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.” 

Last week, Governor Shumlin confined his State of the State address to a single issue: the growing problem of opioid (DAMN, that’s hard to spell) abuse in Vermont. Some critics, like House Minority Leader Don Turner, groused that it wasn’t a “real” SotS:

“My question is…what is the “state of the state?”” said House Minority Leader Rep. Don Turner (R-Chittenden). “…what about the rest of the issues that we deal with?

Yeah, yeah. As if Turner would have accepted Shumlin’s assessment at face value. No, I don’t particularly care about the SotS “tradition.” The speech is a marker for the opening of the new Legislative session, but it doesn’t necessarily have any impact on the flow of debate. Neither do I see a whole lot of value in deviating from the tradition; Shumlin could just have easily done a regular SotS and a separate address on drugs. That would have done just as much to cement the issue at the top of his agenda.

So, on the process question, I profess ambivalence. Now, on to the substance.

The problem of opioid addiction has been a significant one in Vermont for quite a long time. And if Shumlin’s rather appalling statistics are on the mark (I have no reason to doubt him), it’s gotten a whole lot worse in the last dozen or so years.

(Hmmmm… and who was Governor for most of that time? I do believe it was the Patron Saint of Vermont Republicanism, Jim Douglas. Living down to Peter Freyne’s monicker of “Doesless,” eh Jim?)

So I applaud Governor Shumlin for putting the issue in the spotlight and vowing to tackle it with something more than the umpty-billionth “crackdown” that does nothing more than overcrowd our prisons. Although, as Seven Days was maybe the only news outlet to notice, Shumlin’s plan does have a “tough on crime” element as well as a new emphasis on treatment and prevention. But overall, it’s a welcome development.

But it’s only the first step. We’ve seen gubernatorial flagships run aground on the rocky shoals of legislative reality before. Indeed, we saw it last year, when Shumlin’s energy efficiency and welfare reform plans hit the ol’ iceberg and sank.

So moving opioid addiction to the front burner in his SotS is only the first step. Many obstacles remain. Here they are, in rough chronological order:  

— The Governor’s budget address. Last year’s high-profile initiatives came a cropper when Shumlin yoked them to wacky (break-open ticket tax) or unacceptable (slashing the Earned Income Tax Credit) funding schemes. In a year when the state already faces a big budget gap and Shumlin has vowed to hold the line on broad-based tax increases*, I fear that he’ll go back to that Well of Bad Ideas and either propose a Rube Goldberg scheme that’ll fall on deaf ears under the Dome, or take money away from needed programs to fund new initiatives. In the inverted words of the old saying, he’ll rob Paul to pay for Peter. Which leads to the second iceberg in the path of S.S. Opioid Treatment And Prevention…

*Meaning, as always, tax increases he doesn’t like.

— The Legislature.  The State of the State address generates a lot of media coverage, but it doesn’t really move the dial in the People’s House. Lawmakers need a lot of convincing. And even though the Governor has a supermajority in the Legislature, his priorities are often given the cold shoulder. If he really wants his drug plan to go through, he’ll have to do a lot of convincing. In the past, he’s fallen short on the follow-through. Which leads to the third iceberg…

— The Governor’s short attention span. This may be spectacularly unfair, but: my impression is that Shumlin is red-hot on launching new policy ventures, but isn’t as focused on the hard work of convincing other people. This is a little bit odd from someone who rose through the legislative ranks; you’d think he, of all people, ought to be comfortable with the glad-handing and arm-twisting needed to get lawmakers on his side.

The Governor has frequently acknowledged his dyslexia. Looking from the outside, this amateur psychiatrist would say that he also has a touch of ADD/ADHD. Whether or not that’s true, he pretty clearly has more energy than patience. If he truly wants his drug plan to take effect, he’ll have to get in the trenches in February and March.

As for the fourth iceberg…

— Money. Based on past experience and his stated budget priorities, I suspect the Governor will come up with a funding plan that won’t please the Legislature. Last year, he refused to budge when his fellow Democrats devised their own funding schemes; indeed, he preferred to let his proposals sink rather than accept their funding plan. We’re certainly set up for the same thing to happen this year. Hopefully the Governor learned a lesson from last time: Don’t blindside your fellow Democrats with iffy funding plans and expect them to follow happily along. Hopefully he has either worked with legislative leaders to develop a funding plan, or he’s at least kept them in the loop this time around.

And now, the fourth and a half – and biggest – iceberg…

— Will we end up with a shadow of an effective plan? Without digging into the details of the opioid issue, I wonder whether the dollars Shumlin proposes are sufficient. The single biggest problem re: opioids is the lack of treatment opportunities. Well, if we’ve already got lengthy waiting lists, what happens when we start aggressively diverting offenders into treatment? I wonder.

And I wonder even more about the outcome in the Legislature. If the Governor and lawmakers get into a tussle over funding, then the easiest way out is to hack and slash. I doubt that there’s any fat on Shumlin’s proposal; if we wind up with some fraction of his plan, then it won’t be enough.

The worst possible outcome may well be the most likely: Lawmakers will conclude that attacking drug abuse is a good idea, but we simply can’t afford it right now. (How often have we heard that one?) They’ll kill most or all of the treatment side and approve the politically-safe “tough on crime” aspect. We’ll wind up with stiffer penalties for out-of-state drug dealers and for those who commit crimes with guns, but not much else.

If so, the State of the State Address will have been a wasted opportunity. And opioids will continue to be a scourge in Vermont communities large and small.  

It’s always informative to look back to authoritative representations made in the early days of a crisis like Fukushima and see how well they align with reality a couple of years down the line.

Maybe you remember that infamous MIT study that seemed deliberately engineered to mislead about the dangers of radiation.

Therapeutically injected into the PR fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident (which was not, as yet, identified as such), the MIT study took the rather astonishing position that it might not have been necessary to evacuate people from the region around the crippled reactors! It was very popular and widely quoted at the time; and probably gave some poor folks in northern Japan a short-lived sense of security.

If you were paying attention after then, we came rather quickly to understand that MIT was so dependent on support from the nuclear industry that its research in the area could no longer be trusted.

I haven’t heard much reference to those literally incredible findings in the intervening years, but they are no doubt deeply embedded in every proposal for a new nuclear facility that comes into play.

Much like the truncated and censored records drawn from survivors of the WWII nuclear attacks in Japan that form the basis of conventional wisdom even to this day;  the myth of harmlessness generated by this latest attempt to skew the science in favor of the nuclear industry will have a half-life as long as plutonium.  

But, hang on!

Here comes news that, even using the questionable benchmarks established by the post-WW II  records and the equally questionable records from Chernobyl (where Soviet officials are believed to have deliberately expunged much of the data), it can be estimated that the  incidence of thyroid cancer in Fukushima survivors will be one-in-fifty, or seven times the normal rate.

Now…can I interest you in some Japanese farmland that’s going very cheap these days?

A few days ago, I spotlighted Lt. Gov. Phil Scott’s reaction to Governor Shumlin’s State of the State Address (Opioid Crisis Edition), which seemed rather staunchly conservative considering its source. And I wondered if Scott was feeling the pressure to move towards — or at least pander to — the right wing of his party.

Well, if he is, he’s not doing enough of it to satisfy said wing. From Jon “Watchpup” Street at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Journalism” site Vermont Watchdog:

Pressure mounts for Vermont lieutenant governor to take single-payer position

Prominent members of his own party wonder why, after more than 2 1/2 years, Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott refuses to take a position on the state’s single-payer health-care law.

Scott has adopted a skeptical but “wait and see” attitude toward single-payer, saying he can’t take a position until Governor Shumlin actually unveils the single payer plan including its funding scheme.

Which isn’t good enough for “prominent members of his own party.” And who, pray tell, are these “prominent members”?

The very folks who ran the VTGOP off the rails and into the chasm of an historic 2012 defeat: gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock and his extremely well-paid campaign manager Darcie “Hack” Johnston. Those are the only two “prominent members” identified by Street as criticizing Scott.  

First, the ex-candidate:

Brock… said ample information is available to judge that a single-payer system would be bad for Vermont.

Single-payer will jeopardize jobs … It would encourage medical professionals to leave the state, discourage medical innovation … prohibit Vermonters from choosing their own health plans and rely on a state agency he says has already proven itself incapable of implementation.

And the “mastermind” of Brock’s defeat:

“I think Lt. Gov. Scott is very confused on the Republican principles with regard to government-run, socialized health care, “Johnston said.

Yes, the architects of Brock’s woefully underfunded and completely ineffectual campaign are taking potshots at the only Republican who actually won a statewide race in 2012. (Just to remind you of the numbers, Brock  earned less than 38% of the vote and lost to Shumlin by over 20 percentage points, while Scott pulled in 57% of the vote. The only other statewide Republican candidate to win more than 41% was the other centrist on the ticket, Vince Illuzzi.)

Not that these embarrassing results have given any pause to Brock or the Hack; they’re demanding that Scott prove his conservative purity by moving farther out of Vermont’s mainstream. Man, I don’t envy the high-wire act Scott will have to perform: maintaining his centrist credentials (even as Shumlin actively co-opts the center) while trying to mollify the Loser & Nutjob Wing of the party.  

If I were him, I think I’d just let the VTGOP roam in the wilderness and bask in the popularity and job security of being Lieutenant Governor, a job that plays to his skills and lets him go on being Everybody’s Buddy. Why try to save the political bacon of ingrates like Johnston and Brock?

That radioactive mess over in Japan?  It just keeps getting worse.

And it’s leaching out into the environment at an alarming rate.

According to Tokyo Electric Power Co., an evaluation of radiation exposure caused by toxic water, rubble and debris, and other waste kept at the plant was below the limit of 1 millisievert per year as of March, but increased to 7.8 millisieverts as of August.

Just for your interest, measurements taken at the perimeter of the premises indicate radiation to be eight times the regulatory limit and rising.

The source has been identified as stored contaminated water from the cooling process.  Think about that when you consider the decades and decades of suspense that Vermont’s aquifer must endure before our own little hot-pot, Vermont Yankee, has been effectively “neutralized.”

And they want to build more of these environmental time bombs?

If that wasn’t enough to give one pause, how about this:  remember all the assurance we had in the early days of Fukushima, that the ocean is a “big place” in which radiation will be diffused and we won’t have to worry about contamination reaching the aquatic life?

Well, it has just been reported that black sea bream have been caught off the coast of Japan with levels of cesium as high as twenty-four-times the acceptable standards for food.  

Four out of thirty-seven fish sampled had unacceptable levels of the radioactive toxin.

Black sea bream are

on the list of fish that local fishermen are asked to voluntarily refrain from catching in the northern municipalities of Ibaraki Prefecture, which is located just south of Fukushima Prefecture.

(my emphasis added.)

‘Ya think?

Obama administration to end contract with CGI Federal, company behind HealthCare.gov

By Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein

The Obama administration has decided to jettison CGI Federal, the main IT contractor that was responsible for building the defect-ridden online health insurance marketplace and has been immersed in the work of repairing it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

And so should VT.