Well, I showed up at the State House this morning for another day of drama surrounding S.30, the former “wind moratorium” bill that’s been successively stripped of almost all its effective provisions.

But there wasn’t any. Drama, that is. In the space of about two minutes, the Senate took up the latest version of S.30, no one offered any amendments, and it sailed through on a voice vote with a single “No” heard from the floor.

For those just joining us, S.30’s last few remaining teeth were extracted on Tuesday. (A good account of that action was written by VTDigger’s Andrew Stein.) The latest version of S.30 does not include any requirement for the Public Service Board to consider Act 250 criteria in siting decisions for new energy plants, including conformity with town development plans.

The Tuesday action was considered a big win for advocates of renewable energy. And there was talk of a counterattack by opponents of wind energy. But it didn’t materialize. If you believe the hallway chatter, wind opponents had decided S.30 was a lost cause. They may try to attach anti-wind language to other pieces of legislation — and there’s more than enough time for that kind of maneuvering.

The desiccated husk of S.30 is headed to the House, where little or no action is expected.

Not that it really matters; even if S.30 became law, it would have little or no impact.  

Here’s the expanded version of the brief diary I posted earlier today.

At Governor Shumlin’s weekly press conference today, the “big announcement” was a progress report on the health care reform process: Hey, we’re on track! Lots of work to do, but we’re getting there! First in the nation! Etc., etc.  

And yes, the progress does seem to be substantial. Indeed, listening back to my recording of the presser, I was struck by a feeling of optimism. This was the first time the reform process seemed tangible to me — something that would actually happen, and not that far in the future. On Monday, the Administration will unveil the proposed insurance plans and their costs. And the new insurance exchange, Vermont Health Connect, will go online in a mere six months. Starting October 1, Vermonters will be able to shop for insurance and get answers to their questions on a single website. And the exchange is gearing up to serve more than 100,000 Vermonters in 2014 alone.

It’s a big f’n deal, as Joe Biden would say.

But there wasn’t really a specific trigger — a reason why this should be The Big Story today. (Monday’s insurance-plan unveil will be the big story, actually.) I suspect today’s presser had a health care theme because of the secondary announcement: Anya Rader Wallack is stepping down as chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, effective in September. By bubble-wrapping that news in several layers of good tidings, I think Shumlin was hoping to soften the blow of her departure.

And maybe softpedal his choice of a replacement: GMCB member Al Gobeille.

Wallack has spent most of her adult life working on health care reform, and is a nationally-known expert. Gobeille is a businessman whose health care experience consists of his tenure on GMCB. His company runs three Burlington restaurants (Shanty on the Shore, Burlington Bay Market and Cafe, Breakwater Cafe and Grill) plus the Northern Lights cruises.

Hm.

You know the Governor has made an unconventional choice when his first description of the nominee is that he’s a “quick learner.”  That’s the most positive way of saying he doesn’t have relevant expertise. Well, he’d better be a quick learner; assuming his nomination is approved, in six months’ time he’ll be driving the health care reform bus.  

Shumlin and other officials sought to stress Gobeille’s credentials, and emphasized how lots of people in the Administration and the Legislature believe that Gobeille is perfect for the job.

Even though, Shumlin acknowledged, Gobeille will need an associate with the expertise he lacks.

One of the things that Al said to me in our conversations about this, is that he would take this job on the condition that he had someone of Anya’s caliber to help advise the Board.

(Minor annoyance of today’s presser. Everybody — the Governor, her colleagues, even the reporters — referred to her as “Anya.” Maybe she likes the familiarity. But it struck me that if she were a man, there wouldn’t be such presumption. In professional settings, women are called by their first names far more often than men. I occasionally find the same tendency slipping into my own writing, and I think it’s wrong.)

Shumlin went on to say that he hoped to convince Rader Wallack to provide part-time consultancy after she steps down. She was noncommittal.

Rader Wallack, by the way, is leaving for family reasons. When she took the job two years ago, she lived in Rhode Island. She hoped to relocate her family to Vermont, but it didn’t work out. They’re back in Rhode Island, and she can’t indefinitely continue to work so far away from home. Especially with the incredibly demanding nature of the job.

When asked further about the choice of Gobeille, the Governor indirectly acknowledged a political dimension:

…as we move forward to a single payer health care system that’s affordable for both Vermonters and for business, it’s great to have a businessperson who has the respect of the business community leading the charge.

Especially since, as he did not add, the business community is the primary source of reform skepticism.

Well, I guess if you basically trust the Governor’s approach to health care reform, you can accept his reasoning on Gobeille. If the Burlington businessman really is committed to reform — and he has said that he is — then he can be a huge asset to the effort, as someone with strong ties to the business community.

If you’re skeptical of Shumlin, then you see Gobeille as one more piece of evidence that the Governor is a DINO, a pro-business toady, who’s preparing to sell out on health care reform.

Myself, I lean toward the former interpretation; I think Shumlin has staked much of his political reputation to the success of this reform effort. But time will tell.  

What is it with Sen. Joe Benning and rape? He sure does love to use the word. And one of these days it’s going to blow up in his face. “Rape” is one of those words, like “holocaust,” that politicians should avoid at all costs. Because for millions of American women, “rape” is not just a powerful verb, it’s a soul-crushing personal experience. Nearly one in five women in America report that they have been raped or been the target of attempted rape.* So if you use the word in mixed company, chances are that someone in your audience will hear it very differently than you intended.

*For men, the figure is one in 71.

Back in mid-January, I pointed out Benning’s truly unfortunate use of “rape” in reference to Kingdom Community Wind on Lowell Mountain. It wasn’t in passing conversation; it was in an opinion piece at VTDigger.

And yesterday, during floor debate on S.30, he used it again.

“I don’t know any word in the English language to better describe what I see there,” he said, passing out pictures of the project’s construction on the Lowell Mountain ridgeline.

Well, Senator, not to be crude or anything, but if you’d ever felt something unwanted being rammed into your rectum with a knife pressed to your neck, you might get out your Thesaurus and find a better word. There are nine female state Senators; statistically speaking, chances are that two of them have been sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. Not to mention the women in the press corps and gallery, plus all those who heard or read Benning’s remarks.

I won’t even get into the question of whether Lowell Mountain truly experienced anything akin to rape. I’m just saying — again — that Joe Benning’s use of the word is offensive and inappropriate, and he needs to cut it out.  

As our Distinguished Solons prepare to enter their noble chamber for a learned discourse on the subject of S.30, I’d just like to point out that the whole thing is a waste of time.

Senate Bill 30 used to be called the “wind moratorium bill” until its sponsors stripped out the moratorium because they knew the bill didn’t stand a snowball’s chance of going anywhere. But the reduced S.30 still contained new restrictions on wind and other renewable energy projects, plus a heapin’ helpin’ of anti-wind rhetoric in the “Findings” section.

And last week, as the Showdown in the Senate approached, the sponsors (a) postponed the vote until today, and (b) further diluted the bill in hopes of dragging its corpse across the finish line. The anti-wind “Findings” were expunged and replaced with neutral language. And a significant change, not reported at the time, was made to the bill’s mandate that new energy projects be subject to the Act 250 review process.

The current S.30 dumps the Act 250 review mandate. The process would remain wholly within the purview of the Public Service Board. But the PSB would be directed to apply the criteria of Act 250.

So here’s the thing about the latest iteration of S.30: it’s pretty much useless, except as a feel-good measure for the Windies.  

As I reported last week, most of the stuff in S.30 is already on the books. And the studies mandated by S.30 have all been done before. Some of them on multiple occasions.

In that case, I can almost hear the Windies saying, why not support S.30?

Well, even in its watered-down state, it does seek to tip the balance against new wind projects. it would also waste $75,000 of taxpayer money replicating previously-conducted studies. It would create a special legislative committee that, knowing the Senate leadership’s proclivities, will include at least three anti-wind voices. (That’s half the committee, and that’s a recipe for gridlock.)

And, the longer this goes on, the more legislative time is taken up with a bill that’s going nowhere. We already know the House isn’t touching it, and Governor Shumlin is opposed to it.  

I’m heartened by the fact that the Senate Windies have had to throw out the bulk of their anti-wind wish list. But at this point, the best thing is to just drive a stake in S.30 and move on to more meaningful things.  

I’ve got to hand it to John MacGovern. A lesser man would have been discouraged by the absolute whomping he absorbed at the hands of Bernie Sanders last November. But not our hapless Republican nominee, no sirree bob. Like Wile E. Coyote reaching for the Acme catalog after blowing himself up, MacGovern has emerged from the crater of his campaign and is ready to continue the fight against Bernie’s Socialist perfidy.

But to do that, ahem, he’ll need your help.

See, somehow this true-blue fiscal conservative ended his no-hoper Senate campaign $35,000 in the red, according to Federal Election Commission reports. (Must have been all those Acme orders.)

That’s $35,000 out of a total budget of $150,000. Oops.

So yeah, he needs your help.

This month, MacGoo has sent not one, but two fundraising appeals to everyone on his donor list.

The first is a garden-variety money pitch that includes this intriguing promise:

Right now, I am busy getting ready to re-enter the arena and continue the battle we began last year.

See, losing to Bernie by a 71-25 margin was Phase One of his cunning plan. And as soon as he pays off his outstanding balance with Acme Corporation, he’ll be ready to launch Phase Two.

But — and stop me if you’ve heard this — to do that, he’ll need your help.

The brief fundraiser includes the standard artificially-generated urgency:

At the end of the month, I have to report how much money I have raised to retire my debt.  Will you stand with me as I work to meet this critical deadline?

And if we do Stand With MacGoo, what will he do?  

Well, here’s what: He’ll fight against that old shibboleth, the United Nations Small Arms Treaty that’ll allow the One World Militia to invade your home and confiscate your guns!

No, really. That’s the pitch in MacGoo’s second letter, which begins with the big bold headline: “Under the cover of night, at 3am (sic) in the U.S. Senate…”  And continues thusly:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced an amendment to the first Senate budget in 4 years which would STOP the U.S. from signing on to the U.N. Small Arms treaty.  Although the Senate PASSED the amendment (53-46), prohibiting us from surrendering our rights to the UN, Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders cast his vote in SUPPORT of the UN and against the rights of gun owners in Vermont and throughout our great nation.

Sanders is spitting in the face of Vermont gun owners who once helped to elect him!  Not only did he vote in favor of greater restrictions on guns, including the possibility of full registration, but in the same vote he showed his support of yielding U.S. Sovereignty to the United Nations.

And then the pitch: “Please help me to get the word out by making a quick donation!”

Shameless, absolutely shameless.

But then, MacGoo is a veteran practitioner of this peculiarly right-wing scam: Supporting himself by convincing credulous rich people to “help him fight” sone imaginary battle. See, back in 2002, MacGoo founded The Hanover Institute, a nonprofit organization designed to stir up conservative Dartmouth alums about the liberal perfidy of college administrators. (You know, like admitting female students or dropping the “Indians” name for its athletic teams.) Or, as the Institute oh-so inartfully described itself in its 2010 IRS filing:

As you can see, if you can read the incompetently-typed small print, the Institute’s real mission was circular in nature: (1) getting donors to underwrite the costs of (2) MacGoo’s salary and expenses and (3) distributing “information” aimed at (1) getting donors to underwrite the costs of (2) MacGoo’s salary… lather, rinse, repeat.

The Institute filed a couple of high-profile lawsuits against Dartmouth College in 2005 and 2007, and lost ’em both. A promised third lawsuit never materialized. The Hanover Institute appears to be defunct; its website is offline, and it hasn’t filed with the IRS since 2010. Presumably the rich alumni got wise to the scam, so John moved to the next one: “fighting” Bernie Sanders and the One World Government.

Well, y’know, a guy’s gotta make a living.

So if you’ve got some extra cash lying around, and don’t feel like setting it on fire or throwing it down a rat hole, might I remind you that John MacGoo needs your help?  

Just a brief coda to my series of budget thoughts.

One of the lesser tediousnesses of life under the Golden Dome is the knee-jerk lobbyist’s yelp. You know the drill: Legislature considers a proposal that might  — might — impinge on a business interest, and the flacks go screaming to the press corps: This Bill Will Kill Jobs and Decimate Our Industry!!!

The latest run to the microphones was made by Parker Riehle, head of Ski Vermont. And the object of his trumped-up ire was Friday’s House Ways & Means Committee vote for an increase in the state rooms and meals tax.

An increase of one-half of one percent. Effective for only one year.

Cue Mr. Riehle, as reported by the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck (Gannett paywall warning):  

Minutes before they made their choices, lobbyists were still making pleas for their members to be spared new taxes. Parker Riehle, executive director of the Vermont Ski Association, said raising the meals tax would hurt restaurants who work on thin profit margins and, in the case of ski areas, compete with neighboring states for business.

“Hello, Okemo? I’d like to book one of your finest chalets. …Wait, what’s that you say? The state tax is nine POINT FIVE percent, instead of nine percent? Well, I’m sorry, that’s just too much. I’m taking my business to New Hampshire!”

I mean, c’mon.

Nothing against Mr. Riehle. I’m sure he loves his kids and his dog. And as Hallenbeck makes clear, he was just one member of the gabbling horde. But Vermont is in a tough budget bind, and I’m sick and tired of hearing the same old tired whinge.

(Besides, the committee had just cut the tax hike in half and imposed a one-year sunset in response to his arguments. What more could he expect?)

One time in my life, just once, I’d like to hear this instead: “While we don’t welcome a tax increase that could affect our business, we realize the Legislature has hard choices to make. And if this is the best way forward for all Vermonters, we are ready to do our part.”

Yeah, I know, cold day in Hell, blue moon, airborne pigs. And the flack would probably get fired for his selflessness.

But a guy can dream, can’t he?

Part 2 of what I think will be a three-part series.

It’s nut-cutting time at the State House, with a tight 2014 budget and an even tighter outlook for 2015, plus a lot of demands for scarce bits of “extra” money and battles over which unpopular revenue enhancements will survive the process.

At moments like this, I’m very glad to be on the outside throwing rocks at the windows, rather than actually being responsible for making tough choices. That said, I’m ’bout to launch a few rocks. Hey, it’s my “job.”

Some of the proposals seem designed to save money in the short term, but cost even more later on. To some extent, I can sympathize. But at some point you’ve got to rebuild the road instead of patching the same old potholes. As a smart man recently told me, spending only 75% of what you need is a waste of money.

A few prime examples from last week’s deliberations: An omnibus bill designed to fight drug abuse that doesn’t include any new money for treatment; a new cap on welfare benefits that shortchanges programs that would help people get into the workforce; and a boost in heating fuel assistance with not much money for weatherization.

And now, the details…  

The No-Exit Drug Strategery. On a 137-1 vote, the House approved a wide-ranging bill aimed at fighting opioid and methamphetamine abuse in Vermont. The legislation combines a number of proposals that began in three different committees; House Human Services Committee chair Ann Pugh said the bill is designed to…

“…improve treatment, prevent deaths, improve access to treatment and appropriate prescribing, and to keep communities safe.”

Among the bill’s provisions: requiring doctors to participate in the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System*, requiring pharmacists to monitor sales of allergy medicines used in manufacturing meth; and sets up a pilot program for distribution of opioid antagonists. But there’s one teeny-tiny omission:

*And then, when doctors are required to take part, the law enforcement community will come back next year seeking access to the database. Smooth.

What the bill doesn’t address, due to budgetary constraints, Pugh said, is the lack of treatment options for people with drug addictions.

Anyone else see a problem here? We can devise all the crackdown strategies we want, but as long as we don’t fight addiction, we’ll still have a large population of eager customers for illicit drugs of some kind. We limit access to one, the demand will flow somewhere else. Penny wise.

Reach Up to the Glass Ceiling. On Friday, the House Human Services Committee narrowly approved a revised version of Gov. Shumlin’s proposal to impose a five-year lifetime cap on Reach Up benefits for poor families. The committee’s bill postpones the onset of the cap, provides some exemptions for certain recipients, and provides funds to beef up support services for families approaching the cap. The 7-4 majority consisted of three Democrats and four Republicans… so, a victory for bipartisanship?

The Governor had proposed the cap as a way to free up some funds for enhanced services, with the goal of helping more families get off the poverty treadmill. Human Services’ response would mitigate the impact of the cap, but it would also remove a lot of the added help included in Shumlin’s budget.  Here’s a little back-and-forth courtesy of Peter Hirschfeld, the entire Vermont Press Bureau (full article behind the Mitchell Family Paywall):

Rep. Matt Trieber, one of three Democrats on the committee to support the plan, said the time limits are designed to help families, not hurt them. He said the House proposal would bolster case management for families whose benefits are about to be cut off.

Helping families overcome the transportation, childcare and education issues thwarting their success, Trieber said, will be of far greater help than a monthly check.

Christopher Curtis, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid, said there’s no indication that the state has any plan to offer those supports.

And therein lies the rub. Penny wise… and pound foolish:

Curtis… said evidence from other states that have imposed hard caps shows that new costs will only begin appearing elsewhere in the Human Services budget, when desperate families begin showing up at homeless shelters and food shelves.

Weatherization the Hard Way: Making Vermont Winters Warmer. After a post-election break, House Speaker Shap Smith came back to the State House a changed man. A family vacation in Alaska had brought home the hot, hard reality* of global warming. As reported by Peter “Who Else?” Hirschfeld (and posted behind the MItchell Family Paywall), Smith sounded a clarion call in a pre-session Democratic caucus in December:

*Well, it can’t very well be “cold, hard reality, now can it?

“I was really profoundly influenced by my trip to Alaska, and seeing the impact of climate change and hearing from people what it’s going to mean there,” Smith said. “And it just made me realize we’re not putting enough focus on something that could completely change our planet.”

…”We can’t shy away from it because other people are. We can’t say that because the rest of the country is deciding not to take action, that we will not.”

But in the hot hard reality* of this year’s budget situation, we certainly can shy away from it because the money’s too tight. On Friday, the House Natural Resources Committee gave up on expanding the state’s weatherization program and instead recommended that “the state look into” the electrification of its vehicle fleet. The bill that would have “among other things, earmarked millions of dollars for the weatherization of homes and businesses,” says VPR’s Kirk Carapezza, “had been stripped of its primary elements.”

*Like I said.

Committee chair and longtime climate change fighter Tony Klein, who’d seen the bill fall apart under his nose, said:

“It’s a baby step forward, but the problem is huge. We need to do much more and much sooner. If we don’t, then we will create a huge injustice to the generations that follow us.”

The bill does do some worthwhile things, most notably giving weatherization priority to LIHEAP clients — which will kill two birds with one stone, tightening low-income housing and lowering demand for LIHEAP funds. But it could have done a lot more. And it’s not going to get any easier anytime soon:

House lawmakers, however, conceded there may be no money to pay for effective climate change legislation at the state level. Smith said the House hopes limited steps taken Friday will be bolstered with more funding to meet a statutory goal of weatherizing 80,000 homes in Vermont by 2020.

He “hopes.” As do we all. And what’s the penalty for failing to meet our “statutory goal”?

Yeah, I thought so.

Penny wise, planet foolish.  

Part 1 of a probable miniseries on the latest state budget developments.

In record time, Governor Shumlin has gone from equanimity to agita, from smoking jacket to crankypants. As recently as Wednesday’s news conference, the Gov was praising the Legislature for its hard work and progress on a variety of issues, and expressing confidence that everything would come out just fine in the end.

Then came Friday, when the House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax package quite different from Shumlin’s own.

“I disagree strongly with the manner in which the Ways and Means Committee has chosen to raise revenue,” Shumlin said. “I have repeatedly opposed increases to income, meals, and sales taxes, and yet this proposal hits all three. Rather than reallocating existing funds more efficiently to achieve better outcomes as my budget recommends, the committee proposal increases Vermont’s already high tax burden. Luckily, we are only part way through this legislative session and I look forward to working with the legislature to ensure that we end up with a responsible budget acceptable to all of us.”

So the Ways and Means budget is “irresponsible”? Ouchie.

Well, all I can say is, the Governor brought this on himself.  

We entered 2013 under single-party rule. The Democrats controlled everything except Phil Scott’s bully pulpit. I don’t know what went on behind the scenes as the Governor prepared his budget plan, but here’s what it looked like from the outside:

Shumlin came up with some decent ideas for improving key programs in education and energy, as well as moving forward on health care reform. At the same time, he put out some ideas for higher revenue and budget cuts that were pretty much D.O.A. in the Legislature.

Was there no consultation with key lawmakers? Was there no effort to find mutually acceptable solutions, or ways to bring legislators on board? Was the Administration so confident, so arrogant, that it believed the Legislature would roll over and adopt its budget in exchange for a nice belly rub?

From this vantage point, the answers seem to be no, no, and yes.

What’s worse, the Governor made misleading (if not downright untrue) arguments for his unpopular proposals. Arguments that were easily debunked by Your Unpaid Blogger, let alone by experienced budget-writers in the House and Senate.

He claimed that slashing the Earned Income Tax Credit was not really a cut at all because the EITC line item had risen by 49% in ten years — when all of that growth was due to (a) inflation and (b) an increase in qualified recipients.

He glossed over the fact that only a fraction of EITC recipients would benefit from the expansion in child-care benefits that would be paid for by the EITC cut.

He proposed a tax on break-open tickets with an overinflated revenue estimate, which the Joint Fiscal Office reduced by nearly two-thirds.

And, instead of working with the Legislature on finding acceptable revenue sources, he tried to put lawmakers in a box by (1) claiming that his entire plan was a single indissoluble “package”, (2) claiming that a wide range of alternative revenue sources were off-limits in his own personal definition of “broad-based taxes”, and (3) endlessly repeating the Republican talking point that Vermont’s taxes are already too high.

Even as he was proposing to raise some of those taxes himself.

When you make transparently false or misleading arguments, you don’t exactly build trust with your colleagues.

Shumlin’s plan also put lawmakers in a naysaying mood because it left Vermont in a dangerously exposed position going forward, as VTDigger reported:

Joint Fiscal Office estimates show that next year’s budget has a built-in $50 million gap because the Shumlin adminstration has heavily relied on one-time funding to balance the fiscal year 2014 budget. The governor also eliminated all of the state’s reserves – about $30 million worth. That leaves state coffers almost completely empty at a time when federal cuts will be $5 million to $10 million in the near term and further reductions to the state’s $1.8 billion in annual federal funding (out of a total budget of $5.15 billion) are unknown and likely.

The result of all this? The Legislature and the Governor are headed in different directions. The Governor tried to back the Legislature into a corner, and now they’re fighting out of it. And he’s surprised?

He shouldn’t be.

And, if he really believes in those new policy initiatives he’s touted since the beginning of the year, he’d better be ready to compromise on revenue sources. Otherwise, we’ll wind up with a flatline budget and a lot of unhappy people in the executive and legislative branches.

And a whole lot of unhappy people out here in the real world, who contributed to, worked for, and voted for Democrats in the hope and expectation that they’d make a positive difference. We’re still hoping, Governor.  

So, how’s it going with that VTGOP rebranding project? The one certain to vault the party from the poop chute of 2012 to the glorious heights of the Aiken Era?

About as well as you might expect. The news this week: State party chair Angry Jack Lindley endorsed the national GOP’s sad little rebranding document, the “Growth and Opportunity Report.” Which is kind of a mess, and which wouldn’t do much of anything to cure the party’s Vermont woes. Also — Diversity Ho! — there’s an upcoming Vermont appearance by K. Carl Smith, a black Republican who’s expropriated the image of Frederick Douglass in a desperate bid to get the GOP’s black vote out of the single digits. This is the same black Republican whose recent speech at CPAC was derailed by a white segregationist who noisily insisted that slavery was a fun ol’ time for the N-words. That interruption was kind of a shame, because it drew attention away from the odiousness of Smith’s own message.

Let’s tackle Smith first, and then circle back to Angry Jack.

K. Carl Smith, “Liberty MESSENGER” (caps his), will appear at the Country Club of Vermont in Waterbury on April 7. Smith argues that black people should vote Republican because, you know, Lincoln freed the slaves and stuff. He conveniently ignores the last 50-odd years of Republican catering to angry white folks, starting with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and continuing to this day with the GOP’s anti-ACORN campaign and voter-suppression tactics. But Smith takes the “Party of Lincoln” (not Nixon, Reagan, Rush, Hannity or Hans von Spakovsky) nonsense one step further, by recasting civil-rights pioneer Frederick Douglass as a wealthy capitalist and defender of the free market. Oh, and he blames slavery on the Muslims. No shit.

And if you need any more proof of Smith’s hatefulness, here’s a screencap from a short video on Smith’s website:

Nice, eh? The only thing missing from that list is “Douglass, American” vs. “Obama, Kenyan.”

Yep, K. Carl Smith, voice of inclusiveness. Just the guy to make the GOP more appealing to undecideds and moderates.

And lest you doubt that our Vermont Republicans are directly involved in this, the announcement of Smith’s Waterbury event was distributed by the VTGOP. And at the bottom of the announcement you’ll find this: “Paid for by the Vermont Republican State Committee.”

This could be just as bad for the VTGOP as Maine Governor Paul LePage’s disastrous visit on behalf of Randy Brock last July.

And now, the other Republican news of the week.  

VTGOP Chair Angry Jack Lindley, who promised a youth outreach program back in November, which probably consisted of Jack hanging around the UVM campus wearing a pleather jacket and aviator shades, has jumped on the Reince Priebus Bandwagon, i.e. the National Republican Party’s “Growth and Opportunity Project Report.”

Angry Jack hailed the report as…

…”a new and exciting day for the Republican Party. The Growth and Opportunity Project Report charts a new path for the GOP that all Vermont Republicans can get behind as we grow and build our party for the future. After months of painstaking review both nationally and locally, I’m confident that this new pathway for the GOP is the right direction for our party as we expand our tent to elect more Republicans that will improve the lives of all Americans and Vermont residents. The Republican Party is committed to a pro growth strategy not only for Vermont residents but for growing our organization and we look forward to working together with the RNC to build a party for all Americans.”

Your Power Vocabulary Word of the Day: “GROW.” Two “grows” plus two “growths” and one “expand” just to make sure we get the point. And we do: the Republican Party Opposes Shrinkage. (Photo: the heartbreak of shrinkage.)

That’s settled. Now, let’s take a closer look at how the Priebus Priescription (see what I did there?) will f’sho rebuild the Vermont GOP.

The report notes that people have stopped listening to the GOP. But in the authors’ minds, this isn’t because the message is faulty; it’s just the delivery. “We too often sound like bookkeepers,” adept in policy but unconcerned with the real lives of real people.

Yeah, that’s it: the trouble with Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Rand Paul and Ron Paul and Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle and Ted Cruz and Todd Akin and Joe Walsh and Paul Broun and Allen West and Bob McDonnell and Tom Corbett and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (and Wendy Wilton, heh) is that they’re too dry and dispassionate and technocratic.

The report also calls for a more inclusive party, especially for racial and ethnic minorities. This doesn’t mean any softening of policy — although they do call for the GOP to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, which probably means smearing lots of lipstick on the GOP “deport ’em all and build a wall” policy pig. And they want to recruit a younger and more diverse pool of potential candidates “whose values and beliefs are consistent with [those of] the Republican Party…” See, we don’t need to change; we just need to convince others to drink our Kool-Aid.

Oh, here’s a good one: They want the party to “train and prepare ethnic conservatives for media presentations.” In other words, Affirmative Action! Gee, I thought the GOP didn’t believe in that.

The report also wants the GOP to increase its appeal to women. Again, not by changing policy, but by convincing women “that we are fighting for them.” Yeah, that’ll work. They also want to “develop a more aggressive response to Democrat (sic) rhetoric regarding a so-called ‘war on women.'” As if transvaginal ultrasounds, an all-out attack on abortion rights, efforts to end affirmative action (except when it comes to conservative ethnics and women, who are on the GOP’s fast track), and exclude birth control from health care coverage. The problem wasn’t all the shit Republicans were saying or doing; it was that dastardly “Democrat” rhetoric.

The report calls for new outreach efforts at young voters, including “quarterly discussions on your issues with Chairman Priebus” (shoot me) and an RNC Celebrity Task Force. Oh, good God, how shameless and clueless can you get? The Republicans whined endlessly about liberal celebrities; now they want to develop conservative celebs?

And who, aside from Kid Rock, is going to headline this alleged Republican Woodstock? The GOP’s idea of a celebrity with youth appeal is probably Ted Nugent. Who else? Fred Thompson? Clint “empty chair” Eastwood? Elizabeth Hasselbeck?

Julia Barnes, Executive Director of the Vermont Democrats, put out a statement that tidily summarizes this whole mess:

“Instead of admitting that the GOP has failed to represent the values of middle class Vermonters and middle class Americans, they blame messaging strategies instead. You know a party will always remain out of touch when it takes them years to come to the conclusion that: ‘women need to be part of this process’ and that: ‘We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too.’ Including everyone in our political process shouldn’t be a matter of electoral expediency, but a matter of course.”

“The Republicans aren’t failing because their ideas aren’t being communicated well to voters. They’re failing because their message is being heard loud and clear.”

Back to the G.O.P. report. There’s a huge section on campaign mechanics, with a heavy emphasis on social media, databases, software and hardware. This would be the same GOP whose national website still lists Mike Bertrand as Vermont GOP Executive Director. That’s the “Mike Bertrand” who left the job almost a year and a half ago because he wasn’t getting regular paychecks.

There’s an interesting section on “Vendor Selection,” which implies that the GOP is finally beginning to realize that the vast network of conservative campaign consultancies, polling outfits, advertising agencies and fundraisers is a big fat scam whose practitioners are much more concerned with getting paid than with electoral victory. (cough*DarcieJohnston*cough)

And now we come to the proposals for revising the Presidential selection process, which are entirely focused on giving a huge advantage to well-funded, establishment candidates. You know, like Mitt Romney. The GOP apparently still believes that Romney was a strong candidate who was undone, Gulliver-style, by his months-long battle with Lilliputians like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. When actually it was the other way around: Romney’s inability to put those jokers away revealed him as the deeply-flawed, unappealing candidate he’d been all along. And if you grease the skids for the 2016 version of Mitt Romney, and make it harder for insurgents like Rand Paul to cause trouble, then the Future Mitt will sail into the regular election untested and unproven, and he’ll be depantsed by Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or whoever the Democrats nominate.

I wouldn’t expect the national GOP to fashion its appeal to the Vermont electorate. People like Reince Priebus and Ari Fleischer have probably written off the Green Mountain State as irretrievably liberal, and not terribly important anyway. And really, I wouldn’t expect the national GOP to have the self-awareness and courage to correctly diagnose its fundamental problems.

And really, I wouldn’t expect Jack Lindley to display any insight or self-awareness either. He’s much too comfortable in the closed, cosseted world of the Republican insider.

But his endorsement of the Priebus Priescription shows, yet again, that he is the wrong man for the Herculean task of restoring the VTGOP to electoral relevance.  

At his Wednesday news conference, Gov. Shumlin reiterated his opposition to higher taxes on top earners. This time, his argument was: hey, our income tax is already progressive!

“We have one of the most progressive and highest income taxes on wealthy people in the nation. …we have a high marginal rate at the top, 8.9 percent.”

Actually it’s 8.95, but that’s not my point here. The point is, all 8.95 percents are not created equal. This was pointed out below my previous post by commenter “azvox”; I also got an e-mail from Jack Hoffman of the Public Assets Institute on the same subject. (And if you don’t follow PAI’s work, you should. Visit their website, sign up for their RSS feed.)

See, Vermont is one of only six states that levies its income tax on “federal taxable income.” (The others: Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota.) The vast majority of state income taxes are based on “adjusted gross income.” AGI is your income before itemized deductions; “federal taxable income” is your income after itemized deductions. That’s a significantly smaller figure.

How much smaller? By one source, Vermont’s total AGI is roughly $15 billion. Our total “taxable income” is about $10 billion. Quite a difference.

New York and New Jersey, the two states mentioned in Wednesday’s presser, are two of the many states that levy income tax on AGI. Which means that New York’s top rate of 8.82%, and New Jersey’s top rate of 8.97%, take a much bigger bite out of top earners than Vermont’s 8.95%.

And Governor Shumlin is fully aware of this. In January, VPR reported that the Governor was open to considering a shift to AGI as the basis for the state income tax — partly to make the tax fairer, and partly to eliminate a PR problem for the state. Because we assess income tax on “taxable income,” we have one of the highest top-bracket tax rates in the country. But the actual tax bite, or “tax burden” as it’s usually called, of Vermont’s income tax is in the middle of the pack.

Okay, so how much of a difference does this really make?  

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) recently released a study that breaks down the tax burden in each state by income level. The wealthiest 1% of Vermonters pay — not 8.95% — but 5.2% in state income tax.

The main reason they don’t pay more? The fact that we base our income tax on “taxable income” instead of AGI.

In New York, the top 1% pay an average of 6.7% in state income tax. In New Jersey, they pay 6.6%.

(Vermont’s overall tax system, to be fair, is actually more progressive — er, let’s say less regressive — than New York’s or New Jersey’s. That’s mainly because of Vermont’s relatively generous Earned Income Tax Credit program, which eases the tax burden on the lower brackets. And which the Governor wants to cut. If he got his way, our tax system would become a lot less progressive.)

Assessing our income tax on “taxable income” is a big break for top earners, because almost all of them itemize deductions. According to the Tax Policy Center, nearly 90% of taxpayers in the top federal bracket itemize deductions. Only 4% of taxpayers in the bottom bracket do so. And those itemized deductions make a big difference: Taxpayers in the top federal bracket enjoy a 4.4% increase in after-tax income thanks to itemization.

And that’s before they even get to their Vermont taxes.

In sum, Governor Shumlin is technically correct when he says that Vermont has one of the highest top tax rates in the country. But it’s a misleading claim, because our effective top tax rate isn’t nearly that high.

He’s also technically correct when he asserts that Vermont’s tax system is relatively progressive. But that’s kind of like being the cleanest Porta-Potty at the state fair; most states have regressive tax systems. Going back to the ITEP study, Vermont’s top 1% pay 8% of their income in state taxes (including income, sales, and property taxes). Low- and middle-income taxpayers actually pay a higher percentage of their income: 8.7% for the first quintile, 9.1% for the second, and 10.4% for the third.

If we had a truly progressive system, the top earners would pay the highest rates. They don’t. And if we switched to AGI as a basis for our income tax, our system would be fairer than it is now.