Well, well, well. Bruce Lisman’s Republican-in-sheep’s-clothing policy shop, the Campaign for Vermont, has finally revealed some financial information. Credit the Vermont Press Bureau with getting it out there first:

In a lobbyist disclosure form filed with the secretary of state today, Bruce Lisman, founder of Campaign for Vermont, revealed he spent more than $200,000 of his own money on the nascent organization between Jan. 1 and March 31.

(I had previously stated that CFV didn’t have to reveal its finances until the spring of 2013. This is true regarding IRS rules; I hadn’t realized that CFV had registered with the state as a lobbying organization.)

Before we go on, please note that CFV’s unavoidable ad campaign actually began in November 2011, so the actual dollar total is significantly higher than $200,000.That’s a lotta meatballs by Vermont standards, especially when it’s not yet campaign season. Presumably Mr. Lisman realized this, because he put his own spin on the news in a press release today. It provided more fodder for our contention that CFV is far from the nonpartisan enterprise it claims to be. Indeed, his words make it clear why El Jefe General John McClaughry described Lisman in 2010 as the “one Vermonter… that Vermonters ought to listen to in these trying economic times.”  

Which is a tacit admission that nobody listens to John McClaughry, but never mind. Let’s go to the CFV release:

“I am spending my own money, because I am concerned about the economic damage current policies are having on lower and middle income Vermonters,” [said] Lisman. …

“Across the board, the future of Vermont’s prosperity is at risk. From the pursuit of expensive energy, an impenetrable education financing system, an all-in-bet on a new health care coverage system and a state budget growing faster than our economy, Vermonter’s hopes for a more realistic and common sense approach for a prosperous economy are being highjacked,” explained Lisman.

I think you mean “hijacked” there, Bruce. And that’s a pretty thorough and vociferous takedown of the Shumlin Administration’s top priorities — more openly partisan than CFV’s countless radio commercials. Which, by the way, is where Lisman spent almost all of his 200 large. The first-quarter totals:

…compensation – $15,000; advertising – $194,343; other expenditures – $3,000.

So, advertising and pocket change. Which is noteworthy, since the primary purpose of 501c4 organizations like CFV is supposed to be lobbying, not electioneering. That’s why CFV had to file this disclosure — with the Secretary of State, as a lobbying group. I guess that’s why Lisman refers to “direct and indirect lobbying” as the group’s focus. To him, “indirect lobbying” apparently means “advertising.” CFV has done precious little at the Statehouse, which is what we usually think of as lobbying.

One other thing from the CFV release: a bit of greenwashing, courtesy of CFV Founding Partner Dawn Terrill — who was Neale Lunderville’s predecessor as Secretary of Transportation, and served in the Douglas Administration for its first four years:

“When we see the support Bruce Lisman gives to organizations like the Boys and Girls Club of Burlington, the VSO, UVM, the Shelburne Museum, the ACLU/VT, and the Preservation Trust of Vermont it just shows time and time again that he invests in positive things for Vermont.

Yeah, and I bet he likes puppies, too.  

Here’s a nice little Hump Day waker-upper.

On Monday, at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, a prisoner was nearly killed by another inmate. The victim, 19-year-old Ryan John, is in critical condition after an encounter with 21-year-old Dakota Gardner. Security video shows John entering Gardner’s cell and closing the door; then…

Eight minutes later – after prison officials discovered paper over the window of Gardner’s cell door and a team of guards intervened – inmate Ryan John was found near death, a sheet wrapped around his neck. Gardner, 21, of Springfield was inside, standing calmly against a wall.

That’s a lot to happen in eight minutes. Entry, confrontation, attack, and asphyxiation prolonged enough to almost kill. John’s injuries were so severe that he may well face permanent impairment — if he survives. Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito said “we won’t know the extent of the asphyxiation for several days.” So, how does this happen in a “secure” facility?

Pallito said the prison has 130 security cameras, but staff do not monitor the cameras individually. He said it was an infraction for an inmate to be in another inmate’s cell with the door closed.

And obviously, no staffers were actually on the unit, or they would have noticed something. My inference, and it may be unfair, is that the prison relies heavily on video monitoring — but doesn’t keep watch of the cameras. Big money-saver; staffing is expensive, cameras are cheap.

And so, apparently, is human life.

After the jump: Sixth Amendment? We don’t need no stinkin’ Sixth Amendment.

Here’s something else that should make you grind your teeth: John had not been convicted of any crime. He’d been behind bars for 18 months, awaiting trial on a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct. Does that seem a little excessive? An 18-mointh imprisonment for an offense that probably wouldn’t draw an 18-month sentence upon conviction does not appear to jibe with the Sixth Amendment’s promise of a “speedy and public trial” for all offenders.

The name “Dakota Gardner” may ring a bell; last week, he was indicted by a federal grand jury for threatening to kill President Obama and injury Governor Shumlin. He was in prison for a probation-violation charge related to an alleged aggravated assault.

So. How does something like this happen? Is it acceptable? Have we cut so many corners that our criminal justice system no longer lives up to our ideals? I think the answer to that last one is obvious.  

It’s been an interesting week-and-a-half for Our Man From Bennington, the Hon. Dick Sears. (Seen at right, possibly preparing delivery of a Wet Willy to Phil Baruth.) Lately, it seems like every time I read a story about the Legislature, Dick Sears is doing something strange, devious, obnoxious, or a combination thereof.

Jack McCullough has previously identified the Senator as a BKS* sufferer. I concur with the diagnosis, but I’d go even farther: I believe Sears is suffering from a rare and very painful case of Multi-Twist BKS, which is awfully tough on the ol’ twig-and-berries, and is known to cause outbursts of extreme crankiness. Or maybe it’s just Dick being Dick; longtime observers of the Golden Dome may have more insight to offer on that point.  

*”Bunched Knicker Syndrome,” most commonly expressing itself as peevish behavior on the part of a powerful individual.

Let’s go through the diagnosis… after the jump.  

Single twist: Sticking his nose into the House’s redistricting plan because of how it divvied up the Bennington area. That kind of bigfooting is generally considered poor form, as I understand it.

Double twist: His decision to shackle a marijuana decriminalization measure to a bill that would open the state’s prescription database to law enforcement officers — a blatant attempt to snag a few liberal-progressive votes for a regressive measure. And as Sears well knows, even if the Senate passed the database/decrim mashup, decrim would fail in the House because of Speaker Shap Smith’s opposition.

Triple twist, as reported by Jack: Sears threw a hissy on the Senate floor over a comment posted by Sen. Phil Baruth on this very website, in which Baruth expressed his disinclination to fall for Sears’ little ploy. Sears moaned that Senate collegiality has “sunk to new lows.” And actually, I see his point — but it has more to do with Sears himself than with Phil Baruth.

Quadruple twist (oh dear, this case is even worse than I thought): Last week, Sen. Hinda Miller tried to bring the end-of-life bill to the Senate floor (even though the Sears-chaired Judiciary Committee hadn’t passed it) by attaching it to another bill. Sears’ ill-tempered reaction:

“To hijack a bill out of committee is breaking the rules, and if we want to continue to break the rules in this building, there will be consequences for all of us,” he warned.

Yea verily, society shall crumble, children will be slaughtered in the streets, and there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Unfortunately for Sears, that pesky Phil Baruth was on hand to point out that Miller’s maneuver was permissible under the Senate’s own rules. Damn blogger!

Quintuple twist (this is one for the medical journals): During Monday’s Senate debate on a bill to establish a state health insurance exchange, Sears got all hot and bothered about a House provision calling for high-school sports coaches to remove any player who may have had a concussion. Sears, who may well have played without a helmet back in the day, wanted to change the standard to “actual knowledge that a concussion had occurred.” I assume he’d include funding for the installation of MRI machines at all high school sports facilities. Otherwise, how in hell is a coach supposed to diagnose a concussion?

(He was joined in this absurd argument by none other than Prog/Dem Senator Tim Ashe, who’s been spending a lot of his time cozying up to Senate conservatives lately. As reported by Dave Gram of the AP, Ashe argued that the House’s concussion rule would reduce tackle football to “two-hand touch”, and force ice hockey to be played on rubber mats. Now that’s an argument I never expected to hear from a Progressive. Yeah, Tim, let’s keep on letting our kids play contact sports when they’re concussed! Gotta stop the creeping wussification of our society, don’t we? Hock, spit.)

As an occasional sufferer of Single Twist BKS myself (mostly in traffic), I can only imagine Dick Sears’ discomfort at this critical time. Somebody get this man to a hospital — or at least to a clothing store for a nice roomy pair of undies.

(Update, 4/24: The Market board has apparently reversed itself and reinstated Pete’s Greens “with the status of a new vendor.” Thanks to Morgan Brown, sharp-eyed observer of all things Montpelier, for spotting the news and reporting it in the Comments. I’m not changing the text of my diary, because (a) I don’t like to do that and (b) I think it’s still a worthwhile story.)

A bit of trouble has broken out at one of the happiest places in central Vermont: the Capital City Farmers Market in Montpelier. At issue is the membership of Pete’s Greens, the groundbreaking farm enterprise headed by Pete Johnson.

It came to my attention at the April 7 Winter Market. Standing outside were two men holding handmade signs and clipboards; they were collecting petition signatures to have Pete’s Greens restored to the Farmers Market. Inside the hall, there were conversations about the banishment of Pete’s for failure to adhere to the Market’s rules.

This was rather a shock. Pete’s is one of the Market’s mainstays, it has been for years, and as an enthusiastic Market customer, I believe that his absence would make the Market a less desirable place to shop.

It turned out that the Market’s board had made the decision sometime over the winter. Pete wasn’t a regular vendor at the Winter Market, so nobody noticed. The Board sent out an item about the decision in a recent e-newsletter, to wit:

The Capital City Farmers Market prides itself on being a producer only market, this means that the person who makes or grows the product is present at the market interacting with the customers.  The market membership votes on rules that all our vendors must follow to participate in the market.  A key rule is for vendors to attend and sell at the market (for at least half of the markets they attend). This key rule is critical to the character of our market and ensures the connection between farmers/vendors and our market’s customers.

When the outdoor market starts in May you may notice Pete’s Greens is not the first vendor at the market’s State Street entrance. After being given ample notice and continuing to neglect his attendance requirement, the five member board has (after much deliberation and consideration) decided to replace Pete’s Greens with two new farmers.    

We wish him well in all his future endeavors.

It seemed rather harsh, and raised a philosophical question: Is this a farmers market, or is it a farmers market? In other words, is the market operated with the customers foremost in mind, or the vendors? This decision appeared to indicate the latter.  

I can see the value in having the vendor attend in person. But I enjoyed such a connection with Pete (when he was there) and his handful of employees (when he wasn’t). I certainly didn’t feel like there was less of a connection when Pete wasn’t there in person. 

The Market does have rules, and they exist for a reason. However, Pete’s is in a category of its own: it’s a business, surely, but it’s a very small business with a mission of promoting local agriculture and localvorism. Pete has enjoyed a measure of success by being creative in developing his business; is he now being punished for his success?

I have heard at least one vendor complaining about the size and scope of Pete’s operation, and even grousing about the community support Pete received in the aftermath of the January 2011 fire that destroyed much of his operation. Which sounded awfully damn churlish to me, not to mention beside the point: it has nothing to do with whether Pete violated Market rules or not.

It has more to do with an attitude I find unpleasantly Pharisaical: an excessive emphasis on purity, self-defined. Pete is too big to be pure; he’s not a local farmer any more. To which I say, Bullshit. Pete is an entrepreneur in the best possible sense, a leader in developing new markets for local food and showing the way for other farmers to increase the profitability of their operations. Pete is not the enemy, folks. He should not be treated like one.

To date, the only media reporting on this story was in last week’s issue of the Montpelier Bridge. (Available online only in .pdf form.) Its report indicated a pretty wide gap between the two sides’ accounts. The Market board, as stated above, says it gave “ample notice” to Pete. His version is very different:

Johnson himself maintains that he has not violated any market rules, because he attended 12 of 23 markets last summer, despite the fact that he was in the middle of rebuilding part of his farm, which was devastated in a fire last January. He said he has written records of attendance for every market.

…”Throughout last summer’s market, for the early part of the season I was not going to many markets because we were getting the farm rebuilt… I had some communication with the market manager about it and she suggested I ask the board for special exemption. I expected it to be denied, and it was… so far latter half of the market season… I went to12 of the 23 summer markets. Nobody asked me if I went to enough. I thought the market was tracking it… I thought it was all set.”

According to the Bridge story, there was to have been a meeting between Pete and the Market board last Wednesday April 18. No word has been forthcoming, although the Market manager now says that the board will meet this week and may have an announcement afterwards. As of right now, Pete’s Greens is absent from the list of vendors on the Market’s website.

I suspect that the board has been on the receiving end of a great deal of displeasure from market customers. The Capital City Farmers Market has rarely, if ever, been a source of controversy, and I doubt that the board was prepared for the consequences of its decision.

Especially if it turned out they were wrong about Pete’s attendance. That’d be embarrassing, no?

(Addendum 4/24: I can think of at least one other Market vendor in Pete’s class — a one-family operation that’s become a small business. And I rarely see the head of that business in attendance at the Market. I wonder how evenly this particular rule is applied.)

Just in case you thought that a major state party couldn’t be any sadder than the Vermont Republicans (what with their tiny minorities in the Legislature, with their highest officeholder ensconced in a ceremonial office, and with their coffers so empty that their Executive Director had to quit because he wasn’t getting paid), comes the kind of news that’d make coffee shoot out your nose if you had the misfortune to be drinking coffee at the time:

Minnesota GOP Facing Eviction After Failure to Pay Rent

Yep, the Minnesota Republicans are $2 million in debt and scrambling to hold on to their office space. The rent hasn’t been paid since August 2011, and the landlord is understandably peeved. The party chairman is hoping to negotiate a deal with said landlord involving a slow payment of back rent and a cheaper lease on smaller quarters.

So exactly how did a Republican Party in a big Midwestern state get so far in debt? A two-and-a-half-year reign of financial terror by a party chairman who massively overspent and underfundraised, and was ousted for his troubles.

The gory details… after the jump.  

According to Minnesota Public Radio,

…former GOP Chairman Tony Sutton awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in party contracts to state lawmakers, party insiders and attorneys. Sutton resigned Dec. 2 after GOP leaders and delegates started raising questions about the party’s budget.

For now, we won’t ask how the Minnesota GOP decided to put this mook in charge. Instead, we’ll ask how in double-hockey-sticks he went through so much money without anyone noticing. Oh, here’s the answer:

The Republican Party’s bylaws give the party chairman unilateral authority to sign contracts, borrow money and hire staff.

Oh, that’s brilliant. And this from the party of fiscal responsibility, what? A few highlights from Tony Sutton’s trail of tears:

The party’s spending under Sutton included more than $1 million to lawyer Tony Trimble, who unsuccessfully represented the party in recounts for U.S. Senate in 2008 and governor in 2010. …

More than $220,000 went to a public relations firm with close ties to Sutton. Its job was to remake the party’s image, but some party leaders say they never saw the final product.

…The state Republican Party also paid a company that markets medical products more than $10,000 to research whether medical marijuana is effective.

Mr. Sutton, anything to say in your defense?

“I wasn’t handling every invoice; I wasn’t handling every detail,” he said.

Buh…buh…buh… that was your JOB. You had sole responsibility!

Sutton also blames a collapse in small-donor contributions after the 2009 cancellation of a state Political Contribution Refund, which allowed small donors to claim a tax refund of $50. Ahh, so the fiscal health of the Minnesota Republican Party was dependent on… a government handout??? Shocking!

And just how dependent were they?

In 2006 – the last time every member of the Legislature and every constitutional officer were on the ballot – the party collected $1.8 million in donations that were $100 or less. In 2010, the party raised $255 from small donors.

Two hundred and fifty-five dollars. In one entire year, in the entire state of Minnesota. Un-frickin’-believable. And Tony Sutton kept on spending the money. Heckuva job, Brownie!

See, the Vermont Republican Party doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

p.s. Oh, one more thing… and please, put down your coffee before you read on:

He’s head of a political consulting firm called — and I absolutely kid you not — “Winning Strategies, LLC.” You just can’t make this stuff up.

Vermont’s Loudest Economist (TM) Art Woolf chimes in today, on that free-market website named in honor of the strong, vigorous free-market Irish economy. (Yeah, the Irish economy that’s now the Sick Man of Northern Europe. Don’t know if that’s what Art & Co. really aspire to, but never mind.)

He’s promoting an essay by tiresome conservative Walter Russell Mead* about the fatal flaws of President Obama’s health care reform. In which Mr. Mead, naturally, does not mention the substantially worse flaws of the current system.

*Any conservative thinker who dares to triple-name himself is automatically suspected of tiresomeness; the suspicion is confirmed beyond doubt upon reading a few lines of Mr. Mead’s murky prose.

This essay was posted on March 29; I guess Mr. Woolf has been so busy flogging worthless housing studies that he’s fallen behind on his Internet reading. One of the lines that made Art go all tingly:

It is a perverse but very real fact of life that the more complex and rich the system to be regulated, the less the “experts” and the goo-goos have the political power to impose their vision on the regulatory process.

The invocation of “goo-goos” sent me running to Wikipedia, which I’m sure is the reaction Mr. Mead was hoping for. “I’m smarter than you,” he chuckles over a snifter of brandy, “I know obscure political terms from the 19th Century!”

Per Wikipedia, “Goo-goos” is slang for “Good government guys,” originally a group of New York City political reformers who were responsible for the 1894 defeat of the Tammany Hall political machine.

Seems a worthy accomplishment, at odds with Mr. Mead’s connotation of haplessness. However, the term later took on the sense, as Wikipedia puts it, of “a mildly derisive label for high-minded citizens and reformers.”

So good on ya, Wally! You know your archaic political terminology! That Yale education comes in handy, don’t it?

But I digress. My point, to quote Ellen DeGeneres, and I do have one, is that I concur with Mr. Mead’s assessment of the trouble that “experts” get into when they try to understand “complex and rich” systems.

Exhibit A: Art Woolf, attempting to understand the economy and “impose [his] vision” on it. Nothing but trouble there, just like Mr. Mead says.  

Backers of a bill that would allow police access to the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System have pulled in their horns, at least a bit. The bill had attracted a fair bit of skepticism among lawmakers, active opposition from the Vermont ACLU among others, and a bit of derision in these quarters. As you may recall, the bill would have opened police access to the state’s prescription drug database, which was designed only a few years ago for purely medical purposes — to manage patient treatment, not to give the cops access to a whole lot of confidential information.

All the skepticism, opposition and derision has apparently had an effect. Vermont Digger reports that a compromise measure will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would significantly weaken the bill’s original intent. It also includes a tasty bit of bait for liberal Senators: a rider that would decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. (I foresee a spike in the kitchen-scale market.)

Committee chair Dick Sears is shepherding the compromise, which goes something like this:

With the compromise, police would be able to access the name, age and address of a patient who they believe may be diverting prescription drugs for illegal use. Police could also receive access to the name and address of the pharmacy and doctors where the patient accessed certain scheduled drugs – generally opiates.

Using this information, the officers could then go to the actual pharmacies and ask for prescription information under a law that was passed in 1968.

The investigation would have to start from a tip from a health care provider.

While I’m encouraged that public pressure has so quickly wrought such a major change in a dubious bill, I’m also a bit confused.  

From this description, I don’t see how the bill is meaningfully better for police than current law. Any access of the database would have to be aimed at a specific patient, and arise out of a tip from a provider. The only information they can get from VPMS is a patient’s name, age and address — and they can more easily get that from the tipster. They do get one shortcut: VPMS would give them a list of all the pharmacies patronized by the patient. That does save a little time and shoe leather; instead of going to all pharmacies in a given area, they’d know which ones to visit. But they’d still have to visit the pharmacies to get the prescription information. .

In short, the cops would get precious little actual information out of the database itself. Which makes me wonder if the real purpose of this bill is to get a foot in the conceptual door of police access to VPMS. Once the foot’s in the door, further leverage can be applied in a future Legislative session.  

I have no evidence that this is the case. But the bill, on its own, seems like a fairly minor change. It’s certainly a far cry from the original bill. But I remain suspicious.  

Sorry, Congressman. You can take off those librarian glasses and ditch the meek demeanor. You have finally been unmasked by a true patriot: Allen West, nutball Republican Congressman from Florida.  

The truth, courtesy of Talking Points Memo, comes in a video clip from West’s own office:

The unedited video shows West’s declaration at a town hall event. “I believe there are about 78 or 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party,” he said, followed by a long, dramatic pause, during which there were assorted moans and whispers in the audience.

After about 30 seconds, West unfurled his deadpan punchline: “The answer to that: It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

And Peter Welch is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Ipso facto, Q.E.D., mild-mannered Petey is a Commie. Now that we know this, I’m sure we’ll do the right thing and elect Paul Beaudry or whatever true patriot the VTGOP scares up to run for Congress this year.

As for you, Peter Welch: go back to Moscow, you Red lackey!

Minor setback for the Randy Brock campaign: he’s had to cancel a planned fundraising event due to extreme cluelessness.

As reported by the Vermont Press Bureau, Brock was planning to tap into the deep conservative well of the Northeast Kingdom later this month with an event at a lovely little B&B:

A Facebook posting today from Brock’s fund-raising guru, Darcie Johnston, asked prospective voters: “Want to support Randy Brock for governor? Plan on attending this event at the Wildflower Inn.”

Hmm, Wildflower Inn. Ring a bell?

Located in bucolic Lyndonville, the establishment earned some unwanted notoriety last year when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the owners for refusing to host the wedding of a lesbian couple from New York.

Oh, THAT Wildflower Inn. Apparently someone (probably the Vermont Press Bureau) pointed this out to Randy & Darcie. And the event was quickly canceled.

Brock and Johnston swear they had no idea about the inn’s baggage. Brock says the fund-raiser wasn’t organized by his campaign but by some supporters.

“Now that I’ve been made aware of this pending case, it would be inappropriate to hold an event at a place with a cloud like that hanging over it,” Brock said this afternoon.

Nice move, throwing your “supporters” under the bus. But really, two prominent political Vermonters had no idea about the inn’s baggage? They ought to get out more often, maybe read a paper once in a while.

And on a more serious note: This is why campaigns typically have full-time paid staff. Randy Brock’s campaign is staffed by fee-for-service consultants. Which means nobody’s keeping track of these little details. Y’know, spend five minutes Googling all your candidate’s upcoming appearances, and you won’t be embarrassed like this. By depending on consultants, Brock’s leaving himself vulnerable to these kinds of snafus.  

Here comes Vermont’s Most Media-Friendly Economist*, Art Woolf, trumpeting another study of our state’s economic health. This time, it’s his annual study of housing affordability in Vermont. And he comes bearing good news:

*i.e. attention whore.

The share of median family income needed to make the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home in the state fell to 13.1 percent in 2011, Westford economist Arthur Woolf said Monday. 

That’s the lowest percentage in the 25 years Woolf has tracked housing affordability.

Only six years ago, at the height of the real estate boom, that figure was 19 percent. Since then, housing has become ever more affordable. Great, yes? Well, yes and no. I see a couple of significant issues.

First, every housing transaction has two sides. Cheap home prices are good news for buyers but bad news for sellers, who were hoping for a better return on what is (for many) their primary long-term investment. (To be fair, other factors are at work: low mortgage interest rates play a big part, as does median household income.)

Second, and to my thinking much more serious, is buried in the ninth paragraph of the Rutland Herald’s story:

Woolf’s analysis only looks at median income of married couples.

Oh, so this is a study of the Leave it to Beaver segment of the housing market, as pictured nearby. No single-parent households, no consideration of the rental market — which, taken together, account for a substantial majority of all housing transactions.

Even if you want to exclude rentals from consideration, the omission of single-parent families is a serious one, says Sarah Carpenter of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency:

She said based on Woolf’s analysis home buying may be “mathematically cheaper,” but VHFA sees “continued barriers …for those who need to qualify for mortgage insurance and are being asked to come to the closing table with higher down payment and may have lower median incomes because they’re single heads of households.”

Mr. Woolf’s study may have some usefulness despite its shortcomings, but it really cannot be called a study of housing affordability in Vermont. Its focus is far too narrow for that grand appellation.

Even so the top line was sufficient grounds for Vermont Tiger’s Geoffrey Norman to seize upon the study and jump to a politically expedient conclusion:

Good news.  But one strenuously doubts that it will quiet the pleas of the affordable housing lobby for more funding … and ever more funding. 

Er, sorry, but no, Geoffrey. The fact that purchase prices are low for two-parent families has no bearing whatsoever on the need for affordable housing. There remains, in many parts of Vermont, a significant shortage of low-priced homes and rental housing. Art Woolf conveniently excludes all of that from his consideration.