Here is hte promised updated version, mostly containing a very lengthy, entertaining and irritating exchange between Shumlin and the press corps regarding gun control. That’s after the jump.

The main subject of Governor Shumlin’s presser today was some appointments and personnel shuffles in his administration. Most notable: Armando Vilaseca is Vermont’s first Secretary of Education, but he’ll only stay on the job for a year or so.

Vilaseca has been Commissioner of Education since 2009; now that his department has achieved cabinet status, he becomes Secretary. But he wants to leave within a year, so a national search for our second Ed-Sec will begin in a few months.  

Vilaseca explained the unusual move this way:

When I first took the position [of Commissioner] four years ago, one of the things I was hoping to do was to have some consistency in this position. We had had a revolving door of comer’s over the previous decade, and one of the commitments I made was to about five years.

… With so much going on, and our close relationship right now, and with the change from a dept to an agency and all the other work that needs to be done, I think that it is my responsibility to do whatever I can to make this transition smoother.

Shumlin hinted at major initiatives on education to come in his State of the State address next week, but he refused to give any details.

Also two former lawmakers are joining the Shumlin team. Ex-State Rep. Lucy Leriche will become Deputy Secretary of Commerce, replacing Patricia Moulton Powden. Former Rep. Floyd Nease is assuming the newly devised post of Director of Systems Integration in the Agency of Human Services, where he will try to create a “one-door” entry point for Vermonters seeking assistance from an array of programs.

Also moving to AHS with a brief to make services more accessible and efficient is Susan Bartlett, former State Senator and current Special Assistant to the Governor. She will become Special Projects Coordinator in AHS, focusing on paving the way for low-income Vermonters to get the training and education they need to move up in the workforce.

In answer to a question, Shumlin expressed opposition to a proposed moratorium on wind power development, and (again) reiterated his opposition to any increases in broad-based taxes.

The funnest part of the presser was near the end, when Shumlin parried a barrage of questions about gun control. (The pen may be mightier than a sword, but is it mightier than a Bushmaster AR-15?)  The transcript coming up… after the jump.

The gun-control exchange occurred near the end of the presser. It began when the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck asked a question about education reform. Before Shumlin answered it, he paused and made a statement in response to Terri’s blogpost earlier this week in which she pointed out inconsistencies between Shumlin’s deference to the federal government on gun control, and his advocacy for Vermont to lead the way on a variety of other issues.

Shumlin: I just want to point out that I just pointed out that the federal government can lead in some areas, like taxation.

Hallenbeck: But not on all?

Shumlin: I just wanted to point out that I’m consistent.

He then answered her question. Whereupon Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz of Seven Days asked a follow-up that launched the exchange. The transcript is below; reporter’s questions in italics, and Shumlin’s answers — well, really more like non-answers — are in plain text. It’s a long transcript, but I thought it worth presenting as a whole, because it’s such a classic example of a politician determined to evade uncomfortable questions.

_______________________________________________________________

Heintz: Do you disagree with Terri’s thesis?

Yes.

Heintz: On energy, we can’t do much to stop global warming in tiny Vermont. That seems to be something we should try to make a difference in, but on guns, it’s not worth trying?

Listen, there are areas where a Governor must lead and areas where the federal government must lead. And what I feel very strongly is that it’s up to me to lead when the federal government isn’t. The federal government isn’t leading on single payer health care; they won’t even say the word. They’re not leading on renewables.

Heintz: Are they leading on gun control?

Well, the last I saw, the President of the United States held a press conference and asked the Vice President to lead a group that will come up with a national policy to deal with a crisis that we have before us, and get results. I have confidence in them to do their job.

Heintz: Well, the President is trying to lead on health care, he’s trying to lead on energy.

Slow down. When was the last time you heard the President of the United States advocate for a single-payer health care system in America?

Heintz: I recall him passing a pretty comprehensive health care bill.

If that bill would solve our health care problems, we wouldn’t be working so hard to build a better system here. You know the special interests in Washington will not allow a single-payer health care system to pass, and we think we can get it done here in Vermont.

Heintz: And the special interests in Washington probably won’t allow a strong —

Let’s give ’em a chance. The President has just embarked on an effort which he hasn’t done in the past, to come up with some comprehensive solutions to our problems with gun crime and violence in America.

Peter Hirschfeld, VT Press Bureau: Vermont legislators could pass a bill this session —

It’s not an unreasonable position, Paul.

Hirschfeld: — that would prevent a mentally unstable person form walking into R&L Archery and buy a high-capacity magazine for his assault rifle. Why shouldn’t they do that?

Because he can go buy it in New Hampshire, in another state, or go online or buy it at a gun show. My point is, you need a 50-state solution.  We’re not an island.

Hirschfeld: Why not take that step?

Because it doesn’t work. As you know, Connecticut has tougher gun laws than Vermont. Enough said.

Heintz: And most states have different energy laws. I’m not understanding the difference when we should lead and when we shouldn’t lead.

We should lead when the federal government won’t. The President of the United States gave a very compelling press conference on this subject with the Vice President next to him. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Joe Biden, and I think we can only solve this problem with a 50-state solution.

Heintz: So if they fail, and the Republicans still control the house, if the President fails at advancing that legislation, then you will subsequently take a leadership role?

The problem, Paul, is the state-by-state solution, in this case, won’t work. In the case of health care, we cn actually get single payer health care for Vermonters. We can actually build renewables and have a cleaner carbon footprint, and in the future, I believe, cheaper, more reliable energy. In the case of this challenge, when you can buy a gun in another state or on the Internet or at a gun show, Vermont does not have the power to solve the problem. It’s that simple. It’s common sense.

Heintz: So you’ll veto any —

I didn’t say that. I welcome debate on any subject. Let’s see if I get sent a bill. I never, as you know, discuss when I might veto a bill. But I will tell you this: I believe that the solution to our challenges are for all 50 states to have the same rules apply to them.

Terri Hallenbeck: Do you agree that some restrictions should be made on guns?

Let’s see what they come up with.

Hirschfeld: Do you have an opinion on that?

I have this opinion. I have seven days in a week, shortest term of any Governor with the exception of two, and I focus on the things that I can change and that I can get done. This is not mine, this is the federal government’s job to fix.  

Unidentified reporter: Do you think a Vermonter should be able to walk into a gun store and buy an assault rifle?

I think the fed govt should come up with a 50-state solution.

Same reporter: But you, do you think a Vermonter, you’re a hunter, you like guns. Do you think a Vermonter should be able to go into a gun store and buy an assault rifle?

What I think doesn’t matter. They can. That’s the reality.

Heintz: Why doesn’t it matter? You’re the Governor.

Because I can’t change it for all 50 states. I’m not the President.

Hallenbeck: You couldn’t change DOMA either, but you argued that we need to chip away at that.

No, that’s a different story. In VT, we were the first state in the nation to make it possible for anyone who loved another person, who wanted to declare their love for the rest of their lives, to marry. That’s very different than the ability to buy an assault weapon.

Heintz: Do you regret any of the positions you took on that NRA questionnaire you filled out earlier this year?

No, for the reason that when I fill out those surveys, I fill them out in my capacity as Governor for the laws that we have in the State of Vermont.

Heintz: But had you been asked if you supported a federal ban on assault weapons or a ban on high-capacity ammunition, you would have said what?

I would have said no, not in Vermont.

Heintz: But would you have said you support a federal ban?

If it applied to all 50 states and was sensible, I’d obviously consider it, but since I don’t vote on federal bills, I’m not a member of Congress, I’m not the President of the United States, it’s not something I spend a lot of time worrying about.

Heintz: Would you consider, or would you support? There’s a difference.

I want to see what they come up with.

Hallenbeck: What does sensible mean? Some people think sensible is “ban ’em all.’ Some people think sensible is ban none of them.

That’s why we’re going to have a vigorous debate.

Hallenbeck: Is sensible somewhere in the middle?

I think that Washington, working together with the Congress, the  President, Joe Biden, our Congressional delegation, can come up with a sensible answer to your question.

Dave Gram, Associated Press: As an American citizen, which you are, is it legitimate for you to have an opinion on what Congress should do on this issue?

Sure.

Gram: Okay, so do you have an opinion about what Congress should do on this issue?

As I’ve said, there can’t be an American with a heartbeat who didn’t witness and go through together the tragedy in Connecticut and think that we have a sane policy in America, where people who shouldn’t have weapons of war have weapons of war. So I would like to see them come up with a policy that ensures that weapons of war are not in the hands of people who are going to go in and shoot up kindergarten kids in a classroom. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable position.

Heintz: Has your position changed at all since Newtown?

I’ve never been asked the question as if I were a federal person. If you’re asking me, do I think that we need to make changes so that people who are gonna go shoot up little kids in a school shouldn’t have assault weapons, the answer is absolutely, yes.

Heintz: But I’m just saying, have you personally  —

Yes, I’ve evolved. Yes. That incident has definitely changed my opinion in terms of the federal government’s necessity to come up with a 50-state solution to the challenge. I want to add that Aurora, Colorado made us all think. There have been a number of tragedies that just don’t make any sense. So we have a national problem.

We have 250 to 300 million weapons being sold in America. You can’t buy a clip right now because folks are grabbing them up so fast. So we have a lot of weapons out there. The question is, how can we come up with a 50-state strategy that ensures that we get those weapons of war out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them?

Hallenbeck: Do you consider an AR-15 an assault weapon?

I really haven’t given it that much thought.

Hallenbeck: Because it’s an issue, with gun advocates saying it’s being misused as an assault weapon when it’s a semiautomatic.

I’m going to leave that definition to the Feds, who are going to solve this problem for us, we hope.

Heintz: You keep talking about weapons of war.

Hallenbeck: Is that a weapon of war?

Let’s see what they come up with.

Heintz: Is there anything you know of that is a weapon of war?

You know, I’m telling you folks, I’m not trying to mislead you or evade you. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what a weapon of war is because this isn’t the issue I’m focused on. I’m focused on jobs and economic prosperity for Vermonters, I’ve got to give a speech next week that charts a future for this state. Those are the things I work on every day. Because this isn’t a problem I’m solving — I’m not a member of Congress, I’m not the President of the United States, I don’t sit around and think about what the definition of automatic weapons should be. It’s that simple.

Thanks so much.

(That was his unsubtle signal that the press conference was over.)

After what seems like a long, drawn-out process, the Vermont State Employees Association has devised a cushy gig for Vince Illuzzi. The former State Senator and unsuccessful candidate for Auditor had been under consideration for the post of VSEA chief lobbyist, but there was a little tiny problem: Illuzzi didn’t want to give up his part-time post as Essex County State’s Attorney.  

What to do, what to do. We can’t hire Vince straight-up, because his  courtroom schedule would interfere with regular attendance at the Statehouse. Hmmm…

I know: let’s hire somebody else as our chief lobbyist, and devise a part-time consultancy for ol’ Vince!

That won’t look like featherbedding, will it? Cough.  

The state employees union has expanded its lobbying team and has selected two former lawmakers as the point players. The expansion is part of a ramp-up of the union’s political agenda this legislative session.

Steve Howard, a former House representative, will be the Vermont State Employees Association’s legislative director, and… Illuzzi will work as a lobbying consultant for the VSEA.

Howard, last seen losing the Lite-Guv’s race to Phil Scott in 2010, takes over for the departed Conor Casey; Illuzzi’s position is brand-new. And artfully constructed to allow for the ebb and flow of his prosecutorial duties.

The arrangement is being touted as a tag-team approach to VSEA’s political work: VTDigger characterizes Howard as “one of the most liberal members of the house,” and Illuzzi as a politician “often portrayed as a maverick” who was seen (at least by VSEA, which twice gave Vince its “outstanding legislator” award) as a supporter of workers and unions.

May I just pause here and say that, after John McCain and Sarah Palin, I never want to hear the word “maverick” again?

Anyway, at first glance the idea of a bipartisan team makes sense. But then I wonder: the Democrats have overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. Convincing Republicans to support union issues is a mug’s game anyway, and you don’t need their votes, so why even try?

Digger goes on to report Illuzzi’s “quid” that helped lead to the union’s “pro quo”:  

Illuzzi was the legislative architect of the doomed “fair share” act last year, which was opposed by the Shumlin administration. he legislation, which will be re-introduced this session, would require public sector employees who benefit from collective bargaining but have opted out of union dues to pay an “agency” fee.

The bill would have removed a thorn in VSEA’s side. Back in 1998, Governor Dean signed a bill imposing the agency fee on newly-hired state workers. But non-union employees already on the payroll were allowed to continue opting out.

Well, apparently there’s a lot of tenure in state government because, according to VSEA, there are still 542 state employees covered by that grandfather clause — more than 10% of employees who benefit from the union’s collective bargaining.  The union is understandably keen to collect those dues, and is obviously grateful to Illuzzi for pushing the issue.

It’d be nice if they win on “fair share” this year; they’ll need the money to pay for Vince’s sinecure.  

The title of this post is an homage to the great BBC series “Yes Minister,” which is highly recommended to anyone who appreciates the comedic aspects of political horse-trading.

As promised, the stub has now been fleshed out with more pulse-pounding details of today’s presser!!!

This morning, Governor Shumlin held the first of his three news conferences in three successive days. The subject was a new proposal (pretty much exactly as outlined a few days ago in the Freeploid: a bill that would allow the state to seek repayment of a public-sector employee’s pension if that employee is convicted of padding his/her pension fraudulently. The amount of repayment would be at a judge’s discretion, and could be full or partial.

(If today’s presser was any indication, I expect that Thursday’s and Friday’s will also focus on a top-priority item for the Legislative session that begins next week.)

The front of the room was crowded today; there were so many public officials (and others) on hand that they may well have outnumbered the reporters. There was a purpose to the abundance of suits: to showcase broad support for the proposal. Among those playing Pip to Shumlin’s Gladys Knight: Attorney General Bill Sorrell, Treasurer Beth Pearce, State Police Commissioner Keith Flynn, Speaker Shap Smith, and House Judiciary Committee Chair Bill Lippert (who spoke for himself and on behalf of his Senate counterpart Dick Sears), plus representatives of several public-sector unions and members of the state pension board.

Shumlin and Smith promised quick action on the bill, but would not offer a timeframe or deadline. But today’s presser was clearly designed to show that all interested parties are on board with this.  

First of all, in response to a Comment posted by ApacheTrout (Kilgore’s brother?), the proposal would allow flexibility in how much illicitly-obtained pension money could be recouped. It would be up to a judge to determine the figure of repayment. Could be the whole megilla, could be just a portion thereof.

And now, on to the rest of the story.

Shumlin went to great pains, repeatedly, to confine this scandal to a single bad apple. At one point, literally. Yeah, he pulled out the aw-shucks-just-a-VErmont-boy routine again:

As a kid who used to work on an apple farm, I can tell you that when you find one worm in an apple, it doesn’t mean that all the apples have worms.

… I am proud of our state police force, and we should be clear, it was my suspicion that this was an isolated incident of fraud, and so far our investigation has backed that up.

Shumlin bases his faith in the single-fraudster theory on the clean results of two internal audits. So far, no other fraudsters have been found. Of course, the audits covered only three months’ worth of VSP time sheets for the entire force, plus another three months’ worth for the Winooski post, where Deeghan plied his trade. But Shumlin’s faith is strong.

(We’re still waiting for results of an independent forensic audit commissioned by the State Auditor’s office; Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding expects that report “in a month or so.”)

As for reforms that would actually address Deeghan’s exploitation of an apparently lax system, State Police Commissioner Flynn offered a few “meaningful changes,” including…

— New restrictions on requests for leave, comp time or personal time. From now on, they must all be approved by a supervisor.

— Overtime claims will be more thoroughly vetted, and compared with duty logs and other databases. Also, whenever a trooper reports more than 20 hours of overtime in a single pay period, it will be red-flagged for special review.

— A change in the watch-commander system. Currently, a single lieutenant is on call during the night shift in the north and south. In the future, those lieutenants will actually work the shift and take direct responsibility for any supervisory decisions that need to be made.

The comic relief in today’s news conference was provided by the Freeploid’s Mike Donoghue, who came with an apparent brief to push the transparency issue (a priority for the paper in 2013, as stated by publisher Jim Fogler). Donoghue pushed and prodded for new information on the Deeghan case, and Shumlin refused to take the bait. The Administration’s position is that it won’t comment on Deeghan or release any more information until the court case is over, for fear of tainting the prosecution. Which led to the following exchange:

DONOGHUE: How many criminal cases have been overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court because of an outside comment?

SHUMLIN: You probably wouldn’t ask that question unless you knew the answer.

DONOGHUE: Zero. So there should be no problem with you making a comment.

SHUMLIN: I know you don’t agree with our position, but we have to balance our concern with transparency with our wish to win the case.

A while later, Donoghue brought up the 973 bogus traffic citations allegedly submitted by Deeghan. Because his defense attorney objected, those motorists have yet to be notified that they were, in a sense, victims of Deeghan’s fraud. Donoghue asked Shumlin if it was “crazy” that the defense attorney could block notification.

SHUMLIN: As soon as the folks who are prosecuting this case have it resolved, immediately following that resolution, a letter should go out to all the people whose names were used fraudulently, to reassure them that there was no actual effect on their record.

DONOGHUE: But the effect may have already happened.

SHUMLIN: All I can tell you is what I have asked to happen.

When Donoghue asked another follow-up, Shumlin resorted to the old standby, “No comment.”

Finally, near the end of the presser, the Associated Press’ Dave Gram asked the obvious question: how did state law come to bar clawbacks of illicitly-obtained pension money?

The answer: Nobody knows. Jeb Spaulding offered his educated guess:

I think that goes back to the 1940s when the system was put in place, and the thinking was that your pension was like a property right. So they made it untouchable.

In other words, it’s another example of something I’ve come across many times in Vermont: satisfaction with the status quo. I’ve called it “grandfather’s lightbulb” syndrome, after the old joke:

–How many Vermonters does it take to change a light bulb?

— CHANGE IT? But that was my grandfather’s lightbulb!

This exemption for ill-gotten pension gains is one more of our grandfather’s lightbulbs. We don’t change it when it burns out; we wait until someone falls down the stairs in a darkened hallway.

I plan to attend tomorrow’s presser as well. Stay tuned for the latest.  

Governor Shumlin is kicking off the New Year in an unusual way — scheduling news conferences on three straight days. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 11 a.m.

Good. That’ll give him three more chances to produce a coherent statement on gun control. Ever since the Newtown shootings, he’s tried and failed on multiple occasions.

Let’s look at some of his nonsense, shall we? In no particular order…

The 50-state approach. Shumlin insists that gun violence must be addressed on a nationwide basis, not by individual states. But, as Terri Hallenbeck pointed out, that puts the Governor at odds with himself on a range of issues.

When it comes to health care, this is what Gov. Peter Shumlin says: “If Vermont can get this right, the other states will follow.”

Name just about any other topic – same-sex marriage, shutting down nuclear power plants, penalties for marijuana, clean energy – and Shumlin expresses the same sentiment: Vermont should lead the way.

…This argument seems to transcend all issues except gun control.

Hallenbeck adds that a whole bunch of Democratic Governors are pursuing gun legislation in their own states. I guess Shumlin, as the new head of the Democratic Governors Association, should tell them to back off, because his colleagues are just wasting their time.

After the jump: an anecdote becomes proof, more about “crazy people,” and one man’s definition of leadership: doing nothing.

Gun laws don’t work because of a single incident. As reported in VTDigger:

“State by state won’t work,” said Shumlin, noting Connecticut has stricter gun laws than Vermont and the killings there occurred anyway.

There’s a whole lot of stupid in that small paragraph. First, he’s relying on anecdotal evidence to prove a general thesis. The Newtown shootings proved nothing about the efficacy of Connecticut’s gun laws. It was a single incident, and it could have happened anywhere. And I do hope the Governor isn’t making the NRA’s argument that tough gun-control laws cause gun violence. That’s the most unconvincing weapon in Wayne LaPierre’s arsenal.

The crazy-person fallacy.  The Governor recently disgraced himself by saying that we ought to do something to keep weapons out of “the hands of crazy, deranged people.” As discussed previously in this space, that’s not only offensive, it’s completely wrong. Most mass shooters had no previous diagnosis of mental illness. Mentally ill people are far more often the victims of violent crime than they are the perpetrators. So branding “crazy, deranged people” would do little or nothing to prevent future mass killings.

And even if you could somehow identify the “crazy, deranged people,” how do you keep them away from weapons? It certainly wouldn’t have prevented Newtown, because Adam Lanza got the guns from his own mother’s house. So how would you keep guns away from the crazies? Would you bar mentally ill people from living with people who own guns? Would you bar the relatives or friends or roommates or landlords of mentally ill people from owning guns? Good luck with any of that.

Shumlin continued to pound the “crazy people” argument this week, although thankfully he did drop the word “deranged.” I guess he’s still got this mental picture of the human monster killing machine frothing at the mouth and cackling maniacally as he mows down his victims. I hate to break it to you, Shummy, but that’s more of a movie thing than a reality thing.

Leadership by doing… nothing.  Shumlin told Seven Days that he has “a heightened sense of urgency to stop this kind of tragedy.” Well, he sure isn’t acting like it. He has called for a 50-state solution, but anyone with a thimbleful of political insight knows that national gun control is going nowhere with the current Republican majority in the U.S. House.

His “heightened sense of urgency” hasn’t resulted in any meaningful ideas. He hasn’t proposed or endorsed a damn thing except for somehow separating “crazy people” from assault weapons, and he hasn’t proposed a realistic idea of how to achieve that impossible goal.

And then there’s this:

“I will defend the rights of sportsmen and -women to own weapons until my dying day,” Shumlin added. “But in all my years of hunting, I’ve never seen an assault weapon in the woods. People don’t use machines of war to shoot whitetail deer.”

Which sounds like a call for an assault weapons ban. But from his other statements, I have to conclude that it’s not. I guess he’s just shaking his finger and saying “tut-tut” at people who feel the need to own assault weapons. But he doesn’t want to prevent them from doing so.

Vermont exceptionalism. Shumlin has also said that “Vermont should be a model for the country” on the use of lethal weapons.  By which I assume he means that the country should do nothing, since that’s exactly what he wants Vermont to do.

And if he’s talking, as I suspect he is, of Vermont’s attitudes being a model for the country, then I call bullshit. First of all, you can’t simply export a culture. You can’t take Vermont’s approach to guns and inject the same attitudes into the people of Florida or Texas or Alaska. Or even New Hampshire.

Beyond that, there’s the underlying notion that Vermont is somehow superior to other places, that our way of life is a cut above, that Vermonters are purer in spirit. As someone who’s lived here for six years, I can tell you that Vermont is a different place, but not in any meaningful way a better place. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. One of its disadvantages is that it tends to have an overinflated view of itself.

Vermont has very permissive gun laws, and very low rates of violent crime. But that has more to do with low population and a lack of large urban areas, than it has to do with the virtue of our character or the wisdom of our approach toward guns.

If you ask me, there’s a very simple basis for all this desperate gubernatorial spinning on the gun issue. He doesn’t want anything to be done; but in the wake of Newtown, he can’t say so. Instead, we get this cloud of octopus ink masquerading as leadership.  

All-Emoticon edition. Because it’s a holiday, so who has time for authentic feelings?

VTDigger, for a couple of recent articles that illustrated its crucial role in Vermont journalism. In recent days, we’ve enjoyed reading Jon Margolis’ series on the political turmoil in Saint Johnsbury, which features Jim Rust, an energetic Tea Party type, taking the reins away from the entrenched Old Guard. And apparently running wild, turning St. J’s government into an expensive joke on the taxpayers. (Not that the Old Guard were all that great, if Margolis is to be believed.) The whole series is worth reading, but we’ll cut to the money shot:

So the St. Johnsbury follies continue, with select board members squabbling in public, no town manager for almost nine months (and none likely to be chosen for at least another two or three, Rust said), two lawsuits against the town, and a shrunken and inexperienced staff of town workers trying to operate a $9 million a year enterprise, the audits of which are not up to date.

Second on Digger’s hit parade was an article posted just before its holiday recess, which indicates widespread, ongoing dissatisfaction with Governor Shumlin’s mental health care overhaul among the caregivers on the front lines. This dissatisfaction is not confined to the present, interim, patchwork “system”; it also includes Shumlin’s long-term plan for psychiatric facilities spread around the state.  

Which I’ve been pointing out for a solid year now, but it’s nice to see the story finally get some coverage in the “real” political media.

VTDigger, for its unfortunate choice of holiday filler: Bethany Knight’s rather schizoid 11-part exploration of poverty and anti-poverty programs in the Northeast Kingdom. It began, as discussed previously in this space, with a right-wing rant in journalistic clothing. In it, Knight (or her surrogates) bemoaned the loss of the Kingdom’s Good Ole Days, where neighbors took care of neighbors (yeah, right) and we didn’t need no damn gummint stickin’ its nose in and sappin’ the natural self-reliance of the Kingdom’s sturdy if chronically impoverished populace.

Then came parts 2 and 3, which showcased how the government had helped Kingdom residents battle poverty. Sounded like an advertisement for the very programs she had pummeled in part 1.

After the jump: a dyspeptic pharmacist, a master baker, a really bad newspaper, a really, really bad political “strategist” and more!

After that, it was back to more gummint-bashin’ in parts 4 and 5.  And as was the case in part 1, the criticism was almost entirely anecdotal. Very little in the way of hard facts, just a lot of this:

St. Johnsbury pharmacist Jack Ruggles views poor customers with a great “astigmatism’.”

…He knows welfare recipients’ grant and food benefits are loaded onto EBT cards at the beginning of every month. “It’s like Christmas!,” he said. “They get beer, cash, junk food. The carts are full. Then halfway through the month, there’s no money for their kid’s prescription co-pay.”

This is the same “Jack Ruggles” who enlivened part 1 with his astigmatic memories of the Good Ole Days when the poor were free to starve on their own terms. According to the state Board of Pharmacy, Ruggles plies his trade at the Rite-Aid on Railroad Street in Saint Johnsbury. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop in and thank him for his contribution to our public discourse. And maybe ask his boss if snooping in customers’ shopping carts is really part of Jack’s job description.

Anyway, Knight swung back to the positive in parts 7 and 8, so I’m expecting more welfare-bashing in part 9. But no matter how absurdly broad the pendulum swings, there are a couple of constants in Knight’s work: the relatively straight installments are full of expert quotes and statistical information, while the anti-welfare installments are virtually fact-free and loaded with uninformed opinionation.

I understand the reluctance of VTDigger to go dark for a long holiday break — gotta keep up those pageview counts, after all — but I’d hope there were better holiday-filler options than this series.

Morgan Daybell, for fighting the good fight as Executive Director of the Vermont Progressive Party. He’s stepping down after five years, to take a job closer to his home in Montgomery. He’s been swimming against the tide throughout his tenure, as the increasing dominance of the Dems (and the ongoing faceplant of the Republicans) have eroded the Progs’ power — as a spoiler, if nothing else. He’s also seen his party lose its former base in the Burlington mayoralty, thanks in part to the incompetence of the Bob Kiss regime.

He was effectively a one-man shop in terms of paid staff. (Which might seem sad, except that was one more than the VTGOP had in 2012.) And he did his best to rebuild the Progs by fielding good candidates for the Legislature. Although I’m primarily a Democratic voter, I’m glad the Progs are around. As long as they can remain a credible third party, they’ll help keep the Dems honest if nothing else. So, thanks to Daybell for his service, and best wishes for whatever comes next.

The newspaper known in the Northeast Kingdom as the Cal-Rec which, to judge from a recent editorial, is apparently short for Calcified Rectum.

Yep, the St. Johnsbury Caledonian-Record is up to its old tricks. This time, in honor of John Kerry’s nomination for Secretary of State, the Rectum dragged the moth-eaten Swift Boat routine out of cold storage. It accused Kerry of trying to dodge hazardous duty in Vietnam, faking his citations for gallantry, and wounding himself to get sent back home. And a whole bunch of other nonsense. (I won’t provide a link because the Rectum’s content is paywalled. Not to mention hazardous for your mental health.)

All this at a time when even the Republicans are in favor of Kerry’s nomination. I’d say the Rectum ought to be ashamed of itself, but it long ago traveled beyond the outer bounds of self-awareness.

The Rectum’s latest excretion is all the more shameless, given the track record of prominent Republicans and conservatives regarding military service. With the exception of John McCain, just about every single one of them did everything they could (including lying and cheating) to get out of any military commitment. The dishonor roll, as maintained by the New Hampshire Gazette, includes Rush Limbaugh (medical deferment due to a rectal cyst), Wayne LaPierre (student deferment), Dick Cheney (“other priorities” than serving his country),  Pat Robertson (got out of combat duty thanks to his U.S. Senator father’s influence), and John Frickin’ Wayne (stayed in Hollywood playing soldier ion movie sets throughout World War II). You can spend many happy hours perusing the Gazette’s exhaustive list.

 Chris Calvin, departing owner of The Bakers Studio in White River Junction. The bakery/cafe, which (among many other things) has been making excellent bagels for many years, has closed up shop because, well, Calvin has had his fill of working six days a week, 16 hours a day. His workday started just after midnight, and kept him on his feet almost continuously until late afternoon. (His idea of a rest was driving his bagel delivery truck.) Try that on for size.

Calvin will continue baking on a wholesale basis, which will make his responsibilities much more manageable. But the closing of his shop is a blow to his many regular customers in downtown White River.

I had the privilege of getting to know Chris when I wrote a magazine article about his career which turned into a chapter in my book, (PLUGOLA ALERT) Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives. The chapter (entitled “The Hardest-Working Man in White River”) was a chronicle of his life told during a single overnight shift at the bakery. It was a wonderful and exhausting experience — and all I was doing was following him around while he did all the work. Great guy, great baker. I wish him well.

The Brattleboro Reformer, for publishing the mother of all typographic errors. Its post-blizzard headline — emblazoned across the top of Page One — said “LET IS SNOW, LET IS SNOW, LET IS SNOW.” The goof attracted attention on a national level from the likes of the Huffington Post, Gawker, and Jim Romenesko’s media blog.

And even as we pile on the Reformer, we do acknowledge Executive Editor Tom D’Errico’s blogpost in which he admits “There is no excuse” for the error. Well, he also made some excuses (low staffing over the holidays, very heavy workloads, an accelerated production schedule due to the coming storm), but he did take responsibility and apologized to his readers.

Tayt Brooks, Internatlonal Man of Mystery, for being the most uncompelling Man of Mystery in the world. For those just joining us, the Tayter is the politically impotent Treasurer/Sole Staffer of Vermonters First, the SuperPAC that managed to spend almost a million bucks of Lenore Broughton’s inheritance without accomplishing anything whatsoever. VF invested heavily in Wendy Wilton’s bid for Treasurer; she lost badly to incumbent (but first-time candidate) Beth Pearce; it also put a lot of money into backing select Republicans for the Legislature, only to see the VTGOP lose ground in the House and Senate.

If Lenore Broughton had a lick of common sense, the Tayter would be out on his ear. I do have to give him credit for flummoxing the old girl. But he deserves a Poke for continuing to act like God’s gift to Vermont politics. When VTDigger sought comment from him on December 18 regarding VF’s latest campaign finance report, he was (yet again) unavailable for comment. Multiple times over.

Which he has been, routinely, to all media outlets since that embarrassing little “My Dinner With Randy” imbroglio last September. You remember, when Paul Heintz caught the Tayter in a blatant lie over his contact with gubernatorial hopeless* Randy Brock?

*Well, he sure wasn’t a “hopeful.”

Yeah, since then the Tayter has steered clear of any messy entanglements with any and all reporters, for fear of committing more blunders. Which is fine as long as VF has no impact whatsoever. But if it really hopes to actually influence elections, then he has an obligation (moral, not legal) to be answerable in public. Especially since his sugar mama, Lenore Broughton, won’t even let herself be photographed, much less interviewed.

So a big fat year-end Poke to Tayt Brooks, the useless, toothless, feckless, arrogant little opera buffa character of Vermont politics.  

Terri Hallenbeck’s working a shift on New Year’s Eve…

Talk had been that Sen. Claire Ayer, an Addison County Democrat, would be the new majority leader in the Senate this coming year. Not so, Ayer said Monday. She’s changed her mind, leaving questions about who will end up holding that key post.

Ayer was the heir apparent to Bill Carris, who resigned from the Senate due to health problems. But in order to be an effective majority leader, she would have relinquished her position as chair of the Health and Welfare Committee. And she decided that, with health care reform pending, she’d rather stay on at the committee. Or maybe she decided she’d rather not clean up John Campbell’s messes, I dunno.

The majority leader is a key figure in making sure the Senate runs smoothly, which it has not done for the last two years. Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell, D-Windsor, won the Democratic majority’s support for retaining that top Senate job next year, but only with the promise that things would run better. The even-tempered, experienced Ayer would have been a good candidate to do that. Who will fill the role instead appears unclear.

Hallenbeck’s blogpost ends with the following, intriguing, almost bewildering line:

Sen. Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden, a second-term senator, has been mentioned as a possibility

Phil Baruth??? Pardon me while I choke on my Irish coffee. (Hey, it’s New Year’s.)  

This would be the same Phil Baruth who was a notable pain in John Campbell’s ass during the 2012 session. At least that’s how Campbell seemed to see things; here’s a choice quote from the Valley News last spring, as referenced in this here blog:

“I know there was some frustration on the part of some of the freshmen in thinking the power was isolated with the committee chairs, but what I was trying to explain to them is there is a thing called seniority and experience, and just as in anything, you have to put in your time and learn the ins and outs of the institution before you want to run the thing.”

(“Some of the freshmen” was widely understood to mean Baruth, Joe Benning, and Peter Galbraith.)

This would also be the same Phil Baruth who surprisingly backed Campbell when he was challenged for the President Pro Temship by Ann Cummings — and even formally nominated Campbell.

Deal, anyone? Bueller?

But hey, it’s a holiday, so let’s put aside our cynicism and look at the bright side: if Baruth really is the choice, that’ll be a concrete sign that things are changing in the Senate, and Campbell is serious about taking a different approach to his leadership.  

Some interesting stuff in the Freeploid about the likely Legislative response to the Jim Deeghan case. And by “interesting,” I mean “appalling.”

Deeghan is the longtime state trooper who somehow (allegedly, cough) managed to falsely report vast amounts of overtime and, as a result, turned himself into the sixth-highest-paid employee on the state’s payroll. And put himself in line for a vastly overinflated pension.

Well, reading the Freeploid account makes me wonder why we haven’t had a few more firings in the VSP, or at least some suspensions and demotions, as well as loud and angry calls for reform in the barracks. Because of shit like this:

…there was virtually no effective oversight of now former State Police Sgt. Jim Deeghan, who prosecutors say padded his time sheets in recent years to help fatten an upcoming pension and wrote 973 bogus tickets to try to justify some of his extra time.

Deeghan, a longtime patrol commander in Chittenden County, got to approve much of his own overtime and at times signed the approval for time sheets he was filing.

Excuse me: got to approve his own overtime? Signed his own approvals? Bloody f*cking hell. Does that sound like a well-run organization to you? Do you think that if the same thing had been going on in the Department of Human Services, or the Agency of Natural Resources, there wouldn’t have been an all-out Inquisition into management processes and the ceremonial scalping of a few administrators?

After the jump: A fatuous comment from Dick Sears, master of the genre.

Here’s another choice tidbit:

Legislators and other state officials remain baffled how a state trooper could allegedly file false time sheets for at least three years and write bogus tickets for at least 12 years without state police internal controls or management detecting either problem.

Yeah, I must confess to a touch of bafflement myself. And yet, and yet, that paragraph is immediately followed by the following nugget from State Senator Dick Sears:

“I have great confidence in our state police,” Sears said.

Oh really, Dick? Why, exactly? What about the Deeghan case inspires “great confidence in our state police”?

The Legislature’s focus will be on a new law allowing for seizure of an employee’s pension funds in cases of payroll fraud. In and of itself, that’s fine. But as far as I can tell, there won’t be any special attention paid to the agency whose internal controls were a complete failure. The agency, ironically enough, charged with upholding the law. No hearings, no calling on the carpet. Our leaders are apparently satisfied with whatever changes the VSP has decided to make on its own. Because, you know, the VSP has such a track record of bureaucratic inerrancy.  

Governor Shumlin, recently returned from his Italian sojourn, has finally weighed in on the post-Newtown gun control debate in an interview with the Freeploid. In this diary I won’t address his overall stance, which can be briefly described as “The Buck Stops Somewhere Else.” Rather, I’ll just point out one little problematic statement:

I have a lot of confidence in the president’s and vice president’s approach to this, which is: Be inclusive, with the goal of not coming up with a solution that looks good, but really diving into the issues that are driving violence, and that are putting weapons in the hands of crazy, deranged people who shouldn’t have them.

“Crazy, deranged people.” That nugget of insensitivity, I remind you, comes from the man who’s tasked himself with reinventing Vermont’s mental health care system. And it placed our Governor uncomfortably close to Wayne LaPierre territory.

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings… A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

There are a couple of big problems with this call for segregating “crazy people” from assault weapons. Well, a couple of problems aside from utter impracticality (Adam Lanza got his firepower, not from a gun show or the Internet, but from his MOMMY) and complete hypocrisy (registering guns is an invasion of personal freedom, but registering “crazy people” is not).

First, the vast majority of “crazy people” have never been diagnosed. Adam Lanza wouldn’t have shown up on Wayno’s database. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris wouldn’t have been there either. Nor would Jared Lee Loughner. If you want a national database of the “deranged,” you’ll need a much more robust mental health system — one that thoroughly screens every single one of us, and somehow manages to identify future killers through the early, scant traces of aberrant behavior.

Second, “crazy people” as a group are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Relatively few are the slavering, uncontrollable monsters of LaPierre’s imagination. Many are passive or withdrawn*, unable to defend themselves or resist criminal assault. And all would be branded, as if by a scarlet letter “C”, as potential killers in a National Registry of the Crazy.

*as Adam Lanza seemed to be, until the day he took his mom’s assault weapons to school.

Opponents of gun regulation bleat about the impracticality of any attempt to control the flow of high-powered weaponry, and yet they are somehow unfazed by the even greater impracticality and ineffectiveness of a hypothetical Database of the Deranged.

One more thing. Since the national discussion of gun control is likely to go on for quite a while — and will be renewed every time a “crazy person” shoots up a school, church, mall, or other public place — I hereby present our Governor with an extremely partial but nonetheless handy list of other insensitive terms for the mentally ill, just in case he gets tired of “crazy” and “deranged.”

5150, basket case, bananas, batty, berserk, bughouse, crackers, cuckoo, daffy, demented, ding-a-ling, freaky, f*ck knuckle, insane (or even better, “insane in the membrane”), kooky, Low Marble Count, lunatic, mad, mondo bizarro, Napoleon XIV, nutjob, nutty, out to lunch, postal (especially apropos), potty, psycho, screw loose, spaz, wackadoodle, wacky, wigged out.

Also, don’t forget the creative possibilities of the phrase “short of,” as in one brick short of a load, one sandwich short of a picnic, and a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

There now. I hope I’ve helped to add some richness and color to our Governor’s political discourse.  

The normally tireless scribes at VTDigger are off on a well-earned ten-day hiatus. But during their absence, they arranged for some daily postings in the form of an 11-part series on poverty in the Northeast Kingdom.

A worthy endeavor, no? The Kingdom has a long history of poverty and neglect, and its problems have been too tough for any businessperson, politician, academic, or government to solve. So why not give it a long hard look? Especially from a reporter billed as an “AP award-winning writer” who lives in the Kingdom?

Well, the answer is in the fine print. First, the Editor’s Note informs us that this series is being recycled from the St. Johnsbury Caledonian-Record, the most reactionary newspaper in Vermont.  And second, we learn in a note at the end of Part One that the writer in question, Bethany Knight, has “co-authored five reports on Vermont issues produced by the Ethan Allen Institute.” Yes, that Ethan Allen Institute, dogged mouthpiece for the Ayn Randian fantasies of its founder, El Jefe General John McClaughry, sponsor of the execrable “Common Sense Radio,” which is hosted by none other than the newly-installed President of the Ethan Allen Institute, colorless ideologue Rob Roper.

The fine print also fails to provide any specifics about her “AP award-winning” work*, or name any of the newspapers where she plied her trade.

*Dirty little secret of journalism: Prizes abound. If you have a pulse and a reporting job, and you submit entries for journalism awards, you will win some. I should know; I have dozens on my resume.

So considering the sources, I have a feeling I’m about to be treated to a right-wing fabrication of history. And doggone it, Bethany Knight does not disappoint. Part One, “From Kingdom to King Dump,” spins a fable of a proud bucolic paradise that’s been devastated, and its people’s native nobility stripped away, by the predations of state government.

Whaaaa???

The fatuities contained in this essay are too many to thoroughly explore. But let’s start by noting that Knight’s essay contains no factual basis for the assertion that the Kingdom is poorer now than ever before. It quotes no experts; its only quoted sources are “a Newport activist for the poor,” “a native who moved to Boston in the 1990s,” and precisely one named source: a man named Jack Ruggles, whose family used to operate a major building in downtown Barton. Impressive.  How about an example of their deep thinking?

“Vermont is not the Vermont of my childhood,” says a native who moved to Boston in the 1990s for a decent-paying job. “We never had to lock our doors. No one ever had their home broken into.”

Note that this “native” doesn’t specify the Northeast Kingdom; he talks about the entire state. And note that Knight quotes no statistics on crime to support her assertion that the Kingdom has suddenly become a place of danger and suspicion.

As for those expensive government antipoverty programs, the esteemed Mr. Ruggles yearns for the Good Ole Days when we all got by with barn-raisin’s and quiltin’ bees:

“Every town had overseers of the poor,” Ruggles say (sic). “If you needed assistance with groceries, he would go with you and the town would pay for it and help you find a place to stay. He would make sure, if you weren’t working and if you could, to help you get employed.”

And when you got sick, you took a chicken to the doctor.

The rose-colored eyes of memory becloud the painful realities of the old Kingdom. It has always been a place of grinding poverty, and the Overseers of the Poor (and the churches and the generosity of neighbor helping neighbor) were never, ever enough to blunt the harshness of Kingdom life.

Again, Knight quotes no statistics to support her depiction of a Kingdom in decline from a former Golden Age of Self-Reliance. She notes that today the NEK has the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in Vermont, but she fails to add that it has always been so. Even in the Good Ole Days.

And the spike through the heart of her mythical Kingdom?

Vermont started to churn out environmental laws that discourage, if not prohibit, manufacturing and other big employers to do business here.

Which kinda ignores some inconvenient truths. First, the Kingdom has never had much of a manufacturing base. And while it has lost some major employers, it is hardly alone in this. At one point in the essay, she claims that “manufacturing jobs are in New Hampshire.” Oh really? Any statistics to support that? Of course not.

If you think New Hampshire is a low-tax paradise of full employment, just take a drive east on US-2 to Berlin, a formerly thriving mill town that’s at least as run-down as any Northeast Kingdom community. New Hampshire’s North Country suffers from the same economic illnesses as the Kingdom: remoteness, lack of infrastructure, undereducated workforce. The vaunted “New Hampshire Advantage” in taxes and business-friendly regulation doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

Knight includes a short list of lost NEK employers, but she fails to draw any connection to Vermont’s environmental rules. Did Ethan Allen Furniture dramatically downsize its Vermont presence because of regulation, or because it could make more money elsewhere? I think you know the answer to that one. The Kingdom, like many other benighted areas, is at the mercy of economic forces beyond its (and Vermont’s) control, including globalization, downsizing, and outsourcing.  

Knight’s work may improve in future segments; it can hardly get worse. But unless she takes a sudden turn for the better, with more rigorous backing material, better sources, and fewer unsupported assertions, then this series will be a waste of the readers’ time. Based on Part One, I have to wonder why VTDigger bothered to publish it.

 

Another holiday edition of “Thumbs Up…” This time, featuring images of Santa from two cinematic classics: “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “Santa’s Slay,” starring former pro wrestler Bill Goldberg as evil Santa.

And speaking of holidays, this feature will be taking next week off; it should return on December 31.

Terri Hallenbeck of the Freeploid and Kirk Carapezza of VPR, for doing some very fine reporting on what could have been a joke of an assignment — accompanying Governor Shumlin and his merry band of F-35 supporters on their planespotting junket to Eglin AFB. The two scribes played it straight, but their reports made it clear that the entire trip was a dog and pony show. If it wasn’t for their sacrifice of time, energy, and their employers’ expense accounts, we wouldn’t have learned about golden moments like…

— Governor Shumlin saying “Wow” upon first seeing an F-35 and then, Captain Renault-like, allowing that he was “shocked” at how quiet the jet planes were, and trying to convince us that the F-35 is somehow quieter than the currently deployed F-16.

— The entire company doing their best Robert Parker impersonation, characterizing the sound in neo-Wine Spectator terms — “it’s a different sound,” “it’s a deeper sound,” and, from an Air Force Colonel, “deeper, throatier.”  Mmmm, roll the sound around in your ears: earthy, robust, unfiltered, yeasty, chewy.

— Winooski Mayor Michael O’Brien measuring the loudness on his iPad, and then trying to explain away the embarrassing result: the F-35 was quite a bit louder, actually. Oopsie.

So congrats to Hallenbeck and Carapezza for bringing their A-game to this nothingburger story.

Self-aggrandizing petropreneur Rodolphe “Skip” Vallee, for continuing to believe that he is the political equal of Senator Bernie Sanders. Last week, Skippy began airing anti-Sanders ads (on WCAX, natch) attacking America’s Favorite Socialist for being pro-corporation and anti-environment. And if that wasn’t sufficient evidence of Skip’s political tone-deafness, he also slapped a figurative glove across Bernie’s face: “I challenge Bernie to a VPR debate on the Keystone Pipeline and Lake Champlain cleanup.”

I’m sure Bernie got a good chuckle out of that. As if he would waste his time debating Skip Vallee. The same Skip Vallee whose last foray into the electoral arena was a run for State Senate, which he lost despite setting the all-time record for a State Senate race by spending $134,000. (He did, admittedly, have more success as a bagman for George W. Bush, for which he was honored with the ambassadorship to Slovakia, where he didn’t even start a war or anything.) He dipped his toe into the gubernatorial waters back in 2010 but decided not to take on Brien Dubie. So now he thinks he could tackle Bernie Sanders? It is to laugh.  

Oh, in doing some research for this nubbin, I came across an account of Skip’s political origins from the late great Peter Freyne:

After graduation in 1983, the Williams College hockey player sought an entry-level position with Democratic U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. He didn’t get it.

…Vallee ended up getting an internship with Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Stafford, and he’s been a Republican ever since.

Ladies and gentlemen, Skip Vallee, man of principle.

After the jump: A beloved bridge, a sought-after brew, a Foodbank in need, and a late unlamented figure of the political fringe.

The Quechee covered bridge, for its imminent return to active duty. The ridiculously picturesque bridge was destroyed in Tropical Storm Irene almost a year and a half ago, along with a goodly chunk of the adjacent roadway. Well, according to contractors, the bridge is scheduled to reopen on December 28.

There’s still a lot of damage from Irene, a lot of bills to be paid and a lot of work to be done, but the return of the Quechee Bridge is a tangible sign of progress and a morale-booster as well.

The University of Vermont, for another bout of self-aggrandizement – -this time from new President Tom Sullivan. The Prez wants to make UVM more selective, i.e. harder to get into. (Vermont students would be exempt from his new tougher standards because, well, political suicide.) The idea is that being more selective leads to higher retention and graduation rates, which are markers of academic quality.  

The evidence for this? The most selective colleges, those perceived to have the highest academic quality, also tend to have the highest retention and graduation rates.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being somewhat more selective. Although taken to the extreme, a dual admissions standard could result in a two-tiered student population: out-of-state students breezing through advanced courses, and Vermont students hanging on by their manure-encrusted fingernails. But this is just one more example of a self-aggrandizing trend at Vermont’s Most Distinguished Institution of Higher Learning.

Look, UVM is a nice public university in a small state. It’s done pretty well with limited resources. But it is not, and never will be, on the level of “the most selective colleges,” and it’s unhealthy to think so.  It’s resulted. ironically, in an inflated view of UVM’s achievements and the quality of its faculty and programs. From here within Vermont, UVM is a big deal. But outside Vermont, it’s a small fish in a very large pond. And that’s okay. It’s really, really okay.

Marshfield-based nanobrewery Lawson’s Finest Liquids, for crafting brews that are almost too good for their own good. I showed up at the Montpelier Farmers Market a few minutes after opening on Saturday, and noticed a longish line of people outside the Vermont College of Fine Arts gymnasium, the home of the winter market. I thought maybe it was a group tour of the VCFA campus or something.

Then, when I’d finished my shopping, the line had gotten a whole lot longer — at least a hundred people. And one of them explained it was a line for the Lawson’s Finest table in the market. Lawson’s had organized an outdoor line, lest the beer-seekers overwhelm the entire joint. And, as Keith Vance reported, although Lawson’s had brought twice as many bottles as usual, they sold out before closing time and sent some would-be customers away beerless.

The Lawsons issued a statement on their website, in which they said they were “humbled and amazed at [the] turnout,” and apologized to those who arrived too late to get any beer. They also posted a nice photo of the astounding lineup.  

The Vermont Foodbank, which enters the holiday season and wintertime facing a big financial shortfall. The Times Argus (article paywalled) reports that the Foodbank, the state’s primary supplier to food shelves, soup kitchens, and shelters, needs to raise $1.2 million (about 20% of its annual budget) by the end of December.

“We raise a majority of our dollars in October, November and December, but we’ve seen pretty serious shortfalls in the past two months,” says Judith Stermer, the organization’s director of communications and public affairs. “That we’re so far behind is definitely disconcerting.”

That’s not the only bad news. The Foodbank isn’t getting nearly as much commodity items from the federal government as usual. And it could face more money trouble if the mucky-mucks in Washington don’t settle the fiscal cliff negotiations. If you’d like to help, you can donate through the Foodbank’s website.

______________________________________________________________

The late Thomas Naylor of the secessionist group Second Vermont Republic, for leaving a legacy of lies and bitterness behind him. Some may say it’s unkind to speak ill of the recently deceased; my view is that we should speak plainly of their lives for good and ill. And in Naylor’s case, primarily ill.

When Naylor first formed SVR, he attracted a variety of Vermonters from across the political spectrum, including quite a few leftists who were disgusted with the Bush war on terror. Turned out that he had allied himself with some southern neo-Confederate types, and had some very questionable views on the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And when confronted about his views and associations by blogger “Thomas Rowley” and front-pagers here at Green Mountain Daily, he reacted with angry denials and furious counterattacks, and an attempt to undermine the career of at least one of his critics.

And in the process, he made it clear that he held some pretty noxious views. Afterward, a lot of his associates broke ties with him and SVR. The group continued to sputter on, but it ceased to be a meaningful force in Vermont politics. And in the immortal words of Louis Armstrong:

When you’re lyin’ six feet deep, no more fried chicken will you eat,

I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you.