During the 2014 Legislative Session there will be discussion of the same longstanding economic problems. How can we balance the budget while fulfilling the essential functions of state government? How can we prevent property taxes from going up? How can we stimulate economic development? A Vermonter might wonder why such problems are never really solved. I think that the primary reason is that the formation of these economic policies is dominated by politics rather than by economic reality, therefore they never really work.

   One of the weaknesses of the representative form of government is the tendency for elected officials to promise more spending programs without setting up tax revenue to finance them. Another weakness is the tendency for the tax code to be riddled with special provisions that reduce tax payments for particular interests. It is politically advantageous to provide new spending and tax cuts but politically unpopular to finance spending with taxes or to reduce tax subsidies.

    Vermont is trapped in vicious cycles due to these weaknesses. Ambitious spending programs are promised without sustainable funding. Programs therefore fail to achieve their goals due to lack of resources. There is continual pressure for spending greater than tax revenue, creating perpetual budget gaps that are hard to close.  Particular groups receive special reductions in taxes. This then means that to raise the same amount of revenue tax rates have to rise, leading others to ask for special tax reductions, and so on. The costs of entitlements and special tax provisions grow out of control because if requirements are met the statutory benefits must be provided, without further direct governmental management.

   Examples of spending difficulties include numerous programs within the Agency of Human Services in which costs outstrip funding repeatedly. There is also the proposed state financed health insurance program, in which universal insurance and health care have been promised without specifying taxes to fund the cost of up to $2 billion. There are about $3 billion in state unfunded liabilities in retirement funds. Then there are about $1.3 billion worth of “Tax Expenditures” – special tax provisions that reduce payments by those who qualify – that are spread throughout the entire tax code.

   We can transcend these vicious cycles. We could develop a budget that would be sustainable if we restricted entitlements to the basics rather than making new promises that we cannot keep reliably. We could lower all tax rates through the elimination of many special exemptions. I think that property tax rates could come down by 20 cents and all income tax rates could be reduced several percentage points each. Even those who lose special tax treatment would benefit from the much lower rates. Basic but effective government programs and low and stable tax rates would create favorable conditions for economic activity.

   There has been some Legislative interest in such reforms, but too little progress has been made. In part this may be because the Governor has shown a preference for rhetoric over reality in both budget and tax matters. He has chosen to make ambitious promises for programs in education and health care for which he has specified no new funding sources. He has claimed that he will not increase “broad-based taxes” while taking actions that increase the gas tax and property taxes. The only tax expenditure that he has suggested eliminating was one that benefited the working poor.

  The Governor’s political success is such that he has no announced opponent.  I have no confidence that any future Republican or Progressive candidate would be any more willing to face our economic realities in terms of BOTH spending and tax reform than he is. My disappointment and frustration at his failure of economic leadership is so intense that if I could I would run for Governor myself.

  However, armed only with uncomfortable economic realities and without an established base of support, if I tried to run for Governor it would be a joke.  I will continue to work in the Legislature to bring economic analysis and creative common sense to bear on the problems before us, so that our solutions might strengthen Vermont.

Cynthia Browning represents Arlington, Manchester, Sandgate, and Sunderland in the Vermont Legislature.    

Here’s a question for you.

Let’s say you’re a reporter, and you’ve discovered a nice juicy story. One that sheds unexpected light on its subject, and touches on broader social themes. It’s a great story; it’s a lot of work to research and write, but the end product is personally and professionally rewarding.

All that being said, the story might also have unintended consequences for the person or people involved. What do you do?

We have two case studies, one in big capital letters and another in smaller type. One national, one local. In the former, we already know the repercussions; in the latter, they remain to be seen.

Story #1: “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” by Caleb Hannan, posted on Grantland.com. It begins as a sports story about a new type of putter (yes, the golf club) that’s attracted a lot of favorable attention, and about its reclusive inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.

She initially consented to the story on the understanding that it focus on the putter, not on her own story. But while conducting research, Hannan discovers an entirely unexpected life story — including the fact that Dr. V is transgendered. He decides he can’t write the article without including her story. When he informs her of that, she reacts angrily.

And then kills herself.

It’s a damn good story, very well written, and received widespread initial praise from the sports journalism community. And then came the backlash: some journalists and many activists lambasted Hannan for telling a very personal story against the subject’s will.

That’s the big national story and I think the answer is clear, at least in retrospect: Even though you’re a journalist who’s done your job, you don’t always have a “right” to tell a story, and your readers don’t have “a right to know,” if the consequences are so immense.

Now for Story #2. On Sunday January 12, the Burlington Free Press published an article by Mike Donoghue about a woman who claims to have been hospitalized against her will in the psychiatric unit at Fletcher Allen Health Care.

That, in itself, would not attract the Freeploid’s attention. But the patient is Christina Schumacher, whose teenage son Gunnar was killed in a murder-suicide committed by her ex-husband, Ludwig “Sonny” Schumacher Jr. That makes her story, and her hospitalization, a matter of interest to the Freeploid and its readers.

Donoghue assiduously reports her side of the story, and recounts his repeated efforts to get the hospital and other officials to respond.

Which they can’t. The law prevents them from releasing information about patients, the circumstances of a hospitalization, and the reasoning behind their actions. Donoghue damn well knows this, but he doesn’t do a lot to make it clear in his story: he depicts a stonewall of “no comment” from official sources.

The problem is, there are very good reasons for this legal restraint. And there are very good reasons to wonder whether Donoghue’s story will have unintended consequences for Schumacher in the future. Very personal details of her hospitalization and her life have been published in the state’s largest newspaper and posted online for any and all to read.

Schumacher voluntarily spoke to Donoghue. But hell, she’s in a hospital for psychiatric problems. Is she capable of granting consent, of deciding whether to speak with a reporter? Will she ever regret Donoghue’s story in the future? It’s obviously too soon to tell, but I think there’s a very good chance she will. Let’s say she enjoys a full recovery, moves to another state, and tries to resume her career. When prospective employers Google her, they will certainly find Donoghue’s article. What then?

In terms of black and white, Donoghue was absolutely within his rights to interview someone who wants to talk with him and to write her story, and the Freeploid was within its rights to publish. In this case, unlike Caleb Hannan’s, the subject gave her consent.

But there’s a substantial gray area surrounding this story. Should he have considered the quality of Schumacher’s consent? Should he have considered the reasons why patients are accorded broad privacy protections? Should he have considered the possible future impact on Schumacher, to have her publicly identified as a psychiatric patient with the full details of her case, so shortly after her family was destroyed?

Regarding Caleb Hannan’s article, Jeff Chu, a reporter for Fast Company, had this to say:

Sometimes the right thing for us to do as journalists is to honor a life by not telling a story. It’s not always ours to tell.

I wish Mike Donoghue and his editors had pondered that idea before publishing Christina Schumacher’s story. As for me personally, I wish they’d made a different decision. Journalism — even first-rate journalism — ought to be tempered by humanity.  

If you were so unfortunate as to spend your money on a copy of the Sunday Freeploid, sorry about that: you wasted your hard-earned cash on a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation. Must have been plenty of dislocated shoulders around Freeploid HQ after all that furious back-patting.

Yep, the Freeploid seized on its move to much smaller and much cheaper digs as a pretext to fill its meager news hole with page after page of news… about itself. And lots and lots of space-eating pictures, too!

How did they wank? Let me count the ways…

The front page, of course, with a photo of a guy washing windows at the new FreePressMedia space overlooking Your Fair City from seven stories up. And if you liked that picture, just wait till you turn to Section B. You’ll get lots more. Lots and lots more.

Section B is dedicated to Vermont news. Well, it usually is; today, it’s mostly dedicated to Freeploid wankery. It starts on page B4 with the egregiously egotistical headline: A CHANGE FOR THE AGES.

The ages. Really, now.

Reminds me of when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and President Nixon called it “the greatest event since creation.” Which, as I said at the time, certainly put Jesus in his place.

The narcissistic headline tops a lengthy meander down Memory Lane by Freeploid stalwart Sam Hemingway, which includes no less than eight reproductions of past Free Press front pages. Hemingway’s article, with all the front pages and other photos, takes up an entire four pages.

And then you get to the hard-core wankery: A tour of the new Freeploid offices on Bank Street.  

Reporter Dan D’Ambrosio somehow wangled an interview with Publisher Jim Fogler, in which he waxed ecstatic about the move and how it sets the stage for a brighter, more prosperous future. The two-page story is larded with photos of the new space, most of them featuring its very nice views over downtown Burlington and Lake Champlain. The message, apparently, is: “Your daily paper may suck, but look — we’ve got scenic vistas out our office windows! Thank you for supporting your local paper!”

As if anyone gives a hot damn what the Freeploid’s offices look like.

Add it all up, and you’ve got seven pages of precious newspaper space given over to an unpaid advertisement for the past and present glories of the Burlington Free Press, as seen by itself. Well, seven pages of “content” plus a full-page ad paid for by some of the contractors who worked on the new offices. As Barney the Purple Dinosaur might say, “I wank you, you wank me, we’re a wanking family…”

Really, the Freeploid’s overweening self-regard is sickening. After all, what they’re celebrating is a failure, a retreat: the move came about because the paper’s staff has shrunk so much that it needs a lot less space. And because its corporate masters at Gannett are eager to cash in its real estate holdings. I’m sure the $2.8 million sale price will help boost quarterly earnings for shareholders. I’m even more sure it won’t be plowed back into the quality of the local product.  

It certainly didn’t do anything for the quality of the January 19, 2014 edition.  

(This has long been one of my biggest issues with Woolf’s doomsday take on our “failure” to grow in population.  The model is all wrong.  We should be striving toward a model called “sustainability.” – promoted by Sue Prent)

To hear Economist Art Woolf tell it, Vermont’s population problem is that it isn’t growing.  As he put it in a recent Burlington Free Press appearance:  

a very slow-growing population presents challenges.  For one, it limits economic growth and hence the opportunities for Vermont businesses to expand and for Vermonters to obtain jobs. Larger populations also make it easier for people to meet and communicate and to come up with new business ideas.

This is all true.  BUT–and this is a huge but–that doesn’t mean that the most cost-effective (the most economical) solution is to promote population growth.  

A reader of Woolf’s piece could be forgiven for thinking that this is the conclusion they’re meant to draw. He goes on:

Vermont is not headed for disaster if our population growth remains at current low levels. But it will present challenges for businesses, government and individuals, and it will limit everyone’s opportunities.

Yes, a population that doesn’t grow limits some opportunities.  The problem is what Woolf leaves unsaid:  a growing population limits other, very important opportunities even more.

Many Americans think that the government is too large, that its reach into our lives is too deep.  But imagine:  what if every single act of yours that might affect the health of ecosystems had to be regulated by public authority?  Economic growth used to be widely perceived as the necessary companion to increasing democratic freedoms; unfortunately, on a finite planet on which human civilization has built out to (and beyond) the limits of what’s ecologically sustainable, continued economic growth is now the enemy of democratic freedoms.  

We face loss of opportunity because of population growth:  The opportunity to have and keep our civil freedoms, and our sense that there is some behavior that is private and therefore not a fit subject for regulatory control.  

As I’ve argued in a recent book, democratic freedoms and civil liberties depend on our human population being below some critical point–a point below which  nature can absorb and adapt to our freely-chosen acts and ways. Many of us who are concerned about ecological sustainability fear that we’ve long since passed that point.  

The prospect if our population and economy continue to grow?  

The collision of the economy with its resource limits will give us an anemic economy–one in which unemployment is endemic and the rich grow richer, while middle and impoverished classes swell because of broken promises (like pension fund collapses) and higher effective taxes for poorer services.  Pressure will increase to promote economic growth (or even simply recovery) by doing  away with regulatory regimes that protect environmental quality and human health–like the regulatory regime that could have prevented the horrible spill of coal-scrubbing chemicals in West Virginia.  And if we don’t choose to continue to degrade our environment in the effort to maintain an unsustainable economy, then environmental regulation will necessarily get broader and broader in its scope and in the depth of its reach into our lives.  

The alternative?  Limit the matter-and-energy throughput of the economy, bringing it down to a flow that the planet can sustain.  This is the steady-state economy model.

Transforming our economy from an infinite-growth model to a steady-state model need not mean that we diminish the quality of our lives, or even the quantity of our material wealth.  In part the quality of our lives could be improved in a steady state economy by a trade-off of material stuff for immaterial benefits, like more leisure time, more satisfying work environments, a healthier environment.  In part the quality of our material lives could be improved in a steady-state economy by doing more with less:  we can expect that technological innovation will continue to let us wring more economic value–more human wellbeing–from a constantly-sized flow of throughput.  

Both of these sources of genuine economic progress are threatened–even made impossible–by population growth.  

If, under a given set of technologies, the amount of material wealth that an economy can sustainably create is finite, then the larger the number of people that share that finite amount of wealth, the smaller will be each person’s share. In a world that has reached the ecological limits to economic growth, continued population growth can only diminish the average quality of life.

Controlling population growth is now the most cost-effective way of increasing humanity’s standard of living–on the planet as a whole, in this country, and in the state of Vermont.  Far from sending up cautions about our population’s failure to grow, economists in Vermont should be celebrating our state’s near achievement of the steady-state ideal.

(Valuable science perspective on a timely issue! – promoted by Sue Prent)

(Cross posted at minorheresies.com)

“Eventually, the politics of energy has to surrender to the physics of energy.” Randy Udall

Two pieces of news have come together in my mind recently. One is the Vermont Public Service Board approval of a new natural gas pipeline through Addison County. The other is a Wall Street Journal article about investments in shale gas production.

The PSB approval and pipeline story is straightforward. Vermont Gas, a subsidiary of Canadian Gaz Metro, is extending its pipeline from Chittenden County and the population center around Burlington southward through Addison County. Phase 2 of the project will have the pipeline cross the narrows of Lake Champlain and serve the Ticonderoga paper mill in New York. In theory, Phase 3 will bring natural gas to the city of Rutland around 2020.  

There are objections to the pipeline by many residents of Addison County, generally on two grounds: First, that this will encourage the use of hydrofractured (“fracked”) gas, which is controversial due to its threat to ground water and the general environment near drilling sites. Second, that it will detour us from the pursuit of renewable energy and energy efficiency. A number of people simply don’t want a natural gas pipeline on or near their land.

The proponents of the pipeline argue that it will bring cheap energy to western Vermont, with the resulting economic benefits. Phase 2, they say, will bring far cleaner, cheaper energy to the Ticonderoga plant, with resulting environmental and economic benefits.

A sidebar on shale gas production:

So-called conventional oil and gas generally reside in underground sandstone formations, like sponges made of rock. The oil and gas are in the holes in the sponge (porosity) and the holes are connected to some extent (permeability) so that the oil and/or gas can flow through the sponge, much the same way that water can soak through from one end of a sponge to the other. These conventional deposits can be miles across and hundreds of feet thick.

Shale oil and shale gas deposits can be described the same way, but with different measurements. A shale deposit might have one one-thousandth the porosity and permeability of a sandstone deposit. A shale formation like the Bakken in the northern Midwest covers thousands of square miles but is only ten to maybe 150 feet thick. To imagine the scale, picture a layer of plastic wrap over a couple of football fields. This distribution means two things. One is that there is a lot less energy per horizontal acre in a shale field. The other is that the oil and gas won’t travel from one part of the field to another without a lot of help.

Horizontal drilling is the process of controlling the drill bit so that after going straight down it curves sideways and follows the thin shale formation. Drillers make a number of these horizontal boreholes out from a central drilling point in order to get access to a large area of shale.

Hydrofracturing is the process of injecting a mixture of water, chemicals, and then sand at extremely high pressures to blast open the cracks and pores in the shale. The sand is a “proppant”, keeping the blasted shale from collapsing back on itself. These two operations are an expensive proposition.

A horizontally drilled, hydrofractured well has a relatively short productive life. After a massive initial rush of production, output could drop by 40-50% in the first year. It might drop another 30-40% in the second year, and 20% or more in the third. The key to maintaining production levels is drilling intensity – quickly drilling more wells to replace declining ones. This is also an expensive proposition.

Investor Flight

The Wall Street Journal Article (paywalled), as quoted in the ASPO-USA Peak Oil Review (http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e230969c7ec1dec75cc347eaf&id=d61ea0ac6b&e=7b1d4340e6), casts doubt on the cheap energy claim by Vermont Gas. There has been a huge rush into shale gas drilling over the past decade. With that rush came a huge rush of natural gas, driving the price down to the historic lows of the past few years. Those low prices, bottoming out below $2 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf), were below the cost of production. Shale gas exploration companies lost tens of billions annually. As far as I can tell each company’s strategy was to hold on to the mineral leases and produce at a loss until their competitors went out of business. Then the remaining companies could clean up as supply declined and gas prices rose. The industry has been running on continued injections of investor cash.

Recently the investors have been getting cold feet. Here’s the key quotation from the WSJ article:

  “Since 2008, deep-pocketed foreign investors have subsidized the U.S. energy boom, as oil and gas companies spent far more money on leasing and drilling than they made selling crude and natural gas. But the rivers of foreign cash are running dry for U.S. drillers. In 2013, international companies spent $3.4 billion for stakes in U.S. shale-rock formations, less than half of what they invested in 2012 and a tenth of their spending in 2011, according to data from IHS Herold, a research and consulting firm. It is a sign of leaner times for the cash-hungry companies that have revived American energy output. The value of deals involving U.S. energy producers plunged 48% this year from 2012, to $47 billion, the first annual decline since 2008. So U.S. oil and gas producers have started to slash spending.”

                             — (The Wall Street Journal, Jan 2)

Remember that the key to low prices is continued high production and the key to continued high production is drilling intensity. The key to drilling intensity is investment, and that is going away, dropping by a factor of ten in just two years. Investment will only come back when the price of natural gas rises enough to make shale production profitable. Industry analysts argue endlessly about what the breakeven price of shale gas is for various fields, but my general takeaway is that it could mean a doubling of wholesale prices.

Back in Vermont, the residents and businesses of Chittenden, Addison, and Rutland Counties are being promised a bounty of cheap natural gas. The geology of shale gas dictates the economics, and the economics, via investor flight, indicates that this is a false promise. Just about the time that consumers find themselves hooked up to the pipeline and paying for their new appliances the price will start heading for a profitable range. The politics of energy will surrender to the physics of energy before Rutland ever sees a cubic foot of natural gas.

Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz has been working the phones to impressive effect. He’s come up with a list of people who’d like to succeed the late Sally Fox in the State Senate… and the list, cumulatively, is kind of a wow.

I read Heintz’ piece the way I usually read online listicles: scrolling slowly down the page so the names are revealed one at a time. And every time I saw a name, I thought, “Now there’s a strong candidate. The other ones don’t stand a chance.”

Every time. It’s a real testament to the strength of the Democrats’ talent pool. At a time when the VTGOP is scrambling for warm bodies to occupy ballot slots, the Dems have a lot of really good people just hoping for a chance.

The list (arranged alphabetically) starts with Debbie Ingram, head of Vermont Interfaith Action. She ran a strong race in 2012 and finished seventh in an election for six Senate seats after emerging from a strong primary field. Okay, I thought; that’s hard to beat.

Then you get to Tim Jerman, a state representative since 2004 and vice chair of the state party. Hmm, I thought, hard to beat a veteran lawmaker with connections. But he’s followed by…  

Crea Lintilhac, president of the Lintilhac Foundation and the highest-profile liberal benefactor in Vermont. She also sits on a brace of nonprofit boards, so she’s got a substantial web of connections and loyalties to call on.

Good grief, I thought, this is getting ridiculous. And then it got a lot ridiculouser, because the next name is…

Jake Perkinson, chair of the Verment Democratic Party from 2011-13. He oversaw a period where the party cemented its electoral dominance; but even more important, he built a strong back-office machine and a fearsome (by Vermont standards) fundraising operation.

Yikes!

The fifth hopeful is no slouch either: Kesha Ram, a rising star in the Legislature and in state politics. First elected at age 22, still in her mid-20s and serving on the powerful Ways & Means Committee. On any other list, she’d be a standout; given her age and a crowded field, I suspect she’ll have to wait her “turn.”

All in all, that’s just an absurdly powerful list, and yet another indication of how strong the Vermont Democratic Party is. While the Republicans keep recycling losers on the ballot (Jack McMullen, John MacGovern, Randy Brock) and in the office (Jeff Bartley, Darcie “Hack” Johnston), the Democrats have an amazing array of talent. (The Dems’ strength also makes it that much tougher for the Progressives to grow, especially in Chittenden County, the Progs’ home turf.)

Any one of these five people would make a fine Senator, and the Dems are lucky to have such a tough choice on their hands.  

Vermont Public Radio, my favorite news source, ran a story earlier this week about Middlebury College and the position it is taking on the American Studies Association's academic boycott of Israel.

As reported by Mitch Wertlieb:

 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has found its way into a controversy that has some American colleges and universities at odds with the American Studies Association, a group that promotes American History and culture. That’s because the ASA recently issued a resolution to boycott Israeli universities over that country’s treatment of Palestinians.

Middlebury College is a member of the ASA and is among up to 20 other colleges and universities that, in response, issued a statement condemning the ASA boycott.

 http://digital.vpr.net/post/middlebury-college-faculty-object-group-s-boycott-israeli-academic-institutions

The story goes on to quote a professor about why they don't agree with the boycott, calling boycotts of this nature a “challenge to the free flow of ideas”, and doing a pretty good job of explaining why the college would not support the boycott.

What the story did not do was give much of a sense of context, or of the opposing view in this hotly contested debate. Would it have been that hard to talk to someone at the American Studies Association, or to find an academic who supports the boycott?  

I think it's fine to do news stories about local institutions, particularly when they relate to how our Vermont institutions relate to the greater political debate. I do think, though, that VPR could have done a better job in fairly presenting both sides of the debate.

Following several years of costly court battles and acrimonious exchanges between the Town and City of St. Albans over water and sewer allocations, in the truest sense of the phrase, there is no winner.

Rather like the parent of two spoiled children might despairingly rule that “nobody gets ice cream,” Judge Dennis Pearson of Vermont Superior Court has declared the disputed wastewater agreement null and void.

“Now go to your rooms and think about what you did.”

(Happily, I can link you to the excellent front page story by Michelle Monroe of the Messenger that gives all of the gory details.)

In the tradition of country feuds like the Hatfields and McCoys, officials of the City and Town of St. Albans have been trying to get the best of each other for decades, but can’t even offer a credible explanation of what started the whole thing.

Since both municipalities are afflicted with galloping cronyism and opacity of process, it is doubtful that mystery will ever be adequately cleared up other than to say that the big dairying families that control the Town have a deep-seated suspicion of the big commerce and finance families who control the City; and vice-versa.  

As some intermarriage has occurred in the century since the two parted ways, there’s an overlay of some complexity obscuring simple loyalties and leaving most of us relative newcomers completely in the dark.

Introduce to this  smoldering distrust the need to work closely in order to obtain and manage the most essential element for survival and development: water rights; and you’ve got yourself a situation that will serve nobody’s best interests except those of the lawyers.

Anyone who has followed details of the evidence presented over the past few years could have predicted the outcome; but we are grateful to the Judge for having summarized the situation so succinctly.

“…they (the Town and the City) are no further…toward achieving the necessary working arrangement(s) on this and other issues…which any reasonably dispassionate outside observer can…see must, and…could, be resolved if only all of the emotional and historical baggage was checked at the door.”

He goes on to say,

“For better or worse, the town and city are now functionally a single economic zone of interlocking and symbiotic interests…”

The judge has determined that, as the wording of the agreement regarding water and sewer allocations was so vague as to readily lead to disputes, that agreement never had any validity to begin with.

There is plenty of blame for everyone in this two-town tantrum, but City Manager Dominic Cloud must bear much of the blame, for it was he who stepped in at the last moment back in 2009 to revise the agreement with the language that now forms the basis for the dispute.  

Characteristically, as we later learned, Manager Cloud seems to have acted impulsively to head-off a breakdown that was threatening the timely signing of the agreement.

I say “characteristically'” because the machinations by the City Manager to jump-start a couple of his pet TIF projects have betrayed a similar impulse to act a little too quickly, exposing the City to additional costs that might otherwise have been avoided.

The amateurs who run the City and the Town share some of the blame for not seeking better advice before entering into the meaningless agreement.  But Dominic Cloud is a professional, having done service with the League of Towns and Cities.  Presumably, that’s why he gets the big bucks.

How’s this going to look on that resume?

Methinks Jon Margolis nailed this one:

For weeks, the chatter around state government had been about how much would have to be cut…

The answer is: less than nothing. Instead of cuts, Shumlin proposed increases for higher education, rent subsidies, transportation, child care centers, mental health services for the poor, land conservation, and cleaning up polluted lakes.

… In addition to appearing capable, Shumlin’s budget proposals displayed another – more blatantly political – attribute, one he probably wanted to project even if he may not want attention called to it. The only word to describe his program is “liberal.”

I have to agree. There’s a necessary caveat about the devil being in the details, but Shumlin’s budget address was, to me, heartening, especially compared to some of the ill-considered and ill-fated stuff in last year’s version. He managed to close a substantial budget gap and identify funding for some good new programs while kinda-sorta maintaining his no-tax pledge.

(Shumlin has a highly convenient definition of “broad-based taxes.” Indeed, sometime last spring he stopped even trying to devise a definition of the term. And this year he’s proposing an increase in what Margolis calls “a tax with a broad base”: an “assessment” on health care claims.)

(Late add: Today on the Mark Johnson Show, Human Services chief Doug Racine was explaining the Shumlin budget — which must’ve been a lot more pleasant task for Racine than it was last year. But in reference to Shumlin’s tax policy, he made a sly(?) reference to “the taxes he [Shumlin] doesn’t want to raise.” Which, coming from a top Administration official, is amazingly close to my own cynical formulation. Has Shumlin’s limited anti-tax stance become a running joke in Montpelier?)

The Governor’s budget isn’t everything I’d like to see, of course; but it’s a hell of a lot closer than I expected. I’d stlll like to see the wealthy paying their share of taxes; the 2013 House plan for trimming top-bracket deductions and lowering middle-class taxes a bit is a sound policy idea. But, as Margolis noted, there’s a lot for liberals to like. Shumlin and his Administration showed a mastery of the process in crafting this budget. After the rocky rollout of Vermont Health Connect, it’s good to see another outburst of managerial competence from the corner office.

I seem to be tempering my praise quite a bit; perhaps because I expect some blowback in the Comments. But compared to my cynical predictions, Shumlin’s budget address was a welcome surprise.  

The Republican response, OTOH, was utterly predictable. House Minority Leader Don Turner (R-Grumpy) complained about increased spending and dependence on one-time and federal funds — as if every Governor, regardless of party, doesn’t pull every trick in the book when budget time comes around. And he tried to blame the increase in the state property tax on Shumlin, when he knows damn well that the tax is based on local school spending. And local voters, by and large, are appreciative of and generous toward their local schools. The system needs a fix, but it’s not Shumlin’s fault.

Lt. Gov. Phil Scott laid in with some typical smiley-face dogma, sheathing his shades-of-Jim-Douglas rhetoric in a thin veneer of bipartisanship. But his main message was concern about Vermont’s economic competitiveness — the Republicans’ (and especially Douglas’) code word for “cut taxes, spending, and regulation.” Nothing new there, except that Scott continues to sharpen his partisan profile as a mainstream (not moderate) Republican.  

New party chair David Sunderland issued a predictable yammer about our “crisis of affordability” and “staggering…property tax rates” and warning of the “lurking” menace of single-payer health care. And referring to Shumlin’s party with the disparaging monicker “Democrat Party.” That’s no way to broaden your party’s appeal, Dave. Drop the nasty rhetoric. Or at least tone it down.

(The VTGOP’s webpage, by the by, is still headlined “HELP RESTORE BALANCE IN MONTPELIER.” In other words, they’re asking for electoral affirmative action: “Elect us because… well… we ought to have more seats.” That didn’t work in 2012, and it won’t work now.)

The liberals are cautiously optimistic. Haven’t seen formal comment from the Progs yet (they should feel free to chime in below), but Jack Hoffman of the Public Assets Institute (while cautioning that “deeper analysis” is called for) praised the Governor for striking “a better chord…than he did last year,” and said Shumlin “deserves credit for trying to include all Vermonters in his address.”

And that’s where I’m at today. It was a good speech; it looks like a good budget with good priorities. (Especially if you grade it on the Shumlin Curve.) Now let’s see the details. And let’s see Shumlin push the sometimes-jittery Legislature to enact a small-P progressive budget.  

In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to capture the sheer horror of someone like Adolf Eichmann, who carried out his executions of the Jews in the same way that another government functionary would file tax forms, distribute zoning permits, or even hand out railroad tickets, accepting the validity and normality of every dictate of the state.

This is precisely the phrase that came to my mind while listening to last week's two-part NPRinterview of John Rizzo, who is flogging a book based on his experience as the interim general counsel for the CIA during the torture years. (No, not linking to the book here. If you want to pay him for approving of torture you can find it yourself.)

Rizzo is clearly not a fanatic, but the interview makes clear that he had no difficulty accepting the premise that the government was essentially permitted to do whatever it wanted to extract information from those it held captive.

Rizzo even clings to the tired line that waterboarding isn't torture.

 I'm a lawyer, and torture is legally defined in U.S. law. If I had concluded — or, more importantly, if the Justice Department had concluded — that these techniques constitute torture, we would never have done them. So I can't say they were torture. I didn't concede it was torture then, and I don't concede that it's torture now.

 He's right, it is defined in U.S. law. Here's one definition I found: 

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

. . . 

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality . . . 

 Guess what: this is exactly what waterboarding is. It isn't simulated drowning, or giving the victim the impression that he is drowning. No, it is subjecting him to drowning, only to rescue him before he succumbs. It absolutely carries with it the threat of imminent death, the suggestion that if he does not cooperate the torturer will eventually decide not to stop pouring the water over him but continue until he can no longer breathe.

I don't expect Rizzo to ever face ethical or disciplinary charges for presiding over torture by the CIA, but if he does I am pretty sure I know what his defense will be.

“I was only following orders.”