Vermont lawmakers conducted a high-profile grilling of FairPoint honchos, demanding answers about the abject failure of this corporate little-engine-that-couldn’t that swooped in to take over Verizon’s internet and telephone services, over the concerns voiced by Unions (and others). At this point, of course, the stories about the many problems are inescapable – all of which extend from the inability to make FairPoint’s existing systems integrate with the established Verizon ones (after all, its the same staffers and the same systems here on the ground that were working just fine before… it aint the locals’ fault).

Of course today was largely a dog and pony show for the press and public. The Public Service Board is hardly going to de-certify FairPoint to operate in Vermont, as nobody knows exactly what that would even mean. Politicians just wanted to tell FairPoint executives that they really, really want things to improve, and were looking for some reassurance that they will, and that FairPoint isn’t about to slip into bankruptcy, which would also take us into unknown territory.

And yet, despite the tepid reassurances to the contrary, bankruptcy is exactly where FairPoint is going – and soon. A quick glance at what that might mean for customers and local workers after the flip…

Stock marketeers can read the tea leaves. FairPoint’s stock is in the crapper. Valued at below a dollar, they may end up dropped from the New York Stock Exchange. The situation is simply not sustainable. Word is (and I don’t have links for this) that they have approached their investors for wiggle room – either more money, or the conversion of some debts to stock, etc – but haven’t gotten very far.

This doesn’t signal bankruptcy in and of itself, but insiders do believe Chapter 11 is on the way. Chapter 11 does not mean liquidation, it means reorganization. Debts and obligations are put on hold while a plan for recovery is put into place. That plan must meet certain criteria and be approved by creditors, as well as the court, otherwise liquidation could end up on the table. All this means that day to day operations should not be affected, but don’t expect service problems to get much better during this period.

Everything can be on the table for reorganizing the business, including (under Chapter 11, Subchapter 1, Section 1113 of the bankruptcy code) collective bargaining agreements.

If a company petitions under Section 1113, the court has 30 days to rule, and they could rule virtually any way they want. Unions are going to be at a disadvantage in this process (aren’t they always?) as the secured creditors (such as banks) will be the big dogs in the reorganization and will be major drivers in the process. The Unions will likely try to negotiate with FairPoint to avoid the 1113 process which could get ugly for them – particularly in an unfriendly bankruptcy court.

About 80% of the 640 FairPoint employees in Vermont are Union members – either the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers or the Communications Workers of America. These folks are not the people responsible for this mess, of course, and were in fact the very ones trying to tell everyone that this was a bad idea in the first place.

And unlike the banks that have invested in FairPoint and will have the most influence in the reorganization process, nobody in Washington is standing by to bail them out.

Without question, workers in Vermont and across New England will have targets on their heads in this process. FairPoint will grab the best lawyers, make sure the court will be one unfriendly to labor, and will try to get away with what they can at the expense of the Unions.

What do the Unions have going for them in this process? What they always do – they are the people who actually make it all work. You can’t “reorganize” a broken company, and if they push the already-stressed workforce on the ground, things could well break.

And then nobody gets anything.

• A rose, by any other name… “A Community Resource Network” (ACoRN) based out of Lebanon NH is a nonprofit HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C support organization. Apparently there is another organization that uses that acronym. And that other organization has been getting bad national press. What are the odds?

  Anyway, ACoRN (with the little “o”) is apparently getting grief from people confusing them with ACORN, and would like people to know that they are in no way connected.

• A belated shout out to Steve Benen, Vermont blogger extraordinaire, for being such a rock star. Take that Dobbs.
• Wow. Totten writes this and this. Colby writes this and this. Then Totten writes this (at the bottom). Man, that was fast.
• Speaking of Totten, today’s piece on all things Senatorial indicates that longtime Vermont Labor stalwart Ralph Montefusco might run for State Senate. Personally, I’d love to see that happen. Run Ralph, run!
• Speaking of Seven Days, Lauren Ober cracks me up.
• Yeah, that’ll work. In case you haven’t yet read on the sidebar, perennial Liberty Union 50th place candidate Boots Wardinski is boldly volunteering to save the Progressive Party from… er… David Zuckerman. For a preview of how well that’s gonna go over, click here.
• Speaking of the Zuckster, I don’t usually point people to official-institutional blogs like the Prog Blog, but the Burlington Representative has initiated a conversation over there about his consideration of a run on the Dem Primary ballot for Lite Guv. Interesting reading.
• Every now and then Mark Johnson emails me to let me know of something I missed on his show that I should hear or that might inform discussion on the site, as I usually dont have the opportunity to stream it. Or so I thought. I think the real reason I “forget” is those god-awful commercials for Montpelier coffee shop Capitol Grounds. Uhhhhhh… it haunts my dreams…..

Here come the state job cuts – again. Needlessly.

The State Employees Union has been twisting itself into pretzels to find alternatives to cuts, coming up with creative ideas to spread the pain among members. VSEA came to the table offering 4 furlough days, 3 unpaid holidays and use to medical plan surpluses to plug the $7.4 million hole. Putting the lie to Douglas’s claim that the Union refused to look at longer term cost savings, the VSEA even offered to eliminate the dental plan, wellness program and tuition reimbursements for more than $5 million in savings for the next 2 fiscal years. These proposals actually exceeded Joint Fiscal’s “workforce reduction” goals. This is astonishing compromise.

But Jim Douglas is doing what he always does. Digging in on a predetermined, ideological agenda (slash jobs, quash the union, erode government services with an eye towards killing them off entirely), refusing to give an inch as his “opponents” (no, he does not look at anybody else as a “negotiating partner”) meet him 50, 60, 70% of the way. He sticks to his agenda and takes to the press to denounce how unreasonable the other side was and how intractable they were, forcing him to do what he always intended to do from the outset.

It’s sleazy. Dishonorable. Especially when dealing with real peoples’ lives. Apparently to Jim Douglas, state workers’ humanity begins and ends with their Union cards.

I’ve received a couple responses on this. One of them solid, another – good, but a bit concerning.  

From the combined press release out of the Speaker’s and Senate President Pro Tem’s offices:

We are gravely concerned that the impending layoffs of up to 300 state employees could have a devastating effect on state services. We will work with the Union and the Administration to lessen the impact that these layoffs could have on Vermonters.

“Lessen(ing) the impact” sounds dangerously close to rolling over, given that the new law requires Joint Fiscal to sign off on large scale job cuts. This game’s not over – or at least it shouldn’t be.

From a few miles up the road, the Racine campaign had this to say:

Putting more people in the unemployment line cannot help our economy, and cutting services when Vermonters need them most makes absolutely no sense. State employees were willing to make sacrifices, but the governor failed to negotiate a settlement which means more Vermont workers will be out on the street.

Let’s be clear. If the Administration wanted a deal, they could have had one. They kept changing the rules. It didn’t have to be this way.

And it doesn’t have to – yet.

These bills that are rushed through to score cheap political points (such as the condemnation of MoveOn.org for the “Betray-us” ad) are always lousy pieces of legislation. Not only are they often (as in the ACORN and MoveOn bills’ cases) rotten in conception, their actual texts are generally schlocked out hack jobs.

But sometimes, stupid bills can have unexpected consequences. From HuffPo:

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Laugh? Cheer? Put your head in your hands? All of these?

Damn, but Washington makes me proud sometimes.

Psychic exhaustion week. Month, really. I got nuthin.

But this is important. It’s big on the problems, and it announces some help, including a modest increase in dairy pricing. Enough? Okay, that’s barely a rhetorical question… of course its not…. but what should be done? Discuss…

Rep. David Zuckerman is considering doing what some thought he’d be the last Progressive Party politician to do; follow the example of State Senator Tim Ashe and use the Democratic Party primary as his path to office – in this case, (possibly) the office of Lieutenant Governor. Those of us who are surprised are surprised because, since his most recent re-election effort for State Representative in which he was challenged by Democratic opponents, Zuckerman has been the Progressives’ most strident partisan warrior – relentlessly scornful of the Democratic Party in sweeping, collective terms. He has been crusading against what he repeatedly calls the “myths” in circulation about the Progressive-Democratic conflict, and “myths” apparently refer to any perspectives on the matter that do not match his own.

This is a politician who would seem to face a very difficult time getting self-described Democrats to vote for him. And yet, it may well be important for Vermont that they do just that.

In simplest terms, the functional challenge in our winner-take-all voting system to multiple parties is the disparity created on the General election ballot. If there is one candidate of “the right” on a November ballot and two candidates of “the left,” you have, in effect, two elections happening simulaneously; a General Election for the office, and a Primary election on the left. These two elections are fundamentally incompatible (for obvious reasons) without some form of preference voting system (such as IRV). The push, then, is to try to decouple the left’s primary from the November ballot and – like it or not – for now, the clear path of least resistance and greatest participation for such a process is through the Democratic Party primary election.

These are the unyielding electoral mechanics we have often found ourselves talking about on this site, and it is precisely because of this reality that I was supportive of Tim Ashe’s foray into the Democratic Primary. All the talk at the time of him “hijacking” the Democratic Party process was, in any objective sense, parochial nonsense, as self-selecting Democratic voters were free to make the choice of who they deem to be a legitimate candidate regardless of anybody’s rumpled feathers over the crossing of social and institutional norms. Tim Ashe did precisely what he needed to do, and in doing so increased the Progressive Partiers’ impact on public policy as well as made the Democratic Party that much better, to the benefit of all Vermont.

But Ashe clearly recognized that – to be successful – he would not simply have to break with institutional dogma (and perhaps the first deadly sin of pride) himself, he would have to allow others to do so as well, joining him in the dogma-free niche he was carving out. He did this in a couple key ways.

First, If a self-identified Democrat wanted to support him he would let them support him. He did not demand that accept his worldview, back off from what he perceived as “myths” about Progressives that were actually just different opinions, or accept that by supporting him, they were actually engaging in some sort of process of accepting the Progressive Party on his terms. He would simply allow the voter to support him based on whatever personal, subjective calculus that voter was making about him.

Very simply, he did not demand that each individual voter either meet with his personal approval, or possibly agree to say 3 Hail Marys and an Our Father as penance for being such a meanie Democrat for all these years.

Second, he had to learn to listen, and in listening, accept the diversity of opinions among voters. Sure there are points of fundamental principle that matter. If I were running for something and somebody told me they supported me because they hoped I’d take point in rounding up all the homosexuals into prison camps, I’d set them straight. If they wanted to support me because they thought I was trustworthy, even though they were a lifelong Dem-hating Republican, that’s a disagreement at a different level. I wouldn’t feel the need to browbeat him into accepting my view of partisan institutions. I’d just say thanks.

The fact is that many of us on the left (and the right, for that matter) can’t differentiate between trivial disagreements and significant ones. We feel passionate enough about our opinions that we can’t abide dissenting ones, and we create a dynamic where all points of disagreement are created equal. We scream just as loudly about differing views on the Income Tax as we do about racism.

And that’s neither reasonable, nor sustainable.

A key part of leading successfully is listening to those you want to lead. If all we do is correct and cajole in a rigid, unyielding way – well… let’s just say that fundamentalist preacher might be a better career option than elected official.

Simply put, Ashe understood that he needed the votes. That it was he asking for something of them (voters), and thus, was not in a position to make demands. He was offering himself as an option and working hard with a strong message to persuade. He did not (that I could see from Washington County, at least), simply put up a Dem shingle and then either demand or expect that those whiny Dems would just fall into line the way he thought they should. He asked for their votes, thanked them for their support, and asked for their help in talking to their neighbors. Just what you’re supposed to do.

If David Zuckerman goes this route, it will be very important for the left that he do well and that it be a positive experience – whether or not that means ultimately winning. Many of us will see such a move as a very important one for the health and well-being of Vermont politics. And many of us will probably work hard to support him.

It will be up to Representative Zuckerman to decide whether or not he will actually let us.

So, waddayaknow? Now Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie does sound like a candidate – this despite the near universal hubbub that said he wasn’t going to run.

Part of that conventional wisdom was always, in my view, flawed. The idea that if he were serious he would have jumped on it quickly may be an axiom that applies to most politicians, but ignores the fact that this is Brian Dubie we’re talking about. Brian Dubie does not do politics quickly. In fact, his same-day statement that he was considering it probably qualifies as a lightning speed political response on the Dubie scale.

But the hubbub was deeper and broader than that, so it does seem likely that the GOP rank-and-file groundswell on the Lieutenant Governor’s behalf may actually be swaying him – and Hallenbeck (at the only political blog, professional media or otherwise, that still refuses to link to anybody else’s sites) indicates that Dubie’s final decision is to be put off at least another week.

But it’s also likely that the hubub is being generated somewhat by those who want it to be true – and mutterings suggest they may well be some of the same folks who have also encouraged Tom Salmon to switch parties and make noises about the top spot himself. There are a lot of GOP or GOP-oriented movers and shakers who have little confidence in Brian Dubie to withstand the rigors of a full-on gubernatorial campaign, and I – for one – can see why they’d be concerned.

The fact is that Dubie’s continuing hesitation on making a final decision against the increasing pressure to make one as quickly as possible both underscores and exacerbates the fault lines in the Republican Party, and the longer he puts off an announcement, the more those tensions are likely to rise.

On the other side, Matt Dunne is sounding more and more likely to enter a race for Governor. After failing to oust Brian Dubie from the number 2 spot two cycles back, Dunne would need to make a big splash quickly after announcing – probably by raising a lot of money – to be seen as competitive given that the race (and the fundraising) is already underway. But the fact is that Dunne is perfectly capable of doing that, and in a Democratic Primary setting, he is not to be underestimated (just ask John Tracy).

Dems tend to fall into one of two categories regarding Dunne; those who really like him a lot, and those who refuse to accept just how many other Dems really like him a lot. If Dunne gets in, he may well jump to that shared leading status in just a few weeks.

The political shakeup means that the next month or so is an opportunity for new faces to jump into races up and down the ticket. For the top spot, the next organic opportunity to jump in and be taken seriously as a major competitor may not be until March, exploiting what is likely to be fatigue over a contentious legislative session. Clearly, though, anyone entering in March would face an uphill fundraising climb, so look for at least one new announcement this fall that will more or less set the battle lines.

Obama’s highly anticipated health care speech did not disappoint, and the shameless heckling from the Republican side of the aisle amounted to icing on the Administration’s public relations cake, so clearly contrasting as it did the President with the political craziness that has aligned itself against him. Obama’s poll numbers will receive a bump – albeit a smaller one than supporters would like to see, as it will primarily come from renewed enthusiasm from the progressive wing of the party which began losing patience with the Administration on this issue (and others) weeks ago.

And praise is coming in by the bucketful. Engaged progressives – from the pundit class to regular citizenry in water-cooler conversations – are using terms such as “turning point” and “game-changer” in describing the success of the speech and the renewed momentum for reform.

Inspired pundits notwithstanding, however, the game has not changed. We are still working the same board with the same pieces and the same rules. What Obama may have done, rather than change the game, is simply hand himself a “get out of jail free” card, enabling him to regain lost ground and political momentum. But there is still a reform bill to be finalized, and the deeper political realities beyond any sense of this week’s ideological momentum remain the same. What matters, of course, is what happens next.

Political reality may be 90% perception, but that remaining 10% is made up of intractable policy realities, and Obama said nothing that mitigates the core political challenge to health care reform.  

Two distinct lines from his speech collectively frame the biggest single problem that remains: “For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need,” followed a few lines later by “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers.”

Few reformers argue the need to get everyone insured in order to capture savings and increase efficiency in the system, hence the near-universal calls from the left for an individual mandate.

The problem, then, is not whether to have such a mandate, but how to make it work.

A publicly administered and funded insurance option is the simplest, most obvious means to that end. Obama spoke correctly of distinguishing between means and ends, warning against a dogmatic fixation on such a public option by progressives, but the fact is any other means gets sticky, and come down to simply giving people money in some way shape or form, something Washington is loathe to do. And lawmakers should be wary; the notion of simply paying out for individual private insurance without any meaningful regulatory cost controls is an unsustainable, budget-busting gift to an industry already practiced in gouging its clientele.

So without a public option, a fairly straightforward game of policy logic becomes an equation that doesn’t balance easily at all, and despite huzzahs from enthusiastic liberal lawmakers, Obama continued to lay the groundwork for a delicate abandonment of a true public option in his speech. For reform to work without such an option, Congress and the Administration will have to show a willingness to proactively and firmly regulate in a way inconsistent with everything we’ve seen from both up to this point.

If this dynamic that was underway before the speech continues to play out in the direction it had been heading, this meeting of the irresistible force of policy logic with the immovable object of a Congress either chronically confused or simply beholden to insurance and pharmaceutical contributions will leave only one place to balance off the numbers in any final bill; on the backs of middle and working class Americans.

Unless we see more than rhetoric from Obama and Congress – and soon – this debate will continue on the track it has been on for the last week, and could very well still lead to a uniting of the progressive activist base with the far right to defeat a final product seen as doing far more harm than good. Without clearer, firmer and bolder leadership than can be contained in a single speech, we will see a bill, perhaps not as egregious as the abomination that emerged from the mind of Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus, but close enough. A bill that will not provide an immediate, meaningful public option, will still require people to buy insurance, but will only provide assistance to purchase that insurance to the poorest Americans, and in some deferred form – such as tax credits – which will not come when needed.

The middle and working class will again witness what happens when wealthy Congresspeople (especially when looking to make a tough bill’s numbers round out pleasingly) decide what is “affordable” on their behalf. Reform activists still have their work cut out for them if there’s to be a different outcome.  

Robert Reich neatly and clearly sums up exactly what’s going on. Very hard to argue with. Wonder if any of the opposition would have the nerve to watch it.

My latest for the Guardian UK’s “Comment is Free” website sort of overwrites my previous one, as the Obama Administration and its centrist allies seem primed to do the impossible after all – unite the tea party right and progressives against them on health care – unless Congressional Dems can save them from themselves:

Obama has lost his way on healthcare

His strategy has been reduced to crude political horse-trading, and is not grounded in a reasoned discussion of public policy

[…] Consider: a bill with a serious public option brings the progressives on board. A bill without a public option, but with reforms such as community rating and support for primary care brings most progressives on board, albeit grudgingly.

But the ideas being discussed now split the difference in the worst possible way. The centrist option may in fact include the worst of all possible worlds; an “individual mandate” that citizens purchase health insurance without a government administered option that could be fine tuned to meet the needs of low and middle class Americans squeezed out by prohibitively expensive (and wholly inadequate) private coverage.

To the progressives, such a bill supplants concerns of altruism and empathy with Singerian utilitarianism. Simply forcing the uninsured into private plans, already virtually unaffordable for many, and without any meaningful cost containment or regulatory scheme, is as crazy as it sounds, particularly when one considers the twin realities of recession, and the fact that health care spending is projected to be fully double 2007 levels in just over eight years.