Vermont’s highest-profile Republican official, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, is temporizing just a bit on the state GOP’s clear choice for President, Mitt Romney.

Scott told the Vermont Press Bureau on Thursday that he will likely pull the lever for Romney on Super Tuesday, but an endorsement is an extra step he wasn’t willing to take.

…Endorsing Romney would mean he would have to get “100 percent behind the candidate,” said Scott, something his isn’t able to do.

His big objection seems to be Romney’s social status — which is kind of odd for the party that insists America is a classless society. Be that as it may,

“I come from a blue collar background and feel like I’m still blue collar, and I’m not sure Mitt Romney – and it’s not his fault – but I’m not sure he understands some of the struggles we all face,” said Scott. “He lives in a different world than I do.”

I know how you feel, Phil, I know how you feel. I do have to wonder how the rest of the state party establishment views his electoral diffidence.

And I realize Phil Scott is a man of principle, but did he perhaps take a gander at that new poll showing Romney getting trounced by Obama in Vermont? You don’t want to be too close to the guy in the shadow of a falling piano. Or, in T-Road terms, you don’t want to tail a car with a smoking engine.

Well, well. Press release posted on Vermont Digger: “Vermonters for Health Care Freedom Announces Wennberg as Executive Director.”

Wennberg is a former Vermont Commissioner of Environmental Conservation [under Jim Douglas], a former Rutland City Mayor, and a public policy consultant. Wennberg assumes the responsibilities of VHCF from founder Darcie Johnston on March 1, 2012. Johnston is leaving the organization to focus on her consulting business.

Seems rather sudden. Why, just the other day, she was hosting an “informational session” in the NEK under the flag of convenience “Vermonters for Health Care Reform.”

My guess? She’s been a longtime advisor/consultant to Sen. Randy Brock, the putative Republican gubernatorial candidate*. At last notice, he didn’t have a campaign manager. You do the math.

*VT GOP chair Jack Lindley said last week that “the ship has sailed” regarding other candidates, and that Brock will be the Republican challenger to Gov. Shumlin.

So, Andrew Breitbart, right-wing blogger, provocateur, professional Angry Man, and patron of the execrable James O’Keefe, has died at the age of 43. He left a wife and four children, who I’m sure are in a state of shock and grief.

And he left a thoroughly detestable public legacy. He was a bully. He played a major role in the coarsening of political debate, and helped push the Republican Party further and further to the right. He fundamentally perverted the concept of “journalism,” using it as a partisan cudgel with absolutely no regard for the truth. He provided a high-profile platform and backing for a variety of snakes and weasels, most notably James O’Keefe. He killed a fine organization in ACORN and soiled the reputation of Shirley Sherrod, among many others.

I can’t say this about many people, but America’s public life will absolutely be better off without Andrew Breitbart. He joins the ranks of the Thankfully Dead, alongside Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Lee Atwater.

If you’d like to read a more measured Breitbart remembrance from a lefty, see Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. He’s a bigger man than I. Or maybe it’s that he knew Breitbart personally, so he has a different perspective. Me, I only knew the public figure, and that’s what I can evaluate. Speaking of him purely as a public figure, I’m glad he’s gone.  

(Late add 3/1, 12:00 noon: We’ve received a response from one of the groups mentioned in this diary. See addendum below.)

We’ve blogged at length on GMD about the Campaign for Vermont, the public-policy nonprofit that seems to be a vehicle for promoting its founder Bruce Lisman. (Who is also its sole funder, according to Andy Bromage of Seven Days. Lisman won’t divulge how much money he’s spent on CFV, which is a bit strange for someone who promotes transparency in government.)

Lisman and CFV first came to my attention through their ubiquitous radio ads on WDEV and elsewhere. Lately, another “issue ad” has been filling the airwaves: a spot urging Vermonters to reject the wireless “smart meters” that CVPS plans to start installing in the near future. The ads warn of a possible loss of privacy and potential health effects of exposure to wireless transmissions.

The group sponsoring the ads is called “Wake Up, Opt Out.” I did a little digging on the Interwebs to see what I could discover about them. I found some very curious, very interesting stuff; it raises some important questions, and makes me doubt the group’s bona fides.  

After the jump: Two organizations, two PR guys from out of state, and a dearth of financial information.  

The head of “Wake Up, Opt Out” is Jesse Mayhew, a PR/communications professional from Northampton, Massachusetts. Mayhew is co-owner of an ad agency/PR firm called Brave One. His partner in the firm is Lukas Snelling.

If that name rings a bell, it’s because Snellling is head of “Energize Vermont,” another advocacy group fighting another energy initiative in Vermont — wind power.

“Brave One” touts itself as an expert shop on “cause marketing” and corporate social responsibility (CSR for short). Its clients include businesses large and small (Capital One and Energizer are on their client list), and some nonprofit organizations.

Corporate social responsibility is a strategy of corporate self-regulation whose goal is compliance with legal and ethical standards. A three-word slogan is often invoked: “People, Planet, Profits.” Depending on how you see it or how it’s implemented, CSR could create meaningful change in a corporation — or it could be a way to whitewash a firm with a bad image and forestall tougher government regulation.

“Cause marketing” involves a cooperative effort between a for-profit business and a non-profit organization, with the aim of benefiting both. One example: a credit card company donates a small amount of money to a nonprofit for every card transaction. The charity gets some bucks, the company gets some positive PR and maybe even an uptick in card use.

In short, Mayhew and Snelling operate in what I see as a big fat ethical gray area. They may be encouraging corporations to move in positive directions, but they certainly never question a corporation’s basic purpose or business plan. Call it corporate responsibility, or call it greenwashing. Really, it could be either. Or both.

So we have two Vermont organizations opposing new energy initiatives, claiming to be gatherings of concerned Vermonters, but headed by PR guys from Massachusetts. Both groups have the same goal: raising questions about the safety and environmental consequences of renewable-energy projects, and fomenting opposition to the projects.

Mayhew has refused to answer questions about the cost of the “Wake Up, Opt Out” campaign or its funding sources. That troubles me greatly. I could not find any information about Energize Vermont’s funding.

I realize that each group has attracted some support from authentic Vermonters, and that some in the GMD community are opposed to wind or smart meters or both. I’m not making any judgments about the merits of these causes. But I do have serious questions, and serious qualms, about Mayhew and Snelling and the organizations they head.

Do they operate out of sincere environmental concern, or are they front men for astroturf organizations? Are they funded by donations from concerned citizens, or are they bankrolled by traditional energy industries like coal or oil? Or nuclear?

We don’t know. And as far as I can tell, the Massachusetts boys aren’t telling. If they are authentic public-interest groups, they should be willing to open their books.

______________

Addendum: This diary has brought a response from John Liccardi, President of Energize Vermont. He posted it in the Comments below, but I felt I should include it in the diary itself since many GMD readers skip the comments. His statement:

I’d like to thank Mr. Liccardi for responding, and apologize for mischaracterizing his organization. Haven’t heard anything yet from “Wake Up, Opt Out.”

This one’s a few days old, but I just came across it and couldn’t resist.

Researchers at Cal-Berkeley have conducted a series of studies indicating that upper-class people are more likely than lower-class people to lie, cheat, and break the law.

“We found that it is much more prevalent for people in the higher ranks of society to see  greed and self-interest … as  good pursuits,” said Paul Piff, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Berkeley. “This resonates with a lot of current events these days.”

Sure does.

After the jump: Seven signs of malignity, and Rick Santorum restores my peace of mind.

Piff et al did a total of seven studies. From the abstract of their paper, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (link to abstract; online access to full paper restricted to subscribers):

In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

In Study #6, the prize involved was $50. So rich people are willing to cheat for pocket change.

Gosh. And here I thought that greed is good, that wealth is a sign of God’s favor, and that poverty is the outward manifestation of faulty character. Maybe not?

Large sums of money may give people greater feelings of entitlement, causing those people to be the most averse to wealth distribution, Piff continued.  Poorer people may be less likely to cheat, because they are more dependent on their community at large, he said.

But wait a minute– this study came out of a university! And Cal-Berkeley, no less! There you go: liberal academia, brainwashing our young, etc., etc., Rick Santorum says so.

Whew! I think we can safely ignore this piece of Communist trash and get on with the Ayn Randification of our society.  

One of the biggest players in Northeastern broadcasting is about to vanish, a victim of overly aggressive expansion and impatient creditors. And it has big implications for the Vermont radio scene.

A bankruptcy judge has ordered Nassau Broadcasting to auction its 46 radio stations, including 12 in Vermont. And the 12 include some of the biggest stations outside of Burlington. A few names: WORK (“Frank FM”) and WWFY (“Froggy”) in central Vermont, WXLF (“The Wolf”) in the Upper Valley, WMOO (“Moo 92”) in the Northeast Kingdom, and WEXP (“The Fox”) in Rutland. Complete list below.

As is the case with every corporate radio chain, Nassau’s stations feature homogenized formats and syndicated personalities, often spiced up with a local morning show and occasionally a bit more. But very standard, uninspiring stuff; the kind of mass-marketed programming that’s turned radio into the vast wasteland it is today.

(This story comes from the Rutland Herald, whose content is behind a paywall, so I won’t bother including a link. But it was listed on Google News this morning, and if you go through Google News you somehow evade the paywall. Go to Google, click on “News,” and type “Nassau Broadcasting” in the search box.)

After the jump: Big debts, the station list, and a lament for a (mostly) lost medium.

Nassau is a New Jersey-based corporation that expanded aggressively into New England, taking on mountains of debt in the process. It has debts totaling $283.7 million, and its major creditors (Goldman Sachs and others) are forcing bankruptcy and the asset sale. Or, in bankruptcy-filing-ese,

The debtor’s balance sheet reflects far too much secured indebtedness for these businesses and it cannot be sustained; an orderly liquidation process in the form of a proposed sale will, in all likelihood, generate greater recoveries for creditors than a piecemeal liquidation, and no one could fairly argue otherwise.

Bids are due by April 27, with the auction to be held on May 3.

It’d be nice to say that this could open a new day in Vermont broadcasting, with new owners bringing fresh capital and ideas to stale properties. Hell, it’d be nice to say “Anybody want to go in on a radio station?” But the truth is, these stations are almost certain to be shuffled to other corporate chains. Might be a few format changes, but it’ll be more of the same syndicated pap you can hear anywhere in the country.

The lifting of ownership limits in the 80s and 90s by the FCC, and the tidal wave of corporate takeovers that followed, have turned radio into a hollow shell of what it used to be.  

Sigh.

The list:

WORK-FM (Barre) “Frank FM,” Classic rock.

WWFY-FM (Barre) “Froggy,” Country.

WSNO-AM (Barre) Conservative talk. Beck, Rush, etc.

WEXP (Rutland) and WTHK (Wilmington), aka “The Fox.” Country.

WXLF and WZLF (Upper Valley), “The Wolf.” Country.

WWOD and WFYX (Upper Valley), Oldies.

WNHV-AM (Upper Valley), inactive. Formerly ESPN sports talk.

WMOO (Derby), “Moo 92,” Adult Contemporary/Variety.

WIKE-AM (Newport), Country.  

(With apologies to Psalm 146.)

Someone I know lost her job yesterday. Worked for most of her adult life at IBM in New York State. She’s now in her mid-50s, got a month left on the job, then six months of severance pay. (Furloughed workers get one week of pay for every six months of seniority.)

Thank goodness she’ll get her 30 years and qualify for a pension. Some of her colleagues will fall just short, and they’re well and truly screwed. But the pension isn’t nearly enough to live on, so she has to find work. She’s got some good computer skills and a strong work ethic, so her chances are pretty good. But it’s still a real shock, like suddenly stepping into an unseen abyss.  

IBM laid off an unstated number of people yesterday, mostly in white collar jobs, many at its Poughkeepsie headquarters or nearby. The company refuses to give a number, supposedly for competitive reasons — but the real reason, obviously, is that the bastards don’t want the blast of bad publicity that comes with a mass layoff announcement. (There were enough layoffs for IBM to have the police on hand outside its headquarters in case trouble started.)

Alliance@IBM, a union local, is counting layoffs on its own and keeping a running tab on its website. As of this writing, the total is 1202. According to Alliance, IBM’s American workforce has shrunk by 35% in the last seven years, from 134,000 in 2005 to an estimated 98,000 now. (IBM ain’t telling.)

After the jump: I’d call it evil, but it’s really amoral.

In a way, this is a relief for my friend. In recent years, IBM has been ratcheting up the pressure on its staff. Every year, the bottom 10% in her area have been let go. For a while, that meant losing the deadwood, but eventually you’re cutting some pretty damn good workers. And everyone knew that they had to stay out of the bottom range, which meant working harder and harder. And the harder everyone worked, the more it took to stay off the bottom. IBM used to be a really good place to work; now it’s an anxiety-laden anthill.

So where’s the work going? Two places: Developing countries with cheap labor, particularly China, and contracted workers with no consistent hours or pay.

Accompanying the cuts is a blizzard of management doublespeak. From InformationWeek:

An IBM spokesman on Tuesday declined to answer questions about the layoffs, but provided the following statement in an email to InformationWeek: “IBM is constantly rebalancing its workforce. That means reducing in some areas and hiring in others–based on shifts in technology and client demand.

We’re not firing people; we’re simply “rebalancing our workforce.” Guess they really aced that Newspeak course in business school. And here’s a real doozy from North Carolina TV station WRAL concerning the move away from full-time staffing:

“Internally the restructuring has been dubbed ‘Generation Open’ and staff that work for IBM on projects but are not full time are called ‘liquid players,” according to an internal document seen by Reuters.

“Liquid players.” Otherwise known as “people.” People who will have no steady income, no benefits, no regular hours, and absolutely no security. And “Generation Open,” as in “there’s a trap door under your desk.” But hey, you gotta break a few eggs to rebalance a workforce. Back to WRAL:

Big Blue likes to say that it is expanding its overall work force and hiring. True. Numbers are well above 400,000. But what IBM no longer discloses is how many people it employs where. By hiding that fact (it says for competitive reasons), Big Blue escapes harsh criticism about offshoring and outsourcing jobs.

Here in Vermont, there’s constant concern about the health and attitude of IBM. Conservative and business types are constantly pushing the line that we need IBM’s jobs, we need to make them happy. We need fewer regulatory burdens,  we need lower taxes, we need dependable (read: VY nuclear) electric power, we need whatever IBM wants, basically.

Well, maybe. But looking at IBM’s recent history, I must conclude that someday they’re going to say farewell to Vermont. And it won’t have anything to do with the cost of a KwH or the corporate property tax bill or the business-friendliness of state agencies. It will be due to the exigencies of a global corporation running itself on the principles of Ayn Rand. And any amount of bending over backwards won’t change that ugly truth.

If I were doing economic development for Burlington or the state, I’d spend less time catering to a fickle multinational and more time crafting a broad-based economy with a lot of prosperous small businesses.

If I worked for IBM, I’d keep my resume updated.  

Vermont’s Presidential primary looks to be passing by like a thief in the night. The voting is eight days away, and there’s been a lot more attention paid to the Burlington mayoral race than to the Romney/Santorum/Paul/Gingrich clusterf– er, contest. None of the Republican candidates are bothering to stick their noses into the state — not even for a quick speech in a Burlington Airport hangar, a la Dick Cheney.

But hey, we’ve got some actual primary news! The Castleton Polling Institute has released its first poll of the 2012 Presidential campaign. Phone survey of 800 “likely voters,” conducted between 2/11 and 2/22, margin of error plus/minus 3.5%.

The topline in Castleton’s press release: Mitt Romney is the favorite in the Vermont primary. The topline, as far as I’m concerned, is the narrowness of his lead. Romney has 34%, Rick “Santorum” Santorum 27%, Ron Paul 14%, and Newt Gingrich 10%. (By my math, that leaves 15% either undecided or supporting others. Seems like a high number so close to primary day.)

After the jump: Support both firm and frothy, Obama landslide in the works, and broad support for a campaign-finance constitutional amendment.

The survey does contain a bit more good news for Romney:

Romney’s support is firmer, with 55 percent of Santorum supporters saying that they are either somewhat or very likely to change their minds before election day.

If Romney’s support is firmer, is it fair to say that Santorum’s is frothier? Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyway, that is a sign that Romney can hope for a wider margin of victory next Tuesday.

But still. Vermont’s Republican electorate leans heavily toward fiscal conservatism, which is Romney’s wheelhouse. There’s not much in the way of Religious Right or even Tea Party influence. (Indeed, the survey says that only 7% of Republicans surveyed consider themselves to be “very conservative.”) And Romney’s only up by seven percent?

Am I alone in thinking that’s a pathetic showing for Mitt? I’d expect him to be skunking this field in Vermont by 15-20 points.  But of course, this is perfectly in line with his performance to date in the primary season: considering the “quality” of his opposition and the resources at his command, he should be marching triumphantly to the Convention instead of having to kick, bite and scratch for every delegate.

Other tidbits from the Castleton poll:

As far as Vermont’s electoral votes are concerned, it doesn’t matter who wins the nomination; he’ll be obliterated by Obama in November. Obama beats Romney by 26, Santorum by 28, Paul by 30, and Newt by 42. (A moment of schadenfreude, if you please, for the selt-described Defender of Civilization who is now far less electable in Vermont than Ron Paul.)

76% of Vermont voters favor a constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending — including 57% of Vermont Republicans.

58% of those surveyed are in favor of four-year terms for Governor.

So there you go. The first, and possibly last, GMD diary on the Vermont primary. You may now go back to ignoring the whole thing.  

Cheery little article on Vermont Digger, sure to add a little sugar to your coffee, with more evidence that our climate is, indeed, changing. The story has a soft open, about prospects for this year’s maple syrup run; then it summarizes two pieces of tangible, real-life news about our changing climate.

The first: Maple sugaring season is coming earlier and earlier, according to Tim Perkins at the Proctor Maple Research Center.

Perkins cited research that showed that sugar maple trees now release their sap approximately 8.2 days earlier and stop producing usable sap 11.4 days earlier than they did 40 years ago. This translates to an approximate 10 percent loss in the duration of the season.

And item number two, from the genteel world of gardening:

The USDA recently released an updated 2012 Plant Hardiness Zone Map that guides gardeners by mapping the country by zones, which reflects the average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1976-2005. …Much of Chittenden County jumped up a half of a zone as compared to the 1990 map; a potential leap of 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

After the jump: Science… or Anarcho-Syndicalist Al Qaeda New Black Panther Ivory Tower plot?

These aren’t projections from giacial ice data, or theoretical musings from egghead academics, or bumpersticker ravings of the Green Party. These are simple, measurable matters of fact with direct, tangible effects on the way we live. They are also two more pieces of solid evidence to add to the impressive mountain of evidence collected by the scientific community. Or at least those members of the scientific community who haven’t sold their souls to the Koch Brothers.

On the other hand… when you take a closer look at the VTDigger story, you see that the Proctor Maple Research Center is part of the University of Vermont. And the story itself was written by a UVM graduate student.

Well, never mind, then. Both studies are obviously tainted by their association with a university. And as Rick Santorum will tell you, our colleges and universities are hotbeds of Commie/Islamo/Environmentalism. And humanism. Therefore, any product of the higher-education system is guilty by association. Never mind, folks; keep on pumping those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Or, to be more precise but less poetic: “To the law-enforcement agency with GPS devices, every car looks like a terrorist’s.”

Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled against the warrantless use of GPS devices to track a driver’s movements. And now, that noted megaphone of peacenik propaganda, the Wall Street Journal, reports that following the decision, the FBI has had to turn off about 3,000 GPS units that were in use without warrants.

Three. Thousand.

Now, I realize this is a big country with lots of people. But 3,000 seems like an awfully damn big number. I see two possible explanations:

1. We’ve got a plague of domestic terrorism, and Armageddon is just around the corner.

2. We gave the FBI a hammer, and they decided everything was a nail.  

Given the relative absence of things going boom on our shores, I opt for #2. This is why I am skeptical of the War on Terror, why I think the excesses of the Patriot Act are significant threats to our freedoms, and why one of my biggest disappointments with the Obama Presidency is its validation of many of Bush’s worst excesses in fighting terrorism. And why I’m convinced that  it’s a dangerous waste of money to be giving weapons of war to local police departments who don’t need them. And why I’m not a big fan of giving Tasers to the cops.

Because when they get a weapon in their hands, they find reasons to use it. Just ask the UC-Davis Campus Police.

I have a hard time believing that there are enough serious threats to justify 3,000 warrantless GPS tracking devices. It sounds more like a case of spraying everything in sight and asking questions later.