So the Vermont Republicans held their annual convention on Saturday in the Montpelier High School Auditorium. I guess the gathering was largely unencumbered by the presence of the media; as far as I can tell, only the Vermont Press Bureau published a story about the event on Sunday. Maybe the Freeps is saving it for Monday, I don’t know.

For those blocked by the Mitchell Family Paywall, here are some highlights from the day.

Less than 24 hours after his stunning decision not to seek re-election as Auditor, Tom Salmon was actually brave enough to make an appearance in front of the people he’d just screwed over.

(According to Vermont Digger, Salmon insisted on May 11 that he would run for re-election. He then withdrew on May 18, only three and a half weeks before the filing deadline. If it wasn’t for the fact that two Senators* (so far) are chomping at the bit to run, the Republicans would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Or a Salmon. And they would have been fully justified in booing the Fish-Man off the stage.)

*Kevin Mullin and Vince Illuzzi. Actually, Illuzzi says he is looking at both Auditor and Attorney General, as well as running for the Senate again. Gee, dithering about which office to run for; sounds like Vince is following in Salmon’s footsteps.  

And, if the VPB account can be believed, Salmon got off the line of the day:

“I grew up with two Democratic parents. And those Democratic parents taught me to tell the truth and to hold myself accountable,” the Republican auditor said in a speech. “And, as a result, I became a Republican.”

Bahahahaha. THe crowd ate it up, ignoring the disingenuousness of the remark. Do we need to recount the sordid history of Salmon’s pique-inspired party switch, nine months into his second term as Auditor? He didn’t exactly “tell the truth” to the voters in 2008, did he? DId he “hold [him]self accountable” when he dabbled with running for every other office in the state, or when he wasted his time sending out questionnaires to “uncover” embezzlements that had already been fully investigated and reported? Or when he abandoned his party with no advance notice? Just a written press release on a Friday afternoon — Bad News Dump Day.

Well, let’s leave it there, and move on to the rest of the convention.  

Randy Brock trotted out a new stump speech, in which he promised to “pull Vermont back from the edge of the abyss where Peter Shumlin and his cohorts have taken it.”

Gee, Randy, is that the “abyss” with stable taxes, a balanced budget, and a massive head-start on Irene reconstruction? Not to mention Vermont’s shiny new 4.6% unemployment rate? That’s the nicest damn abyss I’ve ever seen. Clearly, Brock is playing from the boilerplate Republican playbook: accuse the Democrats of perfidy, recklessness, and radicalism. Yes, Brock actually called Shumlin “the most liberal governor in our history.” Predictable.

Pursuing the same line of rhetorical excess, Brock dubbed Shumlin’s health care plan “Titanic Care”: “It’s huge, it’s new, it’s untested, it’s got an overconfident captain who ignores predictable

dangers just below the surface, and it’s going to sink.”

How timely, a Titanic reference on the 100th anniversary. I wonder which of his expensive consultants wrote that for him. Is he going to have an intern dress up in a Titanic costume, or maybe wear a captain’s uniform and a Shumlin mask? Is the poor $21 million bear headed for the unemployment line? When the VTGOP announces its full statewide ticket, will they wear Avengers costumes? Randy will be Captain America and I guess Phil Scott would be Thor. If Illuzzi is on the ticket, I’d pick him for The Hulk: the mild-mannered little guy who occasionally morphs into a bad-tempered behemoth. But who gets to tell Wendy Wilton that she has to put on the Black Widow getup?

Beyond the partisan bombast, there were strong indications that all is not well with the VTGOP. With less than four weeks until the filing deadline, there are still some apparent vacancies on the ticket. And its only candidates for Congress and Senate are little-known no-hopers.

Party chair Jack Lindley has made optimistic noises about retaking the State House and Senate. But House Minority Leader Don Turner is far less sanguine:

“I’m focused hard on keeping the numbers we’ve got, so really anything over 48 is a win,” Turner said. “But if we could get to 60, I’d be extremely happy.”

This year, the Republicans have 47 seats out of 150. Turner’s goal is to hold his ground, and his best-case scenario is 60? Sad. And dispiriting for Randy Brock as well:

“If I’m elected governor and the Legislature stays as unbalanced as it is, my options are going to be severely limited,” he said

.

Brilliant.

All in all, a lot of predictable Republican rhetoric from the stage and a lot of low expectations in the crowd. Hardly the display of dynamism and unity that could fuel a Republican resurgence this fall.

One more thing: apparently the Ron Paul folks were on hand in force. Paul, you may recall, took 25% of the vote in the presidential primary, second to Mitt Rommey’s 39 percent. And one of the Paul People, tea partier and all-around libertygibbet Jessica Bernier, was nominated to be Vermont’s national committee chairwoman. I’m sure she’ll do Vermont proud at the national convention.

As we all know, there is no global warming (cough). And if there is, it’s not caused by human activity (snort). And even if it is, we can’t do anything to stop it that might hurt our economy. (Cough, choke, hack. Sorry, something caught in my throat.)

So here comes a very disturbing article from the Reuters news service about the disastrous maple crop of 2012, that seems to portend a very severe crunch on domestic producers. I haven’t seen any similar reports in the Vermont media; don’t know if they’re asleep at the switch or what.

Whammy no.1: this year’s domestic crop will be much smaller than last year’s. We knew that, but here we have new numbers.  

U.S. production will likely total 18 million pounds this year, down from 30 million pounds in 2011, according to a new crop estimate report from Arnold Coombs of Bascom Maple Farms in Alstead, New Hampshire, one of the four largest maple processors in the United States.

Whammy no.2: much of the crop is poor quality and unsalable in its pure form.

“You take 80 degrees (27 degrees Celsius) in March by golly it don’t help nothing,” said Alfred Carrier, a sugarmaker in Glover, Vermont. “We had quite a lot of off-flavored syrup. I don’t think you’d want to put it on a pancake.”

Finally — and this is the real topper — whammy no.3: the scarce crop isn’t leading to higher prices for syrup.

Despite the shortfall, retail prices have risen just 5 percent this year as the Federation of Quebec Maple Producers has retained a 38-million-pound reserve from a bumper crop in 2011, says Coombs. Quebec produces about 80 percent of the world’s maple syrup.

Take those three together, and it looks like a disastrous year for domestic producers.

Yeah, fighting global warming has associated costs. But failing to fight global warming has some real costs as well.

After the jump: the limits of denialism.

On a related note, one of the leading promulgators of climate-change denial, the Heartland Institute, has made an interesting move. It has spun off its insurance research program into a separate entity.

Why?

Because the insurance industry is aware of the tremendous potential economic impact of climate change, and Heartland’s insurance researchers are abandoning denialism. Therefore, they can no longer be directly affiliated with Heartland, which is continuing to push its hard line.

(Heartland, ICYMI, is the organization that briefly put up some obnoxious billboards in the Chicago area, comparing climate change believers to mass murderers like Ted Kaczynski and Charles Manson. Real fun-loving folks, them Heartlanders.)  

Remarkable piece of video shown last night on “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell,” required viewing for any liberal, Dem or Prog. It’s a six-minute talk by Nick Hanauer, a wealthy venture capitalist who was one of the original investors in Amazon.com.

And in six minutes, he absolutely destroys the “cut taxes on wealthy job creators” dogma of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Bruce Lisman, and all their Galtian buddies. A few quotes to whet your appetite:

Rich people don’t create jobs. Jobs are a consequence of a circle-of-life feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring.

In this sense, an ordinary consumer is more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

Hiring more people is a course of last resort for capitalists. It’s what we do if — and ONLY if — rising consumer demand requires it.

In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are middle-class consumers. Taxing the rich to make investments that make the middle class grow and thrive is the single shrewdest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor, and the rich.

This is a green-eyeshade version of Progressivism — tax the rich and boost the working and middle classes, not as a way to achieve some socialistic model of equity, but as the BEST way to create a prosperous capitalist economy.

I find it compelling and brilliant, and I urge everyone to watch it.  

Governor Shumlin has issued his first and only veto of 2012, and it’s deeply troubling in a couple of ways. The vetoed bill would have required the Agency of Human Services to issue monthly reports to the Legislature on elder abuse in Vermont — a program that’s been understaffed for years, resulting in a hefty backlog of cases.

Shumlin’s veto came with some blistering words, viz. VTDigger:

The governor lanced into lawmakers for proposing a bill that “does nothing to advance the goal of protecting those vulnerable Vermonters, and adds yet another layer of bureaucracy to state government, and wastes taxpayer dollars.”

Small problem. Backers of the bill say they took pains to ensure that the legislation was acceptable to the administration.  

Rep. Sandy Haas, D-Rochester*, said she was flabbergasted by the veto.

“We worked with them and we came to an accord, and they said, ‘Fine, we can do it,'” Haas said. “That’s the place where we’re scratching our heads.”

[Sen. Claire] Ayer took umbrage at the governor’s message to lawmakers. “It was an insulting, condescending veto,” Ayer said. “I think he must have the wrong information because it’s a good bill.”

*Correction: Rep. Haas was identified by VTDigger as a Democrat; she is, in fact, a Progressive.

So when the bill passed, the Administration was fine with it. Now that the Legislature has left town, the bill is excessively bureaucratic and a waste of taxpayer money. Fascinating.

After the jump: a rare Doug Racine sighting, and another small problem.

Lawmakers sought the reporting requirements because the Adult Protective Services division has been fraught with problems. And the Shumlin Administration doesn’t seem to have made much progress on a backlog of “several hundred reports” of elder abuse that stacked up during the salad days of Jim Douglas. The lack of progress led Vermont Legal Aid and Disability Rights Vermont to file a lawsuit against the state in December.

Human Services Secretary Doug Racine briefly emerged from an undisclosed location to slam the lawsuit as a “distraction,” and as for the vetoed bill:  

“We were clear the legislation wasn’t needed and could get in the way of getting the work done,” Racine said. …The monthly reporting mandate, he said, would take away resources from the staff of 10-12 investigators in Adult Protective Services.

(A reminder to Mr. Racine: When you leave the Administration, don’t forget to retrieve your soul from escrow.)  

Well, that sounds reasonable. We don’t want to turn our overworked investigators into paper-pushers, do we?

Small problem: According to Ayer and Haas, the whole bureaucracy/paperwork complaint is completely unfounded.

[Ayer said] the information queries are built into the “off the shelf” software program the department recently purchased, and so lawmakers felt the requirements were wouldn’t be a burden for staff to produce.

“We understood it was just a matter of pushing the button,” Haas said. “It takes longer to print than to do the work to ask for it.”

It appears that Shumlin’s rationale has no connection to reality. So why do this? Why veto a bill that had been worked out to everybody’s satisfaction, therefore incurring a significant dose of anger and mistrust in the legislature?

I can only think of one explanation: that the reports would be so full of bad news, made public on a monthly basis, that it would be an ongoing PR nightmare and could hurt the state’s defense in the lawsuit.  

That’s a pretty damned noxious explanation, but if you can suggest a better one, I’m all ears.  

Note: Brief update added below, 5/17, 12 noon.

On April 5, Governor Shumlin held a big splashy news conference to announce that the state had sold 25,000 “Vermont Strong” license plates — halfway toward its goal of 50,000. It was an authentic feel-good moment for the Administration and for Irene recovery efforts, which are the major beneficiaries of plate sales.

Little problem: 25,000 was the number produced, not the number sold. The Vermont Press Bureau* took the bold step of asking the DMV for sales figures, and the number turned out to be less than 8,000.

I take three things away from this. The most prominent and least important: major, major PR screwup for the Governor. When you’re making such a highly-touted announcement, you’d better have your facts straight. This is the kind of process/detail stuff that Shumlin is usually good at. Not this time.

The second lesson, second most important: the Governor went out on a limb with this program, as VPB reported (article behind the Herald/T-A paywall)…

Lawmakers didn’t learn of the plan until the governor unveiled it in his [State of the State] address, and many felt he’d undercut the legislative process by doing so.

At the time, this was poor form and created a bit of executive/legislative tension for no good reason. Now that the program is falling far short of expectations, Shumlin doesn’t just look impolitic — he also looks wrong on the merits of “Vermont Strong” itself. That erodes his credibility.

After the jump: A big opportunity squandered.

The third lesson, and most important, is that “Vermont Strong” looks like a major bust for Irene recovery. Of the $25 price of each plate, $18 goes to the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and $2 to the state food bank. Those causes have received a little less than $200,000 so far, which is obviously far short of the $1 million goal. What’s worse is that the state has already spent $136,000 to manufacture 28,000 plates. So the net revenue from the project is a little more than $60,000. (Note: The relief agencies have received their full share of the proceeds so far. The DMV is more than $100,000 in the hole, having paid the full production costs for 28,000 plates.)

Shumlin announced “Vermont Strong” four months ago, so the program has presumably lost momentum. Sales are only about 16% of the projected goal. It’s hard to imagine the kind of dramatic, sustained surge it would take to get anywhere near the goal. And, as Prog/Dem Senator Tim Ashe told the VPB…

“Financially, the plates may have prevented us from really considering more substantial opportunities to help our neighbors,” Ashe said. “For example, if every person this year on their has bill was asked to pay $1 to go into the fund… we would have raised a lot more money than this license plate program.”

And that, rather than last month’s PR screwup, is the real shame of this story.

Update: At least one person realized Shumlin’s mistake immediately, at the April 5 newser: DMC Commissioner Robert Ide, according to the Burlington Free Press:

I’m rather astounded by that. Ide goes on to explain that “we were selling them fast,” so I guess he thought reality would catch up with the announcement. Which, turns out, was a gross miscalculation on his part. I wonder if anyone else noticed the discrepancy and didn’t say anything about it.

The first few months of the 2012 legislative session were largely devoid of disputation and controversy, as the Legislature disposed of some pretty serious issues — Irene cleanup, the budget, the Vermont State Hospital and state office complex replacements, the next step on health care reform.

But in the last few weeks, things went sideways. And the lion’s share of the dysfunction was in the State Senate. Which raises the question: What kind of job did John Campbell do as Senate President Pro Tem? And should he be given another chance in 2013?

Some facts are inarguable: the House maintained a good pace and moved through a lot of legislation more or less on time, while the Senate played a frantic game of catch-up in the closing days of the Legislature. Most of the visible conflict came on the Senate side. And, where there were differences between the two bodies, the House won out on almost every issue.

In a look-back on the past session, VTDigger’s Anne Galloway concluded that Speaker Shap Smith had emerged as the dominant force; she quotes one lobbyist who said that Smith is “in charge of the building.” On the other hand…

Lobbyists and lawmakers say Campbell, who is well-liked, had difficulty controlling the Senate calendar. Instead of marching through the day’s orders, no one knew what legislation he was actually going to take up on a given day. They say he came across as too eager to please, disorganized and willing to change his position on a whim.

That’s pretty damning stuff, evidence that Campbell was failing at basic tasks of leadership.

After the jump: amendments, subamendments, and a horse’s ass.

Galloway then noted, in Campbell’s defense, that the Senate is full of strong personalities, “many of whom are newbies,” particularly Peter Galbraith, who “showed an unrivaled penchant for grandstanding.” But Galbraith aside (this guy used to be a diplomat??), I saw a lot more disruption from the old guard, particularly Dick Sears and Campbell himself. Methinks the Senate vets are used to doing things their own way, whether it makes sense (or even follows the rules) or not.

And besides, it’s Campbell’s job to ride herd on strong personalities. If he can’t do it, maybe someone else should try. And there’s no excuse for a lack of control over the calendar. More Galloway:

Important bills got stuck in committee and then appeared as amendments to other bills that were eventually ruled germane, or not, depending. …This led to long days of debate on the Senate floor because senators were concerned that bills hadn’t been fully vetted for prime time. Hallmarks of the debate included constant points of order, amendments to amendments and subamendments, and recesses at the sign of any conflict (sometimes as many as seven in a single session).

One of those recesses featured a compelling example of Leadership In Action. This is from the Vermont Press Bureau, published May 3, story hidden behind the Herald/Times Argus paywall. (I subscribe. You’re welcome.)

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell and Sen. Dick McCormack butted heads on labor legislation that would allow childcare workers to form a union and collectively bargain with the state.

Campbell, a fierce opponent of the bill, has repeatedly passed over labor-related bills on the Senate floor that McCormack could have attached his childcare union amendment to.

McCormack rose on the Senate floor and asked whether Campbell intended to “run out the clock” on the labor bills to block the childcare union legislation.

Campbell took offense at the suggestion, and Sen. Dick Mazza asked for a recess.

After Campbell and McCormack left their seats and came together on the Senate floor, Campbell told McCormack: “You’re such a horse’s ass.”

McCormack fired back: “Don’t call me a horse’s ass.”

Wonder if there were any school groups in the gallery that day. I’m tempted to give Campbell a new nickname: Senate President Pro Tem John “Horse’s Ass” Campbell. But I’m a forgiving type (snort), and I’m sure Campbell was driven to extremes by McCormack’s brazen insistence on pushing a piece of legislation that Campbell was unilaterally blocking in a fit of pique over union lobbying tactics.  

The disarray in the Senate was bad enough that some are talking of a possible challenge to Campbell. Anne Galloway:

Campbell last week declared in no uncertain terms he will be running for the Senate and the Pro Tem position again, but a number of Statehouse mavens interviewed for this story said his leadership of the Senate could be challenged come next January.

…The other names bandied about for the top job? Claire Ayer, Ann Cummings, Tim Ashe. Cummings, in an interview, said she was interested in the top job before and would be again. The others demurred.

Usually, Vermont tends to be a “go-along, get along” kind of place that will put up with shortcomings in its incumbent officeholders (cough*BillSorrell*cough). For there to be this kind of open talk about Campbell, you know this is serious.

The name “Tim Ashe” is an interesting one. Some Statehouse observers saw numerous examples of the Prog/Dem cozying up to the Old Lions of the Senate, which seemed rather uncharacteristic at the time. If he’s pondering a move against Campbell, the cozying suddenly makes more sense.

(And if he does grab the gavel, won’t Seven Days just be littered with disclaimers?)

So… should Campbell stay or should he go? And who should take his place?  

Retired Wall Street kingpin Bruce Lisman has made a big splash in state politics with a blizzard of advertising from his self-funded right-wing advocacy group, Campaign for Vermont. (Well, it’s supposedly nonpartisan, but its issues are clearly conservative.) Of necessity, those brief ads are short on specifics and long on buzzwords and right-wing dog whistles.

It’s unclear where Lisman wants to go with this; he might be a future self-funded candidate a la Rich Tarrant, or perhaps a conservative sugar daddy a la the Koch Brothers. But the question is, what does Bruce Lisman really stand for? And if he did actually wield political power, what would he do?

The answers can be found in a May 2010 speech entitled “Finding Skin: How Vermont Can Become Its Own Version of an Economic Powerhouse Without Abandoning Its Values.” “Skin” is an allusion to “skin in the game,” a Warren Buffett coinage referring to organizational insiders who use their own money to buy stock in their enterprise. But the advertisement for the event included a mugshot-style photo of Lisman that made him look like he meant “finding skin” in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way.

The talk can be viewed online thanks to Channel 17/Town Meeting Television. I’ve watched the whole thing, which is not exactly fun; as a public speaker, Lisman is halting and colorless. But the talk reveals his outlook in detail, and the details are by turns striking, disturbing, and appalling. A full rundown follows, but suffice it to say that Bruce Lisman’s worldview is a pure Wall Street product (unsurprising in a person who spent two-thirds of his life there).

Lisman is a capitalist in the literal sense: he believes that capital is the most important thing for a society’s health. He believes that economic growth is the solution to all our problems, and that fostering growth is government’s primary job. He repeatedly emphasizes “transparency” and “accountability,” but he’s short on specifics. He seems to believe that government should run like a business — an article of faith among tycoons-turned-politicians, which has failed to work in real life whenever it’s been tried. (viz. Craig Benson’s brief, unhappy reign as Governor of New Hampshire.)  

Details after the jump, including Sh*t Bruce Says and The Lisman Agenda.  

The highlights: Sh*t Bruce Lisman Says

Here are some of the most outrageous things he said in his 2010 talk. First, as I previously reported, he described the 2008 economic collapse — which his own employer, Bear Stearns, had a big role in creating with its risky investment practices — as “this thing that happened,” a “Darwinian asteroid,” a catastrophe arriving from elsewhere, for which no human or institution could possibly be blamed. Which indicates either a tragically limited understanding blinkered by years of immersion in the culture of Wall Street, or a near-sociopathic level of disingenuousness. But let’s move on.

On the role of government, Lisman says:

“We need to declare that economic growth and prosperity is of first-magnitude importance to the welfare of our state, and is the ONLY answer for what might ail it.” … “The Governor needs to lead the economic development effort personally. The Governor has to make it the most important thing on his or her schedule every day.”

Wow, really? The Governor shouldn’t worry about recovery from Tropical Storm Irene, or health care reform, or social services, or corrections, or legislative relations, until after he caters to the needs of businesses and investors? Yeah, that’s not radical at all. Now, on to taxation:

“Any opportunity to lower taxes should go to capital gains and corporate taxes, not to individuals. The most precious thing in the galaxy is capital at risk. In exchange for risking their capital, they ought to be rewarded for that. If we care about economic prosperity and growing companies that create it, then we should reward them.” 

Gee, I thought the reward for risking capital was PROFIT, not a tax break. And I thought investors and corporations should bear responsibility for supporting the society that fosters their success. The rich are already richer than ever, and corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash. But if they get a tax break, then somehow capital will flow freely?

I’m no Wall Street genius, but I know that people invest because of opportunity. Our system is based on supply and demand — that’s Economics 101. If you don’t have demand, it doesn’t matter how strongly you goose the supply side. It won’t work. Now, on to taxes for the 99%:

“The taxpaying base is quite thin. Because of the progressive nature of it, there’s a cutoff that excludes more than 50% of potential taxpayers from paying taxes. My view: I think everyone is either in the enterprise or they’re not. You’d want everyone to pay something in.”

The Lisman prescription: tax cuts for the 1% and tax hikes for the poor and working class. Also, that “more than 50%” is an exaggeration of a common right-wing lie. It’s usually put at 47% who “pay no taxes” In reality they pay no income taxes, but they pay a variety of other taxes: payroll (including Social Security and Medicare), property, and sales taxes, if nothing else. And the reason many poor people don’t pay income tax is because of the Earned Income Tax Credit — which is meant to encourage the poor to work, even at low-paying jobs, because they get to keep the paltry wages they make.

As for social programs and supporting those in need, Lisman issues a superficial endorsement: he says we have an obligation to uphold the “social contract.” But he goes on to blow the dog-whistle of conservative complaint about the cost of the “social contract”:

“We need to define our social contract better. What does the social contract cost?” …  “If you were to take all our programs in the social contract and compare them to the national average, you’d get a glimpse of how much it’d cost to do the things we say we want to do. If we did that, we could decide how much we want to spend.”

Really? Comparing to the national average is your silver bullet, your big idea? No matter whether the comparison is relevant or meaningful? Would it be relevant to compare Northfield Savings Bank to Wells Fargo, and to run NSB in the same way? Of course not. Lisman also implies that the social contract ought to be a private matter instead of a government operation:

“Kindness and caring are in our gene pool. It’s embodied in something called the Social Contract — our obligation to help those who require kindness and caring.” …”If we can connect those defining traits with two others that make us true Vermonters, practicality and frugalness, we can renew that other great trait of Vermonters: balance.”

Implying that our current social safety net is “out of balance,” i.e. too generous. Lisman follows his call for “practicality and frugalness” with a childhood anecdote about his father distributing food to families in need. He doesn’t overtly argue that we should dismantle government aid programs and return to the salad days when we all cared for our neighbors, but the implication is there. (And private aid was never up to the task. The good old days, as Otto Bettmann said, were horrible. Private charity never came close to meeting the need, and a lot of people suffered and died for lack of help.)

I also like that casual reference to “us true Vermonters,” coming from a guy who’s spent only three of the last 40-odd years in Vermont, and has clearly assimilated the Wall Street worldview.

And now, let’s take a look at Bruce Lisman’s prescription for fixing what ails Vermont.

The Lisman Agenda

In his talk, Lisman ticked off a list of things that should be done to turn Vermont into that “economic powerhouse.” Here are some of them, with my comments.

“Declare that economic growth and prosperity is of first-magnitude importance to the welfare of our state, and is the ONLY answer for what might ail it.”

Really? Growth is the only answer? Who’s asking the questions here, bucko? Economic growth is the solution for environmental degradation, climate change, urban decay, racism, sexism, crumbling infrastructure? Hell, I’d argue that even when you’re talking growth and progress, the free market isn’t always the best driver. Example: the Erie Canal. It made a huge difference in the course of America’s history by providing the first opening to the West. Until the canal opened, America was a narrow strip between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains. Without the Erie Canal, westward settlement would have been delayed for who knows how long. European powers would have had the first opportunity to stake claims to the continent, and North America’s political map could well have been permanently divided.

The Erie Canal was completely funded, organized, and built by the State of New York. The Bear Stearnses of the day refused to touch it.

“We should pursue [economic growth] with the same sense of purpose that we have pursued a more perfect safety net.”

Gee, I didn’t know we had a perfect social safety net. I thought our progress had been slow, halting, uneven, and fraught with political divisions. If we pursue economic growth in the same way, then our economy’s going down the crapper.

“Declare that our government is a government for all the people, and we can prove it by pursuing remarkable transparency.”… “How can a state that is so small and so intimate keep us in the dark about so many things? Like our taxes and where our taxes go. It’s a complete mystery to us.”

Is that really about a lack of transparency, or a lack of desire on the part of citizens to find that stuff out? People are busy, distracted, and (if voter turnout is any indication) disinterested in government. They are certainly uninterested in the details of policy and budgeting. If state government were transparent, how many would avail themselves of the information?

I agree that Vermont needs more transparency. But I doubt that it’s the answer to all our problems, as Lisman seems to believe.

“Pursue performance-shaped budgeting. If you run a business and you invest $100, you want to know if it worked. Performance-shaped budgeting would tell us where our money is being spent and would tell us if our money is being well spent.” … “Every agency and spending program should have goals and ways to measure success in some defined period of time.”

A popular shibboleth of the “run government like a business” crowd. The problem is, government is fundamentally NOT a business. The vast majority of government programs don’t have well-defined beginnings and endings. They are ongoing in nature. You could analyze specific new initiatives, but not most of government. How do you determine success of social services or corrections or transportation or homeland security?

There then followed the previously mentioned call for redefining the social contract, with an apparent eye toward making it cheaper and less comprehensive.

“Finally, we need to embrace economic growth and prosperity but we shouldn’t try to predict the future. We shouldn’t choose companies or industries.” … “Rather, we should build a platform that provides equal opportunity for all kinds of companies and industries to do business here.”

Apparently Lisman would have opposed the auto industry bailout; better to let Darwinian forces determine whether we have an auto industry or not. I assume Lisman would also oppose local property tax breaks for individual developers, government subsidies to specific industries (nuclear power, take a bow!), agricultural price supports (there goes the Vermont dairy industry), or any of the other billion or so ways in which the public sector tries to influence the course of economic growth. And for the sake of consistency, I sure hope Lisman opposed the government bailout of Wall Street in 2008. Let that Darwinian asteroid hit full force!

The fundamental problem is that Lisman ignores the messy complexity of real life, and frames everything in terms of finance and economics. “The most precious thing in the galaxy is capital at risk.” Really? How about love, beauty, spirituality, creativity? How about serving humanity or the planet? Entrepreneurship and ambition? How about our precious freedom? “Give me capital at risk, or give me death!” Now that’s an inspiring slogan. Not everything in life can be boiled down to dollars and cents. In fact, most of the good stuff cannot be.

In sum, Bruce Lisman is a dangerous man, shrouding himself in moderate, common-sensical costume while seeking to promote a truly radical agenda that puts business in the center of everything, and government in the thrall of business.  

Postscript. I’m putting a lot of weight on a two-year old speech. And you might say, well, this is an old speech and may not reflect Lisman’s priorities today, My response:

— It’s the only thing we have to go by. Lisman doesn’t speak in public at length very often. His views as reflected in CFV propaganda are sketchy and often deliberately misleading.

— The principles in his speech line up very closely with the stated priorities of CFV. The speech goes beyond what CFV has publicly advocated, but there is little or no disagreement between the two.

— He’s very big on accountability. Well, he says some remarkable, and at times appalling, things in the speech. He should be held accountable for them.

A word on the title: “The business of government is business” is a quote from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” It is often falsely attributed to Calvin Coolidge — sometimes rendered as “The business of America is business” — and has helped define him as a heartless arch-conservative. His actual quote, however, is “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” Which is quite a different thing. And when you see the actual quote, you have to conclude that, on financial matters, Bruce Lisman is to the right of Calvin Coolidge.

The power of the human mind, when faced with facts or realities at odds with long-held beliefs, to find ways to deny said facts or realities, is a wonder to behold.

Case in point: Bruce Lisman.

Lisman is the native Vermonter who spent decades in the executive suites of Wall Street before retiring to his home state in 2009. Last fall, he created Campaign for Vermont, the self-described nonpartisan, common-sense organization that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on clearly conservative issue-advocacy ads.  

In May of 2010 Lisman gave a talk in Burlington, which bore the verbose and mildly creepy title “Finding Skin: How Vermont Can Become Its Own Version of an Economic Powerhouse Without Abandoning Its Values.”

This talk can be seen online thanks to the good folks at Burlington’s Channel 17/Town Meeting Television. I’ve watched the whole thing, and I’ll have a full report in the near future. (Suffice it to say, Lisman reveals himself as (1) a lousy public speaker and (2) a hard-core free-marketeer whose policy prescriptions wouldn’t be out of line in a speech by Paul Ryan.)

For now, I wanted to pass along one little nugget from the talk. Remember that Lisman spent almost his entire career at Bear Stearns, the financial firm responsible for many of the iffy investment vehicles that almost brought down the global economy in 2008.

In his talk, Lisman gave the following description of the 2008 calamity:

“This thing that happened to us in ’08 and ’09 was not the ordinary garden-variety recession. It was a Darwinian asteroid that hit us. It was big enough to topple countries.”

Oh. My. God. Where do I begin? “This thing that happened,” this “Darwinian asteroid” (whatever the f*ck that’s supposed to mean). This Act of God. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it was an unforeseeable catastrophe that suddenly manifested out of nowhere. “Sure, we ran the Titanic through iceberg-infested waters and ignored 21 separate warnings of hazardous ice in its path — but who could have possibly foreseen its collision with an iceberg? Yeah, the sinking of the ship, the loss of 1500 people, it was this thing that happened.”

There are only two explanations for this piece of utter claptrap:

1. Bruce Lisman is in the grip of a magnificent delusion triggered by the collision of (a) his devout belief in the unsinkability of the free market and (b) the fact that Wall Street ran into an iceberg of its own making and had to be rescued by the government.

2. Bruce Lisman is a goddamn self-serving liar.

You make the call.

More on “Finding Skin” coming soon in this space.  

I want to be careful here, and I want to be fair to Art Woolf, Vermont’s Loudest Economist (TM). But his latest screed on Vermont Tiger is irresponsible hackery at best, and race-baiting at worst.

In it, Woolf takes on the results of the US Education Department’s 8th Grade National Assessment of Educational Progress Science (NAEP) test. The results are pretty good; 43% of Vermont eighth-graders were proficient in science, compared to 31 percent nationally.

This is, of course, inconvenient news for Woolf and the other Tiggers who are constantly flaying Vermont’s public schools for high cost and low performance. So he goes hunting for explanations that don’t involve praising Vermont schools. And he finds a goddamn doozy.

To wit: Vermont scores well, not because of our schools or teachers, but because we have a monochromatic population.

In Vermont 93% of students are white. Only 55% of students in the U.S. are white while 21% are Hispanic and 15% are black.  In Vermont, 2% are Hispanic and 1% are black.

He then notes that 45% of white students were proficient nationally and 46% in Vermont. And then he compares Vermont to Texas, which had a proficiency rate of only 32%.

But Texas is filled with low income minority students, with 63% Hispanic or black students and only 31% white students.   In the Lone Star State, 53% of white students achieved a proficient or advanced score, a higher percent than Vermont’s 46%.  So which state does a better job of educating students in science?

Oh, Art. I’m sure you didn’t mean to assert that the real measure of a school is how well it educates white students. And I’m sure you didn’t mean to imply that minority students are naturally less proficient in science than white kids. But it certainly comes across that way.

After the jump: Show me the money!

Now for Woolf’s triumphant conclusion: Vermont’s per-pupil spending is much higher than Texas’, and we’re getting no better results (among white students). Therefore, ipso facto, Q.E.D., Vermont schools are lousy and costly.

I assume that Vermont Tiger is not a peer-reviewed journal with academic standards for research, because this is a really sloppy piece of work. And dangerous, because it leaves Woolf wide open to charges of racism. Personally, I don’t think he’s a racist, I just think he’s a lazy opportunist when it comes to political debate. Which is less than I’d expect from someone with a professorship at UVM.

So let’s lay out some of the questions that Art Woolf might have asked himself before he ejected this little P.O.S.

Is race the only variable between Vermont and Texas? Are there challenges facing Vermont that don’t face Texas — like, for instance, a small and scattered population? Does Vermont perhaps have a higher rate of poverty among white students? (Only 28% of poor students were proficient in science, compared to 51% in other income groups.) Does Texas, which really skimps on public education, do more “teaching to the test” than Vermont? How does Vermont compare to states with similar demographics, per-pupil spending, or geography?

Is Texas the best comparable to Vermont? Obviously not, in most respects. But it’s the state Art Woolf picked, because it props up his belief that Vermont schools, test results notwithstanding, are an expensive failure.

And in the process, he left himself wide open to racist interpretations of his argument.  

Just when you thought the arguing was over, two of Vermont’s top elected officials have contracted cases of Post-Traumatic Bunched Knicker Syndrome — an exaggerated sense of wounded entitlement whose onset comes well after the triggering event.

That triggering event was the failure of a bill that would have allowed law-enforcement officials to get their foot in the door of the state Health Department’s prescription drug database. Never mind that when the database was established only a few years ago, we were assured that it was to be used purely and solely for health-care purposes. Never mind that those assurance are still prominently displayed on the Health Department’s website. Never mind that the Health Department’s own figures indicate that since the database was established, the rate of prescription-drug abuse in Vermont has declined or stayed the same.

The details of the bill’s demise, for those just joining us: the State Senate approved a bill that would grant law enforcement limited warrantless access to the database. The State House refused to go along with that provision, but did approve several other measures aimed at fighting prescription drug abuse. The entire bill then died in conference for lack of a compromise.

After the jump: Case File No. 1 (Peter Shumlin) and Case File No. 2 (John Campbell).

PTBKS Case File No. 1:  Governor Peter Shumlin. In this week’s Wednesday news conference, he had some harsh words for opponents of the database-access provision.

“The fact that the House didn’t agree with the Senate version of that bill, I think, is inexcusable. I think Vermonters will die because of it. I think we will see crime continue to rise because of it. And, I’m astonished that they’re not taking this crisis more seriously,” Shumlin said Wednesday.

He went on, and on, and on in this vein, even expressing the hope that opponents — many of whom are fellow Democrats — would be punished at the polls this fall. He also took issue with a story by the Associated Press’ Dave Gram*, which pointed to Health Department statistics that bely Shumlin’s characterization of prescription drug abuse as an “epidemic.” The health data show that misuse of prescription opiates is “declining or remaining steady,” that deaths from prescription opiates declined in each of the last six years, and that Vermont has substantially improved its ranking in non medical use of pain relievers, from 11th in 2006 to 34th in 2009.

*We should note that Gram’s story was based entirely on research by Allen Gilbert of the VT ACLU. He deserves much credit for a most timely bit of advocacy; the story may have blunted the bill’s momentum at a crucial moment.

Nonetheless, Shumlin harrumphed, “It IS an epidemic.”

That’s a funny epidemic, if you ask me. And Shumlin’s apparent desire to make this a major campaign issue, and to bring it back in 2013, shines a light on one of his less endearing traits: the unwillingness to listen to others or to let go of an idea once he’s made up his mind.

Of course, his obvious vulnerability to BKS might explain his habit of sleeping, and chasing bears, in the altogether. Can’t get your knickers in a twist if you’re not wearin’ any.

PTBKS Case File No. 2: Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell. Another chronic BKS sufferer, whose symptoms are apparently unrelieved by the end of the legislative session.  

On Wednesday, the Senate leader joined with House Speaker Shap Smith for what was supposed to be a mutual back-slapping review of the 2012 session. And by and large, they stuck to the script, lauding their accomplishments in health care reform, balancing the budget, redistricting, and rebuilding Vermont after Tropical Storm Irene.

But Campbell went rogue on the failure of the drug database bill, per Vermont Digger:

The Windsor Democrat said House members didn’t “understand” the legal ramifications of probable cause and reasonable belief.  Campbell in turn blamed House members, the Vermont ACLU and some of the people who gave testimony for causing confusion…

Ohhh, I see. anyone who disagrees with Mr. Campbell is suffering from a lack of understanding caused by the nefarious activities of the bill’s opponents. What a masterpiece of condescension! The Speaker was quick to respond:

When asked whether he thought House members were confused, Smith replied: “I think there wasn’t any confusion. People saw this issue through different philosophical lenses.”

Bear in mind that the House was perfectly willing to pass a prescription drug abuse bill that included every provision in the Senate bill except police access to the database. But Senate leaders rejected that proposal; they wanted all or nothing. Remember that, if Shumlin or Campbell tries to demagogue this issue in coming months: they could have had almost everything they wanted, but they scuttled the whole bill instead. Bunched knickers are not good for the legislative process.

Chances are, this whole thing will quickly pass into the rearview mirror — at least for now. Shumlin will almost certainly bring the issue back next year, assuming (cough, cough) that he decides (cough, choke) to run for re-election. And I doubt that he will actively campaign against fellow Democrats who oppose police access to the database.

On the other hand, this kind of intra-party squabbling is often a consequence of single-party government. In Massachusetts, the Republicans are impotent and the Democrats are their own worst enemy. (And we thank the Mass Dems sincerely for giving us Senator Scott Brown through their own hubris and ineptitude.)  I hope this isn’t an early warning sign of divisions in the Vermont Democratic Party. (Maybe it’s time for a homeopathic treatment of Progressivism.)