Senator Tillis just won a lifetime ticket for the Dum Dum Trolley [see below]

The junior Senator from North Carolina said he wouldn’t have problem with food service businesses opting out of regulations that require employees to wash their hands upon returning to work after a trip to the restroom. Why? Market forces would take care of it.

While discussing regulatory reform after an appearance at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Sen. Thom Tillis said

“As a matter of fact I think this is one where I think I can illustrate the point,” he recalled telling her. “I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says we don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom. The market will take care of that. It’s one example.”

Tillis, who told the story with his right hand raised for emphasis, concluded that in his example most businesses who posted signs telling customers their food workers didn’t have to wash their hands would likely go out of business. Ah, the free market!  

Closing the event, Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet said, “I’m not sure if I’m going to shake your hand…”[added emphasis]

By the way Tillis is probably opting out on Global Handwashing Day, October 15.  

Dum Dum lollipops  on his Desk:  While Tillis was North Carolina State Speaker of the House  he kept a mug full of Dum Dum lollipops on his desk. If he thought an idea was, well, less than brilliant, he would reward its author with a sweet treat that sent a less-than-subtle message.

Vermont will be giving $2.5 million in incentive funds to GlobalFoundries Inc. This is the Dubai state-owned business that was virtually paid by IBM to take their plant here in Vermont off their hands.

Apparently no guarantees were made by the company in exchange for the $2.5 million incentive fund — or at least none were announced. Secretary of Administration Justin Johnson says the details are being worked out. Vague wishes to be “helpful to GlobalFoundries” and desire for the transfer from IBM go “smoothly” were expressed. And of course Governor Shumlin hopes Global may even retain jobs here in Vermont.

“I think there are some things we can do that would be helpful to GlobalFoundries to make sure we keep all the employees at IBM and expand in Vermont.” […] “This is a good deal for Vermont, it’s the right thing to do for us whenever,” the governor said.

The $2.5 million GlobalFoundries will receive is all that remains in the Vermont Enterprise Fund proposed last June by Governor Shumlin for “unforeseen or extraordinary circumstances.” The fund had originally been almost twice as large but state budget crunching reduced it significantly. There are no plans to replenish the fund after the GlobalFoundries gift empties it. Funny how all those litle incentive “eggs” wound up in the IBM/GlobalFoundries basket.

Secretary Johnson says the gift is all about “looking to the future,” but in all the business-based blather he comes the closest to uttering just the tiniest hint of gossamer strings attached to Vermont’s $2.5 million (ahem) donation to GlobalFoundries. He said, “We’d like them to do their next cool, big thing here and not somewhere else.”

Good plan! Just cross your fingers, hand over our millions and wish hard for the next cool, big thing.

About one week after Essex/Orleans Senator John Rodgers (D) (beagle) introduced S.25 — a bill to name a state dog — the idea is getting little support. At least in an online WCAX poll, little enthusiasm is being shown for the senator’s pet project. Keep in mind though, the poll is non-scientific and as with other things on WCAX perhaps meaningless.

WCAX.com Poll: Should Vermont have a state dog? If so, what kind should it be? We will share the results with policymakers in Montpelier who will make the choice.

Beagle 13% 

Pug 2% 

Golden retriever 7% 

Chocolate lab 4%

Black lab 8%

Husky 3%

German shepherd 5%

Mutt 10%

Something else 4%

Vermont doesn't need a state dog 44%

But then again, bill sponsor Senator Rodgers readily admits he is just having a little legislative laugh, and certainly he's not wasting everyone's time. “It’s been a source of amusement if nothing else.”

Recently on his FaceBook page Rodgers explained what he thinks is a waste of time:

By now most of you have heard about “the Beagle Bill” that I introduced for a constituent. I assure you that it literally took about two minutes. If you want to talk about a waste of time let's talk about the new gun control proposal that I am busy trying to stop. […] 

I guess Senator Rodgers always opens with a joke — or maybe a dogwhistle.

Well, turns out Rev. Robert Potter, the man at the podium who was heckled by single payer demonstrators [gasp!] at the statehouse during the inauguration ceremony, sees the much-talked-about episode as more awkward than insulting or upsetting. Protesters interrupted the event with chants during the ceremony, and some refused to leave at the close.

It was something to be dealt with in a way other than simply anger or threats,” Potter said.

It’s nice to have the kerfuffle taken down a notch or two or three, back into a rational perspective.

The Reverend’s perspective is welcome after amazingly Senator McCormack, a single payer advocate himself, called the protestors “fascists.” And McCormack was later joined on the fainting couch by political analyst Jon Margolis.

 Writing in VtDigger.com, Margolis on the one hand rejected the direct fascist reference, but on the other embraced it saying that in terms of method McCormack was not entirely wrong. And the demonstrators weren’t thugs but,

[…] there was an element of at least potential thuggery in their actions, especially later in the day when some of them occupied the otherwise empty House chamber, threatening to stay unless Speaker Shap Smith promised to hold hearings on a single payer bill. [added emphasis] 

Rev. Potter says he doesn’t fundamentally disagree with demonstrators' goals but doesn’t think it helped the case. “Humor was the great gift of the moment,” said Potter, who reassured those in attendance at the inauguration, “Don’t worry about them (the protestors), I have the mic!”

Potter later reflected, “Laughter is the carbonation of holiness,” acknowledging that the incident was unique in his 55 years in the ministry. “If we hadn’t been able to lighten up the atmosphere, I think it would have left the inauguration in a very different tone,” Potter said. “It was an attempt to soften the moment.” [added emphasis] 

Maybe after some smelling salts, fresh air, and a good lie-down, Sen. Dick McCormack and political analyst Jon Margolis could consider the Rev.Potter’s cure.

Kuerig Green Mountain (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) got a nice big primetime shout-out from Shumlin in his inauguration speech at the state house. The K-cup giant has promised to donate $5 million over five years in kick off funds to the new Vermont Clean Water Fund.

Shumlin’s boosterism couldn’t be more timely, coming right now, with coffee maker recalls and pressure increasing from environmental groups to make all K-cups recyclable.  

VPR reports that a Canadian media company has produced short video depicting an urban landscape engulfed in a K-cup apocalypse.

[…] a massive, Godzilla-like monster made entirely of K-Cups belching a high volume of K-Cups down onto the unnamed city; a photographer being crushed by a car-sized K-Cup; a woman being stomped on by the aforementioned K-Cup monster

It has been estimated that the 8.3 billion K-cups produced by Kuerig in 2013 are enough to wrap around the equator 10.5 times. And if that isn’t enough, it is overpriced! The cost of the coffee at 8 grams per capsule is roughly $50.00 per pound.

The pod maker’s Chief Sustainability Officer did respond to VPR regarding the Canadian video at length.She noted at length their growing efforts to recycle the plastic cups ,and says it is a priority.

“It’s a difficult challenge, but we’ve been working hard to find a solution.”

It's hard, they whine, after all the tax breaks Vermont has handed to Kuerig (formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) over the years, including a half-million-dollar yearly tax break on the K-cup packaging machine. So why wouldn’t the hugely profitable corporation “give back” a bit in the form of a public well-timed gift to the state.

Now $5 million over five years is certainly a thoughtful gift, but it sure looks like an affordable pre-packaged PR cuppa of Kuerig –- this one full of greenwash.

Look, there is a light on in the old Frankenstein house!  

On Saturday former Vice President Cheney’s $3.3 million 8,000 Square foot house on Chain Bridge Rd. in MacLean Virginia was the site of a protest demonstration. The Cheney house on Code Pink’s "Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour." is reported to be a ten minute walk from CIA headquarters.  Two of the twenty demonstrators some clad in orange prison jumpsuits, walked up to the house and refused to leave after police asked them to.  

The protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink walked up to the house before police arrived and asked them to leave, said Fairfax County police spokesman Roger Henriquez. Two members who refused to go were arrested on trespassing charges, he said.

Another Code Pink group demonstrated without incident outside the home of CIA Director John Brennan, also in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, as part of its “Guantanamo Anniversary Weekend Torturers Tour.”

A U.S. Senate report last month said the CIA misled the White House and public about its torture of detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and acted more brutally and pervasively than it acknowledged.

Two protesters, Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, both from Washington DC will face misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct charges.Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba still holds 127 detainees.

Fourteen years after Guantanamo prison opened and after the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation made public some of the horrific methods used, Cheney remains unapologetic about his role in US torture or harsh interrogation of terrorist suspects.  He appeared recently on Meet the Press and stated he would do it all again in a minute. “I’d do it again in a minute,” said Dick Cheney.

 No doubt he happily would, but there are  problems with the examples from history he uses to justify his actions.Here is just one of the six debunked central claims Cheney uses when defending the legality of water boarding 

Japanese soldiers were prosecuted “for a lot of stuff. Not for waterboarding,” Cheney said. “To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that’s an outrage. It’s a really cheap shot.”

In fact, at an international tribunal convened in 1946, Japanese soldiers were put on trial for water-torture techniques including waterboarding, with some defendants sentenced to hanging and others to long prison terms.[added emphasis]

 That’s an unimaginable outrage to the former Vice President; punishing someone responsible for waterboarding torture. To him it may be a kind of “quaint concept”, you know like Bush’s Justice Department said of the Geneva Convention.  

It’s been a bad election year at the polls for most Democrats, but out in the home of Proposition 13, Jerry Brown managed to win his fourth term as California governor. How does he shine on so brightly while other bright lights have dimmed? California and Jerry Brown are both unique, but one thing worth copying err, emulating stands out. And there is a hint in the title of a recent article: How Jerry Brown Got Californians to Raise Their Taxes and Save Their State

Brown took an enormous risk in 2012: he bet that Californians were so tired of cuts and dysfunction that they would vote for a big tax increase. Brown bet right, securing overwhelming support for tax hikes on the rich—including a 29 percent increase for Californians with taxable income over $1 million – and a slight increase in the sales tax.

It took courage on Brown’s part and California’s legislative leaders. California experienced a rare moment when collective desperation pushes political self interest aside just enough for elected leaders to do the right thing.    

So it is fairly disheartening for us to consider what California accomplished in the same week that here in Vermont the Senate Minority Leader, Republican Joe Benning, made himself some headlines by shouting from the roof tops that due to budget shortfalls Vermont would need to raise taxes, acknowledging that the legislature cannot make enough cuts to fix the budget without inflicting real damage. Then, after hardly pausing for a breath, he ruled out voting for those increases, even though he sees no alternative solution. And soon enough, although he hasn’t ruled out a tax increase, a politically weakened Governor Shumlin (if Scott Milne isn’t elected!) seems likely to re-up his no-tax-increase-on-high-earners promise.  

The thing is, what Brown did in California also happened here in Vermont. Once upon a time Governor  Richard Snelling (R) enlisted the help of Democrats in the legislature, and with combined budget cuts and temporay revenue increases (taxes), helped the state out of a budget crisis. But that was 1991, and we all know that was long, long ago, so long in fact I think VPR’s Bob Kinzel spoke of it in almost  hushed, reverent tones in 2008:

Snelling did something that's become one of the most talked about events in modern legislative history. Unannounced, he walked over to the office of House Speaker Ralph Wright and requested a brief meeting to ask for Wright's help in drafting a package of budget cuts and tax increases to erase the deficit.

Hmmm, one of the most talked about events in modern legislative history? Well, not so much this week, so far at least.

While single payer planning in Vermont is down, dormant, or perhaps dead for now, longtime opponents have come in to deliver a few more kicks to the comatose near-corpse. So who are the sharks circling in on the state’s plans for single payer healthcare?

One of them is Shawn Shouldice, the Vermont director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). Under her direction, the Vermont branch of the NFIB is sending out over a thousand postcards urging small businesses to pressure legislators to repeal the single payer provisions in Act 48, the healthcare law. The NFIB bills itself as a “non partisan” business group, however VtDigger.com politely notes they are “a business group which has largely endorsed Republican candidates and causes”

CNN reported in 2013 the single biggest source of funding for the NFIB came from a group backed by the Koch brothers’ political empire.

NFIB and its affiliated groups received $2.5 million from Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a conservative advocacy group with deep ties to the Koch empire.

 Other sources reported that several years ago Karl rove’s super PAC Crossroads GPS gave the NFIB a grant of $3.7 million.  

Actual small business people politically are divided in roughly equal thirds between Democrats, Republicans and independents. Yet the NFIB lobbies heavily in favor of big business and conservative Republican political issues. So, while claiming to be the voice for small business, the nationwide group carries plenty of baggage for big time national conservative funders and the corporados whose interests they serve.

Shawn Shouldice, the NFIB director, wears several hats. In addition to owning Montpelier-based Capital Connections lobbying firm, she has worked as spokesman for Bruce Lisman (small businessman?) of Campaign for Vermont the “centrist” group. Shouldice is also co-chairman of the Vermont chapter of ALEC – a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives.

At ALEC meetings, corporate lobbyists and special-interest reps work with elected officials to approve “model” bills for their legislative wish lists. These bills focus on reducing environmental and corporate regulation and taxes, tighten voter ID laws, and combat single payer healthcare. NPR calls ALEC a dating service between corporations and politicians.  

I wonder if the NFIB-initiated postcard shower might be intended to make waves at Lt. Gov. Scott’s Capitol Plaza business/legislator gathering. Scott has called his upcoming Priority #1 Day One gathering a combination “Shark Tank” show and speed dating event. Interestingly enough he envisions his Vermont pitch session will perform a match-making service strikingly similar to the one ALEC provides – a dating service between conservative business and their well-funded pocket politicians.

Besides Scott Milne I mean. It’s finally down the wire for Scott Milne’s long-running campaign for Governor. And he may be one of only a few Vermonters who see his odds of winning election improving.

In his most recent comments Milne says:

“I’m open to a conversation with anybody, Vermonters large and small, legislative or nonlegislative,” Milne told The Associated Press in an interview. But he added, “I’m not going to be proactively calling legislators and twisting their arms.”

Years of legislative precedent and a Democratic/Progressive majority will favor incumbent Governor Shumlin when the vote to settle last fall’s too-close-to-call election is held this Thursday. The November vote was Shumlin 46.4 percent of the vote to Milne’s 45.1 percent.  

Ever since Milne’s surprisingly close finish, the general consensus has been that it would be very, very, very, very unlikely if not impossible for him to win election for governor in the legislature.

A lone supporter from the newly formed group Vermonters for Honest Government bought a TV ad attempting to target legislators. However Milne’s newest burst of optimism doesn’t appear to be connected to actions he himself has taken or any discernable trends.

And he’s not exactly workin’ the phones!