Dr. George Till, State Representative (D-Jericho) is back with another online Physician Survey on legislative issues related to health care. You may recall the foofaraw over his 2011 survey and its breathlessly reported topline: IF WE PASS SINGLE-PAYER, ONE-QUARTER OF VERMONT’S DOCTORS WILL LEAVE THE STATE!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Caps and italics mine. And exclamation marks.)

There were some problems, reported here at GMD if not elsewhere, that meant the survey was highly unreliable. Licensed physicians were notified of the survey by postcard, but anyone could go online and fill it out. Notification was only as reliable as Dr. Till’s mailing list. It was possible to fill out the survey more than once. The survey was unscientific; it wasn’t a true sampling of physician opinion, but a voluntary online poll of those motivated to fill it out.  (36% of licensed physicians completed the survey.) Also, the “licensed physician” category includes a whole lot of people who are retired, have left medical practice, live in neighboring states but are licensed in Vermont, and have moved away but maintained their Vermont license.

(Many doctors maintain licenses in multiple states. Non-practicing doctors often keep their licensing current in case they decide to go back to medicine. Renewing an existing license is far simpler than re-applying.)

After the jump: slightly more secure, but still fundamentally flawed. Also, apes.  

Well, Dr. Till has a new, improved, secure survey for 2012. As he noted in his postcard to physicians:

Because last years (sic) survey was contaminated by certain advocates and non physicians, your license number will be required to complete the survey.

Contaminated! “Take your filthy paws off my survey, you damn dirty ape!” Funny, that word “contaminated” rings a bell… From a comment posted on GMD April 12, 2011, about a week after Till’s first survey was released:

Rep. Till addressed the Democratic caucus today concerning the brouhaha with his survey. Basically, he was angry with the fact that the survey had been tainted by “contaminants”. He referred to the fact that some members of the caucus had accessed it, as well as maybe some others in the building.

At least some of those damn dirty apes were, as he himself noted, fellow members of his party caucus. Must have been an uncomfortable moment.

This time, in order to access the online survey, you have to enter your license number and specialty. I’m sure there are ways to hack it, but it should at least keep out the casual non-physician and cut down on specious responses.

However, all the other problems remain. This will not be a scientific survey because the responders are self-selecting. Till’s mailing list may or may not be comprehensive. Nonresidents, and nonpracticing physician, are still eligible to respond if they have Vermont licenses. We don’t know what will happen if a physician tries to take the survey more than once; will the survey reject a license number if it’s entered multiple times? (For instance, that semiretired orthopod in Rutland who’s a frequent guest on “Common Sense Radio” bashing HCR. He’s motivated, and he’s got time on his hands.)

Remember all of this in a few weeks, when Dr. Till holds a news conference and the Vermont media report this as a meaningful reflection of physician opinion.

‘Tisn’t.

p.s. If any of you damn dirty apes out there do manage to hack the survey, we’d like to hear. I’m especially interested in finding out which questions are asked and how they’re worded.

Oh dear. The chair of the Vermont GOP, Jack Lindley, has a serious case of Bunched Knicker Syndrome. He’s upset that his man, Thurston Howell the Thir — er, Mitt Romney — failed to win 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary. That means Mitt will have to share Vermont’s 17 delegates with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.

(Probably also means a couple of Lindley’s golfing buddies will miss out on a trip to the convention, replaced by scruffy goldbugs from the Paul camp. But perhaps I’m being overly churlish, due to the ridiculosity of what follows.) Vermont Digger:

Lindley… says he wants the Vermont Secretary of State to examine alleged poll reporting irregularities. Lindley says a new state reporting system for municipal officials led to anomalous results that were posted on the Secretary of State’s website Tuesday night. He stopped short, however, of calling for a formal probe.

“I’m not asking for an investigation,” Lindley said. “I’m asking for an examination by the Secretary of State whose principal responsibility is to validate the integrity of the ballot in Vermont.”

After the jump: political hypertension and Much Ado About Nothing.  

That would be the, as Lindley would say, DEMOCRAT Secretary of State Jim Condos. Lindley’s griping about a new secure online reporting system that had its first run on Tuesday. Before the vote, some test results had been posted on the site, and some were still visible on Tuesday.

“The mistake the GOP made yesterday was they were thinking these were official results – they weren’t,” Condos said. “It’s hard not to think it’s sour grapes. They thought Romney would take 50 percent, and they’re looking to blame somebody and they’re blaming our office.”

It’s standard practice for an election reporting system to post test results before a vote count begins. Sometimes it’s a string of zeroes, sometimes it’s really outlandish totals. Because if the test results are implausible, nobody will mistake them for the real results. Well, not unless they had a big political ax to grind. Cue the Fox News-style harrumphing:

“Obviously the Secretary of State’s site was not accurate,” Lindley said. “Their response was this was an unofficial tally. I’m not sure what kind of system we’re running here, either we have it right or we don’t.”

Problem is, all the officially-reported results were accurate. The test results were never counted. The new system worked! That’s plainly obvious to anyone who isn’t ignoring the facts to try to score a cheap political point.

Lindley then turned to Burlington, the ACORN-riddled Rotten Borough of his fevered imagination.

About 800 provisional Burlington ballots, including about 200 that weren’t matched with Social Security cards or drivers’ licenses, Lindley says, should have been challenged by Republican candidate for mayor, Kurt Wright.

…”Any party would have an opportunity to challenge provisional ballots and they’ve walked away with that, which I think is regrettable,” Lindley said. “So what have we got? We don’t even know if they’re Americans.”

AHA! The smoking gun! Kurt Wright’s landslide defeat can be explained by trumped-up uncertainties over a couple hundred provisional ballots. Never mind that he lost by more than two thousand votes. The anti-immigrant bit is an especially nice, completely irrelevant and baseless touch.

I guess this is what we can expect from Jack Lindley’s Vermont Republican Party: a dogged search for any little thing he can turn into a talking point, no matter how outlandish. A blizzard of hysterical press releases and dudgeony news conferences. Trumped-up allegations of Democrat/liberal perfidy, with constant Bernie “Socialist” Sanders name-dropping.

Ignoring the fact that Bernie is the most popular political figure in the state. But Lindley isn’t using the Jim Douglas happy-face playbook; he’s using the Rush Limbaugh/Fox News/Karl Rove playbook. Small problem: that stuff doesn’t resonate in Vermont. He keeps this up, his party’s going to get its ass kicked in November.

Question: Jack Lindley was chair of the VTGOP once before, in the late 70s and early 80s. Back when the party’s officeholders were Dick Snelling, Bob Stafford, and Jim Jeffords. Not exactly doctrinaire conservatives, and men who were certainly willing to work across party lines. So what happened to the VTGOP, and to Jack Lindley, between then and now?  

I think they’ve caught a bad case of Fox poisoning.  

Gonna put up a few thoughts on yesterday’s voting and invite others to do the same. In the Comments, or in diaries of your own.  

Presidential Primary Headline: “Santorum Trails in Vermont Three-Way.” (Sorry, you may need to flush your eyes in Lysol.) But seriously, Mitt Romney managed a 14-point victory, but only got about 40% of the vote. Bad showing for Mitt in a northeastern state not known for rabid conservatism. It must be heartening to El Jefe General John McClaughry and his Ethan Allen Boys that Ron Paul managed to finish second.

Miro Wins Burlington: Speaking purely as an outside observer, I’m surprised. I thought the Dem/Prog infighting — which the Dems started, IMO, with some of their comments about Tim Ashe being too much of a Prog — plus the Wanda Hines candidacy would give Kurt Wright enough room to slip into the Big Chair. I was concerned that, despite his moderate/good guy image, he’d turn out to be a serious conservative and take some steps (selling Burlington Electric?) that’d be impossible for a future Mayor to undo.

Whither Progs? Having lost the Mayoralty, they must be pondering their future direction. I hope a GMDer with Prog inclinations can offer more insight on the subject.

Corporate Personhood: Incomplete returns at this hour, but so far, it’s a big “yes” for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. Of the more than 50 communities considering the issue, at least half approved it, and only two towns (so far) have reportedly said no.  

That’s it for me. Comments welcome.  

Today’s Valley News has a story about the station that carries Rush Limbaugh et al. in the Upper Valley and Kearsarge/Sunapee region of New Hampshire. The reaction: No plans to take him off the air, and nothing much from local advertisers.

The station is actually two: WNTK-FM in New London NH, and WUVR-AM in Lebanon NH. They are owned by the very conservative Bob Vinikoor, who’d be philosophically disinclined to dump Rush unless it was really bad for business. And personally, he doesn’t see a problem with Limbaugh’s toxic rants.

Vinikoor, the WNTK owner, said he was satisfied with Limbaugh’s apology, but added, “It was still a pretty poor choice of words, and the wrong thing to say.”

Yeah, as we’ve noted before, it wasn’t a “poor choice of words,” it was a three-day torrent of horrible words. And when you do a talk show like that, you plan out what you’re going to say. It’s not scripted, and you want it to sound off-the-cuff, but he had his talking points before he went on the air, and he knew exactly what he was going to do.  

As for the advertisers, the Valley News spoke with a few of them, and only found one that was considering a pull-out (geez, the double entendres are almost as bad as with Santorum). Which isn’t terribly surprising; many local business owners are quite conservative, and like Vinikoor, inclined to advertise on Rush because they like him. Unless it was really bad for business. A sampling:

Steve Gunnerson, the administrator for Newport-based Summercrest, an assisted living and senior community, said he wasn’t concerned because Limbaugh had apologized.

“With an apology, that helps a lot,” he said.

And Bill Bates, manager of R.P. Johnson & Son, a building materials company with stores in Sunapee and Andover, N.H., also said he was satisfied that Limbaugh had apologized. “If someone is man enough to apologize, I think you have to accept it and go on,” Bates said.

So, look not to the Upper Valley for a mass movement against Rush Limbaugh.

One rather pathetic note: WNTK put up an online poll about Rush, and got a grand total of 26 responses. Twenty-six. They’ve either got a tiny audience, or a remarkably tech-unsavvy one. (A combination, I think.) Of the 26, 11 wanted him off the air, five who said his apology was insufficient, and 10 who said the apology should settle the matter. (I couldn’t find the poll on their website. Either they’ve closed the poll or they’ve got a really crappy website. Or both.)

BTW, I haven’t had the chance yet to listen to my local Limbaugh carrier (Lysol! Where’s my Lysol?). When I do, I’ll start totting up the local advertisers.  

Today, the towns of Eden and Lowell are deciding whether to accept federal Superfund money to pay for cleanup of the former Vermont Asbestos Group mine. Cleanup has been recommended by the state Agency of Natural Resources.

But not by Governor Shumlin. In a comment last Friday while walking down the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, the Governor dumped all over his own agency.

“That asbestos has been there a long time,” he said, when he was asked why he has left the question of whether the state should seek Superfund rehabilitation of the site up to a vote of the two towns on Tuesday.

Shumlin indicated the waste piles aren’t posing a threat that would require action and added, “It’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Problem, Gov. The sleeping dogs aren’t in peaceful repose; they’re migrating downstream. Your own agency says so.

After the jump: Multiple violations and pointed questions.

Ongoing erosion of asbestos tailing/waste rock piles is impairing downstream wetlands and streams, which are impacted with asbestos-containing sediments. Without stabilization measures, the asbestos-containing sediments will migrate further downstream.

This impairment is a violation of the Vermont Water Quality standards and the Federal Clean Air Act.

…Sediment discharged from the mine site contains asbestos, which by state and federal definition is a hazardous material.

…The site is also not in compliance with applicable regulations, including the state’s Solid Waste Rules, Stormwater and Wetland Regulations.

There are doubts in Eden and Lowell about the wisdom of a cleanup. Will it be fully funded from start to finish? Would a partial cleanup, or a cleanup in progress, be worse than nothing? I can understand these concerns, and if I lived there, it’d be a tough choice.

But if I lived in a community downstream from the mine, I’d wonder why in hell I don’t get a vote on carcinogens in my water, and why the people of Eden and Lowell get to decide whether or not to continue violating a passel of state and federal regulations.

Me, I wonder how I’d feel if I worked in the Agency of Natural Resources and my Governor was going out of his way to sabotage my work.

And I wonder how far he’s willing to take his cavalier attitude toward state and federal environmental law.  

(A little fantasy, on the heels of GMCR’s unsubtle arm-twisting.)

A Milton woman held a news conference at the Statehouse today, to promote her bid for state tax relief.

23-year-old Sally Johnson, a swing-shift clerk at Maplefields and part-time student at the Community College of Vermont, says if the Legislature fails to lower her tax burden, she will have to consider moving out of state. “I’d really like to stay here, and fully intend to make job-creating investments in heating oil and prescription drugs,” she said, balancing her toddler son on her hip, “but I need a little help to make it economically viable.”

The Shumlin Administration was quick to respond. “We simply cannot afford to lose Ms. Johnson,” said gubernatorial amanuensis Jeb Spaulding. “Because she immediately spends every dime she makes on the necessities of life, she has a direct economic impact that reaches far beyond her relatively meager lifestyle.”

House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President John Campbell promised swift legislative action on the issue.

(Yep, just a fantasy.)

So I was listening to retired Middlebury College professor (and ineludible go-to guy for election analysis in Vermont) Eric Davis this morning on the Mark Johnson Show. And it hit me…

Pundit Laureate.

We’ve got Poets Laureate. They provide a highbrow sheen to the mundane events of public life, a little academic fairy-dust to the grey landscape.

Pundits do much the same. From Walter Lippmann to David Broder to tne NPR tag team of E.J. Dionne and David Brooks, they turn the messy business of politics into a Platonian dialogue, and festoon conventional wisdom with the baubles of putative knowledge.  

We need a Pundit Laureate. And we need Eric Davis as the inaugural titleholder. Imagine the swearing-in of the Governor: after a brief dribble from the Poet Laureate, Eric Davis will take the stage in an elaborate outfit (I suggest this one) and deliver a brief exposition on What It All Means.

I can think of no finer way to commemorate public occasions. Eric Davis for Pundit Laureate!

Headline: Hell Freezes Over. Yes, Rush Limbaugh has issued an apology. In the smallest possible way. After three days of publicly savaging Sandra Fluke on his national radio show, Rush apologized on Saturday. On his website.

Which sets the stage for a Monday full of self-pity and counterattack. “I apologized! What more do they want? They’re trying to force me off the air!”

The apology was, of course, laughably minimal. “Poor word choices.” Yeah, three days of calling her a slut, prostitute, nymphomaniac, saying she should post sex tapes online, etc., etc., etc. Thousands and thousands of “poor word choices.”

On Friday, I suggested listening to Rush’s show, taking note of local advertisers, and contacting them. The worst part of this is the “listening to Rush’s show” part, but there’s an easy way to minimize the pain. The show has a strict clock. Local content and commercials: :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.

This information is from an excellent diary on Daily Kos entitled “How to take action against Limbaugh at the local level.” It’s an excellent summary, highly recommended.

VT stations that carry Rush: WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland.

Last week, in an interview on WDEV Radio, state Republican Party chair Jack Lindley said that his party’s ticket for statewide offices was pretty much set. But, he added, we shouldn’t expect any announcements until the time was right.

He did say that Sen. Randy Brock was all but certain to be the Republican challenger to Governor Shumlin: “the ship has sailed,” he said, on others getting into the race.

So, in the absence of a big announcement, let’s examine some tea leaves and entrails.

We know we’ve got Brock for Governor and Phil “Blue Collar” Scott for a second term as Lieutenant Governor. It seems unlikely that the GOP would jettison its other statewide officeholder, Tom Salmon. In that WDEV interview, Lindley made some very positive comments about Salmon’s anti-embezzlement crusade (which mostly consists of cut-and-pastework plus some breathless news releases, but never mind).  

That leaves us with three offices occupied by Democrats: Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer.

After the jump: rumors, inferences, speculation, general snarkitude, and… The Penguin!!!

Attorney General. Let’s start with rumors of a primary challenge for longtime incumbent Democrat Bill Sorrell. Some names have been bruited about in the media, including Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan and Speaker Shap Smith. That could be just Statehouse water-cooler talk, but for the most telling development of the week: Governor Shumlin’s conspicuous non-endorsement of Sorrell:

When asked at his weekly press conference whether he would endorse Sorrell, Shumlin paused for a few seconds, then said, “The attorney general is doing a great job for Vermont. I’m not going to get involved in electoral politics until past the filing date in any of the offices statewide in Vermont to see whether or not anyone … There are other people seeking those offices, so we’ll have plenty of time for politics after Labor Day so we’ll discuss it then.”

To Sorrell, that pause must have seemed interminable. In the words of Don Corleone: “I said that I would see you because I had heard that you were a serious man, to be treated with respect. But I must say no to you…” 

Next thing you know, horse’s head under the sheets.

On the Republican side, there’s been speculation about Sen. Vince Illuzzi as the AG candidate. Makes sense in a way; he’s a high-profile lawmaker with a bipartisan reputation. He currently sits as a Democrat/Republican. But for those just joining us, he carries some incredibly heavy baggage pertaining to the job of Attorney General. (This baggage was detailed in a 2007 GMD diary; highlights below.)

On at least three occasions in his career as an attorney, he has gotten into trouble for professional misdeeds. The most serious cost him the ability to practice law for four years. In part, it involved a dispute with a judge named David Suntag who, as it happened, was married to the state bar’s counsel investigating Illuzzi for earlier misdeeds. This is from a 2001 Boston Globe story, which is preserved online in a hard-to-read plaintext format, but is well worth the effort:

In the summer of 1993, [state bar counsel Wendy] Collins’s investigation concluded that Illuzzi had violated the Code of Professional Responsibility and moved to suspend his law license. Illuzzi fought all the way to the state Supreme Court, but the justices ruled against him, determining that “his conduct was aimed at interfering with a pending legal proceeding.” On September 1, 1993, his six-month suspension went into effect.

…There’s more. During his suspension, Illuzzi apparently continued to represent clients. The first letter of apology he promised to write to Suntag somehow never got sent, and the next one, which Illuzzi insisted had been mailed, never got to the judge, who had not changed either office or home addresses for five years. The third letter made it.

His combined transgressions cost Illuzzi 4 years of enforced hiatus from the practice of law, and the bar counsel (no longer Wendy Collins) moved to have him disbarred. But on March 19, 1998, more than a month after his latest suspension expired, a hearing panel unanimously recommended that Illuzzi be reinstated as a member of the bar.

So. Are the Republicans ready to give this guy their stamp of approval for Attorney General? It would seem unlikely, but there are hints at a high-profile gig of some kind in Illuzzi’s immediate future.

First: we hear he’s doing some serious attention-whoring. This has always been a big part of Vince’s M.O., but he seems to have upped the ante of late. Second, and more telling, was the Wednesday news conference where Republican mucky-mucks gathered to endorse Mitt Romney for President. Quite a few top elephants were in the room; but the pre-event news release specifically touted three: former NH Governor John Sununu, the gubernatorial nominee-in-waiting Randy Brock, and our man Vince Illuzzi.

To single him out for special notice would seem to signify a bigger role for him in the state GOP’s 2012 plans. And while he could be running for Treasurer (nah) or Secretary of State (meh), there’d certainly be an interesting psychodynamic in having a formerly-disgraced lawyer mounting an Oswald Cobblepot-style “revenge campaign” for AG. Hopefully without exploding penguins.

Treasurer. Incumbent Democrat Beth Pearce was appointed to the office in 2011 by Governor Shumlin to replace Jeb Spaulding, who left the post (immediately after winning re-election) to become the Governor’s Secretary of Administration. She’d been deputy treasurer for seven years. She is running for re-election; it will be her first ever political campaign.

Rumor has it that her Republican challenger will be Wendy Wilton, currently Treasurer of the City of Rutland. Wilton has been a high-profile critic of Governor Shumlin’s health care reform plans, brandishing her own “careful, professional analysis” indicating that the new system “will result in a $300+ million annual shortfall.”  Don’t know how her “careful, professional analysis” jibes with the Republican attack line that we don’t know anything about the Governor’s plan and he needs to tell us NOW. (Exactly how did she analyze a secret plan?) But never mind.

Wilton has been a frequent guest on The Ethan Allen Institute’s “True North Radio,” delivering her critique of the Shumlin plan. She also seems to be spending a lot of time in Montpelier by Rutland city official standards — enhancing her visibility, cadging support, or perhaps just meeting with her favorite Senator.

Secretary of State. Democrat Jim Condos would be up for re-election; presumably he’s planning to run. We don’t have any rumors or whisperings on the Republican side. If you got ’em, load ’em up in the Comments below.

My guess — and that’s absolutely all it is — is that the Republicans will put up some Tea Party type to placate that wing of the party and to play attack-dog on the voter-fraud issue. Considering how hard it is to beat an incumbent in one of these relatively obscure statewide contests, this has to be a low priority for the Vermont GOP.

Summary. If these rumors are true, the Republicans appear to be bracing for a hard-right campaign (by Vermont standards) focused almost entirely on health care, with no particular effort at appealing to the center aside from Phil Scott’s blue-collar bonhomie. Brock, with close advisor (and possibly campaign-manager-in-waiting) Darcie Johnston, late of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, is certainly poised for a frontal attack on the health care issue. Wilton would add a veneer of fiscal expertise to the proceedings.

In his WDEV interview, Lindley acknowledged that Gov. Shumlin had a lot going for him — managing the Irene crisis, steering the state through what Jim Douglas promised would be a budgetary Armageddon*, and co-opting a fave Republican issue by blocking proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy. But Lindley slammed Shumlin and the Dems for being “arrogant.” He used that word a lot. That’s a measure of Republican frustration with their tiny legislative minorities; but it also ties directly back to their criticism of Shumlin’s health care plans — by refusing to finalize the details until after the next election, the Dems are, in effect, confidence tricksters, asking the voters to buy their snake oil. That’s arrogance for ya.  

*You remember — that fiscal disaster that would befall Vermont in a year or two because the Legislature overrode his veto of the 2010 budget? Yeah, remember that? Didn’t happen.

Scott and Illuzzi would be on their own respective islands, lending some bipartisan cred to the increasingly right-wing post-Jim Douglas Republican Party. The Scott Island looks secure, while Illuzzi might be getting the Gaye Symington Memorial Booby Prize — a high-profile nomination followed by a pat on the back and a kick out the door. The Republicans can’t seriously imagine that a guy whose law license was suspended for four years — and who came very close to permanent disbarment — can really hope to win the Attorney Generalship against either a familiar incumbent or a Democratic replacement who’d have the full backing of the Shumlin machine. Can they?

Then again, maybe Illuzzi’s running for State. Heh.

Stay tooned!

Today was the third consecutive day of Rush Limbaugh’s vicious, misogynist attacks on Sandra Fluke, the college student who had the temerity to want to testify before a Congressional panel on the importance of birth-control coverage in health insurance.

I won’t include any details here, because I’d need to dip myself in Lysol afterward. Follow the link if you must know.

The good news is, he’s finally getting some blowback in the most harmful possible way — his advertisers. Three national advertisers have already pulled out, and there’s growing pressure on others, including ProFlowers, Oreck, Citrix, and eHarmony*. This is, as far as I know, the first time that Limbaugh has lost advertisers due to his excesses. Let’s hope the momentum keeps up.

*Late add: eHarmony says it doesn’t advertise on Rush, but is looking into whether “network buys” might include his show. Apparently there’s at least one list of Rush advertisers that is partially incorrect. (A “network buy” is where you purchase advertising time on a slate of programs, and your ads are assigned to different shows based on availability of time. So an advertiser might unknowingly be scheduled on Rush’s show.)

After the jump: Taking it local?

It’s fairly simple to join the pressure campaign nationally. But we could also do some good locally, by identifying local businesses that advertise on Limbaugh’s show. Which, unfortunately, means listening to Rush and taking down the names of local advertisers.

If anyone can stomach the task, please contact the advertisers and also list their names in the Comments below.

p.s. This is my own idea and does not reflect the opinions of the other GMD front pagers. I hope they don’t mind. If this gains enough traction, maybe we can assemble a list of Rushvertisers on this page somewhere.  

Limbaugh’s show is broadcast on WVMT (620 AM) in Burlington, WSNO (1450 AM) in Barre, and WSYB (1380 AM) in Rutland.