Could Paul Krugman’s take on the austerity promoter’s favorite (faked?) study hold a hint regarding the possible motivation for our Governor’s odd budget proposals (in bold):

What the Reinhart-Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to.

So will toppling Reinhart-Rogoff from its pedestal change anything? I’d like to think so. But I predict that the usual suspects will just find another dubious piece of economic analysis to canonize, and the depression will go on and on.

Dare we hope the Governor will choose not to spend too much time wallowing in the ranks of the “usual suspects”?

Will he, instead, rejoin the reality-based community, in which it’s considered a bad thing to leave out all the numbers that inconveniently fail to support one’s desired conclusion?

Will he recognize the reality that supporting humans who need help makes the world a better place?

I guess we’ll find out.  

And a bit of humor:

Even in a legislative session where he's been taking heavy fire, this was an unusual week for Governor Shumlin.

By this point he must be used to the challenges coming from his left. Honestly, I don't think I've talked to a single Democrat who supports his proposals to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit and cap Reach-Up benefits.

It's not surprising, is it? After all, we Democrats define ourselves, among other things, by how we can frame compassionate ideas that recognize the humanity and struggles of the most vulnerable in our society, and that provide an effective means to get out of poverty and to live a decent existence.

This is why Democrats have been fighting so hard to defend both Reach-Up and the EITC. We support the increased child care support that the Reach-Up cuts are supposed to be going for, but it just doesn't make sense to take that money out of the pockets of other working poor and middle-class Vermonters. 

This is why you get things like this. The Caledonia County Democratic Committee has just adopted resolutions opposing both of these cuts.

The Caledonia County Democratic Committee supports recommendations to increase the Child Care Financial Assistance Program (CCFAP) that assists low-income families' access to quality childcare. We reject the Shumlin Adminstration's proposal for the Earned Income Tax Credit to be the funding source.

And:

The Caledonia County Democratic Committee opposes the Shumlin Administration's proposal (and the House Human Services Committee endorsement) for terminating welfare benefits for families who have been on the Reach-Up program for five years or longer.

 Is this a big deal? In my opinion, yes. I've been involved in county and state Democratic politics for years, and I don't think I can ever remember a county committee adopting a resolution opposing the policies of a governor of our own party before. I don't doubt that it's happened, but it's rare.

What happened Thursday, though, is even a bit stranger, and it comes to you straight from the business section of the Burlington Free Press. 

By now we've gotten used to Vermont Democrats calling out the governor and his inner circle. I haven't personally heard any calls for a primary challenge yet, but if things keep going in this direction it is easy to imagine.

So the question I ask is whether the governor's challenges to solid Democratic positions are buying him support from the Right, and today's evidence seems to say no.

Today UVM economist Art Woolf published an opinion piece in the Free Press business section on guess what? The EITC! And surprisingly, since you will pretty much never see Woolf siding with the left wing of the Democratic Party on anything, he does just that here.

Here's what he says about the EITC:

The EITC is an extremely effective and efficient anti-poverty tool. It rewards work, adds to a family’s labor income and is inexpensive to administer.

  . . .

The major benefit of the EITC is that the person who receives the check decides what the family’s greatest needs are and can prioritize them, whether it’s food, housing, health care, child care, education, clothing or anything else. Nearly all other anti-poverty resources are specifically targeted, with someone, somewhere, deciding what the best uses of the funds are. The EITC makes the assumption that the best judge of anyone’s needs is that person.

That is, low-income workers are just like anyone else.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is basically a Republican idea. At the federal level it grew out of Richard Nixon's proposal for a negative income tax, and it really works well at what it's supposed to do: help guarantee that someone who works for a living will not be left in povery despite all their efforts. Like everyone who has studied it, Woolf agrees that it is an effective and efficient program.

Still, if the governor's proposals aren't getting support from the left, and they aren't getting support from the right, where is he going to get the votes to push his plans through? 

 Like I said, strange week for the governor.

Until this year, there was plenty of evidence that, whatever you think of his policies, Governor Shumlin was a skilled politician. He navigated his way to the top of the State Senate; in 2010 he won a highly competitive Democratic primary and beat a well-funded Republican opponent. In his first term, he laid the groundwork for the nation’s first single payer health care system and showed a lot of leadership in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

He sailed through the 2012 election, and entered 2013 with huge majorities in the Legislature. The opposition parties were scrambling, not for power, but for mere relevance.

But since the first of January, the Governor appears to have lost his political instincts and his powers of persuasion.

Let’s start with his January 24 budget address, which included several proposals that landed with a thud: slashing the Earned Income Tax Credit, imposing a lifetime cap on Reach Up benefits, and a new tax on break-open tickets.

It’s hard to imagine that an experienced pol like Shumlin couldn’t have foreseen that, and couldn’t have done some advance work. Make his case to the leadership, pave the way for his big plans. Instead, lawmakers were taken by surprise.

In the months since then, the Governor has left little or no room for compromise: barring any consideration of additional revenue increases and insisting that his plan for welfare, child care and education is an indivisible package. His public argument has consisted of repeating the same talking points over and over again. And if there’s been any backstage maneuvering, it’s been singularly unproductive.

After the jump: a pair of last-minute Hail Mary passes.

Now, as the Legislative session is nearing its end and Shumlin’s plans are foundering in the House and Senate, the Administration finally unveils revised proposals — allowing precious little time for lawmakers to consider them.

On Monday, the Administration scaled back its plan for an EITC cut and the break-open ticket tax, in a presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee that VTDigger described as “not in the spirit of compromise, but in the tone of an executive branch issuing orders.”

Nice.

And then on Wednesday, the Administration offered a revised Reach Up plan, replacing the five-year cap with a flexible program of sanctions that penalize recipients who don’t stick to their job-search plans. As VTDigger reported, key Senators are not happy with the switcheroo:

Members of the Appropriations Committee expressed concern that they’ve received a rash of radical policy tweaks just days before they are expected to finalize the budget.

Sen. Sally Fox, who sits on the Health and Welfare Committee as well as Appropriations, believes the new plan ought to go through both — but acknowledges there’s not enough time. And advocacy groups have had no chance to offer their input.

All of which leaves me with a series of questions.

Is the Governor trying to piss off his fellow Democrats? Does he think that persuasion is unnecessary, and that when he whistles they’ll come running?

Has his attention been diverted by his new duties with the Democratic Governors Association?

At any point in the last four months, when his strategy clearly wasn’t working, did he ever consider changing course?

How much of his political skill was actually the work of Alex MacLean and others who’ve left his camp for more lucrative pastures?

In the grand scheme of things, this year’s tax-and-spending debates have been at the margins of the state budget — relatively small adjustments to a very large package. There are tougher battles on the horizon. The 2015 budget is going to be another tight squeeze, the first phase of health care reform will be going online, and Shumlin will have to reveal the specifics of his single-payer reform plan — including a big new tax structure.

Which leads to one last question: if he’s done so badly this year, how’s he going to do when things really get difficult?  

Sad news from Florida: A man with more money than he knew what to do with has made the tragic mistake of becoming an “enabler” of the poor.

We all know, at least if we listen to the same sources as our Governor, that giving money or any other kind of aid to poor people will only “enable” them in their addiction to being takers of the fruits of other people’s labor:

There is a thin line between being compassionate and enabling people.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I share the terrible news from Florida, where a certain Mr. Harris Rosen has tragically stepped over the enablement line:

Twenty years ago, having amassed a fortune, Rosen decided to give back. He targeted the Orlando neighborhood of Tangelo Park — a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street and the high school graduation rate was 25 percent.

The first thing he did was provide day care for every parent. Next, he offered to pay the Florida state college tuition for any student from his adopted community of 2500 residents.

The poor, poor deluded man!  How could he visit such a cruel “kindness” upon the people of Tangelo Park? Didn’t he know what would happen? Didn’t he know about the cycle of poverty he was about to create? Didn’t he know that the ungrateful, lazy, shiftless takers of that run down neighborhood would do nothing but turn his money into drugs, violence, and decay?

Alas, no. In his haste to be “nice” to the unworthy recipients of his largesse, he blindly went forward with his ill-fated plan, and ruined the neighborhood, permanently entrenching horrors such as:

… the crime rate has been cut in half and the graduation rate is near one hundred percent.

“When people have the resources to go and succeed, there’s a ripple effect,” said one high school senior who was part of the first pre-K class in the Tangelo Park Program. “It becomes generational. No one in my family ever went to college before, but now, my baby sister can’t even picture a life without college. My mother even went back and got her degree. I showed her that she could do it.”

Oh the horror! The horror!  Please, Governor, please prevent Vermont from doing anything so foolhardy! Please keep the wealthy job creators in our state from repeating Mr. Rosen’s folly. Please don’t “enable” our state’s “takers,” I beg of you!

——–

In all seriousness: Governor Shumlin, the policies you are promoting will have the effect of destroying families and seriously harming our state’s economy. Your proposal to protect the wealthy from sharing in the support of our state’s well-being, while slicing more out of the hides of those already in need is – to put it kindly – stupid.

In light of the defeat of the background check bill yesterday (or, in light of its inevitable rejection by the Republicans in the House, its premature defeat), it’s worth thinking about what actually happened.

And why? Because I can already hear people saying that this is one more sign that in their view the Democratic Party is useless, Democrats lack spine, Democrats won’t fight for anything.

So let’s be clear. This was not a failure of the Democrats in the Senate, this was a Republican filibuster.

Sure, there were conservative Democrats who voted to support the filibuster, but even if all of them had voted to end debate, the Republicans had enough votes to maintain the filibuster and block the legislation, even though the bill had the support of a majority of the Senate.

Ii have no problem criticizing Democrats when it’s deserved, and I have great contempt for the Democrats who voted with the Republicans yesterday, but they’re not who killed the bill. It was the Republicans.

Anti-wind movement in VT has taken quite a few pages from the already vigorous nationwide & global campaign which has maintained a presence of a high level of visiblity for several years, at least.

Aided by ALEC – which links lawmakers & corporations  to policy models conveniently created by ALEC to aid them in crafting corporate-friendly legislation which they so helpfully provide handy-dandy blank models for to assist the lawmakers. How kind of them to idiot-proof the model legislation.

*all emphasis added

Environment, Energy, and Agriculture

Rewriting the Rules about the Environment, Energy, and Agriculture

Environment, Energy, and Agriculture

This page shows how bills pushed by ALEC corporations work to undermine environmental protections, limit the ability of local government to manage land use, and protect corporate polluters.

These “model bills” and resolutions thwart efforts to address climate change, streamline siting of nuclear power plants, and oppose efforts to address hazardous coal waste.

Through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific changes to state laws on these issues through these model bills. Do you?  

http://www.alecexposed.org/wik…

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind…

Industrial Wind Action Group

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind…

SPN: Aiding ALEC & Spinning Disinformation in the States

Click here to check out our new SourceWatch resource on the 59 “mini-Heritage Foundations” in the states.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wik…

http://www.prwatch.org/node/11909

A few facts:

– Money: ALEC Is Funded Almost Entirely by Corporations

– ALEC Has Corporate Leaders and Members who Vote on Bills Behind Closed Doors

– Almost All of ALEC’s Legislative Leaders are Republicans

The above is info was used solely to highlight the notable characteristics of ALEC, which says plenty & very telling as to who supports their policy goals – and their “sponsors”, are taken from a comparison of ALEC & NCSL.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may appear on the surface to mimic the bipartisan educational archetype of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL

)

http://www.prwatch.org/news/20…

Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama’s clean energy strategy

– Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power –

Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 May 2012 21.44 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi…

Highlights from the leaked “memo” obtained by The Guardian:

Conservative plans to oppose wind power – memo

Strategy document calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing ‘subversion … so that it effectively becomes so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it’

– Be FOR something (e.g. Science), not AGAINST something (e.g. wind energy). Be proactive  vs reactive

In this case, our VT bunch is for other renewables & wind power – just not in VT or on ridgelines which just happen to be the best place to produce the amount of power necessary to make the projects efficient & worthwhile

 – Create a  grass-roots ground swell from which the clamor for change will reach the elected officials and  policy-makers.

– A) Cause the targeted audience to change its opinion and action based on the messages. B) Provide credible counter message to the (wind) industry. C) Disrupt industry message with countermeasures. D) Cause subversion  in message of industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants  to admit in public they are for it (much like wind has done to coal, by turning green to black and  clean to dirty). Ultimate Goal: Change policy direction based on the message

–  Consider joining forces w some already established organization where there is substantial  commonality and commitment (e.g. ATI, Heartland, IER, CEI, Marshall, Brookings, Cato,  Manhattan, AfP, FW, CFACT, ALEC, NA-PAW, etc.).

– Develop a list of experts for testimony to government agencies, etc. Identify key topics (e.g. health) and get volunteers to act as a clearing house for information and  posting timely information for activists on a website.

– connect with like-minded groups such as tax, tea party, true environmentalists,  business organizations, property rights advocates, etc.

– Create a “think-tank” subgroup to produce and disseminate white paper reports and scientific  quotes and papers that back-up the message.  

– include community activity and participation with sponsorships for  science fairs, school activity etc. with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from  wind because they discover it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up (poster contest, essays etc).

– Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development,  proposing to build 400 foot billboards

– Write expose book on the industry, showing government waste, harm to communities and other  negative impacts on people and the environment. Meme (self-replicating messages) Response Coordinator (This will help slow the meme effect of the industry, for instance when a company places a seal  showing wind power was used to produce the product, we automatically assign a tax wasting  symbol to the product and recommend a boycott on the website.  

When a company uses wind  power as marketing tool, or illustration such as a toy manufacturer showing turbines on the box,  we automatically contact them to tell them we will list them on the web as actively participating  in disinformation by favorably showing wind turbines)  Legal Department for contract review and guidance on communication efforts, and also taking  developers (etc.) to court on various issues to cause media exposure.

Maintain a comprehensive  collection of court cases on this subject. Also to provide legal voice for those who have none in  this issue.  Develop legal strategies that can be copied in other areas.  Take zoning boards to  court to rezone as industrial land to create chilling effect on signing contracts.  Also sue for  property value loss to small land holders, and use all legal cases to create media poster child  effect. Sue states regarding RPS. Sue state utility commission who don’t do their job. Etc.  

National Organization: Details and Narrative    The minimum national PR campaign goal is to constructively influence national and state wind  energy policies.

–  A broader possible goal might be to  constructively influence national and state energy and environmental policies.  The goal will be realized by coordination of a focused message along many channels and with  multiple voices. The intent is to target three audiences with consistent messaging to create the  change.  Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among  grass roots.

– The media committee is responsible for implementing the message in a variety of media  resources including traditional media, new media, social media and networking.  

– The science committee will be responsible for assembling a directorate of scientists with the  proper credentials to be accepted by main stream media.  Those credentials are also important in  making the scientific material harder to target and more difficult to tear down by the  opposition. This committee will coordinate with the directorate to develop a highly respectable  collection of scientific white papers and reports that are consistent in their approach  

–  respected scientists for media and political symposiums to be conducted to further establish the  messages.  They will coordinate their efforts with other committees whose duties will include  dissemination of the science.

–  The networking committee will be responsible for coordinating the response of networked  groups with like-mind on our message. These will include the tea party, anti-tax leagues and  utility rate groups as well as government watch-dog, anti-waste groups.  This committee will  help spread our message to the network groups.

p.8 of the leaked memo is a blow-by-blow example of the “action plan” & how the “commitees” coordinate with one another – quite an expose of their tactics which are clearly mimicked by our local VT operatives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi…

From the “Media Comittee”:

Mon, 2010-03-22 11:46 Brendan DeMelle

Institute for Energy Research Admits It Was Behind Anti-Wind Study

Danish journalists have confirmed that The Institute for Energy Research commissioned and paid for the anti-wind energy study released last year by a Danish think tank..]In 2009 IER run a campaign on “green jobs” attacking the expansion of renewables energies. IER commissioned three studies on renewable energies and green jobs in Denmark, Germany and Spain.[4 These studies by different think tanks were than promoted by IER and other free market think tanks in the US but also used in Europe[5] and Ontario, Canada

Sound familiar? It’s not new — strategies used in VT have been used on a nationwide as well as international level for years as they  conduct a a smear campaign against wind development and to influence legislation designed to stop renewables, in this case industrial-scale wind.

From the “Policy” committee — Moratorium anyone?

NSW Nationals urge wind farms freeze

Updated October 10, 2011

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201…

From the “Health & Science” comittee:

Wind Energy and Health”: Special issue of science journal

Aug 26, 2011

-Calvin Luther Martin, PhD

http://www.windturbinesyndrome…

If you’ve been following the Taser issue, and it’s been pretty important to us here at GMD, you will want to be at the State House tonight.

Ever since Macadam Mason was killed with a Taser last summer mental health and other advocates have been calling for either abandonment or strict controls on Taser use statewide.

Tonight’s public hearing is your chance to be heard.

The House Committee on Government Operations will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, April 17th from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM as part of its consideration of H.225, An act relating to a statewide policy on the use of and training requirements for electronic control devices (also known as tasers).

As introduced, H.225 would limit the circumstances of their use to situations warranting deadly force or involving imminent risk of death through self harm.

Tasers are increasingly being used on Vermont citizens. H.225 was introduced after Thetford resident Macadam (Lee) Mason was fatally shot in the chest with a taser by the Vermont State Police. The medical examiner ruled Mason’s death from cardiac arrest was caused by the taser’s electrical charge.

Read H.225 as introduced:

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/doc…

Written comments can be submitted until April 23rd.

Every week there is another story, or a full week of stories, about the administration's wrong-headed proposals to cut benefits and increase taxes on poor and working poor people in Vermont. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of my colleague Chris Curtis and other family and anti-poverty advocates, the advocates, ordinary people, and even the legislators are standing to oppose those cuts.

For instance, last week the Senate Human Services Committee voted to oppose the Reach-Up cuts the administration has proposed, but the administration isn't taking it lying down.

I have to ask, though, how some ordinarily smart, politically sophisticated people can so consistently hit the wrong note as they make and attempt to justify their proposals.

For instance, here's Dave Yacavone, quoted at Vermont Digger:

 “If something is a good policy and is going to help children and poor Vermonters, process for me does not trump the substance of the policy,” he said.

. . .

 The Senate Health and Welfare’s recommendation, Yacovone said, “is really clinging to approaches that haven’t been working. There is a thin line between being compassionate and enabling people.”

 Do they not realize that hardly anyone outside of the administration agrees that what they are proposing is "a good policy and is going to help children and poor Vermonters"?

 

Or another way to ask the question is, do they not realize that they are losing the PR war, and every time they try to take their case to the public they’re making it worse?

If they want to push their misguided policy they can go ahead and do it, obviously. They’re wrong to do it, but that’s their right. Still, I think they’d be more effective if they would just keep their heads down, stay away from the cameras and microphones, give their detailed, technical rationale in the committee rooms, and stop saying obnoxious* things to the public.

Of course, every time they open their mouths they hurt their case, so I’m not really complaining.

Edited to make the diary a little less, er dickish.

Good morning, folks. How ’bout a nice hot cup of schadenfreude with your pancakes and bacon?

Vt. Republican Party battles over its future

This cheery headline greets subscribers to the Mitchell Family Organ today. Yes, it’s paywalled; I’ll recount some highlights here within the bounds of fair use, but it’s worth actually buying a copy of the paper to get all the gory details.

The article, by Mitchell Family stalwart Peter Hirschfeld, recounts a struggle “for control of the party’s organizational apparatus,” such as it is:

The emergence of two factions – one led by Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jack Lindley, the other by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott – has pitted the old-guard GOP against a cadre of upstart reformists looking to put some distance between themselves and the Republican National Committee.

Scott, the VTGOP’s most successful politician by a country mile, put together a “Strategic Plan Committee” to figure out a return path to relevance. Its members include State Reps. Heidi Scheuermann and Patti Komline, Sen. Joe Benning, and former Douglas Administration multi-tool Jason Gibbs, currently flacking for Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont. (Which raises the question, unanswered in the article, of whether Lisman himself, and his Wall Street millions, are behind the effort. But hey, Lisman’s a self-described nonpartisan, so he couldn’t possibly be involved. Cough.)

The committee’s already strained relationship with Lindley’s office has been complicated in recent weeks by leaks, subterfuge, and a fundamental disconnect between Scott’s new brain trust and the chairman controlling their party.

That would, of course, be our friend Angry Jack Lindley. Who reacted, yes, angrily. He forced several of his cronies onto Scott’s committee, and things have escalated from there.  

Lindley and his loser buddies (including Darcie “Hack” Johnston and Mark “Hey Look, My Last Name Is” Snelling) accuse Scott of trying to hijack the VTGOP for his own benefit, arguing that it’s bad for a single elected official to dominate the party.  

Sounds like they can’t wait for Scott to go independent. Which would leave the VTGOP with how many statewide elected officials, exactly? … Oh yeah, NONE.

The core of Scott’s argument is that the VTGOP is failing due to association with the national GOP, and needs to plot its own course. The Lindley faction says the state party would be in even worse shape if not for help from the national level — pointing specifically to the $20,000 per month the state party “earned” last year by parking funds from the Mitt Romney campaign in its account.

Which is kinda like saying that a tick should be grateful to the dog. The Scott faction’s counter-argument is that if the VTGOP weren’t seen as a captive of the Fox/Limbaugh brand of conservatism, it might just be able to raise money on its own instead of being a parasite.

One final bit of comedy from Hirschfeld’s article. He asked Phil Scott if Lindley is the right man to lead the VTGOP:

“Um, I think that, um,” and here Scott pauses for a full 10 seconds. “I think he can, for now. I don’t doubt his intentions. I think he’s been working very hard to try to, I guess, re-energize the party. But we’ll see. Time will tell.”

Hirschfeld then says that “the knives are coming out for Lindley,” and that “Lindley won’t go quietly.”

Get your popcorn ready, folks.  

Well, that was… er… interesting.

David Hallquist, CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, recently announced his all-out opposition to new ridgeline wind projects, due to the grid’s difficulties in handling intermittent power sources like wind and solar. And on Tuesday, he brought his case before the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, which is considering new legislation on wind energy.

He spoke forcefully and briskly, the words coming so fast that the note-takers in the room had trouble keeping up. “They can’t solve the problem,” he said, referring to grid operators like ISO New England. “It’s such a complex problem, and we are MANY years away from solving it.”

He asserted that the grid is built to handle consistent, one-way power flows — the old-fashioned system, with continuously operating power plants sending electricity to customers. “Wind turbines,” he said, “are being curtailed by ISOs across the country, not just in New England.”

Well, that sounds awfully grim.

Funny, though: the committee just heard from a top VELCO official last week, and he said nothing about critical grid problems interfering with expansion of renewable power. Or, as committee chair Tony Klein put it: “I’m trying to connect the dots: why every other utility has not said the same thing. Why the Department of Public Service, the Public Service Board, VELCO, ISO New England has not said something. The buildout of renewables is continuing. You’re saying there’s no answer.”

“I’m the biggest advocate of renewables around,” replied Hallquist. “But there’s a fundamental physical problem. I don’t know why other utilities aren’t talking about it.”

And then he began talking about rates and customer resistance to higher electricity costs, and said “You can solve the problems, but you have to make investments.”

Whoops. Hold on there, pardner. Is there “a fundamental physical problem” or isn’t there?  

“Making investments will get us to a certain level, but not beyond,” he said. “You can’t get to 90% renewables [Vermont’s goal for the year 2050] with today’s physics. You can go higher than we are now, but there will be a cost.”

Ah, it’s becoming clear now. Hallquist’s clarion call about the grid’s absolute limitations won’t become critical until a few more decades have passed. Given the present pace of technological change, that’s a long, long time. And his shorter-term concern is simply about cost.

Which ignores the far greater costs of continued dependence on fossil fuels. Indeed, when asked, Hallquist endorsed a carbon emissions tax as the best way to correct the imbalances of the energy market, and bring the cost of fossil fuels in line with the cost of renewables.

By the end of the hearing, which only took about half an hour, Hallquist was agreeing with Klein on the way forward: “These problems need to be solved in order to get to our goal. You should keep the pressure on to solve them.”

The best way to “keep the pressure on”? Continue to build renewables. Force the system to adapt and make the necessary investments to facilitate a clean-energy future.

Simple. Not sure what the fuss was all about, though.