(#1 is, of course, TJ Donovan’s candidacy for Attorney General. See kestrel9000’s diary below.)

State Senator Randy Brock, presumptive Republican nominee for Governor, has announced some key members of his campaign team. They include some well-connected Vermont Republicans, as well as a couple of national political strategists who’ve worked on election victories for some notoriously conservative candidates.

The locals: to no one’s surprise, Darcie Johnston is on the team, leading Brock’s fundraising effort. Johnston is a longtime consultant to Brock; until recently, she headed the anti-health care reform group Vermonters for Health Care Freedom. Oh, and one other nugget: She was the one who goaded the Douglas Administration to try to shut down Karl Hammer’s Vermont Compost operation in 2008:

Vermont Compost’s latest troubles started on March 12, when one of Hammer’s neighbors – Darcie Johnston – complained to Douglas about health hazards she believed were associated with the farm…

An expert from the DEC was dispatched to the scene; her report found no health hazards. But even so, the Administration pursued the case with great vigor. More vigor than it had shown for just about any other environmental issue in the state.  

Other locals on the Brockwagon: Mark Snelling, campaign treasurer. President of Greenleaf Metals, onetime candidate for Lieutenant Governor (didn’t clear the primary), holder of various volunteer posts and a famous name. And Paul Gillies, Montpelier-based attorney, will be the campaign’s legal counsel.

And now I’ll spend some time on the two outsiders. After the jump…  

Brock’s general consultant, lead strategist and pollster is Bob Wickers, California resident and principal in the political consulting firm Dresner Wickers Barber Sanders. The Brock press release touts Wickers’ Vermont ties:

Since 1988, Bob Wickers guided all three of Jim Jeffords’ campaigns for U.S. Senate, Randy Brock’s 2004 race for State Auditor and Mark Snelling’s 2010 campaign for Lt. Governor.

Funny, those names aren’t spotlighted on Wickers’ website. He prefers to trumpet a bunch of hard-right worthies such as Mike Huckabee’s 2008 run for President, Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, and Arizona’s Trent Franks, one of the most conservative members of Congress.

Wickers also helped get Scott Pruitt elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. Pruitt was the only AG who refused to sign onto the government’s settlement with the nation’s five biggest banks over their mortgage lending activities, thus forgoing millions of dollars for Oklahoma mortgage holders simply to make an empty political point. Pruitt is one of the most enthusiastic red-state AGs in the legal battle to overturn President Obama’s health care reform. Thanks, Bob.

The last entry in our rogues’ gallery is media consultant Nick Everhart, Ohio resident and partner in “Strategy Group for Media,” a conservative campaign firm specializing in, yep, media strategy. Its client list include Ohio Governor John Kasich, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Congressmen Todd Akin and Joe Barton, plus Americans for Prosperity, the Family Research Council, and Michele Bachmann’s PAC.

What this says to me is that Brock will eschew whatever is left of the party’s tradition of centrist moderation in favor of a Fox News/Tea Party-style of hard-right conservatism and attack politics. We’ll see how that plays in Vermont.

Unanswered question: Last week, Brock said that his campaign would “rely more on specialists… from outside firms while trying to be lighter on paid staff.” So how much time will these high-powered national consultants actually give to the Brock campaign? Will they be present on the ground in Vermont, or will they be Skype-ing it in?  

Brock promises further additions to his campaign team in the near future, including a campaign coordinator. Which would seem to be the most important position in an effort comprised of pay-for-play consultants. And would seem to be a difficult (if not thankless) job, refereeing arguments between the local and national geniuses and trying to leverage as much time as possible from people who have other commitments.

On the other hand, this crew couldn’t do much worse than, say, Corry Bliss. Or could they?

The good news: Hollywood’s making a movie about our homegrown hero, Captain Richard Phillips (of Somali pirate fame). And what could be a better testament to Phillips, than to have Tom Hanks play him in the movie?

(Okay, maybe George Clooney.)

The bad news: the movie’s “hometown” scenes will be filmed in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

“They thought this area of Sudbury looked a lot like the area in Vermont they’re trying to show,” said town manager Maureen Valente.

And now… for the sordid truth behind this Hollywood perfidy.

While the town may not be an exact replica, locales in the Bay State tend to be cheaper than places like Vermont, said Mary McCormack in the Board of Selectmen’s office.

“It’s much better tax-wise for these companies,” she said.

Quick, to the Ethan Allen Signal! Alert El Jefe General!! Vermont’s Tax Burden Chases Tom Hanks to Taxachusetts!!!!! Dang, if it wasn’t for Governor Shumlin and those tax-happy Democrats, we’d be rubbin’ shoulders with Tom Hanks.  

I can see the bumpersticker now: “Vote Brock! He’ll Bring Matt Damon to Vermont!”

This afternoon I heard a VPR announcer give the weather forecast, and said that tomorrow would bring more “nice weather,” with highs in the 70s for much of the state.

I beg to differ. Much as I enjoy not having to wear heavy coats or shovel snow, the weather doesn’t seem nice to me — it seems creepy.

It shouldn’t be this warm in mid-March. The Winooski River should not be flowing freely. There should still be lots of snow on the ground. Maple sugaring season should be in full swing, not on its last legs.

“Most of the research will show that once you go three days with 60 degree weather, you’re pretty well done. The tree can’t really recover from that, it’s going on to its next process of making the bud and making the leaf,” said Dummerston sugarmaker Steve Glabach, who tapped his first tree in 1968. “What I’m hearing is most people are only at three-quarters of a crop and not feeling good at all about the warm weather. The long-range forecast looks warm.”

…”I talked to a large producer in northern Vermont and he says most producers in the northern tier are close to only one-third of a crop and also feels the season may be ending,” Glabach said.

There’s also this, from state forester Sam Schneski:

“The thing that I hear over and over from longtime sugarmakers is that every year we get further and further away from knowing what an ‘average’ year is. The changes seem to be extreme.”

These on-the-ground observations coincide nicely with a recent statistical study out of UVM, showing that maple sugaring season is getting earlier and earlier.

Gee, you’d think maybe staunch defenders of Vermont tradition like Geoffrey Norman or El Jefe General John McLaughry would be up in arms over this obvious threat to maple sugaring, a great source of Vermontish picturesqueness and jobs, jobs, jobs. You’d maybe hope that the state Republican Party, which built itself on the bedrock of Vermont’s rural culture, would come out in favor of energy efficiency and fast-tracked development of renewables in an effort to save maple sugaring.

Nah, just kidding. They’ll keep quiet about global warming until our next cold snap. Which might be next week, or it might be next January the way things are going.

And weather forecasters: when the temperatures goes 30 degrees above normal (or more!) on Sunday afternoon, please don’t tell me how nice it is.  

It was a busy and productive week at the State House, with major agreements on rebuilding state offices damaged by Tropical Storm Irene. And I’d like to record my appreciation for hard work and reasonable outcomes. Whether or not you agree 100% with the decisions made, it’s remarkable how much was accomplished in the seven days since the release of the French Freeman French report on replacing the Waterbury complex.  

Governor Shumlin and the Legislature worked through the options in the FFF report in a matter of days. The result, with about 900 state workers to be relocated to Waterbury, some to be permanently stationed in Burlington or Montpelier, and about 200 shifted from Montpelier to Barre, looks like a solid plan that will accomplish a number of good things.

Waterbury will get back most of its workers. Not as many as it would have liked, but I thought Shumlin did a decent job of balancing the needs of Waterbury and other communities with bringing the costs to a reasonable level.

I was also pleased — and frankly, surprised, given how stubborn the Governor can be — that he gave ground on sizing a replacement State Hospital. You can argue with the result; some advocates will say it’s too big, many in the medical community think it’ll be too small. But the process was impressive.  

The danger of one-party government is that it can become lazy and complacent. With the Vermont GOP in a prolonged and perhaps permanent eclipse, and the Progs in rebuilding mode, it’s incumbent on Democratic officeholders to use their power wisely and prudently. On the events of the past week, I give Shumlin and the Legislative leadership high marks.  

Late note: I’ve added some new stuff to the end of this diary. See below (after the jump).

The Republican Party has rightly been getting tarred and feathered for the national and state-by-state attacks on reproductive rights. Some Republicans have gotten their share of heat (Rush Limbaugh, Bob McDonnell, Rick Santorum), others haven’t (Rick Perry, Mary Fallin*, Mitt Romney).

*Governor of Oklahoma, another state with punitive anti-abortion legislation.

It’s all over the news. If you Google “Republican War on Women,” you get approximately 74,300,000 hits. (Presumably Google is estimating the number because it keeps increasing so rapidly.)

That’s great. Wonderful. The more attention is paid to this, the more likely it is that their agenda will be derailed and they will lose more elections. But there’s one thing that should bother us all.

It’s not a war on women. It’s a war on anyone who cares about women or is involved in procreating or possibly procreating with a woman.

So really, it’s a Republican War on People. With the partial exception of gay men.  

To call it a “war on women” is to…

(a) minimize its impact on, as I said, anyone who cares about women or whose life involves women.

(b) ignore mens’ role in family planning and reproductive health. Hey, that’s a woman’s job! Just like in the Fifties!

(c) place the onus for political action on the shoulders of women.

Yes, it’s heartening to see empowered women taking action: crowds of women demonstrating outside of state capitols and organizing online campaigns to take political action and (among many other brilliant things) post embarrassing questions on the Facebook pages of certain Governors.

But this isn’t just a war on women; it’s a war against humanity and our personal freedoms. It’s a war against health. And really, at its base, it’s a war against sex.  And men should be fully as engaged in this struggle as women.

To call it a “war on women” diminishes its impact and lets us men off the hook too easily. Let’s find it a more accurate and inclusive name. “Republican War on Reproductive Freedom” isn’t catchy enough. Maybe we should just call it the Republican War on Sex.  

Addendum: Some Commenters have taken this diary in an unfortunate way. They’ve interpreted it as an attempt to shift the spotlight off women’s issues by claiming that men are equal sufferers. This was not my intent, not at all. The point I was trying to make, and maybe I didn’t make it clearly enough, is that men need to fight alongside women on this issue. Because (a) it’s only fair and just, and (b) it’s our war, too.

For the sake of chronological clarity: This was added on Saturday 3/17 at 9:00 pm. There were 25 comments below this diary at the time.

Oh, here we go. Larry Elkin, financial adviser to the wealthy and all-around embodiment of Wall Street excess, is going to tell us Vermonters exactly how clueless we are.

Vermonters Buy Into A Constitutional Mess Of Pottage

…is the title of an opinion piece on “Wall Street Pit,” a financial website. In it, Mr. Elkin gets all shouty over the dozens of Vermont towns that voted for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. Don’t they know their place? They should be tendin’ to the fields, maple sugarin’, milkin’ their spotty cows, and playin’ checkers down by the General Store, not worryin’ their picturesquely bucolic heads with Big National Issues beyond their feeble comprehension.

Larry Elkin is a CPA and CFP, worked for six years at Arthur Andersen, the scandal-ridden accounting firm. He now runs his own firm, Palisades Hudson Financial Group, which provides investment services, estate planning, and tax counseling “to a sophisticated client base.” In English: helping One Percenters amass even greater wealth and evade their tax responsibilities.

His firm is based in Scarsdale, NY. Coincidentally, there’s an article in the March 19 New Yorker by financial journalist James Stewart entitled “Tax Me If You Can” (full article paywalled but good summary here) about the lengths to which wealthy New Yorkers will go, to avoid paying New York taxes. Scarsdale’s a tax haven — from City taxes, if not State.

Elkin, of course, doesn’t “live” in New York — city or state. His official residence is in Florida, which has no state income tax. And he also, mirabile dictu, has a summer place in Quechee. (If you see him at the General Store, give him a dope-slap for me.)

After the jump, we dismantle his unpleasant little screed. Pardon me while I adjust my Oshkoshes and get a fresh sprig of hay to clench in my teeth.  

The trouble began when Mr. Elkin was up here on safari, taking a break from Ruling the Universe (TM) and observing the quaint folkways of the natives.

I happened to be in Vermont last week on Town Meeting Day, that New England democratic tradition in which neighbors gather to decide public business.

I didn’t attend because Vermont is just a part-time residence for me; my home and my vote are in Florida. But I was pleased that my neighbors in the Town of Hartford voted to rebuild the Quechee covered bridge, just down the hill from my house, which was destroyed last fall by floodwaters from Tropical Storm Irene.

He couldn’t be bothered rubbing elbows with the natives, but he is gratified that they ponied up to restore his (summer) neighborhood to its pre-Irene spendor.

Quechee is just one of five villages in the town, and there has been some concern that more distant residents would turn their backs on the $1.1 million bond issue needed to pay for the rebuilding. But everyone understood the bridge’s importance to Quechee, a village which also happens to attract a lot of tourists to the area. They come to enjoy our scenic gorge on the Ottauquechee River, which is still easily accessible, and to admire Simon Pearce’s fine blown glass and dine at his excellent restaurant, which is alongside the ravaged bridge and now requires a lengthy detour.

Awww, Larry. You have to spend an extra ten minutes in your Land Rover to get a nice dinner. We feel your pain, really we do. Thankfully those “more distant residents,” i.e. country dirt farmers, saw fit to support their betters.

People know their own neighborhoods, and they usually make good decisions when they get together to hash things out. We don’t have town meetings in Florida. We have homeowners associations and condo boards, and the better ones among them – the ones that invite everyone in the community to participate – work pretty much the same way.

Oh yeah, gated communities and small Vermont towns, peas in a pod. After all, America is a not divided by class; we’re all one and the same. Sure thing, Larry.

So it was disheartening but not entirely surprising to learn that at last week’s meetings, at least 58 Vermont towns voted to endorse a constitutional amendment that would exchange our most precious democratic birthright, the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights and the rest of the U.S. Constitution, in return for a mess of pottage – the overturning of a much-criticized but fundamentally sound Supreme Court decision. In reality, the proposal would exchange valuable rights in return for nothing at all.

Bumpkins! Know-nothings! How dare they?

By “protections afforded by the Bill of Rights,” I think he means corporate personhood. By “fundamentally sound Supreme Court decision,” he means Holy Writ from Pope Scalia. And by “nothing at all,” he means “some semblance of citizen control over our own political process.”

The chief backer of the amendment is Sen. Bernard Sanders, an independent (he calls himself a socialist) from Vermont and self-appointed scourge of the rich and powerful, a persona that appeals to modern Vermonters. His professed goal is to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which is a misguided objective in itself. However, the language of Sanders’ proposal would go vastly further – much further, I’m sure, than his fellow Vermont citizens took the time to explore before they gave Sanders their thumbs-up.

Bernard? Does anyone actually call Bernie Sanders “Bernard”? Not since he was six years old and his momma was calling him in for dinner. Which is Mr. Elkin’s intent here: belittling Sen. Sanders through obviously false aggrandizement.

Too bad us Green Mountain Yokels are too clueless to see through Bernard’s act.

Elkin then spends a couple of tedious paragraphs explaining why Bernie’s amendment would turn the Bill of Rights into toilet paper, before getting on to the “myth” of corporate personhood:

Corporations are merely aggregations of people. To insist that corporations lack the same rights as the people who own them, manage them or work for them is to argue that we forfeit some of our rights when we combine our efforts to accomplish things we could never accomplish individually.

Or, as Mitt Romney so trenchantly put it, “Corporations are people, my friend!” Yeah, corporations are “merely” gatherings of people. With the combined financial, social, and political power to run roughshod over the interests of actual people.

Corporations aren’t people, Larry, any more than a rampaging colony of army ants is simply an aggregation of individual ants. There’s a huge difference in mass and destructive power.

Without corporations and similar entities, an enterprise like Apple would merely have been Steve & Steve’s Computer Company, destined to expire when the collaboration between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak ended, or when Steve Jobs died. Without corporations we could not have car companies, or medical centers, or cellphones, or electricity delivered to our homes. No enterprise could grow larger than the efforts of a handful of people could make it, or last longer than the lifetime of its founders.

Which is completely irrelevant because nobody — not even Socialist Bernard Sanders — is calling for an end to corporations. We’d just prefer that corporations not be able to purchase our political system lock, stock and barrel.

Sanders’ proposal would not stop at stripping free speech rights from corporations and their shareholders. It would strip all constitutional protections. Corporations would not be entitled to due process, or to be free of state interference in interstate commerce, or to be protected from seizure of their property or from illegal searches. Any sort of Gestapo-like tactic would be fair game when directed by the federal government against a business enterprise.

Yep, there’s the inevitable Nazi comparison. Must be almost done with the column.

Did residents of 58 Vermont towns give any thought to this? I very much doubt it.

No, because we’re so easily duped. Say, Larry, I was thinking about buying a bridge. I hear you got a nice one down in Brooklyn.

They may be willing to elect an avowed socialist to the U.S. Senate, and they may have an unreasonably strong sense of persecution by what they perceive as moneyed interests from faraway places (the same moneyed interests to whom they happily sell second homes, ski lift tickets and bed-and-breakfast lodgings), but Vermonters are neither stupid nor antidemocratic.

Gee, thanks, Larry. We’re commie pinko dupes, we hate rich people who helicopter in and act in a condescending manner (maybe he’s already gotten dope-slapped at the General Store), but we’re not stupid.

I feel so validated, now that Larry Elkin, CPA, CFP, member of the cabal that came thisclose to crashing the global economy and that had to be bailed out by America’s rubes and dupes, has formally told me I’m not stupid.

They just allowed themselves to be led by an ideologue who spends most of his time in Washington, D.C., fighting a class war that has not been relevant for generations.

Say, maybe Bo Muller-Moore can print a bumper sticker that says “Brainwashed By Bernie.” It’d look purty on the bumper of my Subaru.

Town meetings work really well on matters that town residents know something about, like the importance of our covered bridge in Quechee.

Stick to small-town stuff, you peasants! Get to work and fix my goddamn bridge! Chop-chop!

But unless everyone guards against being manipulated and bullied into going along with the crowd, town meetings can also degenerate into mobs.

Ooooohhhh, manipulated, bullied mobs!  Well I remember the appalling TV news reports about the Reign of Terror on Town Meeting Day. Such horror, such senseless bloodshed. To me, the worst of it all was the mass guillotinings in Stowe.

Last week’s votes in Vermont are an object lesson in what can go wrong in small-town democracy. It is one that, fortunately, won’t do any harm in the long run.

…because, after all, we are still the Masters of the Universe. Suck on that, you rubes!

p.s. Vermont Tiger posted an excerpt from this piece and gave it their imprimatur. I, for one, am shocked that our Internet neighbors think so poorly of their fellow Vermonters.

For years, Congressional Republicans have sought to eliminate government subsidies for Amtrak. Wasteful! Unnecessary! Harrumph! Let it die if it can’t pay its own way!

This year, the Republican majority passed a highway bill that would strip out all funding for mass transit. Wasteful! Unnecessary! Harrumph!

But there’s one kind of mass transit the Republicans don’t mind subsidizing at all: the air travel system. “Airports inherently lose money,” an airport manager once told me. Kinda like Amtrak? And local transit agencies? Huh.

Huge quantities of public money are poured into our air travel system every year.  Some of it supports essential service. But a lot of it benefits business passengers and “general aviation,” i.e. private planes.  

Yep, public transit for the rich. Now that deserves a subsidy! Not like those dirty buses, trains, and subways.

After the jump, a case in point: Lebanon, NH.

The Lebanon Municipal Airport is in the news again. The Airport’s been losing money for years, and things aren’t looking up. So city and airport officials have called an “Airport Summit” for Tuesday, March 20.

Last year, the airport brought in $728,000 in revenues. Expenses totaled just under $1 million, leaving a deficit of $270,000. Almost 33%. But when you factor in hefty federal subsidies, the airport’s numbers look a lot worse than that.

Lebanon Airport offers passenger service through Cape Air: four daily flights to Boston and two to New York City. Those are small planes, and the average one is less than half full. For providing this service, Cape Air gets a big fat government check through a program called “Essential Air Service” — $2.3 million in 2009.  The vast majority of Lebanon’s passengers were business travelers; most civilians prefer to use Manchester or Burlington, where flights are more frequent, destinations more numerous, and tickets far cheaper.

Without that EAS funding, Cape Air would almost certainly pull out of Lebanon Airport. That, in turn, would have a domino effect on the Airport’s traffic and revenue numbers, and on its other big source of government money: the Airport Improvement Program, or AIP.  

Lebanon gets about a million dollars a year from AIP. (Not included in its budget, because AIP can only be spent on improvement projects, not general operations.) It would lose that money if passenger loads fall below a certain limit. Even with Cape Air’s massively subsidized service, the Airport is in danger of suffering an 85% cut in AIP funds. And if Cape Air were to pull out entirely, the AIP money would disappear. Without AIP, the airport’s facilities would deteriorate in short order.

Its own manager says that if Lebanon Airport lost passenger service, its deficit would increase by about $400,000 a year. That would be catastrophic for a facility that many in Lebanon are already tired of underwriting with their own tax money.  

(Also, it must be noted, the Airport sits on a piece of extremely valuable real estate: on a plateau just above the busy Route 120 shopping strip, with an incredible view of the Connecticut River Valley. If Lebanon shut the airport and sold the land, it’s get a windfall profit and a sustained addition to its tax base.)

The EAS money is supposedly intended to support passenger travel at rural airports that would lose service if left to the tender mercies of the free market. (EAS was established after airlines were deregulated in 1978, because the carriers were fleeing small and medium-sized airports.) But in truth, certainly at Lebanon, the money’s real purpose is to make airports more attractive for general aviation.

There are places where it makes sense to subsidize travel. Places where the next-nearest airport is hours away. But Lebanon is a 90-minutes drive from two airports with much better passenger service, and a little over two hours away from Boston. You can make the drive in less time than it takes a passenger plane to take off, fly, and land. There’s already bus service linking Lebanon to Manchester and Boston, which could be significantly beefed up with a relatively tiny federal subsidy.

But this isn’t really about passengers. It’s about subsidizing business passengers (who are also subsidized by tax deductions for business travel), and it’s especially about maintaining facilities for private and corporate planes.

The federal government is considering a user fee of up to $100 for private planes. The revenues would much more fairly and directly pay for the costs of general aviation. But pilots and plane owners are up in arms. Private planes, especially corporate planes, are job creators, after all! Promoting business activity, boosting the economy.

That’s the kind of welfare Republicans can believe in.

Look, I’m not necessarily saying we should eliminate all the subsidies for aviation. There are arguments to be made for the system. I’m just pointing out a big and obvious inconsistency. In reality, there is no form of transportation that can fully pay its own costs. If we can afford to underwrite business travel through massive subsidy programs, we can spend an equivalent amount of money on trains, buses and subways.

And if we can’t do that, then we shouldn’t spend government funds on air travel for the One Percent.  

So the inexplicably popular IslamoSocialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is up for re-election this year, and the Republicans are looking for their David to take on this Goliath. Last week, it seemed like they’d found their man. But maybe not. Vermont Press Bureau:

Windsor Republican John MacGovern announced his bid against Sanders earlier this month. But his launch got a decidedly tepid response from GOP leaders, who hinted that a name-brand Republican might be waiting in the wings.

So they aren’t satisfied with a former Massachusetts State Representative and two-time losing candidate for Vermont State Senate who’s spent the last decade sponging off rich Dartmouth alumni with his bogus nonprofit The Hanover Institute.

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods ?

Where’s the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds ?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed ?

Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

Ever-louder rumblings about the emergence of another Republican challenger to Bernie Sanders have centered on one man: Kevin Dorn.

I  need a hero, I’m holding out for a hero ’till the morning light

He’s gotta be sure and it’s gotta be soon

And he’s gotta be larger than life, larger than life

Yes, the Man of Our Conservative Dreams, our Champion, our Hero: Kevin Dorn!

Kevin Dorn???

Yep, Kevin Dorn.

Er, ahem, you know, Secretary of Commerce under Jim Douglas? And before that, a lobbyist for the Home Builders and the Realtors?

Yeah, that guy.

We talked to Dorn today, and he confirmed he’s pondering a foray into electoral politics.

He won’t say right now whether he’s eying the U.S. Senate, a statewide office, or perhaps a seat in the Vermont Legislature.

I think Bonnie Tyler just walked offstage.

Kevin freakin’ Dorn.

Is this the Vermont GOP’s idea of “a name-brand Republican”? Sheesh. Much as I’d like to see the Republican Party become the Washington Generals of politics, that’s just sad.

Nothing against Kevin Dorn. I’m sure, in his own way, he’s a competent, accomplished guy. But y’know, it’s hard to see how Kevin Dorn is any bigger a name than John MacGovern, who has run multiple political campaigns and even won a few of ’em. And who has a whole bunch of rich Dartmouth alumni bankrolling his phony nonprofit, and might be able to dupe them into bankrolling a Senate candidacy.

The only real advantage Dorn has over MacGovern is that, in the minds of the VTGOP, he’s “one of us.” MacGovern is an interloper from the Upper Valley who’s done most of his work across the Connecticut, in Hanover. Dorn is our guy, a Douglas Administration insider and, according to the VPB, “a very close friend” of Brian Dubie. Yeah, that’s the stuff.

Now, in a big-picture sense, there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two. Both are auditioning for a lead role — not in “David vs. Goliath,” but in “Bambi vs. Godzilla.”

But it says something about the cluelessness of today’s Vermont Republicans that they’d view Kevin Dorn as a big name. And it says something about the state of the party, that their only choices for U.S. Senate might be John MacGovern or Kevin Dorn.  

Today I spent an hour monitoring the local ad breaks in the Rush Limbaugh Show, to see what local businesses were supporting his misogyny. And what I heard made me feel pretty good: there was an obvious dearth of actual local advertising.  

I was listening on WSNO, 1450 AM in central Vermont, roughly between 12:40 and 1:40 pm. A decent sample size.

The tally:

— 6 local paid spots

— 7 national ads*

— 4 public service announcements (unpaid)

— 5 station promos (unpaid)

— 3 bits of station content (unpaid; weather, community calendar)

*Syndicated programs are often bartered: You get our shows for free, you agree to carry our spots. The stations put those ads in open slots, wherever they haven’t managed to sell the time to local advertisers. These spots are usually offloaded into non-peak hours; their appearance in Limbaugh is not a good sign for him.

Rush Limbaugh is the highest-rated conservative talker, and he’s supposed to be a profit center for local stations. And yet, WSNO only managed to sell six slots out of 25. That’s a really bad ratio. It’s strong evidence that a lot of local advertisers are steering clear of Rush, even though there’s been no public groundswell on the local level.

So you probably want to know: who’s still sponsoring Rush?

Answers after the jump…  

There was only one local advertiser with multiple spots in that hour of Limbaugh: Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont, with two.

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, I’m disappointed. I thought you were nonpartisan!

Surely, if you seek to build a broad coalition of support for your “common sense” ideas, the last thing you’d want to do is associate your cause with Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure I speak for all of us at GMD when I say, please reconsider your support for Rush. It’s only harming your credibility as a nonpartisan entity.

Snort.

The other local advertisers were three car dealerships — Walker Volkswagen, Town and Country Honda, and Formula Nissan — and Westview Meadows, a retirement community in Montpelier. The dealerships buy huge amounts of advertising on just about every local radio station in the area, and probably made a big “Run of Schedule” buy on WSNO — meaning their ads run throughout the day, not on any particular show. Retirement home, there’s Rush’s core demographic in a nutshell.

I’ll also mention that many of those national advertisers were not… shall we say… from the best of families. They included a “natural” weight-loss supplement, the Lifelock identity-security pitch, an ambulance-chasing lawyer trolling for mesothelioma patients, and an investment firm trying to get people to invest their IRAs in gold. (They’re going to hell.)

All in all, a very weak showing for the King of Conservative Talk.  If this randomly-selected hour is any indication, Rush Limbaugh may be in even more trouble than we thought.

If you want to monitor your local station while minimizing your exposure to Rush, his local breaks occur at roughly the same times every hour, approximately :18-20, :30-34, :45-46. :54-56, and :58-06 (mostly news, but also local spots). Simplest thing is to listen during those eight minutes, or perhaps from :54-06 if you can stand two minutes of Rush.

VT stations that carry Rush: WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland. Also NH-based AM 1490 in the Upper Valley.

(It’s 3 a.m., I have insomnia, and I’m feeling uncharitable. Release the Kraken!!!)

___________________________________________

Hear ye, hear ye! Big news from the Vermont gubernatorial campaign! Randy Brock is about to do something! Or so he says!

The glad tidings from Thatcher Moats at the Vermont Press Bureau. Quotes from VPB, snark from Yours Truly.  

Sen. Randy Brock, the Franklin County Republican who will try to take the governor’s office this fall, said he spent Town Meeting Day week gearing up for his election bid, raising money and putting his campaign infrastructure in place.

“Wups, it’s March already, and the Leg is off this week. Guess I better do somethin’.”

This week, Brock said, he will announce the main consulting firms he is hiring for the gubernatorial race, which will provide the backbone of his campaign.

The chattering class is rapt. (Darcie Johnston.) Who will Brock hire? (Darcie Johnston.) What big names, what giants of modern politics, will he enlist? (Darcie Johnston, Darcie Johnston.)

After the jump: Yeah, more snark.  

Brock said he will rely more on specialists in media, polling and policy from outside firms while trying to be lighter on paid staff.

This strategy will allow his campaign to “let people do what they do well,” Brock said on Tuesday.

Oooh, he’s privatizing his campaign! How 21st Century Neocon of him.

Not to mention cheap. Guess he won’t be paying any health insurance premiums or Workers’ Comp.

W-2’s or 1099’s? You make the call.

The firms Brock intends to announce this week will form a major part of his campaign, he said, but additional resources will continue to be added.

“It will be a substantial part of it, yes, but it will not be all of it,” he said.

“Oh God, I hope I can raise some more money.”

Brock held three house party fundraisers as the Legislature took its week-long, mid-session break, the candidate said. Brock wouldn’t say how much money he raised.

There’s a good sign.

“I will simply say our fundraising is on target,” Brock said.

Aim for the stars, and perhaps you’ll reach the sky. Aim for the ground, you’ll probably hit it.

Brock said he also held an event at the DoubleTree hotel in South Burlington on Saturday that raised money, but was more focused on bringing together “some of the key people” – ranging from policy advisers to students with an interest in grassroots organizing – who will chart the path to victory.

“A real motley crew, that was; we passed the hat and got $6.27. Managed to get some frat boys signed on to my ‘grassroots organizing’ team, once they had enough beer in ’em.”