When I wrote a couple of posts yesterday morning about Lenore Broughton, Wendy Wilton, and Vermonters First, I honestly thought it was a major story in the campaign. But as far as I can tell, there’s been nary a ripple in the Vermont media. So I’m gonna give it one more try, and this time I’ll start with the key points:

— In the past two weeks, Lenore Broughton’s Super PAC, Vermonters First, has spent over $108,000 in support of Wendy Wilton’s candidacy for Treasurer.

— Because of a quirk in state election law, we have no idea how much money VF spent on Wilton prior to October 8. But based on the ubiquity of its pro-Wilton ads, we can assume it was a hell of a lot.

— Broughton’s Super PAC has spent far more on Wilton than the candidate herself has. Probably five or six times as much. It’s unprecedented for a single individual to bankroll a single candidate in this fashion.

— If elected, Wendy Wilton will be directly beholden to Lenore Broughton in a way no other Vermont officeholder has ever been.

I hope that’s clear. Now, if you still think it’s not a story, I’ll go away quietly.

After the jump: I don’t go away quietly.

The thing that really surprised me about the lack of coverage is that this is the kind of story that usually gets reported ad nauseam: Vermont political media tends to cover every aspect of campaign finance reports and media buys. This one, not so much.

Not a whisper at VTDigger or the Vermont Press Bureau of VF’s latest $35,000 ad buy for Wilton, or the astounding total of $108,000 in two weeks.

The Freeploid covered the story in a fundamentally misleading, false-equivalency kind of way: the lead was not “Broughton spends big bucks to elect Wilton,” it was

A waterfall of money is pouring into purchases of television and radio advertising and mailings to influence the outcome of the race for state treasurer between Democrat Beth Pearce and Republican Wendy Wilton.

As if the “waterfall” was flowing equally on both sides. In fact, the Democrats are coming nowhere near the spending of Broughton and Vermonters First. The Freeploid also framed the story in terms of “money spent this week,” which omits the fact that Vermonters First spent an additional $30,000 on Wilton last week.

The ‘Loid also seems to have missed the fact that VF didn’t have to report expenditures for individual candidates before October 8. Its story says:

Vermonters First has now spent $108,512 on media buys to support Wilton’s candidacy, having plunked down $30,537 earlier this month on television advertising.

What it should say is, “Vermonters First is known to have spent at least $108,512 to support Wilton’s candidacy, but the actual total is clearly far higher than that.”

All these omissions serve to mask the one-sidedness of WIlton’s financial advantage.

As for my buddy Paul Heintz at Seven Days, he chose to shine a spotlight on an alleged case of political hypocrisy by the Democrats rather than write anything about Broughton’s onslaught.

I suppose that, after all his (rightly) critical coverage of Wendy Wilton’s outrageousness, it helps re-establish his journalistic bona fides to find some dirt on the Dems. But the story was vastly out of proportion, and not really news. Even the folks associated with Priorities PAC, the liberal Super PAC, have made it clear from the start that they’d like to see Super PACs put out of business but they feel compelled to, y’know, not walk unarmed into a gunfight.

But Governor Shumlin has stated his desire that Super PACs go away, and that individual candidates do their own fundraising and spending. And here’s his loyal second, Jeb Spaulding, voicing a pro-Beth Pearce ad funded by Priorities PAC.  

So Paul pounced. Aha! Hypocrisy!

Well, no.

Jeb saw his successor as Treasurer being inundated by a tsunami of Super Pac cash, and he does his bit to help. In accordance with the rules that exist. A vast array of Democratic officeholders, from President Obama on down, have expressed similar sentiments: they’d like to limit Super PACs, but as long as Super PACs are effectively unlimited, it’s best to get in the game. If you really think the Dems should voluntarily abide by the rules as they’d like them to be, and thus concede a huge advantage to the other side, well, then, you’re too pure for politics. And I think Paul’s former boss, the extremely well-financed Congressman Peter Welch, would agree with me.  

Another thing: Priorities PAC has spent a whopping $2,912 to air Spaulding’s ad. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to VF’s waterfall on behalf of Wilton. But no, the Dems’ hypocrisy was the big story of the day. So says Paul Heintz. Who is often, usually, one of our sharpest political journalists. Not this time.

I do appreciate the coverage given to Lenore Broughton and Vermonters First by Seven Days as well as Peter Hirschfeld at the Vermont Press Bureau. But the story continues to grow, and the coverage has not kept pace.  

Just a little Friday morning hate speech on WDEV’s Common Sense Radio today. Conservatives getting all outraged over alleged examples of liberals intimidating them in tactics that always seem to remind them of Nazi Germany.

Things like yard signs getting knocked over.

Yeah, just like Hitler.

It all started with a caller, John from Barre, complaining about a couple of yard-sign incidents and how some Republicans felt intimidated by it. Let’s make it clear, we’re not in favor of yard-sign despoliation by anyone. But as far as I know, these things happen from time to time on both sides. And in my experience driving around Vermont, I see plenty of Republican signs that have somehow survived this Holocaust of corrugated plastic. In fact, I’d say it’s about a 50-50 split. So I’m dubious that a cadre of Democratic hooligans is taking to the highways and byways at night and eliminating any hint of Republicanism. If they are, they’re doing a lousy job of it.

But anyway. It didn’t take long for John to roll out the Nazi comparisons. Brownshirts! Intimidation!

Your host, Rob Roper, whose specialty is saying outrageous things in a disingenuous tone of voice, gave John a couple minutes to rant and then went to a commercial break.

A few minutes later, a caller criticized Roper and his guest, Sleepy Bill Sayre, for failing to react to John’s comments. Whereupon Roper launched a truly idiotic defense of the whole idea that minor acts of vandalism are a precursor to Fascist rule.

He insisted that nobody’s talking about putting people into ovens. Gosh no. But the (alleged) vandalism of some yard signs — and the horrific incident of a few healthcare reform advocates (i.e. union thugs) briefly gathering in front of Lenore Broughton’s house* — are precursors of Nazism:  “The Brownshirts used intimidation tactics. If we don’t want the state to move into a Fascist place, we have to be vigilant.”

*Yep, they’re still beating that drum.

Just check your history books: Hitler’s rise to power began with  vandalizing Franz von Papen’s yard signs. And the Brownshirts were notorious for stopping by people’s houses and delivering notes.

Well, that and the Reichstag fire and Kristallnacht and all that other stuff. But vandalizing yard signs was definitely a crucial tactic in the Nazi playbook, f’sho. And anywhere a yard sign is under threat, so are our fundamental freedoms. Today a yard sign, tomorrow the world!

I don’t usually bother reporting the rhetorical excesses of Common Sense Radio, which are usually more laughable than anything. But this was particularly repellent. I’d just like to thank WDEV for letting this stuff come out of my radio five hours a week.

Oops, I shouldn’t have said that. Probably just made myself an honorary Brownshirt.  

Let’s say you’re part of a small but energetic movement. What’s the best way to gain new adherents and political credibility?

If you said, “divide in two,” DING DING DING.

We now have not one, but TWO faux-populist write-in campaigns for Governor.

The first is Annette Smith’s Gathering Of The Aggrieved, her write-in candidacy opposing wind power, the F-35s at Burlington Airport, “forced vaccinations,” EPA-mandated treatment of public drinking water, smart meters, “the school lunch program,” and, eh, whatever else ya got.

Now we have an anonymous drive encouraging voters to write in Peter Shumlin for Governor and Bernie Sanders for Senate. A few road signs have been spotted in Montpelier and Burlington, simply urging write-ins for Shumlin and Sanders without specifying why. Well, today I saw a flyer in downtown Montpelier that sheds more light on the mystery. The flyer reads as follows:

Write-in

Peter Shumlin  

Peter – Listen to us! No Ridge-Line Wind/NO F-35

I guess this is an appeal to those who are upset with Shumlin’s positions, but not quite upset enough to abandon his candidacy. Now there’s a fine distinction in keeping with the left’s long history of nitpicky sectarianism.

The flyer includes no contact info or other identifiers (which might be a violation of election law, if this were significant enough to warrant attention). Hand-written and then photocopied. Possibly coming soon to a billboard near you!

p.s. Yesterday, the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck wrote a vtBuzz item about these signs, wondering why they were being posted. If the ‘Loid writes a follow-up, I do hope they credit GMD for the scoop. Like they usually don’t.

Things are getting desperate on the Republican side of the campaign. We’ve got Wendy Wilton swinging and missing — badly — on a particularly baseless charge against Beth Pearce; and Randy Brock wanting to rifle through the state’s files looking for anything he can use against Governor Shumlin.

First, Wilton. You may remember she was effectively blindsided in a debate on Monday, when Beth Pearce noted that Rutland had been returned to a bond-rating watch list. In June. WIlton’s unfortunate response: “That’s news to me.”

Need I remind you that WIlton is Rutland’s treasurer?

Well, apparently Wilton knew she’d been hit right where it hurts, because yesterday she made a lame attempt at the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense. She accused Pearce of disclosing private information that might harm Rutland’s fiscal reputation.

Problem, as VTDigger reports: the information ain’t private. It’s a freely-available public document, according to the rating organization, the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank.

And, as if to disprove her own point, Wilton then distributed the entire VMBB watch list to reporters. You know, that document she claimed was private, and damaging to the fiscal reputations of listed communities? At the same time, she claimed that Pearce should be held to a “higher standard” on such disclosure, and hinted at a formal complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

After the jump: Wilton puts on her tinfoil hat, and Brock goes fishin’,

And as if that weren’t enough, she accused the VMBB Board of playing politics by putting Rutland on the watch list:

“The timeline here: I announced that I was running for state treasurer in the middle of May,” said Wilton. “And then come June, at the next Vermont Municipal Bond  Bank meeting, there’s this action: where the board, which includes several supporters of treasurer Pearce, and contributors to her campaign, makes a decision to develop this internal list, not shared with the communities affected…The whole thing seems rather coincidental in some way.”

Oh great, drag out the conspiracy theories. Yeah, Wendy, maybe ACORN was behind the rating. Or Keith Ellis. Or, I don’t know, Barack Obama’s real father. IN KENYA. Or maybe the entire Vermont financial structure is against Wilton because she’d be such a junkyard dog of a treasurer that they fear her ascendancy.

Desperate. Undignified. Thin-skinned. Flailing. It’s not a nice picture.

And now we have Randy Brock who, after months of fruitless attacks on Governor Shumlin’s Teflon shield, is still looking for an angle. At Wednesday’s Freeploid-sponsored debate, Brock ended the proceedings by pulling something out of thin air: accusing the Administration of spending thousands of dollars on confidential settlements with employees.

After the debate, Paul Heintz asked Brock what he was talking about, and Brock didn’t really have much of an answer.

Is there a particular incident you’re concerned about?

“I’m not prepared to say at this point,” he said.

Uh, this seems kind of random and out of the blue. What’s driving you to do this?

“It has been suggested to me that there are such payments that involve public money that would be important for the public to know about,” he explained.

… “Someone has certainly told me, but whether it’s true or not I have no idea,” he said. “Whether there’s anything there or not, I don’t know.

So, like Wendy Wilton, he’s not making charges — he’s just asking questions. Sad.

Undeterred by that shameful exchange, Brock doubled down on Thursday, demanding immediate and full transparency of something that might possibly exist but he doesn’t really know. And shotgun-filing a batch of public records requests for all relevant documents from the offices of five top state officials.

Which will be an expensive, time-consuming operation. But we shouldn’t worry about spending taxpayer dollars on a partisan fishing expedition, no sirree. Filing baseless complaints, asking loaded questions, and wasting everybody’s time: there’s your Republican strategery, 2012 style.

They don’t have any actual issues or traction with the voters, so they have to make shit up.  

You'v heard this, right? Thursday morning Colin Powell went on television and endorsed President Obama's reelection.

 Big deal, right? After all, he endorsed him in 2008 so why wouldn't we expect him to endorse him again this year?

Here's why it is a big deal.

First, we know that if Powell had endorsed Romney in 2012 after endorsing Obama in 2008 it would have been a HUGE deal. He would have been on every talk show and every commercial Romney ran from now to the election. It would have given tremendous support to their message that Obama had his chance but he was a real failure, now it's time to let the grownups back in to take over, and so forth. It especially would have helped Romney on foreign policy, because he could legitimately claim that one of our biggest foreign policy heroes had dumped Obama for the manifestly less qualified Romney.

Of course, since that didn't happen the Romney people can't do that. They always like to have one black guy that they can point to as their own, and when they lost Powell in 2008 they were stuck with crazy guys like the Godfather Pizza Guy. 

Which brings us to the second reason (or maybe second piece of evidence) that this is a big deal: the Republicans are freaking out about it.

Take John Sununu from right across the river. He's now saying that the only reason Powell endorsed Romney Obama is that they're both black. Nothing racist about that, is there? Why should the Republicans give a black guy credit for being able to make decisions based on their carefully considered merits? Even if they were begging him to run on their ticket just a few years ago?

Or as another example, take John “You Kids Get Off My Lawn!” McCain.  Granted, after 2008 McCain probably wasn't Powell's biggest fan, but this goes beyond that. As Benjy Sarlin reports in Talking Points Memo:

 “General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime,” McCain told Brian Kilmeade on his radio program.

So yes, this is a big deal. Someone who has had the chance to study President Obama's record, especially on foreign policy, for the last four years, and has tried to understand Romney's foreign policy (hint: he said  “I'm not quite sure which Governor Romney we'd be getting with respect to foreign policy,”), and still came down supporting President Obama, and giving him credit both for his domestic and his foreign policies.

Thank you, Mr. Powell.  

And now for something completely different.  

That dreary step-cousin of “Vermonters First,” “Vermonter’s For Health Care Freedom” has once again dragged its oxymoronic little self into our peripheral vision.

What caught our eye this time is another one of those pathetic push polls that read sort of like the joke that goes: “when did you stop beating your wife?”

The “poll,” to which anyone could respond (and I did) until it was pulled-down this afternoon, was very similar to a discredited poll by the same group back in 2011.

That previous online poll was cited as a definitive representation of the views of doctors, who supposedly would leave the state in overwhelming numbers if single payer was enacted …until it was discovered that anyone could respond to the poll, doing so as many times as they liked; and that each of those responses counted in the tally.

As only a few individuals even bothered to respond to the poll; and those who did were mostly onboard with the agenda; it was easy to get the desired results.

The poll du jour was sent to all legislators for response, and will no doubt figure in some future attempt to distort the opinion of that body.

Anticipating an early pull-down,  I copied the single question as it was posed, and the four possible responses:

Green Mountain Care single payer has been enacted into law, is being implemented and is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2017. The Shumlin Administration has asked the Legislature to defer consideration of a budget and funding plan until 2015. My view(s) on this issue is as follows:

1) GMC single payer should be repealed with or without a budget and funding plan.

2) Implementation of GMC single payer should be suspended

   until a budget and funding plan are approved.

3) Delaying consideration of GMC single payer financing until

   2015 is reasonable.

4) Comments/other    (a box was provided.)

Nice try guys.  Catch you later.

It’s been awhile since we last visited the white-knuckle world of nuclear energy roulette; but rest assured, it hasn’t gone away…at least not yet.

In the news, however, is a ray of hope.

The owner of a small nuclear reactor in Wisconsin said Monday that it would close the Kewaunee Power Station early next year because it was unable to find a buyer and the plant was no longer economically viable.

Yes, that old “cheap” argument for nuclear is finally being put to the lie.  

The low-cost of natural gas has been driving down energy prices per-kilowatt-hour so that much of the US’s aging nuclear generation “fleet” is operating at costs dangerously close to non-profit.  Add to that the inevitable repair and replacement costs associated with operating those reactors well past their planned life expectancy, and the likelihood that safety issues raised by the Fukushima accident will ultimately force costly modifications to operating reactors everywhere.

Taken altogether, these factors mean that nuclear will be hard pressed to sell the argument that it is an “inexpensive” alternative.

When more reactors begin to withdraw from the fleet due to these cost constraints, it will be difficult even for nuclear’s most passionate proponents to argue that federal support for new builds  represents a wise investment for American taxpayers.

Every day brings new reports of deteriorating nuclear infrastructure, and the challenge that safe storage of nuclear waste continues to pose.  The leitmotif behind all of this bad news remains the constant reminder that worst-case scenarios, like Fukushima, can and will happen unless significant new investments and stringent new regulation are imposed on the industry.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s own Fairewinds Associates continues its leadership role in nuclear energy education with a new Energy Education podcast feature, and offers this informative demonstration of how concerned citizens can get an accurate reading of radiation from samples they submit to a lab for analysis.

This week’s round of mass-media spending makes one thing very clear: the conservative Super PAC Vermonters First is focusing the bulk of its financial might on a single statewide race. In the past two weeks, Vermonters First (funded almost entirely by camera-shy heiress Lenore Broughton) has spent $108,000 on behalf of Wendy Wilton, Republican candidate for Treasurer. It also spent $39,000 for Republican legislative candidates; but not a dime for former VF fave Vince Illuzzi.

With Illuzzi off the list, VF has focused its attention on Wendy WIlton, plus a slate of no-hoper legislative candidates. Seven Days:

With 10 of 48 House Republicans retiring, even party leaders concede they’ll be lucky if they maintain their already depleted numbers in the 150-member body.

“We wanted to have a lot more candidates than we ended up recruiting,” says House minority leader Don Turner (R-Milton). “It is discouraging.”

Remind me not to hire Don Turner as a motivational speaker.

Conclusion: VF’s investment in legislative races might, at best, help the Republicans avoid further depletion of their caucus. That won’t change the balance, which is VF’s stated intent.  

No, its sole hope for “balance,” the payoff for Lenore Broughton’s huge investment, can only be the election of Wendy Wilton as Treasurer. And what will it expect from its chosen candidate? A voice of “balance” (i.e. partisan attack) against the Shumlin Administration, and particularly against its health care reform plans. Which, after all, was Wilton’s stock in trade before she launched her campaign for treasurer.

I’ve previously noted that Broughton’s personal money bomb is absolutely unprecedented in Vermont politics. It’s also unprecedented — and ought to scare the pants off any clear-thinking Vermonter — for one wealthy individual to single-handedly underwrite the campaign of one particular candidate.  

Broughton has spent far more to elect Wilton than the candidate and her party have managed to raise and spend. (Exactly how much, we don’t know, thanks to a loophole in state election law.) Her money, and her money alone, has turned Wilton from pretender to contender.

And if elected, Wendy Wilton will be beholden to Lenore Broughton.

I’d call this a clear case of political corruption — the open buying and selling of a top state office — except that Wendy Wilton doesn’t need to be corrupted. When you look at her political record, it’s clear that she’s a devout conservative. During her one term in the State Senate, she was one of its most conservative members. As was pointed out this week by Senate Democrats, she was in a tiny minority on issue after issue.

So she doesn’t have to be bought; she agrees with Broughton’s agenda, and would be an enthusiastic proponent of it. Her current protestations that she’s a technocrat who simply wants to be a good treasurer are belied by the entirety of her record.

A record that includes service, with Broughton, on the board of Vermonters for Better Education, a group that promotes “school choice,” that lovely conservative buzzword. VBE leans heavily on “reports” from the Ethan Allen Institute, the far-right free-market “think tank” funded, to an unknown degree, by one Lenore Broughton.

It’s a very tight circle, and Wendy Wilton is on the inside. So she doesn’t have to be bought by Vermonters First; she’s a willing participant.

But as for her assertion that she wants to be a numbers-oriented, apolitical Treasurer? Nonsense.

It doesn’t fit her record, and it certainly doesn’t fit the agenda of the person who’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of her candidacy.  

Oh boy. The conservative Super PAC Vermonters First has just filed another mass-media report with the state Elections Office. This time, $35,000 in TV and radio ads for Wendy Wilton, Republican candidate for Treasurer.

For those keeping score, VF has now reported spending $108,000 for WIlton’s campaign — in the last two weeks.

October 11: $30,000 for Wilton TV ads.

October 23: $43,000 for a Wilton mailer.

October 24: $35,000 for Wilton TV and radio ads.

That’s a stunning number, and I’ll have more commentary on it in an upcoming post. But for now, I’ll move on to another stunner.

Given this avalanche of spending in a mere two weeks, I was curious to know the total amount VF has spent on Wilton’s behalf throughout the entire campaign.

The answer: We don’t know. Nobody knows. (Except Tayt Brooks, International Man of Mystery.) That’s because of a quirk in state election law which I will explain after the jump.  

The state Elections Office posts campaign finance reports online. You can go to its website and look up “mass media filings,” which is where I found the above information. There are lots and lots of mass media filings between October 8 and 24. But there are none between August 29 and October 8.

So I talked with Will Senning at the Elections Office, and he explained that state law only requires mass media filings within 30 days of an election. Earlier than that, and there’s no requirement to report media buys.

There’s a reason for that. During election season, candidates, parties, and political organizations have to file campaign finance reports on or near the 15th of each month. The most recent filing deadline was October 15, and the next one isn’t until mid-November, well after Election Day. The requirement to report mass media buys was meant to fill this gap — to promptly reveal significant political activity in a timely fashion, before the election.

However…

While the mid-month campaign finance reports include all expenditures, those expenditures are not broken down by candidate. So if you have a very active organization — say, Vermonters First — spending money on behalf of multiple candidates, then the monthly reports will not tell you how much it spent for any individual candidate.

Which means that, prior to October 7, we have no idea how much money Vermonters First spent in support of Wendy Wilton.

We know it was a hell of a lot, but we don’t know how much.

Until now, that was a minor point. But with the unprecedented activity of Vermonters First, it’s suddenly become a big loophole in our election law.

Just another small example of how Vermonters First is single-handedly changing our political landscape.  

We know that GMD isn't your whole media diet, but this morning there are some new editorials and columns that merit your attention. 

First off, this week's Seven Days features a great column by Paul Heintzabout the race for State Treasurer.  We share his pleasure at the fact that Beth Pearce's campaign has gotten into gear, but what is really striking is this:

 Allow me to be the first reporter in Vermont to admit that I am in no way qualified to judge whether Beth Pearce is a good state treasurer. I have a hard enough time balancing my own checkbook.

And consider me guilty of Perkinson’s charge: I’m far more interested in covering the latest Wilton accusation than I am in Vermont’s nearly impeccable bond rating, for which Pearce can rightfully take a lion’s share of the credit.

But I consider myself a decent judge of integrity. And one thing I’ve found during this campaign is that Pearce appears to have a lot of it and Wilton does not.

 Even for people who don't pay much attention between elections to what the Treasurer does, this is a very powerful conclusion. I encourage you to read the entire column to get the full sense of where Paul's coming from.

On the national scene, it's no surprise who the people around here are supporting, but I have rarely seen the case made as clearly as in this week's New Yorker. I've seen people make sport of this editorial, joking that the New Yorker endorsement guarantees Obama's reelection (note that the GMD style book doesn't call for the New Yorker dieresis); although it's undoubtedly true that most New Yorker readers are Democrats, the substance is what is essential here.

The New Yorker editorial provides historical and cultural context, an appreciation of the dire situation facing the newly inaugurated President in 2009, and a recognition of the difficulties adhering to President Obama's reelection campaign. Nevertheless, the editorial also sets forth an effective rejoinder to the hateful comments of the “no difference caucus” whose voice is heard so commonly on the Left.