Paul LePage, Maine’s far-right and hot-tempered Governor, had a fiery exchange with a TV reporter yesterday. It came just a couple of days before LePage’s scheduled visit to Vermont, to fundraise for VTGOP gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock.

The reporter, Paul Merrill, asked about LePage calling the IRS “the new Gestapo,” which somehow managed to offend some people. Remember, the Nazi comparison wasn’t an off-the-cuff thing; it was in the official Republican response to President Obama’s weekly radio address. It was written out, vetted, edited, approved, and delivered for a national audience.

Initially, LePage blew right by Merrill and refused to answer any questions. But as LePage was walking away, Merrill hit a sore spot by asking if the Governor would apologize. He stalked back to Merrill and said:

“It was never intended to offend anyone,” LePage said. “And if someone’s offended, then they ought to be goddamn mad at the federal government.”

Yes, more civility from Paul LePage. Not to mention flawless logic: if someone’s offended, don’t be angry at the guy who made the offensive remark. Be angry at the government that “provoked” LePage to such extremes.

VTGOP chair Jack Lindley has called on Democrats to be civil to this man. Problem is, he deserves no civility whatsoever. And once again, Randy Brock deserves to be questioned on his choice of political allies. And the national Republican Party should answer for its choice of spokesperson and for his language.

But I’m not holding my breath.  

Note: I’d written most of this before kestrel9000 posted his diary on Paul LePage’s upcoming visit to Vermont. I decided to go ahead and post it anyway, because I found a lot more examples of LePage’s nasty behavior. I think it reinforces kestrel’s point about the company Randy Brock chooses to keep, and the Republicans’ hypocrisy on matters of politeness and civility.

______________________________

Go to hell, Paul LePage! Kiss my butt, you idiot! Get out of my state!

Believe it or not, all of those imprecations and insults were uttered by Paul LePage, the ultra-conservative Governor of Maine. (Yes, that’s him. Sorry, you’ll never be able to unsee that image now.) He’ll be in Vermont this Wednesday and Thursday July 11-12 to fundraise for Randy Brock. When the gig was first announced, VT Democratic Party chair Jake Perkinson issued a news release tying Brock to the extreme policies of his invited guest.

Brock and VTGOP chair Jack Lindley fired back, accusing Perkinson of “nasty personal attacks” (Brock) and “hurling insults” (Lindley). Which was nonsense, because Perkinson’s attack was based on policy, not personality. And there were abundant grounds for a policy-based attack: LePage has called for a flat state income tax (which would result in massive tax cuts for the rich) and a 50% cut in the corporate tax rate; he has advocated school vouchers and state funding for religious schools; he wanted to roll back child-labor laws to allow kids to work up to 32 hours — for a special, lower version of the minimum wage; he has defunded Planned Parenthood; he has proposed union-busting right-to-work legislation; and he rammed through a massive, market-based overhaul of health care in Maine which has, according to one expert, resulted in higher premiums and worse coverage for many, and a rise in the number of Mainers without any insurance at all. The guy who helped create that legislation, Tarren Bragdon, is now helping Randy Brock put together his own market-based health care plan.  

So you see, LePage’s record is perfectly fair game for Perkinson and the Democrats. And if Randy Brock chooses to invite LePage to Vermont, then Brock should answer for LePage’s politics. Especially since he’s hired LePage’s health care advisor to create his own plan.

Now, if Perkinson had wanted to issue a personal attack, he would have had plenty of ammo to choose from; LePage may be the nastiest, most intemperate figure in American politics today. He makes Chris Christie look like the Dalai Lama by comparison.

After the jump: Hell, butt, idiot, bullshit, and other markers of civility.

Before we get to LePage’s lengthy rap sheet of rudeness, let’s note that Lindley demanded that the Dems “treat this man with the same civility that our side demonstrated during President Obama’s recent visit to Vermont.”

Which was also complete nonsense. As I reported earlier, when the President visited Vermont, Lindley put out a blisteringly negative press release. Not at all civil.  

So my opening welcome to Paul LePage — fashioned entirely from his own words — is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Republican-style civility to which he is accustomed.

Well, he’s accustomed to dishing it out, anyway. For the sake of simple fairness, he should be just as willing to take it.

While Jack Lindley was clearly uncivil to President Obama, he was the very picture of civility when compared to Paul LePage. During a 2010 gubernatorial debate, the candidates were asked “If President Obama was with you tonight, what would you ask him to do to help the state of Maine?” LePage’s response: “I’d ask him to get out of my state.”

At another campaign appearance, he amplified the sentiment: “We’ve had enough of the federal government. We’ve had enough. …And as your governor, you’re gonna be seeing a lot of me on the front page saying ‘Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.'”

Okay, so that’s his idea of “civility” toward the President. He takes the same approach to anyone who dares to question or oppose him. He once told a reporter to “stop the bullshit.” A favorite word, as it turns out; last December, in an attempt to humanize LePage, his aides arranged a meeting with three unemployed Mainers. Afterward, he posed for pictures with them; but after they’d left, here’s how he described the meeting:

“It’s all a big play and I think it’s bullshit,” said LePage pausing for a minute then adding slowly and deliberately, “Bull …. shit.”

Immediately after his comments his press secretary whisked the Governor away into his waiting SUV.

His humanity toward the jobless was also on display in his speech to the Maine Republican convention in May:

LePage called on the state legislature to pass structural changes to welfare, saying, “Maine’s welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job.”

He’s not a whole lot friendlier to those who do have jobs — at least, when those jobs are in the public sector. On April 26, he said this: “The problem is the middle management of the state is about as corrupt as you can be. Believe me, we’re trying every day to get them to go to work, but it’s hard.”

And just this weekend, as kestrel9000 previously reported, he ejected another burst of projectile rhetoric, calling the IRS “the new Gestapo.” Yes, because IRS agents are torturing and murdering anyone who dares oppose their Thousand Year Reich.

But wait, there’s more! I haven’t even gotten to LePage’s most famous outbursts.

Shortly after taking office, he refused to attend Martin Luther King Jr. Day events because he considered the NAACP a “special interest,” and added that the NAACP could “kiss my butt.”

And a couple of months later, he ordered the removal of a Maine artist’s mural from the Department of Labor building, because it only showed the labor side of history. And when a group of protesters threatened to form a human chain to block the mural’s removal, he was asked what he would say to them. “I’d laugh at them, the idiots,” was his reply.

(A lot of this bluster might be simple insecurity. LePage “won” the governorship with only 38% of the vote in a hotly-contested three-way race. Independent centrist Elliot Cutler took almost 37%; Democrat Libby Mitchell got 19%, and two other independents took about 6%. Deep in his heart of hearts, LePage has to know that he was and is deeply unpopular.)

You know, personally, I’d be afraid to treat Paul LePage with civility. I don’t think he’d know how to react, considering that he appears to be completely lacking in it himself. If Paul LePage and civility came into contact, it might be like a collision of matter and anti-matter — instant annihilation for all concerned.

I, for one, will do all I can to prevent such a catastrophe. Therefore, I say again, with all the Republican civility that he deserves:

Go to hell, Paul LePage! Kiss my butt, you idiot! Get out of my state!

This thing about gas prices in northwestern Vermont just keeps getting more and more interesting.

Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders called for a federal investigation into why gas prices are higher in the northwest, while they’ve dropped in other parts of the state. (Including very nearby parts.) He offered a hint to the feds: the fact that gas station ownership is heavily concentrated in the Northwest. Nearly 60% of the gas stations in Chittenden County are owned by four companies.

(One of them,. R.L. Vallee, is owned by Skip Vallee, a very generous donor to Republican campaigns. For his fundraising work in 2004, he was named Ambassador to Slovakia by President Bush. Earlier, he’d made one spectacularly unsuccessful foray into politics, spending a massive $134,000 on a losing bid for State Senate.

If anyone out there has information about the political affiliations of the other three, I’d be happy to hear it. The other three outfits are Champlain Oil owned by the Cairns family; Simon’s, owned by Joe and Charles Handy; and S.B. Collins, owned by Bruce Jolley.)

In today’s Freeploid (available here if you haven’t used up your monthly allotment of ten freebie articles), there’s a really good story about the issue. And the Big Four had some fascinating (in a stupid and/or condescending way) things to say about gas prices. I’ll present a selection here, and follow with some information on why free markets don’t work in sectors like this.

First new bit: Bernie reports that Burlington-area gas prices are out of whack with a Federal Trade Commission computer model. According to said model, the price of a gallon of gas should have been somewhere between $3.25 and $3.58 — not the actual $3.68 average.

The Big Four gas station operators were quick to take umbrage at Bernie’s call.  

“It’s normal competition,” said Bruce Jolley of S.B. Collins Inc. of St. Albans. “You watch what everybody else is doing.”

Interesting way of putting it, Bruce. That could mean you’re making sure your prices are the lowest around, or it could mean you’re not lowering your prices unless you have to. Jolley continues…

Asked why Burlington-area prices earlier this week were 35 cents a gallon higher than in Middlebury, Jolley said Middlebury had “different competitive pressures.”

Yeah, Middlebury is more isolated and has a lot fewer drivers. You’d think those factors would raise prices, not lower them. After all, it’s harder to get the gas there, and you’re selling in substantially smaller quantities. Whatever happened to economies of scale? But wait, Jolley has one more insight to offer:

Asked why Burlington’s prices were the among the highest in New England, he said, “I don’t have an answer for that.”

Well, thanks a lot. You’ve been in the gas station business since the mid-1970s, and you don’t know how gas prices come about?

Skip Vallee offered the biggest howler of all. After the jump…

Vallee said Sanders should support the Keystone pipeline project and the plan to refine tar sands oil from Canada for use as gasoline and other petroleum products if he is truly interested in saving his constituents money at the gas pump.

“That would save Vermonters 30 cents a gallon,” Vallee said.

Sure thing, Skippy. The Keystone pipeline would funnel tar sands oil from Canada to refineries and ports on the Gulf of Mexico for export overseas. It would have no direct effect on Vermont gas prices, and would not lower US prices at all unless the Canadian oil is so abundant that it floods the global market, lowering oil prices for everyone. And that’s notgonnahappen.com.

As it happens, I recently read a very good explanation for the gas price phenomenon. It comes from a study of electricity markets done by Sarosh Talukdar of Carnegie Mellon University, as reported in David Cay Johnston’s excellent book “Free Lunch.”

Talukdar created an ideal market for electricity. It had a decent number of producers and utilities, competing on an equal footing. You’d expect that competitive pressures would force electricity prices to fall to the lowest level that would allow producers a reasonable profit.  

But they didn’t. Prices rose. Talukdar ran the model four times, adjusting the parameters, and each time the result was the same.

If this had happened in real life, you’d be crying “collusion” and “price fixing.” But these weren’t real companies, it was just a computer simulation. The conclusion, as reported by Johnston:

What the experiments showed was that sellers could jack up prices in this market because the buyers are forced to buy. If the price of a share of stock or a piece of land is too high, buyers can walk away. Not so electricity.  …So long as no one broke ranks and undercut the market, the sellers overall get higher prices and fatter profits…

…This unstated coordination gave the producers of electricity what economists call market power, which means the ability to set prices higher than a competitive market would allow.

…”Collusion is a crime,” Talukdar noted, “but learning is not. My studies show it is easy to learn from the signals given by others how to get the benefits of colluding without breaking the law.”

The markets for electricity and gas are very similar in one crucial way: captive customers. If you’re driving around Burlington and your gauge is on “E”, you’re not driving to Middlebury for a fill up. Hell, if your tank is 1/4 full, you’re not driving to Middlebury just to save 25 cents a gallon. The Burlington area is. practically speaking, a captive market.

Remember, this works even if there is no active collusion — just a handful of experienced operators who, as Talukdar puts it, know how to read the signals.  

Conservatives these days are fond of putting their faith in free markets. But that’s not enough. Winding up the free market and letting it go simply doesn’t work for a variety of products and services, including the most essential ones. Talukdar concludes that “the design of markets matters a great deal and the design must be verified to see if it really works as a free market.”

That notorious communist Adam Smith had some things to say about this, too. He was the foremost apostle of free markets — but he included some very strong caveats. He warned that a free market wouldn’t work unless buyers and sellers were equally knowledgeable about the transaction, equally free to engage in commerce or not, and had free choice of equivalent options. The second qualifier doesn’t apply to Chittenden County gas prices: sellers are free to sell, but buyers are stuck with the choices available in their geographic area. In that circumstance, as Talukdar proved, prices are likely to be higher than they should.  

A few side dishes for your holiday barbecue… Entergy tries to corral the PSB, police “free for all” near Burlington Airport, TJ Donovan stakes out activist turf, and a positive step by state government. Details following…  

Entergy seeks limits on PSB review. The owners of Vermont Yankee have unleashed their expensive lawyers yet again, continuing their openly adversarial relationship with the state. This time, Entergy is seeking to severely limit the grounds of a Public Service Board review of VY’s operations*. Per Brattleboro Reformer:

*Corrected; the motion was not filed in federal court, as I first wrote.

Because of Judge J. Garvan Murtha’s ruling that Vermont legislation was passed to regulate nuclear safety and the continued operation of the Vernon reactor, Entergy officials stated the PSB is no longer allowed to include energy diversity, the impacts of safety on Vermont tourism and whether Vermont Yankee’s continued operation is in the public good or whether Entergy has been or is a “fair partner” to the state.

…To avoid preemption from the Atomic Energy Act, the motion states “a board ruling must be exclusively based upon an independent, non-safety rationale that provides a factually justifiable basis for shutting the plant down.”

The motion also asserts that concerns about electric system reliability should not be considered. Which is a bit much, coming from the outfit that’s staked its claim on being a reliable source of baseload power. I guess they’ve dropped “reliable” from their mantra “safe, clean, reliable.”

If you’re not a fan of Bill Sorrell, you could call this filing another instance of collateral damage from his one-sided loss before Judge Murtha.

Cops gone wild in South Burlington. Remember that story about police training exercises in those vacant houses near the Burlington Airport? Well, the other shoe dropped in Tuesday’s Freeploid. (Paywalled, natch.)

What happened is that a nice little use of resources (soon-to-be-demolished houses) went completely out of control. And now South Burlington and the Airport has halted all training exercises. This is why the police can’t have nice things.  

The arrangement went off the rails when the Vermont State Police allowed out-of-state agencies to use the houses. Eventually, troopers from all six New England states did so, among others, and coordination with South Burlington police was sketchy at best, nonexistent at worst.

The failure of police to coordinate their training with South Burlington, with neighbors and with the airport led the airport official with immediate responsibility for the houses, [Burlington Airport] Facilities Foreman Matt Harding, to complain internally June 5 that the police presence was turning into a “free-for-all.” Houses were being left unlocked after training, said Harding, who indicated he was often left in the dark about when training would take place.

Also left in the dark: the remaining residents of the neighborhood, a very rare enclave of affordable housing in the immediate Burlington area.

The training for the outside SWAT teams was coordinated by Adam Crogan of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration at the airport.

…Crogan told Harding the State Police were “very excited” about the training, because “some of these guys will go 20 years as a trooper and never have a realistic training venue like this.”

Yeah, they were so excited they couldn’t keep it in their pants. so to speak. The Freeploid also reports that the exercises went beyond designated vacant areas, and came uncomfortably close to “houses that were still occupied,” according to Matt Harding. Yikes!

As I said before, the cops ought to take a bucket or two of that bottomless well of Homeland Security money and build themselves a little Potemkin village somewhere that they can shoot up to their hearts’ content.

Donovan says he’ll go national on marriage equality.  TJ Donovan says he is fully in support of marriage equality — not only in Vermont, but nationwide. Indeed, he says Vermonters won’t have true marriage equality until it’s the law of the land.

Federal law withholds from some married people the rights it grants others.  For example, federal law prevents same-sex married couples from filing joint federal tax returns, which can lessen tax burdens. Federal law prevents the surviving or divorced spouse of a same-sex marriage from collecting Social Security benefits on an equal basis enjoyed by other married persons.

If he becomes AG, he would use his position to advocate for gay rights in other states and at the federal level. VTDigger:

Donovan cites the May 31 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals that “federal law unconstitutionally discriminates against full citizenship for all adults.” He expects gay marriage rights to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in the next session, and he says he would do anything in his power (amicus brief, anyone?) to support a decision that would uphold Vermont’s law.

It’s another solid step in Donovan’s bid to differentiate himself from Sorrell as someone who wants to be a more involved, activist AG. It happens to be true, of course, that Donovan has a more activist view of the office. But it’s also a politically astute way of painting Bill Sorrell as lacking in energy and engagement. Or, ready for the rocking chair, if you prefer.

DMH and VSP developing better coordination. I’ve been a critic of Patrick Flood and the Shumlin Administration’s post-Ireme plans for mental health care (and I still am), but I have to give them a lot of credit for being proactive on another important issue: the interactions between police and the mentally ill.  

State Police and the Department of Mental Health are trying to develop ways to collaboratively respond to people in mental health crisis. This efforts, Flood said, have been stepped up since the death of Macadam Mason after being tasered* by a state trooper. Valley News:

*My damn spellcheck just tried to turn “tasered” into “tasseled.” Bad computer!

Flood said the first stop will be to ensure that police call the local mental health agency as soon as they get a report of someone who appears to be in a mental health crisis.

Beginning this week, all state police barracks and all of the state’s designated mental health agencies — regional nonprofit mental health service centers that work under state contract — will have contact persons on hand to speed communication.

…”Whenever possible, a mental health professional will join the police at the scene,” it added. “Within three weeks, joint protocols will be in place to guide interactions in these situations.”

The devil is in the implementation, of course; Flood admits that fully funding a 24/7 crisis response capability is problematic. And the issue of taser use must still be addressed in full. But I give a lot of credit to Flood, the VSP, and the Shumlin Administration for taking this seriously. It’s the way government ought to work.  

Those with long memories may recall that way back on May 19, at the VTGOP convention, Randy Brock unveiled the upcoming unveiling of his health care reform plan. Vermont Press Bureau:

Less government intervention, not more, Brock said, will allow market forces to work their cost-containment magic.

…Brock’s speech got a rousing ovation from the GOP faithful. He’ll make his case to a broader swath of the voting public when he unveils a more complete reform plan early next month.

“Early next month,” meaning early June. One month ago. So where is the completed blueprint for RandyCare? I was expecting a big foofaraw with plenty of bunting, fireworks, maybe a brass band, cheerleaders, and a passel of top Republicans playing Pips to Randy’s Gladys Knight.

Maybe they’re just putting in a whole lot of overtime. It’s got to be difficult consulting with all those top conservatives from all over the country, including Tarren Bragdon, the guy responsible for turning Maine’s health insurance system into a free-market disaster.

Maybe they’ve put off the announcement till next week, when Maine’s Tea Party Governor Paul LePage comes to Vermont to fundraise and rabble-rouse on Randy’s behalf.

Maybe the job turned out to be too difficult. Or maybe they decided that the details of a Tea Party reform plan would be so unpalatable to the Vermont electorate that it would doom Randy to a defeat of historic proportions. The good Senator has spent plenty of time slamming Governor Shumlin’s reform plan and the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare, but he’s been very coy about his own plan since his big pre-announcement on May 19.

Of course, considering that many Republican policy proposals are nothing more than a few lines of rhetoric, maybe what we got on May 19 is all we’re going to get. Color me disappointed, but not surprised.  

Inoculate, v.t.  To introduce immunologically active material (as an antibody or antigen) into especially in order to treat or prevent a disease.

Vince Illuzzi, itinerant candidate, has been given a gift. The bestower of the gift is one Jon Margolis, veteran journalist and now political analyst for VTDigger. In a post dated June 28, Margolis considers Illuzzi’s ethically troubled past and whether it should be a factor in his candidacy for state Auditor of Accounts.

For those just joining us, Illuzzi has been a state senator for 32 years and is also state’s attorney for Essex County. But back in the 1990s, his license to practice law was suspended for almost five years and very nearly revoked permanently, over a series of legal and ethical violations. From the GMD archive, a couple of recommended reads: a former GMDer examines Illuzzi’s record in 2007 at a time when some were talking up a possible independent candidacy for Governor; and a well-connected commenter JFXM writes about Illuzzi’s failings (scroll down to Mahoney’s comment, last in the sequence).

After the jump: An absurd comparison, and a journalist’s benediction.  

I’m quoted in the article because I was the first one to bring up Illuzzi’s past during this election cycle, back when he was considering a run for Attorney General. I thought it completely absurd that someone with such a checkered history as a lawyer should be considered for the top legal position in the state, and wrote multiple diaries on the subject — and on the seeming reluctance of the Vermont media to explore it, or even mention it at all.

In his VTDigger piece, Margolis gives an abbreviated account of Illuzzi’s legal troubles, which is reasonably presented as far as it goes. (An abbreviated version naturally doesn’t wield the heft of a full accounting, and makes it easier for a reader to minimize the importance of his wrongdoing.) But Margolis goes off the rails, IMHO, when he turns to the question of whether Illuzzi’s misdeeds should be part of the debate this year. He posits the notion of a “political statute of limitations,” and basically fires a warning shot across the Democratic bow:

If Democrats – overtly or covertly – do try to bring up Illuzzi’s past, the tactic could backfire as voters decide bygones are bygones.

Then comes the real howler.

People do change. Even politicians. To take just one example – but one that might interest active Democrats – Robert F. Kennedy at 35 was brash, sometimes small-minded, and occasionally vindictive when he managed his brother’s campaign for president in 1960. A few years later, tempered by tragedy and experience, he had not lost all those traits, but they were buffered by increasing tolerance, generosity and openness to new ideas.

Vince Illuzzi, to paraphrase the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s wisecrack of the 1988 campaign, is no Bobby Kennedy. He has faced no comparable tragedy. But he, too, seems to have matured.

Yikes. Nice of Margolis to concede that Illuzzi is no Bobby Kennedy. But why bring up RFK at all? You could make an equally valid comparison to another iconic figure from that era — Richard M. Nixon. In his 30s he was an amoral politician with a paranoid streak, known for Red-baiting his opponents and shedding crocodile tears in his famous Checkers speech. When he ran for president in 1968, we heard over and over again about the New Nixon. But eventually, it turned out to be the same old Tricky Dick — vengeful, amoral, paranoid, self-destructive.

Yes, Mr. Margolis, people do change. But far more often, they don’t. Especially in the absence of life-changing trauma, like the assassination of a brother and an agonizing internal conflict over the Vietnam War.

Also, in addition to Illuzzi’s ethical lapses, there are stories all around the Statehouse of his bouts of anger and vengefulness. This, from Margolis’ 2001 Globe piece:

“People are afraid to cross him because he has this reputation that he’ll stop at nothing to get revenge,” says one former official, and even Senator Elizabeth Ready, a Democxrat who is one of Illuzzi’s closest friends, says, “He doesn’t forget the people who have hurt him.”

Is that the kind of person we want in the influential but vaguely-defined office of Auditor? If he’s truly changed and matured, perhaps. If he hasn’t, like Nixon, then he could raise some holy (but unwarranted) Hell in the Auditor’s chair.

Margolis closes his VTDigger piece with some tender sentiments:

“Everybody grows and matures and learns from their mistakes,” Illuzzi said. He hopes voters think he has matured enough to ignore the less admirable parts of his past. It’s too much for him to hope that nobody mentions them.

Awwww. Let’s all hope that the nasty Democrats don’t hurt Vince’s fee-fees by dredging up the distant past. If, in fact, 14 years qualifies as “distant.”

My position: as I said, Illuzzi’s entanglements with legal ethics are less germane to the Auditor’s office than to the AG’s. But they are at least somewhat germane. A thorough consideration of his candidacy must, of necessity, include a full review of his wrongdoings and the questions about his temperament. If, after that review, the people of Vermont decide he should be their Auditor, then fine. But the past shouldn’t be swept under the rug — even if Vince Illuzzi would wish it so.

Especially if Vince Illuzzi would wish it so.  

Chittenden County State’s Attorney (and candidate for Attorney General) TJ Donovan kinda stepped in it last week. As was first reported by the Vermont Press Bureau (short version available free here, full story paywalled here), Donovan asserted in a VPR interview that “One in seven babies born at Rutland Regional Medical Center are born opiate-addicted.” It wasn’t the first time he’d used that talking point in promoting his anti-drug agenda.

Problem is, his number is completely wrong. Not even close. The actual figure is less than one percent.

So how did Donovan muff it so badly? The Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck does a good job of trying to reconstruct the whole thing — sadly, her article is behind Gannett’s new paywall. If you’re not a subscriber, stop by your local library and give it a read. We’ll give you a non-copyright-infringing preview here.

Seems Donovan heard it in a report last fall by WCAX-TV, which asserted that one in seven mothers giving birth at RRMC are opiate-addicted. Which is different than one in seven babies; Donovan now admits he made that incorrect mental leap on his own.

But WCAX got it wrong, too. At the time of its initial report, a state Health Department official checked the figure and determined that the true figure was less than one percent. Somehow this didn’t percolate through the WCAX newsroom, because it again reported the incorrect one-in-seven-mothers figure in February.

(The WCAX report was based on a remark by an RRMC doctor who was referring to mothers with any addiction issue, in the past or present — and including alcohol. But if most of the mothers are — or were — addicted to plain old alcohol, that doesn’t help promote a War on Drugs, does it?)

After the jump: playing telephone, and playing politics with the truth.

Hallenbeck dubbed the whole thing “a game of telephone.” Which has an added dimension in the age of the Internet, where false reports are passed through the online echo chamber and the original mistakes are archived, little time bombs of misinformation waiting to be discovered.

In this case, discovered by an ambitious politician looking to illustrate the severity of a pet issue. Donovan, to his credit, has acknowledged his error and promised that statistics will be checked more thoroughly from now on.

To his discredit, he fell back on the “Nonetheless…” style of political unreasoning: the one-in-seven figure may be vastly exaggerated, but nonetheless, the issue is just as important. Governor Shumlin did the same thing in April (as the VPB points out) during the Legislature’s debate over giving police warrantless access to the Health Department’s prescription drug database.

The Governor was depicting the legislation as a sorely needed weapon in the battle against a raging epidemic of prescription drug abuse. But then the Associated Press unhelpfully noted that his own Health Department’s statistics showed that prescription drug abuse “is declining or remaining steady.” Shumlin’s response was classic: “It is an epidemic.” Because he says so.

Donovan gets better marks than Shumlin, who ignored the facts when they were presented to him. But both make the same fundamental, self-serving mistake: insisting that, whatever the facts are, their issue is crucial and must be addressed swiftly and forcefully.

To be sure, drug addiction (and specifically its effect on pregnant moms and newborns) is an issue that needs attention. But, as Hunt Blair, deputy commissioner of the division of health reform, put it: 



Clearly even a single baby born in this unfortunate circumstance is one too many, but this kind of exaggeration does not help the cause of public information or public health.

It can, however, add a little juice to a favorite campaign theme.

I also have to wonder if Donovan’s agenda was shaped by his mistaken belief. One would think so; if 14% of Rutland’s newborns were drug addicts, drastic measures would be justified. If the real figure is less than 1%, then there’s a lot less urgency to the issue. Donovan, in admitting his mistake, said “It’s been corrected. We’re moving on.”

“Moving on” with a platform based on a vastly overinflated statistic? Is your approach to the issue really the same, whether the actual figure is 1% or 14%? Hard to believe.

One more purely political note: Rutland’s real-life statistic is actually lower than the state’s as a whole. Do you think Donovan cost himself a few votes down Rutland way, with his baseless characterization of the city as a breeding ground for crack babies?  

With gratitude to Camper Van Beethoven:

Where, where the hell is Bill?

Where, where the hell is Bill?

I thought it was time to check in on Vermont’s self-designated Prophet of Prosperity, Bruce Lisman. He of the “nonpartisan” Campaign for Vermont, the advocacy group that’s spent at least a quarter-million of Bruce’s Bear Stearns Bucks slamming the Democratic agenda and promoting conservative talking points. When last we checked in on Bruce, he was littering the airwaves with advertising and spreading his gospel through opinion pieces in various media outlets.

(What he wasn’t doing much of, at all, was engaging in dialogue — the supposed raison d’être of CFV. As Doug Hoffer recently pointed out on this site, virtually all of Lisman’s communication is one-way and pre-produced. He may be promoting dialogue, but he’s been conducting a months-long, self-funded monologue.)

Anyway, I visited the CFV website, and was rather surprised to see that Bruce hasn’t been doing much of anything lately. The CFV site is almost as sleepy as Vermont Tiger, in fact.

After the jump: The absence of Bruce, and possible explanations.

There is one new listing under “LATEST NEWS.” It’s for a June 26 talk by Lisman at the Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce. (CFV doesn’t offer any audio, and I would looove to hear a recording of that speech. Lisman’s speeches reveal much more of his true agenda than his sanitized radio ads. Anyone out there sneak into the BCoC with a recorder?)

Otherwise, meh. There’s only one other June listing in “LATEST NEWS,” and it’s just a note that one of CFV’s partners, Richard Pembroke, Sr., had published an opinion piece in the Manchester Journal and on, ahem, True North Reports, that nonpartisan beacon of truth.

Before that, the “latest news” is from May 11, for goodness’ sake. And that’s just a note about an opinion piece by another CFV partner. Sad.

Click on “RESOURCES,” and you see nothing much. Pembroke’s opinion piece is the only entry more recent than May 10. Under “Press Releases,” the most recent is May 1 — CFV’s lament over the legislature’s failure to act on Lisman’s agenda. No “news” at all in two months of campaign season?

The CFV website doesn’t list any radio ads newer than April. And I have to say, it’s been a while since I heard one of its ads on WDEV. (From Thanksgiving through most of this spring, CFV was buying a dozen ads per day on WDEV, and spending just as heavily elsewhere.)

And under “Interviews,” nothing since Lisman’s epic March 14 appearance on VPR. Yup, really engaging in that dialogue he treasures so much.

So we must ask the musical question: with the exception of his popup in Brattleboro, Where the Hell is Bruce? After several months of ubiquity, why has CFV gotten so sleepy? I can think of a few possible explanations:

Short Attention Span Bruce. CFV was a shiny new toy, but after a while he got bored with the whole tedious “trying to influence the political process” thing. Maybe he bought Bob Stiller’s yacht.

Thin-skinned Bruce. He’s taken a fair bit of heat, much of it from Your Friendly Neighborhood GMD. Probably a tough thing for a longtime Wall Street baron: he returns to the land of his humble upbringing to bestow his wisdom to the unwashed, only to become the target of our spitwads and paper planes. Where’s the gratitude? The bowing before the throne, the kissing of the ring?

Please-Go-Away Bruce. Perhaps the returns on his winter/spring barrage were disappointingly small. How many people actually joined CFV, or responded to his tsunami of advertising? CFV might have made the same discovery as Americans Elect: that a bottomless wallet doesn’t help you sell a pig-in-a-poke.

Bruce 2.0. Having established CFV through a high-profile media campaign, maybe Bruce has switched to a quieter grass-roots effort to organize a true political movement.

….Naaaaah.

Snake in the Grass Bruce. He might have decided that spending over $200,000 before April 1 was a waste of money, since hardly anybody was paying attention to politics back then. (We were, of course, but we’re sick little puppies with no social life.) It could be that he decided to pull back for a while, and launch a second offensive this fall.

My money’s on Snake, but it’s too soon to tell. We’ll get some evidence on July 25, when lobbying groups have to turn in their spending reports. After that, if Bruce and CFV start popping up around Labor Day, then we’ll know he’s been saving his ammunition. If not, then perhaps Bruce will soon be nothing but a fond memory of yet another rich man trying (and failing) to co-opt Vemront’s political process.  

TJ Donovan has bagged another union endorsement in his bid for Attorney General, and it’s a big one: The Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA), which has more than 6,000 members.  And the endorsement came with a slap at incumbent Democrat Bill Sorrell:

After the jump: Hey, Bill’s got some supporters too!

AG Sorrell has announced some endorsements of his own this week — basically continuing his parade of retirees. Per vtBuzz, the latest Sorrell backers include…

…former Burlington Police Chief/state Public Safety Commissioner Tom Tremblay, along with a string of other Vermont law enforcement types. Also on the list were A. James Walton, one of Tremblay’s predecessors as public safety commissioner, retired state police Col. John Sinclair and  Majors James Dimmick and Nick Ruggerio, former University of Vermont Police Chief  Gary Margolis and former Burlington deputy chiefs Steve Wark and John Sonnick.

Does it just seem like virtually all of Sorrell’s high-profile backers are people who used to be something? Of course, the senior vote is nothing to sneeze at in a Democratic primary. And hey, I’m AARP-eligible myself. But the list does have a distinct air of ex-ness about it.  

It’s an oft-repeated rule of life in the age of e-mail, text and Twitter: Don’t press SEND unless you’re really, really sure. Don’t post something online or in an e-mail that you wouldn’t mind seeing on a billboard.

Well, Paul Burns blew it bigtime. The Executive Director of VPIRG sent an overheated e-mail to the VPIRG board shortly after learning that his employee, Cassandra Gekas, was running for Lieutenant Governor. And yup, the e-mail was leaked to the media — Seven Days and the Vermont Press Bureau, at least.

In it, he blasts Governor Shumlin for enticing Gekas into her candidacy, and depicts Gekas as a dupe for taking Shumlin’s bait.

Oops.  

In his e-mail, he says this about Shumlin:

I believe that Cass was talked into this by the governor and others.  He should be ashamed of himself. …He deserves to hear from others who don’t appreciate this self-serving political move.

And on Gekas’ decision he says “I know it sounds absurd but it’s true… I hope [Gov. Shumlin] has a nice job waiting for her after she loses a race for which she is completely unprepared, but it’s no excuse.”

Hmm. If I were Gekas, I’d be a tad insulted. And if I were another VPIRG employee, I’d wonder what Paul Burns really thinks of me.

Elsewhere in the e-mail he characterizes Gekas’ departure as “doing great damage to VPIRG” and says “I let her know how important her leadership was in the office.” There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance: is Gekas vital to VPIRG’s work, or is she a chump? She can’t be both, can she?

So far, Burns has refused to comment on the e-mail. I’ll bet. The fact that he sent it, even in the heat of the moment, doesn’t reflect well on his leadership qualities. A manager has to manage him- or herself as well as the staff, and he failed.

Indeed, he may be the one “doing great damage to VPIRG,” having made some harsh accusations against the Governor. It also may indicate some internal problems at VPIRG; somebody leaked that e-mail, knowing what damage it would do to Burns. As Seven Days’ Paul Heintz noted, the VPIRG Board “includes a number of prominent Shumlin supporters and donors.”

Do you think those “prominent Shumlin supporters” were happy to receive that e-mail from Burns? Do you think that one of them might be the source of the leak?

As I wrote previously, Gekas is not without fault, and Burns has reason to feel aggrieved. She gave him almost no notice of her candidacy, and that was wrong. But Burns made a royal mess of things. Here, free of charge, is a little management advice for the next time a valued employee/chump decides to run for Lieutenant Governor:

Remain calm. Discuss a mutually agreeable departure. Notify the staff and Board in a non-inflammatory way. Release a public statement lamenting her departure from VPIRG and praising her public service. If you have to vent your real feelings, do it verbally with someone you trust. Otherwise, keep your trap shut and DON’T PRESS SEND. Go home and have a stiff drink.