Tag Archives: Campaign for Vermont

Early Lisman speech praised the 1927 Commission on Rural Life

Back when he just getting his Campaign for Vermont underway (and still pretending to be a centrist) Bruce Lisman delivered a speech titled Prosperity is at the heart of the Campaign for Vermont.

cforVIn one of his first speeches made upon entering the Vermont political scene he cited the landmark 1930’s report by the Vermont Commission on Country Life [sometimes called Commission on Rural Life] as a positive example for Vermont leadership to follow.

In November 2011 when Lisman gave the speech to the Associated Industries of Vermont, the state was still recovering from the 2008 recession and in the midst of rebuilding after hurricane-turned-tropical-storm Irene. His address is part-attack on the Shumlin administration and part-branding himself as a white knight returning, to save his home state – with the Campaign for Vermont.

And he wrapped it all around this theme :

If we are exceptional, it isn’t just because it’s so damn cold and dark. It’s because in all that we have ever done we work hard, we work smart, we adapt quickly, we solve problems, and we know how to strike a deal to get things done.

We marry our kindness and caring gene to the gene that demands practicality and frugality.

Consider this: After the flood of 1927, our State launched Vermont’s Commission on Rural Life, a three-year project to re-imagine Vermont.

From that study, our leaders recognized the challenges we face, as individuals and as a state, are sometimes bigger than we can handle alone.

We were a bit humbled, but also enlivened by the opportunities for renewal presented by accepting a bit more dependence on Federal resources.

Irene offers a parallel opportunity to re-imagine Vermont in a world that is changing; an opportunity to examine the resources available and re-imagine.

Our challenges of today call for new imagination.

The Commission was the brainchild of Zoology Prof. H. F. Perkins of the University of Vermont – who also organized the 1925 Vermont Eugenics Survey. The Rural Life Commission’s final report took three years to complete and was the work of over a dozen committees and sub-committees.

One historian, writing in 1999, summed up the report like this: Beneath the surface of its 1931 final report, Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future, however, lay Perkins’s eugenic concern for protecting and nourishing Vermont’s “old stock.”

Over the years the eugenics component may have faded historically; to some readers, the report may generally be regarded (when regarded at all) as simply a multi-faceted government report from many years ago. Sections of the final report were working plans for rural rejuvenation and development. One chapter suggests the state should develop itself as the destination for tourists and summer residents – perhaps the birth of the modern tourist industry.

The report has all that – but with a little minor research the darker side emerges quickly. Not much about tourism surfaces when you Google it and the top search results center exclusively on Vermont Eugenics. And eugenics , according to the report authors’ intro, was the intended essence of it. As they explained in the introduction to The People of Vermont section: Thus, the center of interest from the beginning was in the people. The interest in land utilization, agriculture, forestry, and summer residence was in the background.

Governor-wannabe Bruce Lisman grew up in Burlington, graduated from UVM, and in recent years served on its Board of Trustees. It is possible he wasn’t familiar with the darker eugenics aspect of the study, or perhaps simply discounted it in favor of the convenient 1927 Vermont flood parallel to the ongoing Irene recovery for his talk.

And no one even batted an eye back in 2011 during Lisman’s speech favorably citing the Rural Life Commission’s report that, in part, promoted eugenics.

Now, five years later, Donald J. Trump wants to “build a wall” and without shame expresses openly anti- immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments in the Republican presidential primary. I wonder what kind of headline Lisman would get today, if he praised the eugenics-tainted Vermont Commission on Country Life’s 1931 project to re-imagine Vermont.

Is there such a difference between demonizing adherents of Islam or dehumanizing Mexicans (Trump) on the one hand, and making sure that “undesirables” don’t pass along their genes (Perkins, with recent praise from Lisman)? Is this the kind of thinking – or at best, thoughtlessness – we want running Vermont?

If that’s the way the country and our state decide to go, maybe the Canadians really ought to consider building their own wall.

Bruce Lisman pitches his southern strategies

Republican Bruce Lisman once again looks to a state down south to find one of his bright ideas for “fixing” Vermont. LISMAN_CHUNK_OUTLINES.indd

Lisman, who is campaigning in the Republican gubernatorial primary, wants to cap Vermont’s budget growth and to that end he casts his budget cutting gaze due South, this time to North Carolina.

In asserting that he could find real savings in Medicaid, Lisman pointed to North Carolina, where auditors found potential for $180 million in savings over a biennium. He said his Medicaid reforms would not unfairly strip benefits from those in need.

Lisman’s suggested southern strategy, according to reports, involves changes that are roiling North Carolina’s Medicaid program. And it is neither fast nor painless, and it is all very controversial:

Hardest hit will be the family practitioners and pediatricians who are supposed to take the lead in providing better medical care for about 1.7 million low-income children and adults in North Carolina. […] In fact, a 3 percent cut in North Carolina’s Medicaid rates, originally slated to start in 2014, took effect Jan. 1 – and doctors may have to go back through last year’s billing and pay that money back.

“This would wreak havoc with the finances of any business,” a statement from the N.C. Medical Society says.

The last time Lisman looked south for inspiration, he found a statewide jobs program from Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana. In this instance, while on one of his Vermont “good Ideas” listening tours, the crowd listened to Bruce praise a D+ rated program from Louisiana.

And it’s as if Bruce didn’t bother or care to do much homework on this one either. A non-partisan research group gave the program a D+ rating. The state-subsidized private-sector jobs created at an annual cost of $1.1 billion had few performance standards, no wage requirements, and according to the state’s own evaluation, subsidized workers unable to afford their own health insurance may fall onto the rolls of Medicaid, negating any positive economic benefits. 

Soooo…Bruce, let’s see how would that work?  Your “good idea”  jobs program is likely to fill up Medicaid rolls at the same time you slash away at Medicaid benefits. Looks like your “new direction” for Vermont might be circular.

So go for it Bruce. A little havoc — kind of like your era on Wall Street circa 2008. No worries for a one-percenter as long he keeps his state’s budget capped at 2% growth?

Bruce Lisman’s Vermont: Re-imagine valued customers…

In his latest opinion piece in VtDigger.com, Bruce Lisman the multi-millionaire candidate running in the Republican gubernatorial primary says: “It’s time to dare to be great!”

His top priority if elected would be: “First, I’d ask you to re-imagine our state’s government – one that treats its constituents as valued customers and sees employers as strategic partners.”

Well yes sir, Bruce! Re-imagine – Constituents as valued customers ! Whoa, that’s a  catch phrase for voters to rally round.

The problem with this suggestion is the role of constituents (citizens) and customers are different. On a government service level citizens experience interactions that are similar but not the same as those a customer might experience. Briefly a customer in the market place has the opportunity to choose what, where and when to buy. And a citizen using government services can’t exactly shop around for the best price on something. You can’t shop around for the best deal on your truck registration. The state of Vermont has a total monopoly on that one. And unlike a customer/seller relationship ,citizenship comes with collective obligations for the common good.

The retired Wall Street banker might just be listening to the call of his own imagined greatness propelling him forward.

Perhaps he hears echoes of Abraham Lincoln’s moving 1862 address to Congress “Fellow customers, we cannot escape history… The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

Aristotlecustomer 1

However Bruce Lisman might give consideration to the ancient philosopher Aristotle’s words of caution : “It is not always the same thing to be a good customer and a good citizen.”