( – promoted by odum)

For the past 20 years or so, there’s been a tactical argument in Democratic/liberal circles: Stand on principle and risk alienating independent voters? Or tack to the center in order to marginalize the Republican Party.

The latter idea has been dominant since the 1994 midterms, when the Republicans took control of Congress and knocked Bill Clinton on his backside for the remainder of his presidency. Monica didn’t help, of course; but Clinton’s aggressive triangulation was well under way before anyone had heard of that blue dress.

Ever since, aside from populist campaign rhetoric, national Democrats have mainly pursued a centrist course. Barack Obama has been basically a centrist for much of his presidency. He has diluted core Democratic principles in order to paint himself as the reasonable person facing a snakepit of naysaying extremists.

(As part of this strategy, Obama has occasionally indulged in the popular centro-Dem pastime of “kicking the hippies” – taking gratuitous shots at the left in order to burnish his centrist credentials.)

I never completely bought the triangulation argument, but I thought it warranted consideration. Not any more.  

I now believe that triangulation has been a dismal failure. It has played a large part in the continual rightward movement of America’s political center of gravity. And far from marginalizing the right, it has actually served to isolate and enfeeble the left.  

Remember the 1970s? When there was a broad national consensus on policies that are completely out of mainstream discussion today?

When top tax rates were incredibly high by modern standards? When the right to unionize was broadly accepted? When a strong social safety net was seen as crucial to a just society? When one Richard M. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and opened the door to China? When Ronald Reagan was seen as a cartoonish excrescense of goofy California politics who was absolutely unelectable on the national level?

Yeah, those were the days.

The steady rightward shift of our politics is mostly due to the well-oiled, well-funded, well-connected conservative machine – from the Christian Coalition to the Heritage Foundation to Regent University to the Swift Boaters to the Koch brothers. But Democratic triangulation has played an important role; instead of actively resisting the rightward shift, Democrats have focused on softening its harsher edges. They’ve been chasing a “center” that’s a moving target.

In the process, the Democrats have ignored – or actively demonized – their left wing. They have abandoned their own core principles and validated the fundamental precepts of conservatism. Some examples:

— When Obama failed to pursue a public option, let alone single-payer, in his health care plan, the underlying message was that the private sector is better than government at providing health care – in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. (The relative success of Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, versus the ongoing clusterf*ck of for-profit health insurance.)

— When Obama sought to continue the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts, and when he ultimately acquiesced in their wholesale renewal, he accepted the fundamental conservative idea that taxes obstruct economic growth. And when Governor Shumlin refused to consider a tax hike on the wealthiest Vermonters, he openly cited conservative orthodoxy: that such a tax increase would chase the wealthy away.

— When Obama filled his economic team with Wall Street executives, he endorsed the notion that Wall Street knows best – an idea that should have been thoroughly discredited by the 2008 crash.

— When Shumlin hired Neale Lunderville as his flood recovery czar, the unstated message is that when you need a tough job done in a hurry, get yourself a business-oriented conservative. Phil Scott has already made this argument. Expect to a lot more of it in the 2012 campaign.

— New Hampshire Governor John Lynch pulled a Lunderville himself, when he renominated Republican appointee Kelly Ayotte for a second term as Attorney General. By doing so, he legitimized Ayotte as a bipartisan political figure. (Which she most assuredly is not.) Lynch deserves a lot of blame for Ayotte’s rise to the U.S. Senate.

— When Shumlin repeatedly slams the VSEA for seeking to enforce a legally-binding contract, he reinforces the conservative view of unions as greedy obstructionists.

— When Peter Welch added his voice to the conservative attack on ACORN, he scored a dubious triple play:

1. He helped destroy an organization that had done a lot of good work on behalf of America’s most disenfranchised people.

2. He gave credence to the conservative lie that voter fraud actually exists on a significant scale.

3. He lent some of his gravitas to journalistic scam artist James O’Keefe.

Okay, let’s turn from principle to realpolitik. Triangulation is supposed to make your party more electable than the other guys. Has it worked?

Did Clinton’s centrism sideline the Republicans or prevent George W. Bush’s election? Did Governor Howard Dean’s propensity for hippie-kicking ensure a Democratic successor in the corner office? Did John Lynch’s centrism in New Hampshire prevent the Bill Loeb wing of the NHGOP from returning to power? Did Obama’s efforts at compromise in his first two years have any effect on the outcome of the 2010 midterms? No, no, no, and no.

Sure, there were other factors at work in all these cases. But there’s precious little evidence that triangulation has helped the Democratic Party.

Indeed, it has backfired. Positions that, 20 or 30 years ago, would have been seen as far-right are now accepted as one side of our political debate. The hard rightists, tea partiers and Christian conservatives now hold the balance of power in Congress and on the campaign trail – in spite of poll after poll indicating clearly that they represent a small minority of the electorate.

So ask me if I’d like to see Obama (or Shumlin) stand firm for liberal policies, even if it might mean short-term defeat, and I’ll say a hearty “Hell, yes!”

Barry Goldwater was a laughingstock in 1964, and his nomination doomed his party to defeat. But how long were the Republicans shut out of the White House? A whopping four years. And within 16 years, the Goldwater/Reagan wing had taken over the Republican Party. Today, an ideology to the right of Goldwater and Reagan is ascendant in the GOP. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society are under threat – from diehard conservatives, and from triangulating Democrats.  

Look at Ronald Reagan. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bernie Sanders. People can respect a politician who firmly believes in something, who has the courage to stand on principle. Even if that principle is dead wrong.

Voters liked the Barack Obama of 2008, the figure who stood for something new and different. They liked him a lot better than the triangulator who occupies the White House.

If Obama had more frequently stood his ground, he may have lost more battles. But he’d be seen as more of a leader and less of a groveller, ever chasing the retreating shadows of McConnell, Boehner and Cantor. He’d be seen as that force for hope and change we all voted for, and he wouldn’t have to belatedly try to recapture the magic of 2008.

And the left would be far better poised for long-term victory.  

( – promoted by odum)

So the University of Vermont has concluded that “no laws or university policies were violated” by Rachael Kahn-Fogel’s relationship with Associate VP Michael Schultz. It did find that the relationship damaged morale in the development office, and ran counter to the institution’s “guidelines and values.” But nothing more. Freshly-ex-President Dan Fogel issued a statement saying “It is good to have reached closure on this unfortunate matter.” Yep, nothing to see here. Let’s all move on, folks.

Just a suspiciously lumpy rug, and a well-used broom nearby. Let’s examine the lumps, shall we?

— Well, sure, the relationship didn’t violate any University policies. There weren’t any policies covering the situation, as UVM Board President Robert Cioffi acknowledged.

— In addition to Fogel’s own expedited departure and enriched severance package, Michael Schultz has also made a quick exit. And he gets a severance deal equivalent to Fogel’s: a year and a half’s salary ($155K/year) and other benefits. According to the Burlington Free Press, Cioffi said that the Schultz deal averts possible litigation. You betcha.

— The board reviewed some $84,800 in possibly questionable expenses charged to UVM, and concluded that a mere $151 “exceeded reasonable thresholds.” Fogel has repaid that money. Is it just me that thinks the $151 is a rather suspiciously minuscule amount? Very specific, very small, but quantified — seemingly designed to imply a thorough, painstaking review.

— But what of the unquantifiable costs to the institution? UVM was going through a period of expansion and fundraising, and some painful budget cuts. At the same time, its development office was in significant disarray. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Ms. Kahn-Fogel served as a volunteer fund raiser for the university, and her ill-defined role contributed to problems within the development office, the review found. The report notes, for instance, that staffing decisions in the development office were made based on the Fogels’ preferences and comfort levels with certain individuals rather than their qualifications. Those favored by the family were “perceived to be protected” and promoted within the institution, the review found.

“This environment negatively affected morale in the development office and created ongoing distractions from the pursuit of the fund-raising objectives of the university,” the report says.

Interesting that “the Fogels” are cited for imposing their preferences, not just Kahn-Fogel.

We’ll never know how badly UVM’s fundraising was hampered by these shenanigans. And here’s where the whole fiasco bothers me the most.  

This situation was allowed to fester for years, undermining morale and causing staff turnover in one of UVM’s most important offices. We don’t know what, if anything, was done to try to rein in Kahn-Fogel. Or to stop the Fogels from meddling in development office staffing decisions. As far as I can tell, damn little was done until the whole thing was brought to light a couple months ago by Shay Totten in Seven Days.

I’ve written before about the “grandfather’s lightbulb” phenomenon all too prevalent in Vermont institutions and businesses, large and small. In short, it’s a tendency to ignore problems or inefficiencies (or even illegalities) for no good reason — just, well, we’ve always done it this way.

Robert Cioffi said he knew nothing of the relationship before it became public, but “he conceded that board members and some administrators were aware of concerns about the climate in the development office…” (Chronicle of Higher Education) To borrow the classic Watergate line, “What did they know and when did they know it?” And why didn’t they do anything? Or at least ask some pointed questions?

The UVM review said that, although there was no actual wrongdoing, “Effective management and oversight were lacking, for which the president, and in turn the Board of Trustees, must accept final responsibility.”

To which I say, what do you mean by accepting responsibility? I think we all know the answer to that: not a damned thing.

p.s. The Board took another bold, decisive action as well. Following widespread criticism of Fogel’s severance package, Cioffi announced that the board has begun “a study of executive compensation.” I can hardly wait for the results of that little gem.  

( – promoted by odum)

From an unexpected source — the Wall Street Journal — comes a bit of insight into the blithe safety assurances we get from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission every time there’s a question, issue, or event at a nuke plant.

The article, from Tuesday’s WSJ, is entitled “Earthquake Risks Probed at U.S. Nuclear Plants.” A nice pleasant little breakfast read there.

The gist of the article: in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi incident, even as NRC officials were delivering their breezy “no threat to public health or safety, everything hunky-dory, please move along” reassurances, something very different was going on inside the agency. Take it away, WSJ…

Privately, though, internal emails from March show staffers at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission fretted about the public attention on the potential earthquake vulnerability of some U.S. plants. Since 2005, the agency had been working on a study of seismic hazards that is far from complete but showed good reason to worry about two dozen reactors.

Earthquake dangers have long been known in the American West. Most of the new concern is focused on the central and eastern U.S. (The list of “about two dozen” plants includes Seabrook, but not VT Yankee.)

Now, the risk of a big quake in, say, New Hampshire or South Carolina or Michigan is far lower than in California. But it isn’t zero. And quakes are especially feared “…because earthquakes produce tremendous forces, but also because they are impossible to predict.”

How did this new concern come to the fore? Well, in applications for new nukes filed since 2005, utilities included environmental reviews. And…

NRC staffers say they noticed something in some applications for proposed new plants to be built adjacent to existing reactors: Using updated scientific information, seismic experts hired by the utilities produced “hazard” calculations showing a potential for stronger earthquake-caused ground motion than the original plants were designed to handle.

In other words, the utilities’ own experts reckoned there was an increased chance that an existing reactor could be struck by an earthquake that could overwhelm its ability to shut down safely.

Now, the additional risk from an earthquake is relatively small. It’s low on the list of concerns about nuclear power. To me, the key item to take from this story is that even the NRC itself doesn’t necessarily believe its own public-relations pablum.  

   

(I wouldn’t normally promote something about a specific business like this, but Langdon Street Cafe is kind of special.  I totally get the decision to close, but it’s always been one of my favorite place to eat, drink coffee, and websurf in between other events in our capital city.   – promoted by JulieWaters)

…so says the Burlington Free Press. The Cafe will shut its doors at the end of the month. It’s a significant loss for the central Vermont cultural scene; throughout its seven years of existence, the Cafe had maintained a ridiculously ambitious concert schedule. And while it attracted good crowds, it was never profitable. Freeps:

“The under-story is we never made money,” said Ben T. Matchstick, the cafe’s impresario whose partner, Meg Hammond, is the owner of the business. He and Hammond have an 18-month-old son and Matchstick said they can’t afford to go further into debt.

Perfectly understandable, and still sad. Best wishes to Ben and Meg; they’d done yeoman’s work on the Cafe, and I hope their next venture will be both creative and lucrative.  

( – promoted by odum)

Caught a bit o’ Rob Roper on the Ethan Allen Institute Vanity Project* this morning. (A “bit” is all I can take.) And boy, did he have a doozy to start the show.

Talking about George Till’s SurveyMonkey poll, he posited that, as far as we know, the non-doctors who took the survey are all supporters of single-payer. And so, Roper concluded, the results of the survey are even more dramatic and meaningful!

Just think: if 53% of responders said they would stop practicing in VT if it adopted single-payer, and single-payer advocates had their thumb on the other end of the scale, then that means an unknown but very large majority of actual doctors might leave the state! And if the 44% in favor of single-payer included a lot of its advocates who are not doctors, then that means a majority of Vermont doctors must be against the idea!

Which, of course, ignores the basic issue: we have no real idea who took the survey, so we have no real idea whether the results mean anything or not. But by all means, Rob, spin away.

*a.k.a. “Common Sense Radio” on WDEV.

…but this time, it wasn’t from Vermont Yankee. It was from Dr. George Till. Take it away, Dave Gram of the Associated Press:

A Vermont legislator and physician said Friday he believes he got tainted results from an online survey he took of fellow doctors to determine whether they support Gov. Peter Shumlin’s plan for a single-payer health care system. …

… Friday, Till said he’d learned that some respondents were non-physicians.

So after four days of generous news coverage, he admits the poll was problematic. But it’s a tightly-worded admission; he doesn’t acknowledge the fundamental problem, that the survey was posted online and could have been taken by anyone with Internet access. Instead, it implies that a couple of lawmakers somehow hacked their way into it. And implicitly blames the lawmakers for doing so.

Still missing from the story: how Till (and his UVM grad-student assistant) could be so clueless as to conduct a survey on a wide-open website.

Below the jump: Media hijinx!

I heard about Till’s admission on VPR, whose Saturday morning anchor was presumably reading a short piece from the AP broadcast wire. After hearing the report, I looked up the story online and found a couple of interesting tidbits regarding our state’s biggest newspaper.

Dave Gram’s story was posted on the Burlington Free Press website. It was also posted elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I first found his story on the website of a newspaper in Columbus, Indiana. In its version, the third paragraph of the story reads as follows:

The Associated Press did not report on the results when they were first released because the unscientific survey did not meet AP polling standards.

Funny thing: on the Freeps’ website, that entire paragraph was omitted. I guess that stuff about journalistic standards would have been a tad embarrassing.

Another little thing: The (truncated) AP story is in the Freeps’ news section. There’s also a post by reporter Terri Hallenbeck on the Freeps’ vt.Buzz political blog. Her blogpost is even more carefully couched than Gram’s AP story, and goes a little further in casting the blame on those dastardly Dems who pissed in George Till’s pool.

Friday, Till apparently learned that two lawmakers had gained access to the online survey and taken it themselves, including House Assistant Majority Leader Willem Jewett, D-Ripton, and Health Care Committee Vice Chairman Mike Fisher, D-Lincoln. I couldn’t reach Till on Friday afternoon, but those who were in the committee room Friday morning said he wasn’t happy about any of it, accusing lawmakers of skewing his survey.

That’s rich. He posts a survey on a wide-open website, then (reportedly) implies that Jewett and Fisher hacked in, and completely fails to acknowledge the survey’s fundamental flaws. And both he and Hallenbeck imply that Jewett and Fisher were the only people who skewed an otherwise valid survey.

Finally, the conclusion of Hallenbeck’s post is worth reading:

Here’s the rub: It doesn’t look good for those in House Democratic leadership to be going behind the back of their fellow lawmaker. At the same time, it indicates the survey was not completely sound.

Again, blame the lawmakers for taking a survey that was wide open. And make the thinnest possible admission about the unscientific survey — “not completely sound,” indeed.

Given all of this, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Till’s survey continue to be cited as valid and credible, even though it obviously is not.  

( – promoted by odum)

The size of the Vermont press — sorry, media — corps has become smaller and smaller in recent years. So small that it’s getting difficult for Vermont Public Television to find three “reporters” to fill out its Vermont This Week panel.

And yet, somehow, the Associated Press managed to shake someone loose to cover a rally on Thursday in Montpelier that attracted “about 20” people.

Not a misprint: “about 20.”

“About 20” people from a coalition of Tea Party-type groups — none of whom could muster anything more than token attendance — rallied in opposition to Democratic efforts at health care reform in Vermont.  

So I ask the editors of our media: How small does a right-wing protest have to be, for you to deem it unworthy of coverage? At what point do you tell your reporter, “Never mind, go dig up some real news”?

I mean, there was a hardy group of souls who staged a weekly antiwar picket in front of the Montpelier post office once a week for YEARS. They may still do it, pardon my ignorance. On a good week, they’d manage to gather “around 20.” But never any hint of a story in the media.

And this story on the tiny protest is written exactly the same way as a story about a big protest: it gives precious space, and significant weight, to an insignificant group of people. To be fair, it does mention the minuscule turnout in the second paragraph; but after that there’s no mention of what is, to any objective observer, the most salient fact: that almost nobody attended the “rally.”  

( – promoted by odum)

… per Shay Totten in this week’s Fair Game: most of Gov. Shumlin’s top appointees got substantial pay raises over their predecessors. Some are getting 10% or more, and a couple — Susan Wehry and Steve Kimbell — are really cashing in, with raises of $35K apiece. Totten sums it up:

In all, Shumlin is spending $400,000 more than Douglas on top execs, and he’s not done hiring yet.

I hate to speak ill of our new guv, but this sucks in a couple of ways. Well, three. In no particular order:

— As Totten points out, he’s seeking benefit givebacks from state employees.

— He’s proposed cuts that will impact services to the poor, among others.

— The Democrats used to routinely pillory Douglas for giving raises (and promotions) to his appointees. Now, the Dems are in power and they’re playing the same game.

Not the right time, Gov. Not the right time.  

Now comes “a small group of House Republicans,” according to the Freeps, calling for better plowing of state roads and highways. “Our goal should be bare roads,” says House Minority Leader Don Turner. Vermont has had a safe-roads-at-safe-speeds standard since 1981.

Hmmm. A couple things cross my mind. First, I don’t remember hearing any of this talk from Republicans when they actually had administrative responsibility for road maintenance. Now, safely in the minority and having no actual power to adopt a new standard, they can freely demagogue the issue on the day of a 12-inch snowdump.

And second, of course, aren’t we in the middle of a budget crisis requiring deep cuts in state spending? Turner has an eminently helpful suggestion about that, according to the Freeps story:

Turner said he wasn’t asking for the state to spend more money overall, but to reprioritize spending to put more toward clearing roads. He said he did not have specifics that he would cut in place of plowing, but he would expect that to come out of legislative discussions.

All righty then. According to Deputy Transportation Commissioner Sue Minter, adopting a bare-roads standard would require doubling the state’s snowplow fleet, and nearly doubling the annual cost of snow removal.

Deeper cuts to social services, anyone?  Yeah, it might be painful, but we gotta make the roads safe for drivers to go 70 mph year-round, don’t we?  

( – promoted by odum)

Yup, bad news from Vermont Yankee. Another well tests positive for tritium.

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail…

Key line:

The latest discovery could mean that a new leak has developed in pipes that Entergy said didn’t exist last year.