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Thursday insta-diary

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Here’s something quick with a chart and a Vermont connection.wolrd_military_spending_barchart_large

In an editorial Monday titled: A Better not Fatter Defense Budget the NYTimes.com suggested the time has come to take a look at throttling back US military spending. And one of the most expensive aircraft ever, the F-35 (scheduled to be based in Burlington VT 2019)caught their eye.

The Pentagon can do with far fewer than the 1,700 F-35s it plans on buying.

[…]For nearly a decade after 9/11, the Pentagon had a virtual blank check; the base defense budget rose, in adjusted dollars, from $378 billion in 1998 to $600 billion in 2010. As the military fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban, billions of dollars were squandered on unnecessary items, including new weapons that ran late and over budget like the troubled F-35 jet fighter.

Did Scott Milne just launch a run for U.S. Senate?

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Scott Milne recently sold his stake in his family travel agency and began floating serious trial balloons about running against longtime Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. In March he discussed his qualifications with vtdigger.com:

[…] you know, I’m a travel agent and I think I got a shot at taking out the longest-serving senator in Vermont history and currently the longest-serving senator in the United States,” Milne said.

He now, it seems, is exploring whether the investigations into the (alleged ) “Ponzi” scheme at Jay Peak and Q-Burke is an issue that Senator Leahy, a champion of the Federal EB-5 program, may be vulnerable on. Could it have legs for Milne?

mobbingIt seems unlikely, so we will see, but Scott Milne didn’t wait and  jumped head first into it:

“Peter Shumlin and Patrick Leahy have both displayed a lack of competence and a lack of leadership in the way the EB-5 program has been structured and managed,” Milne said, lumping Leahy in with the Democratic governor he nearly defeated in 2014. “On the federal level, I think it just wasn’t structured with auditability and transparency built into it.”

Milne may not have thought this one through. You see he and his business partner Attorney David Boise (his former college roommate and largest contributor to his failed campaign for governor) explored using EB-5 program to help finance their mixed use Vermont development.

B&M Realty and Development has been attempting to build a mixed used development, Quechee Highlands in Hartford near the intersection of Interstates 89 and 91. B&M’s project has been wrangling in the courts over regional land use regulations (one of Milne’s signature issues).

In 2009 at their own expense, B &M partners Milne and Boise joined an EB-5 road trip to Asia with then-Governor Jim Douglas.douglaseb-5Saigon  Milne must have enjoyed the trip.He returned impressed with EB-5 and sang praises to its entrepreneurial qualities without qualification.

“To me, it [EB-5] is the perfect storm of government policy capturing the best of entrepreneurial spirit,” Milne told the Valley News a week after returning from Asia. “I was pleased beyond my expectations.”

Although still hemming and hawing a bit about challenging Sen. Leahy, Milne says former Vermont Republican Party chair Jim Barnett has been advising him.

I’d think Barnett might have told Scott Milne not to tie his shoe laces together if he wants to run … or walk in the election. Penny loafers might be a safer bet for this Republican.milnescottdouglas

Phil Scott and Donald the “misguided missile”

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You might think every savvy GOP politician would have been paying attention six months ago when Republican strategist Ward Baker spelled out strategies to deal with Trump the “misguided missile.” The widely leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned Republicans to prepare and guard against collateral damage should Trump prevail and win the GOP presidential nomination.

Scott supporter Kurt Wright (R-Burlington) isn’t worried about Trump at the top of their party’s ticket harming the VTGOP. Wright is counting on what he believes is the provincial nature of Vermont voters.

Wright said. “They [voters] don’t care about the national politics. Vermonters are great at separating out what Vermonters do … as opposed to what’s going on in Washington.”

But Wright’s response kind of ignores that much of Trump’s appeal is that he claims not to be a Washington creature.

I guess putting distance between yourself and your own party’s presumptive “misguided missile” candidate is a tough task.scottwhome

At a press event Thursday Scott tried hard to keep the topic orbiting around the state budget. However only a couple days after Trump crushed all opponents in the Indiana primary, he was pressed to respond to the obvious question: Do you now or will you ever support Donald Trump for President?

Scott deserves credit for declaring he will not vote for Trump. Unlike Bruce Lisman who unbelievably says he intends to “[…] carefully evaluate Donald Trump’s candidacy and listen to what he has to say.” That leaves me more than a little curious over what on earth Trump might say to win over Lisman.

But with six months’ lead time to prepare a winning strategy for coping with Trump’s run at the White House, couldn’t Scott have done better than this?

Scott, who declared he would not vote for Trump, revealed later Thursday he has decided to write in former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas as his presidential choice in the November election.

“He’d make a great president,” Scott said about the four-term governor.

Aww, isn’t that just precious VTGOP fandom! I’m sure Jim thinks you could be a dandy Governor too, Phil! You could be the Governor Dubie Jim Douglas never had.

But it is still pretty early in the game for Scott to put down his Jim Douglas trump card — we’re not even through the primary yet! I’ll bet he’ll need to play that one a few more times before November.

Candidate Phil Scott’s roundabout bid

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By now every voter in Vermont must know that Lt. Gov. Phil Scott is the longtime co-owner of Dubois Construction – a company that competes for and receives millions in state highway contracts. Considering his position as an elected official, it is surprising that this issue has only been raised a few times during his 15 years as a state senator (on the Transportation Committee) and his time as Lt. Governor.

roundaboutconflict 1Early on when Scott was about to enter the race for governor, he attempted to preclude any discussion of conflict of interest and told Vtdigger.com he would temporarily distance himself from his highway construction business, should he become governor.   “When a project he has supported as an elected official goes out to bid, Scott said he makes sure his company does not seek the contract.”

Well, one of his “quiet accomplishments over the years” (listed under ‘transportation’ on his campaign website) may conflict just a bit with that statement.

In 2005 (five years before he became Lite Governor) while serving on the Senate Transportation committee, Scott successfully lobbied U.S.Senator James Jeffords to place  a specific type of funded project  in a Federal transportation bill.

Vermont (USA) Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) credited Vermont State Senator Phil Scott (R-Washington County) with the provision in the new federal transportation legislation adding modern roundabout projects to the list of safety improvements eligible nationwide for 100 percent federal transportation funding.

Modern traffic roundabouts are recognized safety improvements for traffic and pedestrians, and usually significantly improve intersections. They’re also pricey, so in 2005, getting the Feds to cough up 100% of the cost of building them was significant.

It also turns out Scott’s Dubois Construction Company made several attempts to get a piece of that federal roundabout funding he had arranged.

Over several years, Dubois Construction bid on at least three roundabout projects including two since he became Lt. Governor.

One bid [CONTRACT ID : 04B198] in 2008 was worth $1,388,412.00, one in 2011 worth $1,754,788.83 [CONTRACT ID : 08B126], and in 2013 (what would have been a biggie) worth $11,953,592.58 [CONTRACT ID : 78D082]

. All his bids were in the middle of the pack, but not being the lowest bid, none were awarded to Scott’s company. Taken together, the three bids would have been worth over 15 million dollars to Scott and Dubois Construction.

Up until recently, it was accepted as gospel that Vermont’s government was uniquely honest. But with the EB-5 Regional Program now under fire over Jay Peak’s alleged “ponzi scheme,” an overly active government-to-business revolving door, and finally the state Senate’s embarrassing efforts at (not) passing any ethics regulations, this bit of bogus gospel is due for a revision. One longtime Vermont commentator recently declared that “Vermont state government is still pretty squeaky clean.”  Kind of an ethical gray area — you know, like, being “sort of” honest?

At least in a ’roundabout’ way, Phil Scott may have provided a road map of how, if elected governor, his ethics will intersect with his private business interests.

Right in character: F-35 fails latest test

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Look up in the sky! It is a bird or even superman —  but not an F-35. The troubled new jet fighter scheduled to be deployed to Burlington International Airport in 2019 continued right in character — performing poorly.f35csmp1

“The Air Force attempted two alert launch procedures during the Mountain Home deployment, where multiple F-35A aircraft were preflighted and prepared for a rapid launch, but only one of the six aircraft was able to complete the alert launch sequence and successfully takeoff,” the Pentagon’s top weapons tester disclosed in written testimony to Congress on 26 April.

Under development for 15 years the F-35 program has set records burning through $400 billion of our tax dollars. Currently the cost per aircraft is estimated to be of $412 million. And after all that time and money, the results of the recent deployment test are probably the last thing supporters of deployment to Vermont –notably Senators Leahy and Sanders, Rep. Peter Welch, Gov. Shumlin, and Mayor Miro Weinberger — want to hear.

Glitches that required system and/or aircraft shutdown and restarts that prevented launches were blamed on “immature software.”

For now at least, the F-35 is a fully mature employment program for some defense contractors. Currently these aircraft at one base require 60-90 industry tech reps per squadron. And in Senate testimony just last week Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said the program needs about 2,600 people to oversee it at a cost of $70 million per year. One Senator said he had numbers indicating it was nearly 3,000 people and $300 million a year.

Now, seven years since its first flight hour, the F-35 has reached the 50,000 flight hours mark.  Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, F-35 Joint Program Executive Officer: “The next 50,000 hours will be achieved much quicker as we double the size of the F-35 fleet worldwide in the next three years alone.”

The 50,000 flight hours are comprised of two categories: System Development and Demonstration flights (SDD)  test hours (12,050) and Operational flying hours (37,950).  Therefore, the total for Operational flight hours is only 37,950 hours-about a quarter less than the total flight hours of 50,000.

When he was defending the safety of deployment to Vermont in 2013, Lt. Col. Chris Caputo said the new fighter would have 750,000 flight hours before it comes to Burlington in 2019. A lot more F-35’s will have to be flying  and an awful lot of Operational flight time (700,000) will have to be logged in three years if the Vermont Air Guard is  to receive a plane that meets that goal.

Another question for the brass hats — and the F-35 cheerleaders –how realistic (or affordable) is reaching that goal in three years considering all the “glitches” and “bugs” haunting the aircraft?

A GMD bonus fun-fact:

Lockheed Martin was the biggest federal contract in 2014, Lockheed’s Pentagon contracts alone are worth more than the federal government provides in grants to the state governments of North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Idaho, and Alaska combined.

Trump struts upon stage and the GOP frets

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The Republicans are still digesting the news of Donald J. Trump’s latest primary wins. And for now they seem to be in disarray — and it’s ugly. How ugly is it? Well, former Speaker of the House John Boehner (R, Orangeland) must be smelling sulphur, as he thinks fellow Republican  candidate Senator Ted Cruz  is the devil in red or “Lucifer in the flesh”  as he claims.

On a less metaphysical level, a recent Roll Call’s Capitol Insiders Survey shows rising Republican pessimism about election prospects:

A majority of the GOP staffers who responded to the April survey now expect either Donald Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to win the party’s nomination and nearly half of them —  a solid plurality —  think the Republican nominee will lose.trumpdigest

And with Trump likely the one at the top of the ticket, fears that the GOP will suffer losses in Senate races and that their majority in the House may shrink are growing rapidly.

GOP fretting about the Senate majority has grown throughout the year. When CQ Roll Call asked aides in January, only 28 percent of Republican respondents were worried. That rose to 45 percent in March, and now it’s nearly half. By contrast, this month only 37 percent of the Republicans said they expected their side to maintain control.

Any hopes that incumbent Congressional Republicans have for passing major legislation to aid their coming campaigns before the election are apparently slim.

They [congressional staff] gave the best shot to pending legislation that would revamp criminal sentencing rules. And even on that they are not hopeful. Only a quarter of the aides said they expected Congress to act. That compares to nearly 4 in 10 when CQ Roll Call asked about the issue in December.

Now, as Trump struts on stage and the GOP frets, it could it spell tragedy not comedy on a dramatic scale. You know, err… with the GOP lead by a poor player, an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Get to the bottom

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It has been a busy week since the SEC locked up Q-Burke and cracked down on Stenger and Quiros’ “Ponzi like” EB-5 scheme.

One thing that has grabbed a lot of attention is a “batch” of emails from the Shumlin administration that had been slated to be deleted.  Speculation is rampant about the timing – why in early April, prior to the SEC action, this batch of correspondence was slated to be wiped.EB-5 chart 1

They reportedly may contain correspondence between Shumlin’s former staff member Alex MacLean, who was then working for Jay Peak’s Bill Stenger, and the governor’s office. Administration officials say the request to delete was routine. And they want them made public however Attorney General Sorrell is said to be reviewing the issue.

Now The Vermont House has scheduled a debate for Friday to consider a proposed resolution calling for the release of the emails, joining several candidates for governor and others requesting the contents be made available to the public.

Rep. Chris Pearson (P-Burlington), who heads the House Progressive caucus, says there’s an easy way to put to rest any lingering questions.

“I agree with a whole lot of Vermonters that something seems very fishy here,” he said. “But I’m not asserting anything. I’m saying: Show us the emails and prove it to us.”

To that end, he and four fellow Progressives have introduced a resolution asking Shumlin to deliver the emails to a House committee by May 1.

Maybe it is worth asking this: Is it more likely the email batch is simply an embarrassment (a big one perhaps) for the Shumlin administration, or could it be a smoking gun?  I’d bet on embarrassment over smoking gun. So good: “show us the emails” because the longer it hangs fire the more suspicion gathers.

But if the point is to get to the bottom of how the state allowed this Ponzi scheme to happen, why not start at the bottom rather than the top?

Not exactly the bottom, but how about at the state Agency of Commerce and Community Development(ACCD). This would be the state agency that had the schizophrenic task of promotion and oversight of approved EB-5 programs until February 2015 when oversight began to be shared actively with the Department of Financial Regulation (DFR).

The ACCD’s directors of the Regional EB-5 Center for both the Douglas and Shumlin administrations had day-to-day dealings and traveled extensively overseas in support of Jay Peak and Q-Resorts’ team.

In their designated role former Regional Center Directors James Candido (Douglas’ man) and  Brent Raymond (Shumlin’s former Director) were the faces Vermont presented to foreign investors. Their attendance at worldwide EB-5 conventions signaled Vermont‘s stamp of approval for Jay Peak /Q-Burke, helping  Stenger and Quiros gather funds.

Considering the scale of fraud alleged could state officials so familiar with the operation not have expressed some worries or had suspicions? And just what was the calculus that weighed in favor of ignoring the tell-tale signs, of favoring the developers-cum (alleged) robber barons over their responsibilities to the people of Vermont and the (alleged) foreign-investor-victims?

At some point Vermont’s  combination “watchdog” and enabling agency – going back to the Douglas daze – deserves as much or more attention than Shumlin’s batch of emails is now getting. The Regional EB-5 Center was there helping sell the snake oil from the start. What did the directors know and when might they have known it ?

Former Governor Jim Douglas goes to John!

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John Kasich’s presidential campaign that is.  Former Governor Jim Douglas has officially endorsed John Kasich and joined his Vermont Leadership Team. Douglas joins Vermont State senators Peg Flory (R-Rutland), Kevin Mullin (R-Rutland), and Rich Westman (R-Lamoille) who signed on to the Ohio Governor’s campaign earlier.

In his statement Douglas said: “Among the candidates left standing, only John Kasich demonstrates the leadership ability needed in the Oval Office. From balancing the budget in Washington to turning Ohio’s economy around, he knows how to solve problems and he knows how to bring people together.”

Before becoming governor Kasich was a Newt Gingrich Republican in Congress for nineteen years, with a brief spell prior to becoming governor earning big bucks  at Lehman Brothers (before they went belly-up). kasichthewall

Curiously Kasich says if elected president he would try to reunite Pink Floyd for a concert.

(What is it with Republicans and walls?)

 

And how about that record the Ohio Governor has that Douglas admires? In brief here are four items thinkprogress.com singled out from his time as Governor.

~ Enacted sweeping tax cuts that devastated Ohio’s poor.

~ Signed a budget that included restrictive anti-choice measures.

~ Dealt a blow to labor by supporting pro-business legislation.

~ Pushed through charter school reform while ignoring failing schools.

And Progress Ohio Executive Director Sandy Theis says bluntly:

“John Kasich is nowhere near as likable or as moderate as he makes out, and I think it won’t take long for that to become apparent in this campaign. He’s a flash in the pan,”

Sounds as if Jim Douglas has lot in common with Governor Kasich — except the Pink Floyd thing.

But who’s gonna tell Donald Trump and Ted Cruz they lost Governor Douglas’ and Vermont State Sen. Peg Flory’s coveted endorsement?

Scott to visit community affected by toxic chemicals

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Scott will attend, according to his published schedule the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation community meeting for residents of Bennington, North Bennington, and Shaftsbury.

When the PFOA well contamination first came to light, Lt. Gov. Scott initially referred to the contamination as a “spill” and did not mention monitoring private or public wells and only suggested “We should start by helping municipalities upgrade systems to prevent spills of raw sewage and untreated wastewater.”

I’d be surprised if Scott has any legislative recommendations to propose that might help prevent a disaster like this happening to Vermont families. That is because the Lt. Gov. had a chance in 2015 to improve regulation of toxic chemicals and chose not to.Philscottphilscott

Scott cast a tie breaking vote last session in the legislature that killed a bill designed to expanded existing rules governing chemicals allowed in children’s toys. The lieutenant governor said he sided with the business community, which opposed the changes, so as not to create uncertainty for them.

No small irony then that he is on the road today to campaign …err I mean to visit a community suffering from toxic chemical exposure. I wonder if Scott would go back and change his veto on chemicals in children’s toys -or maybe he just hopes voters won’t look back too far at his record on chemical regulation.

Q-Resorts fallout: revisionist photoshopping we might see

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Reports are, as you might expect, that Vermont pols are working hard to put a little sunlight between themselves and alleged EB-5 ponzi artists Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros. It will prove a little harder for some than others.

Early on in the EB-5 saga, in October 2009 Governor Jim Douglas went on a junket to South Korea with Stenger and Quiros . While there, according to a press release at the time,  he facilitated the first EB-5 investor seminar for the now-failed AnC Bio as part of his economic development mission to Asia.

Will former Governor Douglas try to blur it away even though he had a front row center seat?douglas ancbio 2

Vermont.gov press release: “On behalf of the people of Vermont, I want to welcome AnC Bio VT to Vermont,” Douglas said while at the AnC plant in Seoul. “This is an exciting opportunity that can bring hundreds of high-tech, good paying jobs to our state.” — Gov. Douglas 2009 [vermont.gov noted that pictures were available for the press]

Starting in 2004 EB-5 was Led by Jim Douglas

The following is from Bill Stenger’s 2011 written testimony to US House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and it couldn’t be clearer:

It was not until late 2004, because of improved C.I.S. [U.S.C.I.S.] efforts and the renewed commitment by our state officials led by Governor Jim Douglas, that the program became truly functional from our perspective in Vermont.

To be there or not to be there?

This was Bill Stenger’s birthday celebration on September 27 2012, Newport’s Lake Memphremagog.

getmerewrite
#1 Left to right: Congressman Peter Welch, Bill Stenger, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Gov. Peter Shumlin, Ariel Quiros and William Kelly. #2 Left to right: Bill Stenger, Ariel Quiros and William Kelly

No one is exactly trying this, because you can’t just photoshop yourself out of the recent past, but a few Vermont politicians may try to blur the lines and change the focus, with or without technical wizardry.