Oh, looky here: according to Talking Points Memo, the most successful state in implementing health care reform is…

… Vermont.

Yes, Vermont, the state where spectacularly unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock insisted that the system didn’t work and wouldn’t work, and was “a story of incompetence and hubris.” But somehow, in spite of all that, Vermont has managed to enroll a higher percentage of Obamacare-eligible people than any other state.

According to TPM, Vermont has enrolled 52.4% of its eligible population. It’s the only state over 50%. TPM arrived at estimates of eligible populations using figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute. Details at the above link.

And there’s good news on the other end of the system as well:

Vermont’s largest health care provider has had few problems with patients using health insurance provided by the state’s new health care exchange since coverage began Jan. 1, an official said Wednesday.

… Shannon Lonergan, director of registration at Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care, said only a small percentage of the thousands of patients the hospital and its affiliated offices see every day have been covered by insurance provided through Vermont Health Connect. Still, they expected more problems than they have seen.

”Surprisingly, it’s gone well,” she said.

Here’s the thing that’s often been lost in the shuffle: the website, the software — those things are not health care reform; they are tools to achieve reform. What’s becoming very clear is that while the tools didn’t initially work as they should, the actual process of reform is doing quite well, thank you.

Maybe that’s why the dead-ender opponents of reform, like Sore Loser Brock and Darcie “Hack” Johnston, have pretty much stopped talking about the health care exchange; instead, they’ve turned their fire on single-payer. Because they know opposing the exchange is a lost cause.

After the jump: That Newsweek report, and the Huntsman’s obsession.  

Well, they still harp on the flaws in the initial rollout and make wide-ranging accusations of misconduct or corruption or stupidity or whatever. But they’ve stopped saying “the system doesn’t work,” because it does, and even they realize it.

And speaking of the initial rollout, let’s take a moment to dispose of the investigative report from the formerly-substantial journalistic entity known as Newsweek, now a mere shadow of its former self. Last week, Newsweek reporter Lynnley Browning wrote a lengthy “takedown” of last year’s exchange rollout, which asserted that state officials had “glossed over ominous warning signs and Keystone Cops-like planning.”

Er, that oughta be “Keystone Kops,” but whatever.

I’ll confess I didn’t read Browning’s opus. When I saw that the most notorious charge — that a July demonstration of the exchange website was faked by contractor CGI — was based on a single anonymous source, I’d had enough. Using a single anonymous source is a big fat journalistic no-no. Browning leans awfully heavily on this single unnamed person, as we see in this key passage:

In the demonstration, “a lot was left to the imagination,” says a person familiar with the event who declined to be named…  Some state staffers that July 26 thought it showed “live” registrations and enrollments by hypothetical consumers, when in fact static, premade screens were displayed. “People weren’t technologically sophisticated enough to understand what was actually going on,” this person explains.

CGI, the source adds, had one goal in that demonstration: It “wanted the state of Vermont to keep its faith.”

Everything in those two paragraphs is credited to a single anonymous source. Maybe this little reportorial transgression explains why Browning has taken the unusual career path of going from the New York Times, the nation’s leading newspaper, to Newsweek, a business that’s barely hanging on, and was famously sold in 2010 for the princely sum of $1.

In this week’s “Fair Game” column, Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz gives Browning and her story a thorough fluffing. Perhaps that’s because he, himself, has spent quite a bit of time waving the red flag over the exchange rollout, and, well, confirmation bias.

The other day I was chatting with a State House reporter who told me that this “faked demo” tale had been widely flogged to in-state political reporters by opponents of reform. The local scribes didn’t bite because they were well aware of who was selling this bill of goods, and they knew there was no corroboration or documentation of any of the charges.

So instead, somebody from outside the state, presumably clueless of the levers and gears of Vermont politics, swallowed the tale hook, line, and sinker.

Heintz reports that he was contacted by another anonymous source who also had doubts about the July demo — although how he knows that his source and Browning’s are actually different people is a mystery to me.

If the two unnamed sources are actually two people, which we have no way of verifying, I still question the ethics of Browning and Heintz in writing stories that were each based on a single anonymous source. Heintz had no way of verifying the bona fides of Browning’s source, so his story depends entirely on a single mystery guest. And again, those two anonymi could well be the same person.

Heintz (and Browning and Brock and Johnston et al.) still believes there’s a scandal waiting to be uncovered, and he chides the Vermont press corps for failing to uncover it. Not sure if he includes himself in that score; he’s one of them. And while he has repeatedly drawn attention to unanswered questions, he hasn’t done much to provide answers.

As for his unanswered questions and Browning’s unsupported allegations, to me it’s less likely a scandal and more likely a reasonable consequence of trying to launch an extremely complicated new system. Every major new government program has gone through growing pains. For that matter, a whole lot of private-sector launches have initial difficulties — or bomb completely. (New Coke, Edsel, the World League of American Football.) Yes, the exchange had a troubled beginning. But it’s working better every day.

And, the most important thing: it’s providing health insurance for thousands of Vermonters who couldn’t get it before.  

If one is in need of a good laugh, check out the caption under the overlaid image of Governor Peter Shumlin reportedly aired recently on WPTZ – Channel 5 – News (Burlington, VT/Plattsburgh, NY: i.e., “Shumlin on Heroin”), via Haik Bedrosian, here.

Either the folks at WPTZ must know something the rest of us don’t or they’re just plain dopey.

(smile)

There have been some major changes in Vermont’s media landscape in recent months. I thought it was time for a scorecard of sorts: who’s doing what, and how well they’re utilizing their resources.

A couple of caveats: My focus here is on media that cover (or claim to cover) state politics and government. And I’m leaving out the TV stations because, frankly, I don’t watch them very much. (I will note that, for all their shortcomings, both WCAX and WPTZ are much better at covering substantive news than most big-city TV operations, which are obsessed with violent crime and produced as if their audiences have ADD/ADHD.)

The new year has seen the emergence of a clear Big Three, and they aren’t the ones you’d expect. After that, there’s a big newspaper on the decline, a smaller paper hanging in there, and a rare throwback to the golden age of radio.

Still the champ: VTDigger, which continues to maximize its limited resources and provide an essential stream of news and information. In the Desert Island scenario, if I had to choose one media outlet, it’d be VTDigger. Anne Galloway has built (is building) something really remarkable. And it’s not easy being the Tampa Bay Rays of Vermont media: constantly losing reporters to bigger outlets and developing the next crop of talent.

Number 2 is Seven Days. Its newly beefed-up reporting staff is knocking out three or four can’t-miss stories every week. At a time when many free weeklies are falling apart — mainly thanks to corporate ownership — we’re lucky to have local ownership at Seven Days, who are investing their healthy ad revenues into a vibrant news operation.

Close behind, and poised to overtake, is Vermont Public Radio. VPR was a sleeping giant for a long time; most of its longer-form stories were rehashes of whatever was in the morning papers (or on VTDigger), and I never felt the need to catch VPR’s local news segments or listen online. That’s changed since the first of the year. Now I try to visit VPR’s website at least once a day, and there’s usually at least one story (often by Peter Hirschfeld) that hasn’t been reported elsewhere.

I downgrade VPR somewhat because it has so many resources, it could do even better. VPR has a huge staff and top-heavy management, and it’s such a fundraising powerhouse that it sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the nonprofit environment. Which means VPR should meet very high expectations; lately, it’s begun to approach them.  More, please.

Those are the new Big Three. Together, they provide a healthy amount of news coverage, especially given our current age of media decline and unpredictability. They’re not perfect, and a lot of news goes uncovered; but we’re hella lucky compared to many other, larger markets.

After the jump: kudos to Steve Pappas and Mark Johnson; another raspberry for the Freeploid.

Haven’t got to the Freeploid yet, have I? Nnnnnope. After the Big Three, in this order:

— The Mitchell Family Organ. The Times Argus and Herald are sadly underfunded, and the MFO’s capital bureau is again reduced to a single reporter. But hell, I give the Mitchells a lot of credit for just continuing to publish a daily paper in two small markets. And, more often than not, the MFOs deliver at least a couple of good stories every day. I’m a Times Argus reader, and its editor, Steve Pappas, is one of my Heroes of Journalism: he has a tiny budget to work with, he deals with constant turnover on his news team, and he produces a lot of copy himself while also riding herd on the entire operation. I hope the Mitchells realize how fortunate they are to have him. And if he ever leaves, any other news organization would be wise to snap him up ASAP.

— Ah, the Burlington Free Press. Doubly enfeebled by declining ad revenue and its money-hungry corporate owner Gannett. It’s also become less relevant to anyone outside Chittenden County due to its obvious diminishment of State House and statewide political news in favor of purely local content. The Freeploid has two State House reporters, but they don’t produce as much as the MFO’s one (now Neal Goswami; formerly Peter Hirschfeld). I can’t say that’s their fault; I suspect it’s a matter of editorial priorities. The Freeploid is now the most underperforming player in our media landscape (performance compared to resources), now that VPR has upped its game.

— And finally, but this is no disgrace, WDEV. Its news service is mainly rip-and-read, but it is dedicated to local programming. In itself, that’s a big plus in this age of mega-media. But its crowning jewel is The Mark Johnson Show, an invaluable platform for public discussion and debate. While VPR has a swarm of producers around everything it puts on the air, Mark single-handedly gets the most important guests and asks the key questions. If VPR wasn’t so timid about breaking the modern public-radio mold (nothing longer than 4 minutes), it could do Vermont a huge service by giving Mark a daily platform to engage a statewide conversation.

Yes, I know, Vermont Edition. That’s nice, but it’s limited. I’d like to see VPR — and other public radio stations elsewhere — step out of its comfort zone and fill a couple of daily hours with local conversation. The midmorning and midafternoon ratings aren’t that strong anyway; why not take a bit of a chance? And in the process, do more to justify your place in the nonprofit world and the media landscape?

VPR produces more local programming than most public radio stations, but even so, the vast majority of its broadcast day is spent airing programs produced elsewhere. Many of those programs are worthwhile, but if you look at where the hours and resources go, VPR is no more a “local” station than any of the commercial talk or music stations that are basically repeaters for national programming.  

So there’s my State of the Media report. Your thoughts are welcome, as always.  

For anyone who has been following the drama in St. Albans City over developer-driven changes to the infrastructure of tiny Maiden Lane, I thought I’d provide this update.  On Monday night, the City Council dissolved the Design Advisory Board, which had unanimously opposed those changes.

Here follows the statement which I read at that meeting:

We, the appellants in the matter of the Smith House/ Owl Club at 13 Maiden Lane in St. Albans, Vermont, will not be bringing a separate appeal to Superior Court concerning the changes to parking on Maiden Lane that have been approved by the City Council.

Although we continue to believe that those changes will have an adverse impact on the historic downtown in general and on our neighborhood in particular, we feel it would be counterproductive to devote any of our limited resources to a separate appeal.  Absent broader knowledge of the situation, the judge will be inclined to accept the opinion of the elected City Council as to what represents the best interests of the people of St. Albans.

For us private citizens to undertake the necessary traffic study would not only be financially impossible, but would also set a wrong precedent under which the City might again abdicate its responsibility to devote the necessary time and resources to thoroughly investigating the impact of a change to the right of way that may seem “minor” to the City Council but not to the neighborhood.

The City has taken the position that the scale of the private project for which the change is to be undertaken is not sufficient to trigger the need for a traffic study.  We disagree.

The diminutive scale of Maiden Lane itself effectively enlarges the project and its potential impacts.

Even if the scale of the Connor redevelopment project for 13 Maiden Lane would not alone trigger the need for a traffic study, surely in combination with the large new ACE Hardware project less than half-a block away, it should.

Together, the two projects mean increased volume of traffic at the already troubled intersection of Main and Congress Street, doubling the impact on tiny Maiden Lane.  Even Messenger St. is likely to suffer negative impacts near its intersection with Congress St.

For the City to take the position that neither of the two projects triggers the need for a traffic study is simply irresponsible.  There were repeated requests for a traffic study from the public, but those requests were ignored.

In so doing the City administration has set itself up as an advocate for the interests of one private developer in opposition to concerns expressed by many members of the public and the entire Design Advisory Board.

If the City was not prepared to undertake the entire cost of such a traffic study, it could have compelled the applicants to contribute as a condition of their approval.

In light of their decision to rubber stamp Connor Contracting’s parking proposal and leave it to a judge to undo any damage from that decision, we do not believe that the City Manager, the Mayor and the City Council can be relied upon to protect the best interests of the people of St. Albans.  However the remedy to unreliable government will not be found in an endless series of related appeals.

The only path to better governance remains at the ballot box.  

Sue and Mark Prent, and Peter Ford

Because of questions raised about the accuracy of my diary from last night, Inside Baseball in Montpelier, I have taken it down for review and editing.

Watch this space for more details.

UPDATED:  Edited to remove the conspiratorial tone of the original. Thanks to JO for the catch.

Jack McCullough 

What started out as an uncontroversial, good-government civic project in the Capital City has turned to controversy, due largely to last-minute changes adopted by Montpelier's City Council before the proposal goes to the voters.

The project, launched in October, 2012, was intended to be a modernization, reorganization, and update of Montpelier's city charter, with no changes to the substance of the charter. As described by the Charter Revision Committee in its report to the voters,:

 The Charter Revision Committee was careful to not propose any substantive changes to the charter.  Our proposed revisions are clarifications and updates to the charter text.  The committee recommends deleting obsolete and unnecessary charter text, adding new language, moving and reorganizing some sections, and inserting new sections that accurately describe the current practices and authority of Montpelier city government.

. . .

The document Montpelier Charter Revisions submitted to the council in August 2013 has extensive clarifying edits but no substantial changes.  When the committee met with the council in August and November, a few additional clarifying edits were requested by the council and incorporated into the charter revision document.  

 (g) Permit the non-highway use, occupancy or reservation of portions of public streets and thoroughfares, provided that such use, occupancy or reservation is in the public interest and will not impair or interfere with the free and safe flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic thereon.

(h) Establish fees and benefit charges for city services, permits, licenses, hearings, and uses of city property.  Establish fees for dog licenses.

The first provision, allowing the Council to premit non-highway use of public streets, arises out of a kerfuffle last year about Montpelier Alive's proposal to let local restaurants and bars use the parking spaces in front of their establishments for “parklets”, or outside seating. In a city where parking as tight as it is in downtown Montpelier you can imagine that this would not be universally popular, but in addition to the lost parking people were complaining about safety and public alcohol consumption issues. Questions were raised by the chair of the local Liquor Board and the state Liquor Control Commission (how I wish Vermont's commission were called the ABC Commission, as in some other states!) and transportation issues were also raised.

Beyond that, some residents were unhappy with the idea of public space, even parking spaces, that could be used as a public resource would essentially be turned over to local businesses. The Times Argus reported:

 Ann Gilbert, a member of the New Directions Coalition, a central Vermont organization promoting healthy lifestyles, said she too was concerned about allowing alcohol to be served at the parklets. 

 The proposal never went anywhere last summer, but now it pops up as part of the charter revision.

The second item is similar. The fight was over dogs, dog owners, and dog waste in Montpelier. Should Montpelier have a dog park, should dogs be allowed to run off leash at Hubbard Park,  should dog owners be more responsible to take care of dog waste, and who should pay the cost for dog waste receptacles the city wound up buying, dog owners or the general public?

Because people feel strongly about their dogs, and other people feel equally strongly about not have to encounter threatening dogs or dog feces contaminating their daily walks, this led to some very strongly worded arguments on Facebook and elsewhere. (For instance, see Bryan Pfeiffer's blog post “The Crap Around Montpelier“.) 

 I think there are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of this one. On the one hand, I don't want to deal with feces other people and their dogs distribute around the city, and I think it is reasonable to argue that dog owners should bear the cost of disposal. On the other hand, we don't make tennis players pay a fee for the upkeep of the public tennis courts, we don't make joggers contribute (beyond their taxes) to the city's hiking and running paths, we don't charge people who frequent Hubbard Park a special “park impact fee”, so why should dog owners be any different?

Again, while not explicit, the dog fee has surfaced as part of the Council's changes to the charter revision proposal.

In both of these cases there is a perfectly innocent explanation: in the course of considering ordinances the City was told that the Council didn't currently have authority to do what they wanted to do. The parklet proposal impinged on the authority of the Department of Transportation and the dog fee proposal would have violated state law on the permissible uses of dog licensing fees.

Contacted about this proposal, Mayor John Hollar emphasized that if either of these proposals is going to be implemented it would still have to do through the Council's usual process for enacting new ordinances, including public hearings. 

Former Council member Nancy Sherman, who chaired the charter review commission thinks the charter change proposal goes too far. In a letter in Times Argus she doesn't go so far as to call for the defeat of her own commission's proposal, but raises questions about whether this was a back door deal to sidestep public input. As a consequence, this uncontroversial update may suddenly be getting more attention than anyone expected.

These are substantive changes, and it's hard not to think it would have been better to have them on the ballot as standalone measures, so each could have been debated on its own merits.

Today, I received am email from my friend Marie Limoges that contained this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v… The link contains video of the assembly line of the Tesla Motor Co. The emphasis is on how automated with robots is the assembly of these automobiles.

What struck me was the thought of how many workers these machines replaced. This replacement of human beings by automatons has been occurring for the past forty years. Initially, these workers were replaced by less expensive foreign workers. Then, even those jobs were transferred overseas to nations to take advantage of the less rigorous safety, health, retirement and other statutory rules.

To be sure, the robots are designed by higher wage workers. But, those workers replaced within this nation by robots have less beneficial employment, at best. At worst, they have long term unemployment before they must turn to low paying service industry jobs or welfare.

Another friend of mine, Ralph Rosenberg, refers to these manufacturing leftovers as the “new nobility.” The “new nobility” are those who the society must support to do nothing. From where does the money to support these people come?

There are many solutions. One answer might be to revise or eliminate the laws providing for depreciation of production machinery or to require taxation of employers for the depreciation of the employees. Call it what you like. The current system must be changed to provide for those persons who are excess to those needed for production in this country. Either tax breaks for business must be eliminated or those who have income from the businesses must fill the gap.

As Robert Reich blogged on Saturday, January 25, 2014:

At some point, working people, students, and the broad public will have had enough. They will reclaim our economy and our democracy. This has been the central lesson of American history.

Reform is less risky than revolution, but the longer we wait the more likely it will be the latter.

I really ought to stop commenting on the ever-flowing cascade of fatuity produced by the Campaign for Vermont’s opinion essay machine. But it’s like eating potato chips: betcha can’t eat just one.

Today’s entry comes from the Master of Fatuity himself, Tom Pelham, CFV co-founder, state functionary in a variety of Administrations, and self-regarded freakin’ genius. The latest Words From On High are entitled “It’s Complicated.” By which he means, “Only I can understand this stuff, now let me explain it to you in a really condescending way.”

Now look, Tom Pelham knows far more about government financing and taxation than I do. But it’s also obvious that his insights are heavily colored by his fiscal conservatism, which makes his policy prescriptions difficult to trust. Or, in my case, easy to dismiss.

But we soldier on. Pelham begins his essay — distributed for free in the Vermont media — by slamming the Vermont media.

Over the years, it has become clear that some in the media do not fully grasp how Vermont’s education property tax system works.

Damn reporters. How dare they not be as brilliant as Tom Pelham?

His point, and he does have one, is that the media are misrepresenting the implications of the school property tax system’s income sensitivity provisions. (If that sentence made your eyes glaze over, then you’ll be in a coma by the time you finish Pelham’s mighty slog.)

Pelham may well have a point: the tax system is a tough nut to crack, and the media’s nutcracking proclivities are intermittent at best. But his underlying message is an ideological one: that income sensitivity unfairly shifts the tax burden upward. This leads to the conservative canard that lower-income voters happily approve school budget increases because they don’t proportionately feel the pain of higher taxes.

That’s just plain old bullshit from the ideological charnel house that brought us “Welfare Mothers in Cadillacs” and “Obamacare Will Make Americans Lazy.”

Actually, if you take a look at the following chart from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (which I posted last week in this space, but it’s equally relevant here), you’ll see that in spite of the effects of income sensitivity, the property tax hits working folks the hardest.

Hmm. Gee. To judge by that chart, Vermont could use a little bit more income sensitivity. Because it seems as though the working poor and middle class are still paying a bigger proportional share than are the top 20%.

Tom Pelham is well versed on the gears and pulleys of tax policy. He knows how it functions. But there’s the machine, and there’s the stuff produced by the machine. That’s what matters about public policy and its outcomes. And in that sphere, Tom Pelham is no smarter than your average reporter (or blogger).  

ICYMI, the Gannett media chain issued a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report last week. Industry observers saw signs of trouble for the corporate owner of the Burlington Free Press. Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review called the results “basically miserable.”

One big problem: Circulation revenues showed a slight increase for the year, but declined in the fourth quarter. The annual results were buoyed by the imposition of paywalls and price hikes for the paper editions; the 4Q falloff may be a sign of reader fatigue with both. Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute:

This raises the concern that capturing revenue from new digital subscribers and pairing “all access” print/digital bundles with a big price increase could be a one-time revenue event. Gannett not only failed to continue gaining circulation revenue at the end of the last year, it lost a little, as these subscriptions came up for renewal.

Edmonds notes that Gannett is hoping for another revenue boost this year, as its local papers begin to carry a slimmed-down version of its national flagship USA TODAY; Gannett’s CEO Gracia Martone says “the expanded content could provide the rationale for another round of price increases.” As I predicted several weeks ago in this space. This time, I’m not especially happy to be right.  

They’re really pushing the limits of reader fatigue. And, as Chittum reports, Gannett properties are poorly positioned to thrive in the digital age.

The medium- to long-term point of a paywall strategy is to create a new, growing digital revenue stream while protecting your existing digital-ad business and slowing the decline of print revenue as much as possible. The end game is, hopefully, an all-digital business that can support a strong newsgathering operation without print subsidies.

But a paywall imposes the quality imperative more than ever. You have to have a strong newsgathering operation to justify charging online in the first place.

Gannett, though, has a well-earned and long-established reputation for high margins and poor quality. Last year it generated 22 percent operating cashflow margins, paid out $183 million in dividends, and laid off hundreds of journalists.

And there’s the rub: Gannett’s cost-cutting inflated its profit margins in the short run and allowed it to maintain high dividend payouts at the expense of its newspapers’ quality. And mediocre media outlets aren’t likely to bring eager customers through the digital door. Chittum:

It’s worth pointing out that Gannett doesn’t break out its digital-only subscriber numbers in its securities filing. A year ago it had snared a pitiful 46,000 subscribers across its 81 papers but projected it would a quarter-million digital-only subs by now. You can bet it didn’t come close to that. If Gannett had something remotely positive to say, it would tell us.

Seen through these expert analysts’ eyes, Gannett is taking on water as it sails into stormy seas. And its captain may not particularly care all that much. During the 4Q announcement, CEO Martone was asked if Gannett might follow the lead of News Corp. and Tribune and spin off its newspaper operations while keeping its cash-cow broadcasting properties. Her reply wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy.

In essence, Martore’s answer was not now, but maybe later.

Sounds like the captain is ushering Gannett newspapers into the lifeboats. I think we can expect the Burlington Free Press to continue cutting its news operation while asking readers to pay more. It might work in the short term, but it’s a recipe for eventual disaster.  

News consumers in Vermont are relatively blessed by the presence of VTDigger and the new and improved news efforts at VPR and Seven Days. (And WDEV and the Mitchell Family Papers, which do good work with very limited resources.) It’s a good thing, since the Freeploid is already a shell of its former self, and continues to be drained by its corporate masters.  

Submitted for your approval: a recent opinion piece posted on VTDigger by Jeff Provost, “a business owner and a member of Campaign for Vermont.” The title: “The State Is In Serious Trouble.”

Ah yes, Campaign for Vermont doomsaying. It’s such a boost to Vermont’s image to have serious people going out of their way to slag the state at every opportunity, in hopes of gaining some short-term political edge. It’s almost like they hope Vermont will fail.

But anyway, back to Mr. Provost, “business owner.” What business, pray tell? According to The Google, he is owner of Dock Doctors, which waged an expensive lobbying and advertising effort last year, aimed at killing the shoreland protection bill. Sounds like a typical CFV “nonpartisan” type.

Normally I don’t take the time to dismantle every piece of piffle generated by the CFV Laugh Factory, but Provost’s is a truly spectacular example of rhetorical parkour — the art of leaping from one point to another with no regard for the terrain in between.

He begins by discovering our parlous condition by driving down a single road.

Traveling a distance of less than a mile on a street in one of Vermont’s larger cities, I counted eight single-family residences for sale, not to mention a couple of other multi-family structures and one commercial building – all on the market, and presumably with few to no buyers at all knocking on the door for a tour.

… Either the prior owners have moved away or, because of the poor economy in Vermont, have been forced out of their mortgages and into rental situations. Sadly, it’s probably a mix of both.

Okay, hmm. A single stretch of road is presumed to be emblematic of the entire state. When, in fact, it’s the exception, not the rule: the unspoken truth in Provost’s exposition is that he hasn’t seen any similar lumps of for-sale properties. If he had, this one stretch wouldn’t have struck him as exceptional. I’d be curious to know where this road was located; there are certainly some troubled communities in Vermont with lots of real estate on the market, but there are many more that are doing just fine property-wise.

As if that isn’t enough of a death-defying logical leap, he embeds a couple of huge assumptions: that there are “few to no buyers” and that the prior owners “have been forced out” “because of the poor economy in Vermont.” How does he know how many buyers might be out there, or how long the properties have been on the market? How does he know the prior owners were “forced out”? Maybe they upgraded.

But no, he has a preconceived narrative, and he’s looking for evidence to fit.

Having discerned the health of the entire herd by reading one set of entrails, Provost goes on to quote some handy statistics: he points out our “meager” net job growth of 7,000 since 1999. I wonder how he happened to pick that year. What I do know is that it included the jobless growth of the Bush years (and the Douglas Administration, mind you) and the devastating effects of the great recession of 2008 (triggered by Bruce Lisman’s old buddies on Wall Street, mind you).

And he chooses to compare Vermont’s job growth, unfavorably, with North Dakota’s. Which is just goddamn absurd: North Dakota has enjoyed a huge resource boom since 2000, mostly thanks to hydrofracked oil. It’s like comparing Austria with Abu Dhabi. The difference between Vermont and North Dakota has nothing to do with public policy or taxation; it has to do with exploitable resources.

He then bemoans our falling population and student enrollment, which are legitimate issues to be sure. But he uses them as a prelude to an all-out attack on you-know-who in Montpelier.

All of this is happening while our most influential elected officials continue to add taxes, operate inefficient and ineffective government programs, stymie development, mandate high-cost energy and impose a variety of roadblocks on businesses that are barely getting by as is.

“Roadblocks” like the shoreland protection bill that might cost Dock Doctors some business, hmm?

All of Provost’s rapid-fire assertions are highly arguable, but he’s hoping that sheer quantity will compensate for uneven quality. And then — well, you had to know that this was coming:

Meanwhile, to our east in New Hampshire, you will find a vibrant economy that benefits from no sales tax, no tax on wages, no estate tax and no land gains tax. …New Hampshire has become a hub for the technology industry, primarily in the southern part of the state. It has also grown its population by well over 6 percent since 2000, one that is more than double Vermont’s.

Ah, New Hampshire, the lodestar of the pro-business, pro-development crowd. Live free or die! No taxes! That’s the ticket.

Well, Jeff, I hate to break the news to you, but the “New Hampshire Advantage” has much less to do with taxes than with geography. As you yourself note, New Hampshire’s growth has come “primarily in the southern part of the state.” More specifically, the southeastern corner, blessed by its proximity to the prosperous Boston metro area and its centers of learning and research that generate a whole lot of entrepreneurialism. Plus the ongoing boom in seacoast-area properties. Growth in the rest of New Hampshire — anywhere outside of the area bounded by Nashua, Manchester, Concord and Portsmouth — is no better than in Vermont. New Hampshire’s North Country is just as poor as our Northeast Kingdom.

And as long as we’re on the subject of proximity to New Hampshire, why don’t any of the Provosts of the world ever discuss our other three borders — shared with high-tax Massachusetts, New York, and Quebec? Whatever we lose to New Hampshire, we must gain back from the three rapacious governments to our north, west, and south. Especially Quebec, what with disastrous single-payer health care; disaffected Canadians must be streaming across our borders!

But for now, let’s stick to the New Hampshire Fable. Here’s an inconvenient truth: Vermont’s unemployment rate is roughly a half-percent lower than New Hampshire’s. And according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two states’ jobless rates have tracked very closely since at least 2005. Vermont’s been consistently lower for the last couple of years; before that, New Hampshire did a bit better. Now, I know the unemployment rate isn’t perfect, but I sure don’t see any edge for the Tax-Free State.

See, taxes are not the only factor in entrepreneurialism and business decision-making. It’s actually pretty far down the list. And while Vermont does have a higher tax burden than New Hampshire, we also have better public services and better schools. Those are helpful to business. We have a climate that, in many ways, is entrepreneur-friendly; it’s easier for a growing business to gain a foothold in a smaller market, and it’s easier for a business to obtain financing when there are a lot of locally-owned and community-focused banks and credit unions, as we have in Vermont.

And now we have come to the big conclusion of Jeff Provost’s parkour adventure. And it’s a big fat kiss on the ass of you-know-who:

So far, Bruce Lisman and his group, Campaign for Vermont, are the only ones who have really attacked the problem that is our struggling economy. Maybe our current administration ought to reach out to those folks for help, or at least take a page from their playbook.

Oh, how they have “attacked the problem.” That is, if by “attacked” you mean “written fatuous opinion pieces and bought a lot of advertising time.” Reminds me of George S. Patton, it does.

Well, actually, it reminds me of the old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore routine.

PC: Do you remember that, the Second World War?

DM: Certainly, yes.

PC: Ghastly business.

DM: Oh yes.

PC: Absolutely ghastly business.

DM: Yes, indeed…

PC: I was completely against it.

DM: Well, I think we all were.

PC: Ah yes, but I wrote a letter.

You know, if Jeff Provost is right, and Bruce Lisman’s Brigade of Letter-Writers is really the only thing between us and economic doom, then we really are in big trouble.

Fortunately for all of us, Jeff Provost is wrong.