Hey, remember those eye-searingly bad web advertisements posted by Tayt Brooks’ superPAC, Vermonters First, for Wendy Wilton and Vince Illuzzi? The ones that appear to be the handiwork of a color-blind computer newbie equipped with a copy of Web Advertising For Dummies?

Well, turns out the ads are illegal as well as terrible.

See, both ads feature the state coat of arms in the background. And, as VTDigger reports, that’s a no-no under state law.

So they’re gone. But thanks to my earlier posts, the awful ads continue to exist as images only — no active links — here on GMD, to serve as cautionary examples of what not to do for future generations of web designers. You’re welcome.  

The political fact-checker seems like a wonderful idea. It serves as an objective source to guide you through the blizzard of lies and half-truths that fill the airwaves every campaign season.

Problem is, there’s facts, and there’s truth. And sometimes the two don’t match up.

Example #1: Politifact’s notorious 2011 judgment that Democrats told a big fat whopper when they accused Paul Ryan of planning to “end Medicare.” Technically, the Dems’ claim was false; Ryan didn’t actually want to kill Medicare. He just wanted to fundamentally change it from a defined-benefit program to something of a defined-contribution program — taking away the real value of Medicare as a guarantee that senior citizens will always have health care coverage.  

But still, the Dems’ accusation was false. If you’re weighing the facts. But it’s not false if you’re weighing the truth.

So now our own Vermont version of Politifact — VTDigger and Seven Days’ Fact Checker — has similarly stumbled over the difference between fact and truth. They have judged as “True” the Republicans’ claim that Governor Shumlin’s health care plan will result in the “largest single tax increase in state history.”

Huh?

They judged it as “true” because, if Shumlin completes the transition to single-payer health care, nobody in Vermont will be paying premiums to insurance companies; we’ll be paying taxes instead. We won’t necessarily be paying any more in absolute dollars — in fact, if the plan works as envisioned, we’ll wind up paying less — but more of what they pay will go through the state.

So the Republicans’ claim is technically correct.

But the real message in their claim — that Vermonters will be paying through the nose, rendering our state unlivable expensive for the vast majority of Vermonters — well, that is total and absolute bushwah. Even so, it passes the “Fact Checker” test, which only examines the facts.

But they completely fail to discern the truth.  And in the process, by giving the Republicans’ charge their “objective” stamp of approval, they do a profound disservice to our political discourse.

I bet the Brock campaign and Vermonters First are already working on new TV ads featuring the Fact Checker’s conclusion.  

For those of you whose eyeballs aren’t permanently seared shut by the ghastly political advertisement reproduced in my previous post, well, I’ve got another one for you.

And now I have realized the genius behind this ghastly explosion of bad web design.

The answer… and again, to protect the kiddies, the disturbingly inept image… after the jump.  

Oh God oh God oh God, the pain, the pain.

Hmm, something familiar about this catastrophe. Eyeball-searing clash of color, check. Vermont flag for no particular reason, check. Mishmosh of fonts, check. Beginner’s level ad design, check.

And the topper: truly ghastly nightmare-fuel photo of candidate, check. Good grief, is that Vince Illuzzi or is it a still of Bela Lugosi taken from one of Ed Wood’s terrible movies? I can practically hear the mitteleuropean mellifluosity intoning, “I shall feast upon your flesh at midnight! AH, HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!”

Really, this photo makes the Wendy Wilton image look positively welcoming by comparison.

Huh. Two appalling ads, designed in precisely the same way. And that’s when I noticed the fine print at the bottom of both ads:

PAID FOR BY VERMONTERS FIRST

That’s right, we have Tayt Brooks, International Man of Mystery, to thank for visiting these horrors upon our Internets.

Makes me feel better about the political acumen of the far right’s Great White Hope. If this is his idea of effective presentation, then he’s gonna flush a whole lot of Lenore Broughton’s money down the toilet.  

Just scanning around the Web, checking to see if anything’s up in the Green Mountain State, when I’m assaulted by a truly terrible example of political advertising. Social media, NOT.

I present the offending image after the jump, to give you time to send the children from the room.  

The horror, the horror!

Where do I begin? The riotous clash of colors? The  visual non-sequitur of the Vermont flag appearing for no particular reason? (What, she’s a True Patriot while Beth Pearce is an interloping tenant?) The mishmosh of fonts? The overall composition that suggests a beginner’s design skills? The squinting, leering mug of Wendy Wilton, for which I suggest the caption “Your hide will make a fine poncho”?

Seriously, is that the closest they could come to a photo of Wendy Wilton smiling? Damn scary. Gives me another reason to vote for Beth Pearce: I don’t want to see that image plastered on the Vermont Treasurer’s website for the next two years.

So who does her campaign graphics anyway? And which campaign functionary took a look at this “art” and said, “Yeah, that’s the ticket! Slap that baby on the Interwebs!” And can they be fired immediately and/or sued for design malpractice?

Please note: I hate it when female politicians are judged entirely on their looks or wardrobe. This commentary has nothing to do with Wendy Wilton’s appearance; it has everything to do with campaign ineptitude.

Miscellaneous items from the past week or so, for good and for ill. Possibly the first in a regular series; no promises, tho.

Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau, for getting the scoop on Governor Shumlin’s sweetheart land deal. Shumlin backers have complained that his private life should be kept private; but when he puts down $35,000 for a $700,000 property, there needs to be exposure and explanation. Which the Governor petulantly refused to provide. And an extra thumbs up to Hirschfeld for tolerating the Governor’s tantrum last Thursday.

Randy Brock, Republican gubernatorial placeholder, for his near-incoherence in explaining the most creative part of his economic-recovery plan, the Business In A Box. As Paul Heintz reported, he bumbled, fumbled, and stumbled his way through it, giving the impression that one of his consultants had come up with it, and that he’d never really given it much thought until he was facing the media. What’s next, Randy? A farm-assistance plan called “Pig In A Poke”?

After the jump: More thumbs and a finger poke, featuring Steve Kimbell, David Zuckerman, Jake Perkinson, and more!

Steve Kimbell, Commissioner of Banking, Insurance, And All Things Boring, for an overdue retraction of his attempt to prevent credit unions from uttering the sacred word “banking” in their advertisements. VSECU had been using the generic term in its ads, pointing out that it offers the same services as a bank. State regulations are designed to bar a credit union from pretending to be a bank; but the VSECU ads clearly identified it as a credit union that offered banking services. Last week, Kimbell finally backed off his niggling interpretation of the rules.

Chris d’Elia of the Vermont Bankers Association, for his weak-tea whinge in response to Kimbell’s decision. Banks have no monopoly on all iterations of the word “bank,” any more than Chick-Fil-A can claim all usages of the words “Eat More,” and d’Elia’s tired bleat changed no minds.  

State Senate candidate David Zuckerman, for putting together a really impressive list of Democratic supporters in response to his shunning by certain Democratic leaders. Which leads us to…

Vermont Democratic Party chair Jake Perkinson, for going along with Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell’s refusal to lend any support to Zuckerman’s candidacy because he dares to run as a Prog/Dem instead of a Dem/Prog. (Lite-Gov candidate Cassandra Gekas is doing the same, but no shunning for her.) Zuckerman ran as a Democrat; he won enough Democratic votes to gain a spot on the ticket; indeed, he finished fourth in the primary, better than two other Dems who are on the November ballot. Perkinson and Campbell are being small-minded, and their action seems designed to exacerbate simmering Dem/Prog tensions. And the liberal cause in Vermont is better served when the two parties set aside past offenses and manage to get along.

The Vermont political media, for pretty much ignoring the Campaign for Vermont Prosperity (?*)’s recently-released “energy plan,” a rehash of free-marketer complaints about the cost of electricity and how it’s making Vermont an unlivable hellhole, plus the usual “release the Kraken” bushwah about how the Markets Will Save Us All. Way back when the CFVP(?) was shiny and new, it promised to release detailed prescriptions for all of Vermont’s ills. Now, as the campaign season enters the homestretch, we finally see the first one. Too late to meaningfully impact public debate. Not that it would, anyway; it’s the same old stuff we hear all the time from the Republicans and their sugar daddies in the fossil-fuel industry.

*CFV can’t make up its mind on its own name: Campaign for Vermont, or Campaign for Vermont Prosperity? I’d suspect them of deviousness if (a) there were any pattern to the use of the names and (b) I thought they had the strategic capacity that makes deviousness possible.

Nancy Remsen of the Freeploid, for an unfortunate turn of phrase in her coverage of Randy Brock’s economic plan. In a story also undistinguished by her omission of Brock’s struggles to explain Business In A Box, she adopted the Republican phrase “common-sense health care reform.” Er, Nancy, that’s what Randy Brock calls it. It’s meant to draw a line between his market-worshipping version (common-sense) and Governor Shumlin’s plan (nonsense, I guess). If it’s not one of the Rules of Journalism, it ought to be: don’t adopt one side’s terminology. Makes it look like you’re putting your thumb on the scale.

Whoever’s responsible for the e-mails inciting Shumlin supporters to badger the news media. As I reported in this space, at least three commenters on a VTDigger story about the Guv’s fab new East Montpelier digs used the same phrasing. And one of them mistakenly cut-and-pasted his response to the e-mail into his VTDigger comment, thus revealing the scuzzy maneuver. And one of the comments strongly implied that the same tactic has been used against other media sources. This is an offense against the already-beleaguered practice of journalism, and it’s politically unnecessary in a race that Shumlin is certain to win.

That’s all for this installment. Feel free to brandish the Digit Of Your Choice in the Comments below.  

10 Ideas That Could Transform the USA

1. Immediately close all US military bases on foreign soil. Author Chalmers Johnson reports that there are 737 US bases in 130 foreign countries.

2. Immediately discontinue the manufacture, export, and use of drones.  Cut the military budget by 99%. Cut the State Department budget by 90%. Eliminate the Black Budget which was authorized by the 1947 National Security Act of President Truman. Even if all uniformed members of the military were brought home, the killing would not end. It is clear that the State Department, CIA, and private contractors are more dangerous than the military.The uniformed military is only the tip of the iceberg. The real danger is with US forces that operate in secret.

3. Encourage the dissemination of information from whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. Any possibility of a democratic nation died with the adoption of the Black Budget which prevented citizens from having access to information; therefore, no informed vote has been cast in the USA since 1947. If you can’t follow the money, you don’t know what your government is doing. More whisleblowers are needed so that voters will have the information necessary to cast informed ballots.

4. Place a 100% tax on all income above $88,000-all income, earned and unearned.

5. Aim to close all nuclear power plants. Encourage green power – solar power – water power – wind power. A ridgeline with windmills is preferable to a ridgeline that has been contaminated.

6. Support small, local, organic family farms.  End all subsidies to large industrial farms.

7. End all secret boards. This can be accomplished by withholding public funds from organizations that use secret boards for decision-making purposes.

Hospital “ethics” boards meet in secret and make life and death decisions. Any decision to “pull the plug” should be made in the open. Patient confidentiality would not be violated if the identity of the patient was not disclosed.

Library boards sometimes meet behind closed doors and censor political books that could be considered “unpatriotic”. (Yes, it is now happening in the USA.)

8. The problems with the legal system could fill volumes but there are some simple improvements that could be made.

Limit the use of expert witnesses. With enough money testimony can be designed to fit any goal desired-no matter how unjust. Juries should always be told when testimony is purchased. Now, is the perfect time to examine the way juries work. Secret deliberations foster unjust verdicts. The deliberations should be open- the identities of the jurors could be withheld until after the verdict is rendered. Group deliberations are a problem. Anytime more than one person is in a room, one person will be dominant. A pecking order contaminates the process and can prevent a fair verdict. Is unanimity really a sacred concept-or should there be room for dissenting views within a jury? Even the Supreme Court allows for dissenting opinion.

End the death penalty. The state should never have the power to kill its citizens or anyone else. In addition, the death penalty can be a deterrent to justice. The first juror to speak publicly after the Casey Anthony trial stated that it was the death penalty that affected her verdict vote.

9. Adopt a national policy which assures food, shelter, and medical/dental care for all-with no regard to race, creed, citizenship, economic status, place of birth, or any other dehumanizing judgment.

10. Send a formal apology with an offer of reparations to all individual victims of unjust US imprisonment and torture. Also to all countries that have been victims of USA foreign policy. Start with the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia. The Chagossians were forcibly removed so that the island could be transformed into a military base for the US. It can be debated that the forced expulsion of the native population is evidence of genocide by the USA.

 

( Cross posted at http://www.minorheresies.com )

I didn’t watch the presidential debate. There is only so much my psyche can take. I have read a few of the after action reports, and it sounds as if I didn’t miss much.

Apparently Mitt Romney “won” on style, which is mostly what these things are about. He wore out his teeth from behind by lying through them continuously ( http://www.nationofchange.org/… ). Obama was professorial and languid. Yawn.

One commentator pointed out that the debates are aimed at the undecided, which means the low-information, low motivation voters who haven’t been paying attention in class, ever. I guess this means the people who are more concerned with the latest celebrity breakup than the future of the nation. It sounds as if the proceeding delivered for them. The outcome of the election may hinge on their casual judgment.

The contest of personalities between Romney and Obama interests me not at all. Their political differences are akin to the differences between a medieval surgeon who wants to bleed you before cutting your leg off and a 19th century surgeon who knows better than to bleed you but wipes his saw on his pants by way of sanitary practice. Obama is a few centuries more advanced than Romney, but neither offering us a sure path to survival. Neither is operating on the basis of state of the art medicine or offering to save the leg.

This makes sense. Both men were chosen through the accumulation of large campaign donations from multi-millionaires. These wealthy donors, in turn, are remoras sucked on to the inhuman corporate sharks that run our society. These corporate sharks have all the foresight and compassion of…sharks. It should not shock us that the candidates have no policies that truly address the realities we face.

In a recent interview, writer and political activist Noam Chomsky was asked how progressives should view the present electoral contest.

Chomsky said “I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it. Seeing if there’s a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza.  And my own judgment, for what it’s worth, is, yes, there’s a point to taking a part.” ( http://www.alternet.org/electi… ) The long and short: Vote against Romney/Ryan (for Obama) in a swing state. Vote third party in a non-swing state. Then get on with more important things.

What are those more important things? Primarily, fixing the machine. We don’t like the products, but most people are caught up with hating the present malfunctioning unit. They hope, against all rationality, that the same machine will suddenly produce a perfect model after an endless string of defectives. It’s a factory, not a slot machine. It’s not designed to produce what we need. Quite deliberately the opposite.

The first step in fixing the machine is doing what I am doing right now: Pointing directly at the machine and noting that it is what needs fixing. Education is the starting point. Most of America is caught up in its tribal hatreds.

A suggestion: The next time someone starts talking to you about how much they like candidate A or dislike candidate B, don’t get caught up in that discussion. Talk about the machine. The money filter ( http://www.minorheresies.com/p… ). The Saving American Democracy Amendment ( http://www.minorheresies.com/p… ). Anything other than personality driven horse race politics. The first step towards an answer is getting people to start asking the right questions.

So here it is, less than a month till Election Day, and Jack McMullen has suddenly begun to flog “the key issue in the campaign.” Yep, after running for Attorney General for months on what might best be called “watered-down TJ Donovan,” Six Teats has finally discovered “the key issue.”

And, since he’s a Republican running for a law-enforcement office, you get one guess what the issue is.

Crime.

And Jack’s new TV ad is the usual Republican Panic In Needle Park stuff, as Paul Heintz reports:

It features footage of two somewhat preppy-looking drug dealers handing off the goods, as well as a still shot of an older woman with purple bruises below her eye and on her lips.

… McMullen said he wasn’t sure of the provenance of the image depicting the beat-up woman, nor whether the bruises are real, but he said, “We wanted graphic images of what actually happens… We thought it was representative of the kind of things that happen.”

In other words, stock images from the FearMongers’ Collection.

Anyway, congratulations to Jack McMullen for finally, belatedly discovering “the key issue in the campaign” after wandering in the wilderness for so long. And congratulations to Jack for finally discovering a ready source for campaign cash: his own pocket.

Too bad it’s way too late in the game to reset his entire campaign.  

For the first time in recent memory the State Treasurer's race has gotten more attention than anything else on the Vermont ballot, and voters are faced with a clear choice: a finance professional with almost thirty-five years of experience in state and municipal finance, and a right-wing demagogue.

Just a couple of weeks ago Wilton trotted out her first line of attack: a bogus argument based on overtime pay at the Treasurer's office. In fact, even after paying overtime to one retired employee, Beth Pearce saved over half a million dollars in her first two years in office. She's reduced payroll by 7.5%, has held the line at 12 employees, and has asked Governor Shumlin to reassign over $100,000 to the Emergency Personnel fund which pays out money to the family of emergency personnel who are killed in the line of duty. 

In other words, when you look closely at Wilton's claims of mismanagement what you find instead is a record of high performance and fiscal management in the Treasurer's office.

So what's next? How about attacking the Treasurer for renting instead of buying?

That's right, to hear Wendy Wilton tell it, apparently the 30% of Vermonters who rent their homes are by that fact alone disqualified from holding public office. Somehow it indicates that they “lack commitment” to the state.

Is this really a smart move? I guess if Mitt Romney can feel free to disregard the “47%” there isn't anything odd about Wendy Wilton tossing the 30% of Vermonters who rent under the bus, is there?

 Then, finally, on this weekend's You Can Quote Me, which I encourage you to watch (and by the way, who would have thought Beth would be debating circles around Barack Obama?),  Wilton went off on a tirade about transparency for a state web page that the Treasurer has nothing to do with, leading Pearce to wonder, with ample justification, if Wendy Wilton understands what the Treasurer does.

We know that Wendy Wilton has been bringing in the Super PAC money that's buying all those TV spots, but when it comes down to the substance of the race I'm starting to sense the smell of desperation in the Wilton campaign. 

This rather entertaining bit of GOP slapstick came up a couple of days ago; and since it’s been a day or two since their last faux pas graced the pages of GMD, we might as well start the week off with a bang.

What’s “entertaining” is certainly not the remarks  made by Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro and House candidate Charlie Fuqua of Batesville, but the flapping and flailing of the entire GOP as they attempted to flee the scene.

Arkansas is known for many things: Wal-mart, Razorbacks, and intern-diddling Presidents, for three.  Now add to that list the distinction of having not one but  two Republican candidates for the statehouse that have managed to make what are quite possibly the most objectionable remarks of this campaign season.

And that is one tall order, given the competition they’ve had from fellow Republican, Missouri’s Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” remarks.

Aikin will have a lot of company now on the GOP wall of shame; and no attempt at false equivalency will ever lay a glove on Joe Biden.

For Rep. Hubbard has actually written a book that states that slavery was a

Contending that “blacks” have it a lot better living in America today than they would have had it if they were still living in Africa, Rep. Hubbard wrote in his 2009 book, “Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative,”

“the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.”

As if determined to dig his hole even deeper, he adds:

“Wouldn’t life for blacks in America today be more enjoyable and successful if they would only learn to appreciate the value of a good education?”

Not to be outdone in the offensive arena, Mr. Fuqua advocates for deportation of all Muslims in his own page-turner, released in April, “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution”

“I see no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States,” he writes in his book, according to The Arkansas Times newspaper.

Interestingly, although Mr. Hubbard’s comments on slavery have been in the public domain for three years, and Mr. Fuqua’s e-book came out in April, the GOP had no comment about either candidates’s offensive writings until Saturday, when the state GOP Chairman, Doyle Webb released the following statement:

“The reported statements made by Hubbard and Fuqua were highly offensive to many Americans and do not reflect the viewpoints of the Republican Party of Arkansas,”

Rather than just leave it at that, Mr. Doyle went on to attempt a trifecta of offense by accusing Democrats of using the candidates’ outrageous writings as “distractions.”  That means there are at least three Republicans in Arkansas who should not ever, ever be considered for election to office.

Jay Barth, who is a poli-sci prof at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas draws a direct line between the racial intolerance of 1960’s Arkansas and both men’s appalling views:

“It’s hard to remember a set of remarks this extreme on racial matters by an Arkansas official since the state’s politics modernized in the late 1960s than that by Mr. Hubbard,” Barth said on Saturday.

‘Way to go, AR GOP!