of countless home-scale windmills?)

The best approach to a clean-energy future is a balanced development of (large and small scale) wind, solar, in-state hydro, and any other renewable, low-carbon option we can come up with, as well as all the efficiency efforts we can muster. If you do without one option, you increase reliance on the others. Take anti-wind carpetbagger Luke Snelling, whose “clean energy plan” cuts out ridgeline wind; instead, he calls for a massive increase in solar power (along with continued heavy reliance on nuclear and Hydro Quebec, both of which bear heavy environmental costs). How massive? Try a 2,592% increase in solar in the next 17 years.

Problem is, as proposals start coming for new solar arrays, the vocal opposition starts to appear —  as in Pittsford and earlier in Charlotte. If this trend continues, we won’t be able to get anywhere near Snelling’s target. Or anywhere near any reasonable target for reducing our carbon footprint. And our efforts to create a greener, cleaner energy system cannot possibly succeed.

And, in the name of NIMBY-driven denialism, we will have done our part to kill the planet. But at least we’ll protect George Clifford’s “thousands of dollars.”  

I don’t feel pity for Darcie “Hack” Johnston, health care reform denialist, conservative flack-for-hire, and former First Mate on Randy Brock’s Titanicampaign. She is too well paid for pity. But there is an air of existential sadness about her continual struggle to push a big heavy rock up a very steep hill. Her pet causes are terminally unpopular, and all her efforts are having precisely zero effect.

So she has to take her victories where she can find them. Example: last week she jumped on board the Darrell Issa bandwagon, and called for a special legislative session to dismantle Vermont’s health care exchange.

Now, in terms of her stated goal, her missive had all the effect of a BB bouncing off Superman’s chest. But it got her a little publicity!

That’s a win, isn’t it?

Well, it is, in the small, ineffectual, hidebound world of the Hack.

Look: an article in the Freeploid! And better still, look here: she was listed as a “Winner” in Seven Days’ weekly “Winners and Losers” column!

Yay!

After the jump: Alone again, naturally.

Of course, the Shumlin Administration confidently asserts that the Issa complaint is baseless. House Speaker Shap Smith called the Hack’s allegation “pure politics,” and said a special session “is very unlikely.” Consulting my Shap/English Dictionary, I translate that as “when monkeys fly out of my butt.”

And even House Minority Leader Don Turner isn’t interested in a special session because (a) he knows he lacks the votes to affect a reopened debate on health care, and (b) he wants to look ahead to implementation of the exchange, telling the Freeploid “I just want to make sure Vermonters have affordable insurance come January.”

Of course, being an actual officeholder, he has less time for rhetorical flourishes than does the Hack; meaningless gestures are her stock-in-trade.  

So yeah, if you measure victory in terms of column inches, I guess Seven Days is right to call Johnston a “winner.” But in terms of influencing the actual course of health care reform, the Hack remains what she has always been: a tried-and-true loser.

A well-remunerated loser, certainly; but a loser nonetheless.  

So, the inevitable has come to pass. The chief dirt-digger of Congressional Republicans, Darrell “Wrong Way” Issa, has turned his prosecutorial spotlight on Vermont’s health care reform process. VTDigger’s Andrew Stein dutifully writes up this nothingburger of a story:

Vermont… policy requires residents buying health insurance individually or through small businesses with 50 or fewer employees to purchase coverage on the state-run market. Friday, the House [Committee on Oversight and Government Reform] sent a letter to Mark Larson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, indicating that such mandates are illegal.

The aforementioned committee has become a clown-carload of baseless conspiracy theories under the leadership of Issa, he California Republican and former car-alarm huckster. To me, this is strong evidence for the probity of Vermont’s process, since Issa has a lengthy record of seeking scandal where none exists. In his zealous pursuit of imaginary misdeeds, he has embodied the most notable traits of two fictional French policemen: the humanity of Javert and the instincts of Clouseau.

But Vermont Republicans, shivering in the chill of their long political winter, can’t help but be drawn to the warmth of his feckless grandstanding. Darcie “Hack” Johnston, the grande dame of health care reform denialism and the “brains” behind Randy Brock’s gubernatorial campaign, called for a purely voluntary health care exchange.

And Shawn Shouldice, Vermont director of the National Federation of Independent Business (and press liaison for Bruce Lisman’s supposedly nonpartisan Campaign for Vermont), pounced on Issa’s accusation like a starving hyena on a scrap of roadkill:

“The [Affordable Care Act] very clearly prohibits compulsory participation in the exchange,” Shouldice said in a statement. “We’ve never understood how the Vermont health care exchange can compel small businesses and individuals to participate in the exchange, and we’re encouraged that finally someone in Washington is asking the same question.”

Unfortunately for Shouldice, the Hack, and Issa, there’s this paragraph in the ACA that says:

“Nothing in this title shall be construed to terminate, abridge or limit the operation of any requirement under state law with respect to any policy or plan that is offered outside of the Exchange to offer benefits.”

After the jump: a notable abstainer from this partisan jackassery.

That unambiguous statement ought to put this whole issue to rest, but given Issa’s predilections, I’m sure he’ll keep ranting about it. But Vermont Republicans ought to be a little less desperate in their choice of allies. After all, they are trying to broaden their appeal, aren’t they? Jumping on one of Issa’s flaming bandwagons isn’t going to help.

One prominent Republican who seems to be aware of this: Betsy Bishop, former Douglas Administration multitool and head of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. She was actually quoted in the Issa committee’s letter of inquiry…

But Bishop said she neither knew about her quote being used nor was it used in full context.

… Bishop says she doesn’t attach much weight to the letter, and the chamber would work with – not against the Shumlin administration – to implement the exchange as it has been crafted into state law.

Smart lady. Since her first duty is to represent the interests of her organization, she’s foresworn the short-term thrill of the cheap political attack in favor of burnishing her relationship with the state officials with the power to impact her constituents.