Sometimes I think, not at all self-servingly, that Governor Shumlin ought to hire a snarky blogger — to provide a bit of perspective, a bit of sour in the dough, and as a preventative to doing stupid stuff like…

Gov. Peter Shumlin signed an executive order Monday creating a new council to combat poverty … the Governor’s Council on Pathways Out of Poverty will have between 10 and 30 members and meet three times a year.

Uh, er… a POOP Council? Really, now.

I do have some more substantive comments on the Governor’s new POOP. Back in the 1990s, my home state of Michigan had a conservative Republican Governor by the name of John Engler. One of his strokes of rhetorical brilliance was to give the Department of Social Services a new name: the Family Independence Agency. Because, y’know, we’re not in the business of giving handouts to the undeserving poor; we’re giving people a chance to achieve Family Independence!

Stupid shit, which Engler’s successor Jennifer Granholm quickly undid. And Governor Shumlin is dipping into Engler’s tainted pool of anti-welfare jargon with this “Pathways Out of Poverty” POOP.

I’m not arguing with the idea that we’d like to see as many people achieve independence and security as possible. But, as Our Lord and Savior once said, “the poor you will always have with you.” Especially since one of the principal products of our 21st Century economy is poverty and financial insecurity.

You want evidence? Take a look at the Public Assets Institute’s new report, “More Jobs, Clustered in Low-Wage Sectors.”

The [November] unemployment rate inched down to 4.4 percent, mainly because fewer Vermonters are looking for work. At the same time, employers reported 2,200 more Vermonters on the job than in October, with most of those newcomers in traditionally low-wage service sectors.

A nice shiny chart, displayed after the jump, illustrates this disturbing reality.  

All those low-paying jobs put a smiley face on our unemployment rate, but they do little or nothing to give people a Pathway Out Of Poverty.

Now, that chart is a noe-month snapshot. But it’s part of a longer-term trend — as shown in PAI’s year-end report “State of Working Vermont 2013,” which finds that “fewer Vermonters were working in 2012 than in 2007. And private employers were providing fewer jobs, most concentrated in low-wage sectors.  Also, “the number and the percentage of Vermonters in poverty had increased,” as had the number receiving food stamps (up a stunning 86% in five years) and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Governor’s new Council will have to be awfully darn creative to buck these trends and provide real Pathways Out Of Poverty. Methinks it’s more likely to produce a honeywagon-load of POOP.

In addition to his new Brown Ribbon Committee, Shumlin also announced a brace of anti-poverty initiatives worth a grand total of $2.2 million. Funding source TBD, since the Gov is determined to flatline next year’s budget. Human Services Secretary Doug Racine described the initiatives as “more aggressive than efforts put forth in other states,” and “a huge initiative [that] will make a huge difference that you aren’t going to be seeing in the rest of the country.”

Gosh, Doug. Mighty big (or should I say “huge”) words for a couple mill. I know that’s a lot of scratch for your average working-class stiff, but it seems like a spit-in-the-wind for the fight against poverty. Can two million dollars — and that’s generously assuming Shumlin comes up with a funding scheme that’s acceptable to the Legislature — really “make a huge difference”? Somehow I doubt it.

Look, it’s nice and all. But don’t oversell what is, in reality, a very modest proposal.

And I wish good luck to the curiously variable 10-to-30 members of the Governor’s new POOP, I really do. They’re gonna need it.  

Wise men run for the hills (and staffers update their resumes) when these dreaded words fall from the lips of Jim Fogler, President and Publisher of the Burlington Free Press:

I have exciting news to share.

Because it usually means “Look out, folks, I’ve got a truckload of manure to dump on your heads!”

And what a truckload it was, that greeted His Dear Readers on this first day of 2014.

The opening shovelful deacribed the Freeploid’s new digs:

We’re moving our Free Press news, advertising and business offices to a new, state-of-the art media facility in mid-January from our downtown College Street location…

See, it’s not a “newspaper office,” it’s a “media facility” suitable for synergy and crossbranding and multipurposing and other buzzwords deployed to conceal the death rattle of Fogler’s enterprise. The Freeploid’s new offices media facility is a rental space on the seventh floor of a downtown building. He played up the nice view of Lake Champlain (I wonder who got the corner office), but what it really means is that the Freeploid’s corporate masters at Gannett have decided to cash in their real-estate chips.

Inevitable, but sad. Newspaper buildings used to be landmarks; now, they’re hidden away in nondescript quarters invisible to the general public. But what wonders, aside from a lovely view, does the “media facility” have to offer?

The high-tech, new location will put all of our employees in open spaces, helping all of our departments build off of the energy of others. There will be increased communication…

… yelling, shouting, airport-level decibel readings, and no privacy whatsoever — for those key off-the-record conversations, or for a bit of on-the-clock Web browsing. You’ll never know when Jim Fogler’s tiptoeing up from behind.

There will be more TV screens throughout our new space showcasing Facebook, Twitter feeds and news programs, keeping us up to date on news developments and our readers’ feedback.

Oh goodie, the sportsbar approach to newsroom decor. Big video monitors displaying the continuous flood of meaningless Internet gibber. Yeah, that’ll lead to in-depth, revealing journalism.

Wait, no, it’s not “journalism,” it’s “product.” As in…  

…a higher-quality product in digital and in print.

Nice thing about buzzwords like “product” and “content” is that they say absolutely nothing about quality or insight or truth. Nope, we’re all just crankin’ out the product. And then we get to the real business of the Freeploid’s new “media center” — DA BENJAMINS.

Our sales teams will be able to show our customers in media rooms what’s new and being offered in regard to our new digital capabilities, including Web development, social-media strategies and placement, targeted emails and search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM).

Oh, I am so glad to hear that “our sales teams” will have a prominent place in the newsroom. That concept of an unbreakable wall between journalism and sales is so… 20th Century, don’t you think?

I’m also glad that my newspaper is dedicating itself to search engine optimization and marketing. Is there a Pulitzer Prize for that?

Oh, and then Fogler gets to the real shitball of Freeploid 2014.

On the content front, look for a larger printed Burlington Free Press soon.  …a newspaper with more to read… We’ll be adding more pages of content…

Larger, more to read, more pages of “content.” Must be a good thing, yes?

Well, yes, if you believe that an 800-pound man is healthier than a 180-pound man. Because what Fogler is talking about is not an expanded commitment to local or Statehouse reportage; it’s stuffing the Freeploid with a castrated version of the industry’s chief castrato, USA TODAY (all caps please, per Gannett’s copyright team).

Or, as Fogler puts it, Gannett will “leverage both USA TODAY’s national coverage and the unique, local reporting of our journalists.”

That’s “leverage” as in “maximize profit.” Because, as we previously discussed in this space, the daily insertion of USA TODAY pablum will allow Gannett to claim a much larger circulation figure for its dismal national newspaper. And, as we’ve already seen, they’ll be “leveraging” us readers as well:

Asked whether prices would rise for subscribers receiving the extra USA Today content, a Gannett spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said, “As we introduce enhanced products, consumers tell us they are willing to pay for the added value we’re bringing them.”

Meanwhile, the real focus of The New Freeploid will be stuff like…

On the digital front, with iPhones in our reporters’ hands, we offer more video today than most media locally. We also are planning a redesign of our website and our mobile apps in 2014 that will make it easier to find the stories and video you want to see. Our digital offerings include solutions such as Web development, targeted emails, SEO/SEM solutions and display ads on one of the most viewed websites in the market.

“More video.” Not “better video,” just MORE. Plus all those “solutions” for problems I don’t have. I turn to a newspaper or website for news, for information — not targeted emails, SEO, and more intrusive advertisements.

And, in more evidence that Jim Fogler and his ilk have their eye firmly off the ball:

Our presence on Twitter and Facebook is constantly engaging readers, including young people, which helps them recognize the importance of the Burlington Free Press in their daily lives.

“Young people.” The constant preoccupation of dying media empires (and the Republican Party, heh). Hey, Jim, haven’t you heard that “young people” aren’t that into Facebook anymore? Why not force your ever-more-distracted reporters to create Tumblr feeds and Instagram accounts and gifs and Vines while you’re at it?

Fogler closes his missive with reassurances about the ‘Loid’s survival evolution and growth. He promises that…

…we are here not only to stay, but to grow…

Just like the 800-pound man.  

Note that I'm not saying “top ten”, because I don't necessarily know how many I'll want to list. Still, I have a feeling that I won't have trouble with the dividing line between the books I would strongly recommend, those that are just okay, and those that I would steer you clear of.

 Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May

This year we saw Republicans in state legislatures continue to try to keep black voters away from the polls and Republicans on the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act, so this is a timely reminder of the difficulty and heroism of the fight to establish voting rights.

 Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

At a time when conservatives think slaves should have been grateful for the life they had, and Southern conservatives express nostalgia for the Lost Cause and anger at what they like to call the War of Northern Aggression, it is still important to have a clear vision of the reality of slavery in our past.

 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins.

 A new poll just demonstrated that the percentage of Republicans who “believe in” evolution (do you “believe in” gravity? the germ theory? the heliocentric model?) has dropped to a minority. Maybe it's because some of the smart ones are leaving, but it's important to know the facts.

 Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry – A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat.

We are constantly seeing new research demonstrating the limited effectiveness and affirmative harms of psychiatric medications. In this book Carlat exposes the moral bankruptcy of the industry in which so many policy makers continue to repose their blind faith.

 Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

New York City is falling apart, Richard Nixon is about to resign, and a French tightrope walker prepares to walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  This novel, which I had some reluctance to read, captures these events and a world we can hardly imagine or remember forty years later.

 The Cost of Haven (Great Cities, #1) by F.F. McCulligan

 My interest in fantasy pretty much begins and ends with Tolkien, but I know that fantasy readers are always on the lookout for a new voice. Here's one that presents a believable world and believable, relatable characters. It's worth reading, even if I, the author's father, say so myself.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 You really haven't read it yet? Come on, what are you waiting for? Too big a fan of capitalism? 

 Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon.

 I never thought I'd have any interest in a book about the world of horse racing, but this is definitely worthwhile.

Since last I posted in this space, i’ve been (a) out of town visiting family for THE HOLIDAYS, suck it Fox, and (b) crafting a nice little WordPress blog about my father’s military service in World War II. (Nothing terribly dramatic by Great War standards, but something for me and the folks.)

During my absence, Peter “Test, 1-2, 1-2, Test, Test” Hirschfeld produced a nugget of journalistic goodness for the Mitchell Family Organ. (Paywalled, sorry.) It’s about ten days old now, but since the MFO frequently serves as a little tiny echo chamber where stories go to die, I thought it was worth dredging up.

Basically, it’s about the key role that Vermont Republican operatives have played in generating bad publicity for Vermont Health Connect. The hook: Back in early November when Health Access Commissioner Mark Larson kinda misled a House committee about a single privacy breach? Well, it turns out that the loudest mouth in the anti-reform movement, Darcie “Hack” Johnston, was the one who instigated the event:

Not only was Johnston aware of the security issue when the question about the breach was posed to Larson on Nov. 5, she actually fed the inquiry, via handwritten note, to the Republican lawmaker who asked it.

And then, of course, ran to the nearest camera to bemoan what she called “a really sad day for Vermonters.”

All I can say is, good on ya’, Darse. You’re not quite as useless as I thought you were.

The rest of the article explores “the role of a small group of Republican operatives who have launched an opposition-research campaign aimed at weakening Vermonters’ appetites for… health care reform.”

Using the state’s public records law, Johnston, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock and Brady Toensing, the newly minted vice chairman of the Vermont GOP, have mined primary source material for evidence of technological misfires and bureaucratic incompetence. Johnston and Brock have funneled this information to Vermont media.

Ask me, it’s all good. Searching public records for politically useful material? Absolutely nothing wrong with that. (Makes me wonder, though, about the complicity and independence of “Vermont media,” but that’s a subject for another day.)

But it does raise a very real question about the “new,” “moderate” VTGOP.  

We have three names here. Randy Brock, supposedly a nice guy, but he and the Hack have been close for a long time, and he paid her an ungodly sum of money to run his gubernatorial campaign (into the ground). Then there’s Toensing, the scion of DiGenova and Toensing, a particularly nasty DC law firm whose speciality is ginning up fake controversies about Democrats. (He’s the junior partner; his mommy and daddy are the headliners.) Hirschfeld helpfully notes:

Toensing said he acted mainly out of concern as a private citizen who has been affected personally by the technological difficulties that have followed the roll-out of the exchange.

His request came nine days after he was elected vice chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, however…

Hirschfeld quotes “party colleagues” as depicting Brady Toensing as an “opposition-research guru.”

How lovely.

I hope we never hear another goddamned word from any Vermont Republican about how we ought to do things The Vermont Way, meaning with honesty and purity and respect. ‘Cause Brady Toensing is none of those things.

And he’s the #2 man in the state party.

And he got there with the backing of Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, alleged nice guy, alleged moderate.

Nowhere in Hirschfeld’s epistle do we see the name “Phil Scott,” or for that matter “David Sunderland,” the new party chair.

What we do have is a pair of tried-and-true attack dogs, plus an embittered former gubernatorial candidate, playing conservative hardball on Governor Shumlin’s signature issue for the benefit of the Vermont Republican Party. And, in the case of brand-new party official Brady Toensing, presumably with the approval of the Vermont Republican Party.

The new, “moderate” Vermont Republican Party.

The new “moderate” party that happily hired “an opposition-research guru” as its vice-chair, and is allowing two prominent members of the bad old non-moderate VTGOP to play point on the party’s behalf.

This is the kind of stuff I would’ve expected from “Angry Jack” Lindley, not from the supposedly kinder, gentler, Philler VTGOP.

Meet the new boss…  

Okay, not the weightiest matter we have to talk about this, but I hope you didn't miss this story.

According to the Nashua Telegraph,   

 Longtime state Rep. David Campbell, a Democrat, was behind the wheel of the BMW that struck several ducks outside the Crowne Plaza’s main entrance late Monday evening.

 And get this–it was their fault!

 When a witness took a picture of Campbell's legislative license plate, his excuse was “The ducks should have moved.”

Or, as George Costanza taught us many years ago:

Don't we have a deal with the pigeons? 

George Costanza versus the pigeons by joeyguse 

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

The Congress has just ended one of the worst and least productive sessions in the history of our country. At a time when the problems facing us are monumental, Congress is dysfunctional and more and more people (especially the young) are, understandably, giving up on the political process.  The people are hurting.  They look to Washington for help.  Nothing is happening.

In my view, the main cause of congressional dysfunction is an extreme right-wing Republican Party whose main goal is to protect the wealthy and powerful.  There is no tax break for the rich or large corporations that they don’t like.  There is no program which protects working families – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, affordable housing, etc. – that they don’t want to cut.

But the Democrats (with whom I caucus as an Independent) are most certainly not without fault.  In the Senate, they have tolerated Republican obstructionism for much too long and allowed major legislation to fail for lack of 60 votes.  They have failed to bring forth a strong and consistent agenda which addresses the economic crises facing the vast majority of our struggling population, and have not rallied the people in support of that agenda.

As we survey our country at the end of 2013, I don’t have to tell you about the crises we face.  Many of you are experiencing them every day.

   –  The middle class continues to decline, with median family income some $5,000 less than in 1999.

   –   More Americans, 46.5 million, are now living in poverty than at any time in our nation’s history.  Child poverty, at 22 percent, is the highest of any major country.

   –   Real unemployment is not 7 percent.  If one includes those who have given up looking for work and those who want full-time work but are employed part-time, real unemployment is over 13 percent – and youth unemployment is much higher than that.

   –    Most of the new jobs that are being created are part-time and low wage, but the minimum wage remains at the starvation level of $7.25 per hour.

   –    Millions of college students are leaving school deeply in debt, while many others have given up on their dream of a higher education because of the cost.

   –    Meanwhile, as tens of millions of Americans struggle to survive economically, the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well and corporate profits are at an all-time high. In fact, wealth and income inequality today is greater than at any time since just before the Great Depression.  One family, the Walton family with its Wal-Mart fortune, now owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.  In recent years, 95 percent of all new income has gone to the top 1 percent.  

   –  The scientific community has been very clear:  Global warming is real, it is already causing massive problems and, if we don’t significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet we leave to our kids and grandchildren will be less and less habitable.  

Clearly, if we are going to save the middle class and protect our planet, we need to change the political dynamics of the nation. We can no longer allow the billionaires and their think tanks or the corporate media to set the agenda.  We need to educate, organize and mobilize the working families of our country to stand up for their rights.  We need to make government work for all the people, not just the 1 percent.

When Congress reconvenes for the 2014 session, here are a few of the issues that I will focus on.  (By the way, I’d love to hear from you as to what your priorities are).  

WEALTH AND INCOME INEQUALITY:  A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little.  It is simply not acceptable that the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while the bottom 60 percent owns all of 2.3 percent.  We need to establish a progressive tax system which asks the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, and which ends the outrageous loopholes that enable one out of four corporations to pay nothing in federal taxes.  

JOBS:  We need to make significant investments in our crumbling infrastructure, in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, in early childhood education and in affordable housing.  When we do that, we not only improve the quality of life in our country and combat global warming, we also create millions of decent-paying new jobs.

WAGES:  We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.  We should pass the legislation, which will soon be on the Senate floor, to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, but we must raise that minimum wage even higher in the coming years.  We also need to expand our efforts at worker-ownership.  Employees will not be sending their jobs to China or Vietnam when they own the places in which they work.

RETIREMENT SECURITY:  At a time when only one in five workers in the private sector have a defined benefit pension plan; half of Americans have less than $10,000 in savings; and two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their income, we must expand and protect Social Security so that every American can retire with dignity.

WALL STREET:  During the financial crisis, huge Wall Street banks received more than $700 billion in financial aid from the Treasury Department and more than $16 trillion from the Federal Reserve because they were “too big to fail.”  Yet today, the largest banks in this country are much bigger than they were before taxpayers bailed them out.  It’s time to break up these behemoths so that they cannot cause another recession that could wreck the global economy.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM:  We are not living in a real democracy when large corporations and a handful of billionaire families can spend unlimited sums of money to elect or defeat candidates.  We must expand our efforts to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move this country to public funding of elections.

SOCIAL JUSTICE:  While we have made progress in recent years in expanding the rights of minorities, women and gays, these advances are under constant attack from the right-wing.  If the United States is to become the non-discriminatory society we want it to be, we must fight to protect the rights of all Americans.

CIVIL LIBERTIES:  Frankly, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies are out of control.  We cannot talk about America as a “free country” when the government is collecting information on virtually every phone call we make, when it is intercepting our emails and monitoring the websites we visit.  Clearly, we need to protect this country from terrorism, but we must do it in a way that does not undermine the Constitution.

WAR AND PEACE:  With a large deficit and enormous unmet needs, it is absurd that the United States continues to spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.  The U.S. must be a leader in the world in nuclear disarmament and efforts toward peace, not in the sale of weapons of destruction.

This is a tough and historical moment in American history.  Despair is not an option.  We must stand together as brothers and sisters and fight for the America our people deserve.          

The question of Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning schedule seems to have been resolved to Bill Sorrell’s and Governor Shumlin’s satisfaction; but one phrase in the press release from Entergy should certainly give the savvy Vermonter pause:

…We will begin that decommissioning process within 120 days of the fund having adequate money in it to decommission.

Or, as Johnny Mathis might put it, the dregs of Vermont Yankee may be with us…

“until the Twelfth of Never…

And that’s a long, long time.”

While our attention has been occupied closer to home, the situation at Fukushima continues to be anything but stable.

Despite official efforts to suppress the flow of information concerning the crippled plants and surrounding environment, bits of worrisome news do creep into the light of day.

Radiation from groundwater leaking into the ocean became an issue early on; but recently, it has been reported that the contamination goes much deeper into the earth than was previously believed to be the case.

Discovery of this deeper migration of radioactive water raises concerns that much more contamination has been reaching the ocean than had been predicted based on superficial flow alone.

The painfully slow and risk laden job of removing fuel rods from Fukushima’s twisted rubble has begun, concentrating first on the spent fuel pool left exposed to the elements by explosions in the first days of the catastrophe.  

There were 1,533 fuel assemblies in the pool at Reactor #4 alone, and each of those assemblies holds 80 individual fuel rods.  While they are characterized as “spent” rods, the radioactive potential concentrated in them is far from exhausted and requires the utmost caution to handle.  

Once all of the fuel rods in Reactor #4 have been safely removed and stored in casks, a task that will take until the end of the coming year (longer if problems occur),  the entire procedure must be repeated at each of the three remaining reactors where an equal number of spent fuel rods await removal.

Dangerous and delicate as that lengthy task is, once completed, the worst will be yet to come.  

As reported by the Guardian:

More challenging by far will be digging out the molten cores in the reactors themselves. Some of the fuel burned through its primary containment and is now mixed with cladding, steel and concrete. The mixture will have to be broken up, sealed in steel containers and moved to a nuclear waste storage site. That work will not start until some time after 2020.

Meanwhile, no effective solutions to the continuing groundwater problem have presented themselves.

Despite the obvious message carried by the Fukushima story, even in Japan, the push is on once again for nuclear energy.  

In the U.S., the industry has succeeded in recruiting some environmental voices by representing nuclear as the best “short term” option to decrease carbon emissions.  Except that it never will be “short term;” and neither will be the environmental impacts, as has been amply demonstrated at Fukushima.

So, instead of turning-up the volume on a call for energy efficiency as a principle strategy for ending our fossil fuel dependence and hastening the switch to truly clean renewables, those environmentalists have been persuaded that nuclear energy is somehow better than carbon based energy…this, despite the necessity to ignore sourcing issues as well as disposal and decommissioning issues (nevermind the implications of any functional failure or accident in between) in order to buy into that meme.

What was the Cesarean rule?  Divide and conquer? Looks like that’s the only lesson the nuclear industry has learned since Fukushima.

Perennial champion of the little guy, our own Bernie Sanders will ring in the the New Year by introducing legislation to raise the Federal minimum wage for the first time in seven years.  He’s only asking for $10.10 an hour; and even though a livable wage is something like $15. an hour, you can imagine the “righteous” indignation that will surely be spun by Republicans over this meager proposal.

Sanders very reasonably argues that raising the minimum wage will represent exactly the stimulus that our top-heavy economy needs to bring it back to life.

“Trickle-down” advocates have had more than ample opportunity to demonstrate how reduced taxes on the rich and corporations could work that magic.  The experiment was a spectacular failure, plunging millions more Americans into poverty while lifting the rich into the lofty strata of the super-rich.  So profound is the growth in income inequity that resulted from “trickle-down” economic policy, that we now have a convenient shorthand to identify those super-rich: “the One Percent.”

I was pleased to read the full text of Senator Sander’s press release on the minimum wage initiative, reprinted in the Weekend Messenger as an editorial.  

St. Albans should be one place that pays particular attention to the message as it experiences its first holiday with Wal-Mart working the crowd at Exit 20.  

. The Walton family fortune of $144 billion is greater than the combined worth of the bottom 40 percent of Americans.  Yet the average Wal-Mart associate makes less than $9 an hour.  This means that in order to feed their children, see doctors and put a roof over their heads, many Wal-Mart workers must rely on federal assistance.  Nearly half of the children of Wal-Mart associates are either on Medicaid or uninsured. In many states, Wal-Mart has the highest percentage of employees receiving food stamps.

“American taxpayers should not have to subsidize the low wages at Wal-Mart to make the richest family in America even wealthier.  That is not only morally grotesque, it is bad economic policy,” Sanders said.

Peace on earth and “Amen” to that.

Hey, remember that time Scott Brown came to Vermont and held a fundraiser that reportedly lost money?

The $125-a-head private reception at the Rutland Holiday Inn began with veggies, dip and libations. After small talk and speculations about who might run for governor, the party of nearly 50 moved into the dining room for dinner and Brown’s speech.

“Nearly 50,” you say. All righty then, let’s give ’em the benefit of the doubt and round up to 50. That’s a gross of $6,250?

I have no idea how much it costs to run a shindig for Republican bigwigs, but it’s safe to say the event was not a success.

Well, ex-Sen McDreamy just held a big-deal event in New Hampshire, where he’s about to establish residency (in the tony seacoast enclave of Rye) and is doing a high-profile Hamlet act on whether to run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.

And how did the Nashua fundraiser go?

Er…

…protesters outnumbered activists who coughed up $50 to see Brown.

The tally: About 90 people inside; over 200 protesters outside, according to the NH Union Leader. (A majority were gun-rights activists, some dressed in hunting gear and carrying guns.) And Brown, brave stalwart that he is, “snuck in [the] back door,” said longtime political reporter Kevin Landrigan.

Sheesh.

Leaving aside the brutal optics for a moment, just think about the dollars. A prominent Republican ex-Senator who might just be his party’s candidate, giving a speech in NH’s second-largest city, manages to gross a woeful $4,500. Looks like another money-losing “fundraiser” for ol’ Scotty Too Hotty.  

The ex-Senator is supposedly the Great White Hope of the state party, whose other Senate hopefuls include two-state joke Bob Smith and far-right activist Karen Testerman (think of her as the Nancy Sheltra of New Hampshire). But hardly anybody shows up for his event. And his track record of occasional moderation in hopes of flummoxing the Massachusetts electorate now serves to completely alienate the hard-core base of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

I do have a serious thought, in addition to the irresistible chance to have a good guffaw at Brown’s expense. Which is, how much appeal does a “moderate” Republican actually have? There’s a lot of talk about Third Way centrists and moderate Republicans who can recapture the political center. But while that idea has a lot of appeal to the political pundit class, the bumble-stumble-fumble of Scott Brown makes me wonder how many actual voters would flock to a centrist’s banner.

It also makes me wonder whether Vermont’s own avatar of moderation, Phil Scott, really has broad appeal. How would he actually do if he had to run a serious, issue-oriented campaign? How would he manage the tightrole walk of establishing moderate credentials without making himself anathema to the conservative base?

I realize that Scott Brown is not Phil Scott, even though they are very similar in many ways. But you’d think that if Scott Brown is an exemplar for Republican victory in a blue state, then why can’t he headline a fundraiser without losing money on the deal?  

Hold the phone, everybody! Stop the presses! John McCain, inescapable creature of the Sunday morning talk shows, has had an idea!!!

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Wednesday that he would introduce a bill to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his own set of reforms.

… It is composed of conservative pet policies, such as tax credits for individuals and tort reform to stem medical malpractice lawsuits.

Well, isn’t that special. President Obama and the Democrats fight and fight and fight for reform. They barely manage to get a bill through an unfriendly Congress. They endure five-plus years of constant, relentless attack from the right. They barely survive a Supreme Court challenge, and then prevail in a 2012 election that was, at least in part, a referendum on health care reform. They beat back Republican attempts to tie Obamacare repeal to lifting the debt ceiling. And they take us most of the way down the road to Obamacare implementation.

And now, after all of that, John McCain has the colossal nerve to try to reopen the issue.

A little frickin’ late, isn’t it?

Does he really believe the President and the Democrats are going to dismantle their signature accomplishment just because he’s unrolling… er… a five-year-old leftover casserole from his unappetizing Presidential bid?

The central tenet, tax credits for purchasing health coverage, was also included in McCain’s 2008 presidential platform.

Normally I wouldn’t go to the trouble of posting a GMD diary about this absurd bit of political Kabuki. Except that it’s echoed by one of Vermont’s own, Republican Senate Minority leader Joe Benning. In a recent opinion piece posted by VTDigger and also published by God knows how many of our content-starved newspapers, Benning calls for setting aside partisan labels and taking a fresh look at our health care system.

After “objectively” assessing the pros and cons of the government and free-market approaches, Benning grandly offers:

Perhaps it is time to consider a hybrid system built on the best attributes of both sides.

(Cough.)

Er, Joe. A couple of points:

— Obamacare already IS a hybrid system. It actually includes some of the best AND worst attributes of both sides, but that’s because of all the contortions and compromises needed to get reform through Congress. But Obamacare, while providing a structure of government oversight and regulation, leaves a whole lot of room for the free market to work its alleged magic.

— Benning writes as if we are only just now approaching the health care reform issue for the first time. The fact is, for those just tuning in, we’ve been fighting this battle for the last five-plus years. There have been endless debates, proposals and counter-proposals, and Our Side Won.

— Okay, three points. We’ve already spent a whole lot of money, time and toil on trying to implement a new system. Surely Joe Benning, being the good fiscal conservative that he is, wouldn’t want us to just throw all that away, would he?

Benning is a complete dunce if he really thinks he’s offering a serious proposal. What it really is, is yet another last-ditch Republican attempt to undo their string of defeats on health care reform. They’re desperately trying to get to the front of a parade that has already ended.

Furthermore, look at what he offers as a model for “hybrid” reform:

Take, for instance, our interstate highway system. Competition, with government-set parameters and monitoring, has built what is arguably the world’s best road system.

What the frak????? Our interstate highway system is a model of a hybrid approach? What planet does Joe Benning live on? The interstate highway system is far, far more centrallized and government-controlled than Obamacare. It’s actually much closer to Governor Shumlin’s single-payer model. Because in the interstate highway system, the federal government is the single payer.

Generally speaking, Joe Benning is one of the better Republicans in Vermont. But this? A Godawful, irrelevant mess, delivered much too late. Just like John McCain’s “new” plan.