So, one of the louder Republican voices in the Legislature is talking of a run for Governor. Heidi Scheuermann of Stowe is telling one and all that she is “considering” a candidacy.

The Republicans could do tons worse. (See: Brock, Randy; or Vallee, Rodolphe.) Scheuermann is young, active, relatively moderate, and female, which is a pretty big deal for a party known as a refuge for bitter old white men. Also, she’s putting forward the best possible mix of issues for a challenge to Governor Shumlin: economic growth, property tax relief/school funding reform, and Shumlin’s plan for a single-payer health care system. She is wise, IMO, to de-emphasize the troubled rollout of Vermont Health Connect, and to forego any talk of repeal. VHC is likely to be an established and accepted fact by this fall, and a Republican candidate would be smart to turn that page.

All that being said… no. She’s got no shot. Shumlin remains popular; he’s got a million dollars in the bank and he’s just getting started; it’s awfully late for Scheuermann to begin a run; she has no statewide profile; and Vermonters hardly ever boot an incumbent anything. (See: Sorrell, Bill.) She’d also be saddled with a weak party structure that’s years away from competing with the Democratic machine.

And although she’s chosen the right issues, they aren’t weighty enough to build a case against an entrenched incumbent. The economy could be stronger, but it ain’t that bad; single-payer is an unknown, and it’s hard to make a convincing case against an unknown; and Democratic lawmakers are taking positive steps to defang the property-tax issue by moving to cut the statewide levy and push school reorganization.

Which begs the question: Why is she even thinking about a candidacy almost certain to fail? She’d seemingly be better off continuing to raise her profile in the Legislature. She’s young enough to bide her time until Shumlin tires of being Governor and the VTGOP can fully regenerate. So why run now?

Here’s where the Bruce Lisman Conspiracy Engine huffs its way onstage.  

In addition to being one of the more vocal Republicans in the Legislature, Scheuermann is a high-profile member of Campaign for Vermont (Prosperity), Now WIth Less Lisman. She was one of the Founding Partners of CFV, way back in the fall of 2011. She has repeatedly touted her relationship with Lisman and CFV and brought its issues into the Legislature. CFV’s top issue for 2014 is ethics reform; and Scheuermann is the lead sponsor of H.846, an ethics bill “modeled after CFV proposal,” in the words of a VTDigger headline from February 16.  

According to one of my sources, Lisman was actually thinking about a run for Governor this year, but realized he’d have to spend a boatload of money (check) and probably lose anyway (double check). Now that he’s backed away from active CFV leadership, he could inject himself more personally into Vermont politics… but if not as a candidate, perhaps as a Lenore Broughton? With a fraction of the capital needed for a campaign of his own, he could effectively jumpstart the candidacy of an established Republican… a Republican with ties to CFV and its agenda… a Republican who would establish the CFV agenda as a force in the VTGOP…

Sounds like Heidi Scheuermann to me.

In this scenario, Scheuermann is a stalking horse for a future Lisman candidacy, say in 2016 or 2018*. She wouldn’t gum up the works by actually winning, so the field would be open next time around. And if she managed a respectable finish — beating Randy Brock’s 38% by at least a few percentage points — she’d provide a shot of credibility to the CFV agenda, and show the VTGOP that this is the best way to win back the corner office.  

* Argument for 2018: it’s a non-Presidential year, better for Republicans; and Shumlin is likely to be leaving office by then. Argument for 2016: Lisman is entering his late 60s, so time is not on his side.

As for Scheuermann, she’d sacrifice her House seat — but how much fun is it to be a Republican in a Democrat-dominated legislature? And plenty of rewards would be available. She could be given a gig at CFV if she needed a job. And if Lisman were to actually become Governor, she’d be at the top of the list for Cabinet posts.

Is all of this excessively conspiratorial? Probably. But it’s plausible nonetheless.

More plausible than Scheuermann honestly believing she can beat the Governor this year.  

It is true that S.204 (aka “VT State Bank”) failed to move out of Senate Finance Committee in time to be sent to the House of Representatives yesterday (3/26/14). Nevertheless, I saw/heard the following during the long knock-em-down drag-em-out concerning S.220 (Workers Comp, registry of sole contractors, advertising funds for tourism, etc, etc):

on page 528, Senate Journal for the date:

Senators Ashe, Bray, French, Lyons, MacDonald, Mullin, Pollina, and White


move to amend the bill as follows:


First: By adding a new section to be numbered Sec. 25 to read as follows:


Sec. 25. VERMONT STATE TREASURER; CREDIT FACILITY FOR 
LOCAL INVESTMENTS


(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, the 
Vermont State Treasurer shall have the authority to establish a credit facility of 
up to 10 percent of the State’s average cash balance on terms acceptable to the 
Treasurer for purposes established by the Treasurer’s Local Investment
Advisory Committee.


(b) The amount authorized in subsection (a) of this section shall include all 
credit facilities authorized by the General Assembly and established by the 
Treasurer prior to or subsequent to the effective date of this section, and the 
renewal or replacement of those credit facilities.

State bank gets a toe in the door? And if so, what’s Mullin doing there? Or 10% is just a popular number these days?  

 UPDATED again.

VPR reports that the amendment was supported by the committee this morning. Next stop is the House floor. With the support of the committee of jurisdiction things look very good. 

UPDATE, 3/27/14, 9:22 P.M.

The amendment has over fifty cosponsors now. They'll be making a presentation in House Ways & Means, which has members who are known to support the provision, in the morning before the amendment gets taken up on the floor. 

 Watch this space for more developments.

Expect the unexpected when the miscellaneous tax bill comes to the House floor later today.

I know what you're thinking. “Is there anything that I am less interested in than the miscellaneous tax bill?” 

Well, that's about to change. You see, the miscellaneous tax bill is about raising money, and every year the Legislature hears the same message: there's not enough money to do what you want to do, whether it's housing and heating assistance for poor people, environmental protection, or any number of activities that would really make a positive difference in people's lives. And of course, the other half of that message, the half that comes across loud and clear, is that there is no additional taxing capacity, no appetite for raising taxes on Vermont's hard-working or rich people.

But some smart House members are looking around the country and have identified a new source of revenue. As you know, out in Colorado they're raking in the dough even faster than they thought they would. The projected income for the first year is $40 million in new taxes, all paid by Coloradans who are more than happy to shell out for the opportunity to get high.

Yes, the green is coming from marijuana, and a tripartisan group of legislators, more than thirty so far, think it would be a smart move to figure out how much Vermont could raise in taxes if we legalized pot. Tomorrow when the miscellaneous tax bill is taken up one of the amendments that will be put before the house is this:

 Sec. XX  JOINT FISCAL OFFICE REPORT

No later than January 15, 2015, the Joint Fiscal Office shall report to the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance regarding the projected revenue impacts of legalizing the possession of marijuana, including the feasibility of a sales tax on marijuana and any other information that would assist the committees in considering marijuana policy reform. 

It doesn't commit the state to doing anything, but if we're going to keep leaving money on the table we should at least know what kind of money we're talking about.

 They're still working on the language, but with thirty members signed on they are already well on the way to getting this passed. And from what I hear, if anything the support in the Senate may be even stronger.

Count on seeing some major pushback from leadership, but this seems like the obvious next step. 

Keep marijuana out of the hands of kids, regulate it, and start collecting the taxes Vermont needs.

This amendment is the first step. 

Or whatever they say at the beginning of a football game.

You read it here first: unionization is coming to minor league football.

That's right, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that NCAA football players, this time the Northwestern team, are university employees, and are consequently entitled to form a union to bargain collectively for wages, hours, and working conditions.

You heard that right: wages, and that could mean big money.

 According to reporting by CNN: 

Figures filed by Northwestern University show that the Big Ten Conference football program had revenue of $30.1 million in 2012-13. It had expenses of $21.7 million, leaving it a profit of $8.4 million.

 How does this translate to the players?

Here's one way to think about it. In the United States major league athletes take home bring home half or more of the total revenues the teams get, more in baseball, basktball, and hockey, a little less in football. What's a fair share for the workers who enable the so-called universities to realize annual profits in the billions?

Or think of it another way: There are seventy NCAA football coaches who make more than a million dollars a year, not counting endorsements (which happen to be illegal for NCAA athletes).

Or one more perspective, also from CNN:  The average annual scholarship shortfall that athletes have to pay themselves to attend school is $3,285.

Yes, these workers, whom the NCAA calls without a hint of embarrassment “student-athletes”, and who are compensated by nothing more than a scholarship that is very unlikely to lead to a degree, wind up subsidizing their employers for the privilege of playing big-time sports.

 This is far from the end of the story. The case will go up to the full NLRB, and then undoubtedly through the federal courts, but this is a major step toward justice for NCAA workers.

1. Put one foot ahead of the other.

2. Carelessly let gun point vaguely downwards.

3. FIRE!

Today’s metaphorical practitioner of this Second Amendment-protected activity is John Campbell, Vermont’s Senate Penitent Pro Tem. He forgot to engage the safety catch on his mouth before speaking with VPR’s Peter “Gotcha” Hirschfeld about the prospects for Governor Shumlin’s #1 issue, single-payer health care.

“The governor and the administration have their sights set on this single-payer, and one that is publicly financed through a myriad of different way (sic),” Campbell said Tuesday. “I believe that right now, …that may not be something that would be politically viable in this legislative body, due to the costs involved.”

…Given the challenges ahead, Campbell says the Legislature needs to begin putting together an alternate health care reform plan, in the event single-payer fails.

Which seems to be a long-winded way of saying “Ding dong, single-payer is dead!” A curious sentiment coming from one of Shumlin’s top two legislative allies. Er, should I say, “a person who should be one of Shumlin’s top two legislative allies”? It sounds a lot like Lt. Gov. Phil Scott’s position. Indeed, it’s arguably to the right of Vermont’s top Republican: Scott has adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward single-payer, while Campbell is giving it little or no chance of passing the Senate.

This is a nice little giftie for the Republicans. I can just imagine the press release: “Even the Senate’s top Democrat doesn’t think single-payer will work!” And if they can get hold of the audio, it might well make its way into a bunch of campaign ads this year.

But let’s turn to the big issue: Campbell going off the reservation on health care.

There are a couple ways of interpreting this. Well, three: the conspiratorial; the et tu, Brute; and the (relatively) benign. Unfortunately for purposes of snarky political blogging, the third is most likely the case. But let’s go through ’em all, shall we?  

Conspiratorial. Many liberals and progressives, and some in the media, don’t believe that the Governor really wants single-payer. They think he’s holding it out there to mollify the left as he, generally, steers a centrist course. In this scenario, Campbell is laying the groundwork for a potential retreat from single-payer.

I don’t buy it. For one thing, if I were Governor Shumlin and I wanted someone to put out a stealthy political message, I think I could find a better choice than John Campbell. For another, and this may be unfashionable, but I actually believe that the Governor is totally serious about single-payer.

But on a very practical level, he’s talked about it so much that it’s become the linchpin of his tenure in the corner office. If he leaves office with a workable single-payer system in place, his Governorship will be seen as a success. If he falls short, it’ll be a lasting stain on his legacy no matter what else he accomplishes.

Et tu, Brute? In this scenario, the notoriously centrist Campbell is drawing a line in the sand (or, if you prefer, sticking a knife in the back), putting pressure on the Governor to give up on his legacy issue. This would be treachery of the first order — especially since the Governor was one of those who helped save Campbell’s bacon in 2012 when there was widespread dissatisfaction with his performance as Senate leader.  

To believe this is to credit Campbell with enough political courage to risk alienating his party’s power structure, and enough verbal dexterity to thread a needle with his words. Personally, I don’t think he has that much of either quality. Which brings us to…

The self-inflicted wound. So, Peter Hirschfeld corners Campbell and asks him about the prospects for single-payer health care. Campbell hems and haws, allows his abundant political caution to take over, and emits a blizzard of tortuous verbiage that casts some doubt on the launch of a huge, expensive social engineering project. I put my money here. I mean, just read this entire paragraph. Or at least try to, without your eyes rolling back into your head:

“The governor and the administration have their sights set on this single-payer, and one that is publicly financed through a myriad of different way,” Campbell said Tuesday. “I believe that right now, after the due diligence that has been done by not only the Legislature, but also by some of the people in the administration, to me it demonstrates that that may not be something that would be politically viable in this legislative body, due to the costs involved.”

Sheesh.

Another sign of verbal ham-fistedness: why’s he talking about an “alternate reform plan”? If single-payer doesn’t work out, wouldn’t we just stick with Vermont Health Connect? Why try to devise yet another system?

Not exactly Daniel Webster-level stuff. To me, the tone and style of his response points to the real explanation: John Campbell tried to go Full Waffle and failed.

I bet the Governor’s not happy, though. (A call to Shumlin’s office for comment went unreturned as of this writing. If I hear back, I’ll let you know.)  

More evidence has emerged that the Japanese government has deliberately manipulated data in order to give the impression that radiation doses in three evacuated Fukushima Prefecture municipalities are significantly lower than has been recorded.

The Mainichi Times  is reporting that the “Cabinet Office” team was concerned that releasing the data as recorded would discourage evacuees from making plans to return to their homes.  It would obviously be extremely disadvantageous to Prime Minister Abe’s plans for resumption of Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy if it became generally known that the evacuated towns continue to be uninhabitable, three full years after the critical event.

Problems with the resettlement plan arose when recent airborne measurements, which the government had expected to show significant declines in radiation, returned results much higher than anticipated.

The new results, however, were significantly higher than expected, with the largest gap coming in Kawauchi. There, the Cabinet Office team had predicted radiation doses of 1-2 millisieverts per year, but the data showed doses at between 2.6 and 6.6 millisieverts. Cabinet Office team members apparently said that the numbers would “have a huge impact” and “we will need to explain them to the local municipalities,” and release of the results was put off.

How to “fix” the uncooperative figures?  Simply change the number of hours that people are assumed to spend outside where their exposure to radiation will be greatest!  Now, instead of assuming people will average eight hours per day in the open, number crunchers are allowing only six hours for outdoor activity.  

‘Probably works just fine in a couple of winter months, but where do you think this nature loving population can be expected to spend much of its time throughout the remainder of the year?

Now that the numbers can be presented in a more palatable manner, evacuation orders will begin to be lifted, this coming month.  

The Miyakoji district of Tamura is set to have its evacuation order lifted on April 1, and the eastern part of Kawauchi is expected to have its evacuation order lifted sometime during the 2014 fiscal year.

Charming.

Tomorrow, look for a streamed presentation of Fairewinds Associates’ Arne Gundersen delivering the keynote address at Penn State’s TMI@35 Symposium.

“35 Years and Three Meltdowns Later: The REAL Lessons from Three Mile Island” will examine the nuclear industry’s persistent practice of manipulating dose calculations in order to support the myth of “harmless” radiation.

To quote Arne:

Don’t like the answer?  Change the assumptions!

As far as I know there's only been one, but it's important this week.

The year is 1990, the case is Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), a case in which two people fired from their jobs with the state of Oregon for using peyote in religious ceremonies appealed their disqualification from unemployment benefits because they were discharged for misconduct.

Their argument was that because their conduct was motivated by their sincere religious beliefs it was protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and that it was unconstitutional to penalize them for their actions.

The Supreme Court rejected their claim concluding that religious motivation is not enough to give them a blanket exemption from neutral and generally applicable state laws.

Justice Scalia wrote the court's opinion, and here's the money quote:   

We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs [p879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):

 Most of the liberals on the court dissented, but I think they were wrong and Scalia was right.

What remains to be seen now, of course, is whether Scalia is going to have the intellectual integrity to hold to the position he took in 1990. This year the case is Hobby Lobby and it's challenging the contraception coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

If Scalia were as intellectually honest as he likes to pretend he would follow his reasoning in Employment Division and uphold the contraceptive mandate.

One suspects, however, that we will see a results-oriented vote in favor of his base. 

Myth: Natural Gas is cheap and will save rate-payers money.



Because of the recent boom in hydraulic fracturing of shale in the US and Canada, unprecedented by any real use for or established systems of use for Natural Gas, we are temporarily in a period of excess supply with relatively low demand for this specific fuel. High supply + low demand = low price. But the supply is predicted to remain constant and eventually decrease (natural gas is as non-renewable as oil, no matter how sustainable the industry likes to paint it), whereas the demand is quickly rising. Natural Gas now powers many public transit systems, more and more transmission and distribution lines are popping up, and many large facilities are now set up to export liquefied natural gas (LNG, the kind that can travel by cargo ship) to Asia and other overseas markets. Also, as more and more environmental and scientific feedback emerges and industries are forced to take more and more expense-accruing precautions, the added cost will certainly not be taken out of the companies’ precious profits but out of the price paid by the consumers.



The new equation becomes Lower Supply + Massive Demand + added costs not originally predicted by the industry = Skyrocketing Prices.



Many homes will spend upwards of 3,000-4,000$ (and those prices are gas industry estimates, mind you) converting from propane to Natural Gas, imagine their disappointment when they find themselves trapped in a fuel that betrayed their assumptions of saving them money in the long run. The only financial winners of this pipeline are Vermont Gas. Any attempt to defend this myth, (that the public will reap financial benefits) is just a mask donned by pipeline proponents to help our public officials save face while bending over backwards to shine the shoes of the 1%

Actually, it's only partly the rent.

The truth is, it's a mismatch between the rent and the worker's income. You might not be surprised to learn that a recent report demonstrates, once again, that Vermont is one of the hardest places to afford housing.

  In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent in Vermont, renters need to earn $19.36 per hour, or $40,272 a year. This is Vermont’s 2014 Housing Wage, revealed in a report released today. The report, Out of Reach 2014, was jointly released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization, and the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.

 We don't have rent control in Vermont, and it's pretty certain that we never will, but we can do something about inadequate wages for working people.

For example, we can raise the minimum wage. That's only half the job, though. Sixty thousand workers in Vermont don't get paid sick time, so if they have to miss work they don't get paid. Picture being on a low salary already, then trying to make your rent when you miss out on a couple of days' pay this week.

We know that the means are at hand to address both of these problems: raise the minimum wage and require all employers to provide earned sick leave, but apparently that's a big lift this year.

 Tom Stevens, the State Representative who has been the champion of the earned sick leave proposal, and a small business person, Jen Kimmich, one of the founders of the Alchemist, writing at VtDigger.org, point out that the evidence supports the sick leave proposal. It turns out that where it's been tried and studied it has not hurt small businesses.

 A growing body of evidence should put to rest lobbyists’ predictions of doom. Kevin Westlye, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, opposed the first paid sick days bill in San Francisco, but later told a business reporter that it’s “the best public policy for the least cost. . . .” The current director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce testified in committee hearings this year that concerns raised by Vermont’s business organizations were voiced in his city, too, but that seven years after implementation, earned sick days have had no adverse effect on his members.

In addition, just released research from Connecticut, the only state thus far to enact an earned sick day law, found that “the concerns articulated by many business associations that the law would impose heavy burdens on employers and invite worker abuse turn out to have been misplaced.” Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said the law had led to no change or an increase of less than 2 percent in their overall costs.

Time's running out. Call your legislator and tell them that you support both a minimum wage increase and earned sick leave. 

About a month ago, I posted a diary about pro-choice groups’ mounting dismay with Vermont’s own Senator Patrick Leahy, usually a liberal stalwart. But in this case, he’s putting Senate comity above the interests of liberal activists. My post was followed by surprising silence in the rest of the Vermont media, which are usually quick to chronicle every jot and tittle of Leahy’s career.

Do they not like cribbing from GMD? Or do they not like reporting bad news about St. Patrick? I don’t know. But now comes Politico.com with a further report, including the Obama Administration’s rising impatience with Leahy, described by Politico as “the one and only man who could peel away the next layer of Senate control over [judicial] nominations.”

For those just joining us, Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which makes him the key player on judicial nominations. He has made a point of honoring a Senate tradition of “blue slips,” which allows any single Senator to block a judicial nominee from his/her home state. Which allows Republicans an effective filibuster on any judicial nominee from any of the 32 states with at least one Republican Senator. Which includes the vast majority of federal court vacancies.

The odd thing about Leahy’s insistence is that his Republican predecessor at Judiciary, Orrin Hatch, did not uphold the blue-slip tradition.

And, with a good chance the Republicans will retake the Senate this November, they are in no mood to approve any new nominees. As White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler told Politico, the blue slip policy “assumes a level of good faith on behalf of the Republican senators.”

You might say that Leahy is playing croquet while the Republicans are fighting a back-alley brawl.  

Also, The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she decried Leahy’s adherence to the blue-slip policy while highly qualified Obama nominees sit on the sidelines.

Judgeships matter, as the president and Leahy know well. Is it too much to ask – is it anything to ask at all – that the president nominate judges who share his values? That is, after all, what Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did.

But to our dear St. Patrick, a hoary — and inconsistently enforced — Senate tradition is more important than getting more Obama judges onto the federal bench. Usually, he’s pretty well grounded in reality, in spite of his nearly four decades in the World’s Most Distinguished Boy’s Club. But in this case, it looks like our Senior Senator is identifying more with his cloakroom buddies than with his party or his loyal supporters.

If anyone from Senator Leahy’s office, or the Senator himself, would like to offer an explanation to GMD’s readership, I’m happy to listen.