Riding Shotgun is a story in Seven Days about the recent deer hunting trip reporter Paul Heintz was taken on by Governor Shumlin. Reading it made me wonder just a little – and by that I mean not a lot, but still a little – about his closeness to the politician he covers.  

It all started with an apparent off the cuff manly taunt from the governor about hunting but led fairly quickly to a serious invitation.

Five days later, I was riding shotgun in Shumlin’s Dodge Ram pickup truck along the back roads of East Montpelier. It was three days into rifle season, and the governor had finagled an afternoon off after speaking at a Veteran’s Day ceremony in Burlington.

The uneventful politician/reporter hunting trip during which no deer were taken is related in a friendly, all-in-good-fun manner.  

While sharing a snack with his new hunting partner, Heintz might have been thinking back to the term ‘reporter on the tire swing’ coined back in the ’08 McCain presidential campaign as he wondered:

Oh, shit, I thought, I’ve been co-opted. What would Bob Kinzel say if he could see me now?!

However I’d worry less about Kinzel and more about the possible double meaning of the quip the Governor reportedly made earlier to his team

“I told my team I’d have you gutted out and hung up by 4:30,” Shumlin said.

So who’s fair game now?  

Thanksgiving open thread

One portion: The restoration of the wild turkey here in Vermont is thanks to tax dollars and a government run program.

The wild turkeys we see in Vermont today originated from just 31 wild turkeys stocked in Rutland County by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department in 1969 and 1970. Vermont’s forest habitat was once again capable of supporting turkeys. State wildlife biologists moved groups of these birds northward, and today Vermont’s population of turkeys is estimated to be about 50,000. 

According to early reports about the Hostess bankruptcy, the well known brands – Twinkies, Ring Dings and the well known bread substitute Wonder Bread – were to be sold off to raise money to pay off creditors.

This would have happened if everything had proceeded according to the bankruptcy plan filed by the owners. However the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) have called the deal into question. The BCTGM takes exception to management’s proposal to pay senior executives a bonus of up to 75 percent of their annual pay so they will stay on and help wind-down the bankrupt business.

The Washington Post’s Plum-line blog reports that labor and Hostess management will be going into last-ditch mediation in hopes of saving 18,000 jobs and 33 manufacturing plants. The unions hope to turn the entire affair into a teachable moment.

The AFL-CIO will be following the lead of the union that represents the Hostess workers, but it has offered to lend any assistance it can, and will separately use this story to draw national attention to labor issues in general.

Whatever the health of organized labor overall, the Twinkie story seems like another good opportunity for unions to counterprogram conservative messaging with their own story about the scapegoating of supposedly greedy union workers for corporate failings, even as “vulture funds” make a killing – and more broadly about the real causes of middle class economic insecurity.

Hostess’ debt is owned by a series of hedge funds and “without large union concessions – what some would say, total union capitulation – the hedge funds decided Hostess would have to die,” according to Business Insider.

So as you see, it’s no Wonder: it’s the union workers’ fault for not being as soft and squishy as the company’s famous spitball raw material.

 Following election loses Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal seems to recognize that his Republican Party has a simple problem. So the Governor called for an end to “dumbed down conservatism” which he claims is responsible for trouble at the polls and is damaging the Republican brand.

Said Jindal, “We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Well, US Congressman from Texas Louie Gohmert may require more than one memo or some other form of intervention to stop the stupid. This past Wednesday Rep. Gohmert nominated Newt Gingrich for the position of speaker of the house during party leadership votes.

"You don't have to be a member of the body to be speaker," Gohmert, of Texas, told the caucus during the closed-door meeting, according to a source inside the room.

It isn’t clear from reports  if this is true or not but Gohmert’s effort on behalf of former Speaker Gingrich, who resigned from the House under a cloud more than dozen years ago was not seconded by any fellow Republicans. Speaker Boehner, who was uncharacteristically not moved to tears, remarked “Louie, I love you too” after winning the vote.

Maybe the stupid is baked into the cake.

The chart and much more can be found here

In a post election interview with the Wall Street Journal Senator Mitch McConnell clings to his Bush tax cuts for the wealthy

“'We Have a Voter Mandate Not to Raise Taxes”

And commenting on negotiations with President Obama,  he added:

“You know, he [Obama] doesn't own the place."

Nationally in 2009 3.6 million people worked at or below the minimum hourly rate. That’s a large part of the population clinging to or off the side of a financial cliff.

Well November 9th the Vermont Department of Labor announced that the state’s minimum wage will go up on January 1st 2013. From the current rate of $8.46 it will go up fourteen cents to $8.60. For tipped workers the current $4.10 will gain seven cents bringing that to $4.17.The increase is a result from the rate being adjusted to the consumer price index.

Vermont is one of sixteen states with rates higher than the federal minimum of $7.25. Washington State is the highest at $9.06, five states have no minimum rate and the rest of the states are at or below the federal rate.

How far does the minimum go? [after the jump]  

Here is some perspective in the form of a chart that shows how many hours per week minimum wage workers would have to work to afford rent and utilities on a modest two bedroom apartment. 

 And how about Papa John’s pizza owner John Schattner who is literally at the other end of the minimum wage. Schattner recently said that he feels he just has to make up the costs of the Affordable Care Act by passing them on to his minimum wage employees and his customers.

“I got in a bunch of trouble for this,” he said, referring to the comments he made in August, according to Naples News. “That’s what you do, is you pass on costs. Unfortunately, I don’t think people know what they’re going to pay for this.”

So Papa John Schattner (a Romney supporter and fundraiser) will reduce workers hours and raise his pizza prices too.  Must have been a heart wrenching decision for a man worth $402.6 million back in 2006 that lives in a 40,000 sq. ft mega mansion. The place is complete with a 22-car underground parking garage, built-in car wash and motorized turntable to arrange the limousines  

Minimum wage, Yah!  It really is the least they can do.

At least for a day or so a blizzard of articles exploring the demographic dilemma faced by the Republican Party has been running second to the larger blizzard about the “fiscal cliff”. A couple days before the election and ahead of the curve Senator Lindsey Graham said if Romney were to lose, only demographics would explain the loss. A former top Bush official put it more colorfully “

We’re in a demographic boa constrictor and it gets tighter every single election.”.

By the final days of the election even some news outlets began to comment of the fact that Romney crowds tended to be overwhelmingly white and older by comparison to the mixed age and race crowds at Obama rallies.  

Interestingly the same constricting demographic squeezing the Republican Party is, according to news industry analyst Kevin Doctor is also squeezing the newspaper industry.

When it comes to audience, the American newspaper industry looks a lot like the Republican Party. Consequently, its business reversals parallel the deepening Republican national electoral woes.

[…]The print audience — the audience that still responsible for 80 percent or more of almost all newspaper companies’ revenue — strongly parallels the Romney vote in almost every category: age, ethnicity, and gender. Older, White, and male.

Wonder  who might adjust to the new demographic realities more quickly, the newspaper industry or the Republican’s Grand Old Party. My money is on the one that carries the funny papers.  

 On last Friday afternoon, only 17 days after winning his primary election for Attorney General Bill Sorrell released a statement clearing a Vermont State Trooper in a fatal shooting death. State Trooper Dustin Robinson fired seven shots striking John Martel once after the burglary suspect ‘failed to respond’ or refused to comply with orders. There were no witnesses to the shooting other than Trooper Robinson, who says, as reported by A.G. Sorrell, that after being fatally shot Martel told him  “I wanted to die.”

The Attorney General’s ‘report’ cited medical examiner’s findings that agreed with the trooper’s (unwitnessed) version of the shooting death. According to the AG’s statement, the use of deadly force is justified when an officer believes that he is in danger of death or serious injury, and that deadly force is needed to respond.

Attorney General Bill Sorrell affirmed [Trooper] Robinson’s account of the shooting: that he opened fire on Martel after the burglary suspect refused to obey his instructions and twice pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the trooper. The object turned out to be a cellphone.

After the jump: Sorrell: "… that's a tall order"

This summer the Attorney General told Vtdigger.com that like all citizens (even suspects?) police officers are, of course, presumed innocent. But Sorrel added:

“To say a police officer is intentionally trying to kill someone without cause: that’s a tall order.”

A day after the April 30, 2012, shooting, while facts were still being gathered, State Police Col. Thomas L'Esperance said at a news conference "John Martel made a decision when he was confronted by Trooper Robinson …” L’Eperance could also have noted back then that the only other man present at the shooting – the trooper – also made a choice, as Friday’s AG statement makes clear:

As Martel kept making movements in his belt area, Tpr. Robinson put away his taser and took out his firearm, repeating commands to Martel to show his hands.

Suicide by cop?

A recent report exploring ‘suicide by cop’ say it has taken on life of its own and become a broad catch phrase with police spokespeople and the media. Theories about it vary widely but a former NJ police officer and expert on ‘suicide by cop’ who teaches criminal justice and has reportedly done extensive research says:

He did not believe they [alleged suicides] possessed full understanding of the fact that their aggressive actions would cause their death.

In this case, it seems convenient that the ‘dying statement’ of a fleeing suspect (whose death was caused by a gunshot wound in the lower back) was witnessed solely by the person with the most investment in hearing a statement that would exonerate him.

Questions:

How does a cell phone look like gun? If a cell phone can be made into a “deadly weapon,” who makes that app? What training do police officers get in identifying actual deadly weapons versus innocent objects that an officer’s fear may transform into the illusion of a weapon? How often is a trooper’s visual acuity checked?

And, btw, Mr. Attorney General, since when do police have the training to be judge, jury, and – in a state supposedly without a death penalty – executioner with the knowledge they will receive the ultimate blessing of your office? Do you suppose that if you even once had found an officer’s shooting of an unarmed civilian not justified and the trooper faced consequences, the next cop might have second thoughts before killing someone wielding a phone or a pen or a harmonica?

 Duncan Black, aka the blogger Atrios, made an observation yesterday and part of it may have relevance to the recent arrival of super PACs here in Vermont. Atrios maintains that the Republican “noise machine,” while never all-powerful, always had a smooth routine that they were very competent at. He thinks the national Republican noise machine is floundering this year, but it is the well practiced routine that has relevance here in Vermont.

Here is the routine as practiced back in the day:

…Republicans would kick the soccer ball, the press would chase it and then coo, “oooo, pretty soccer ball.”

[…] during the Kerry campaign it was enough for Karl [Rove] to suggest that they were going to run a REALLY SCARY AD SOON and then cable news would spend 3 days talking about JUST WHAT THAT SCARY AD MIGHT BE and HOW IT MIGHT AFFECT THE CAMPAIGN, and then they'd run the web-only "ad" 5 million times and spend the next 10 days talking about it.

So here’s what that routine looks like in Vermont scale. When the Republican super PAC hits airwaves Monday, will Randy Brock get any love? For about a week or so Vermonter’s have been reading about a scary new Republican super PAC lurking nearby that is coming to the state. First we were alerted to news that the Republican super PAC would spend at least $70,000 to run ads pushing conservative viewpoints. Speculation followed about what outside groups might be bankrolling the effort. This was quickly followed by speculation and hints about the content of the ad.  

Then like clockwork, word followed that the ad might snub gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock and focus instead on Wendy Wilton, the Republican candidate for treasurer, and Republican Vince Illuzzi, who is running for State Auditor. This weekend the curtain was raised just a bit more for Monday’s opening show. Finally, close to breathless with anticipation, The Vermont Press Bureau story talks with Tayt Brooks, point man for the outfit “Vermonters First.”

The Illuzzi/Wilton spots are what’s known in the TV business as “bookends” – 15-second spots at the beginning and end of a commercial break.

According to documents on file at WCAX, those spots constitute only a portion of the $53,000 buy by Vermonters First, which includes plenty of 30-second ads as well. An approximately $15,000 buy on WPTZ won’t start until Sept. 17.

We asked Brooks whether we could expect to [see] Randy Brock’s face in those longer spots, but the former executive director of the Vermont Republican Party wouldn’t say. We’ll find out soon enough – the ads begin airing Monday morning.

And there it is, rolled into the Green Mountains: Vermonters First soccer ball, “oooo,pretty.” Will the routine work in Vermont?  We’ll find out soon enough – JUST WHAT MIGHT THAT SCARY AD BE and HOW IT MIGHT AFFECT THE CAMPAIGN.

And is it “Vermonters First” as in the wellbeing of our state takes priority, or “Vermonters First” as in the first time Green Mountain state residents will be exposed to this level of outside-financed negative campaigning?  

 Polls are enigmatic things, but even with all their flaws, we are told they supply a snapshot of where public attitudes are at a given moment. This recent Gallup poll, if I understand correctly, sampled non-unlikely, undecided non-committed voters and improbably independent voters between the ages of forty two. They did adjust for wind-speed and naturally the overall results have a possible credibility interval which was compensated for.  

Seriously, it does appear Obama got a bounce, however small in his approval rating:

Gallup’s daily tracking poll for Friday put Obama's job approval rating at 52 percent, the highest it’s been since the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama has also moved to a three-point lead over Mitt Romney among registered voters (48-45 percent), up from Obama's one-point margin over the last nine days.

Gallup cautions that up-ticks are often fleeting and may be short-lived, but they say if Obama built on his lead this could signal a possible “resetting” of the race. So results may vary and contents may settle during transit.

Romney/Ryan and the difficult “negative bounce”  

Some polling done shortly after the Republican Convention found that Romney and Ryan experienced hardly any bounce at all. Incredibly The Princeton Election Consortium found that team Romney may have created for themselves a “negative bounce”:

” Basically, their convention appears to have helped…Obama. […] From an analytical perspective, a negative bounce is quite remarkable because all the talk in recent weeks has been of bounces being smaller or zero, but always in the hosting party’s favor.  

The Consortium suggests two factors that may have created this unusual situation for Romney/Ryan:  

(1) The Ryan-VP bounce effectively used up whatever room there was for a bounce. This year, opinion seems to be fluctuating in a very narrow range: Obama up by 1.0-5.0%. Maybe there was no room for improvement.

(2) The GOP convention was not particularly inspiring. Indeed, the most notable event was Clint Eastwood’s empty-chair routine, which overshadowed Romney’s acceptance speech.

So explore the numbers behind the Romney/Ryan “negative bounce” phenomena.

Where they really shot in the feet from an empty chair?