Cross posted from Rational Resistance. 

Over my legal career one of the cases I am most proud of involved a federal drug forfeiture case I worked on. The victims of the forfeiture were a husband and wife and their four children. The federal prosecution, facilitated by a paid informant, landed both parents in federal prison for years and tore them away from their children. Then the federal government tried to take their home.

When [the parents] were faced with both prison sentences and the loss of their Vermont home, some had very little sympathy for their efforts to keep their four children together in the only home they had ever known. Their response when asked, “But what about the children?” was “Well, they should have thought about that before they got involved with drugs.” Fighting negative public opinion, the [parents] persisted in bringing their concerns to the press and their legislators. Their efforts were instrumental in raising awareness of the plight of child victims of forfeiture, and resulted in a debate on the rights of children in such cases, as well as front-page coverage in Vermont papers and on TV, and a piece in the New York Times law section, picture and all (“When a Forfeiture Means Uprooting the Innocent,” 5/15/92).

In this article, Jessica, the . . . oldest child, then 15 said, “I haven't done anything for the past two years. I can't go on vacation because I don't want to come back and find the house boarded up. My parents should serve time for what they did, but the government shouldn't take our house. I've lived here since I was three. It's punishing us kids a lot.” (In this case, the . . . two oldest children were actually part owners of their home under the terms of a divorce settlement between Patricia and their father — a fact the government wished to ignore).

I was able to represent two of the children, obtain representation for the other two, and work with the lawyers for the two parents to save the home for the children. At the time I had not heard of any similar case in which a family home was preserved for the children, so aside from the suffering and deprivation the family had to endure during the imprisonment it was a good result, and I'm happy to say that the family is still strong.

At the time I considered, and still consider, the paid informant to be lower than whale shit, abusing the trust of people who thought he was their friend for his own benefit. I wonder if he has ever felt remorse for what he did.

There are cases, though, in which the informant is as much a victim as anyone else. A recent New Yorker has an excellent article about confidential informants in drug cases, documenting a number of cases in which people arrested for minor drug charges were forced to become undercover informants. Sometimes, as happened to three young people profiled in the article, things go badly wrong (what could go wrong when you send an unsophisticated kid into a drug buy with cash, hard drugs, and guns, right?) and the undercover informant winds up getting murdered by the people the police sent them to gather evidence from.

You should read the whole article, but the gist of it is clear. The War on Drugs depends for its very existence on the coerced use of informants, some of whom are minors; informants are involved in up to eighty percent of all drug prosecutions. The informants are sent into dangerous situations with little or no training and inadequate supervision and backup. Their efforts not only enable drug prosecutions, they also provide support for the forfeiture industry, in which local, state, and federal agencies cash in on drug prosecutions by seizing the assets of the defendants in a system of “guilty until proven innocent” cases filed not against the person but against the property itself. (The case I was involved in was officially called The United States of America v. Eleven Acres of Land, More or Less.) These forfeiture cases enable them to buy guns, fancy cars (think Don Johnson's Ferrari on Miami Vice) and other equipment. Finally, the system of mandatory minimum sentences not only imposes harsh sentences on minor offenses, increases the terrible incentive to become an informant, and includes rewards for acceptance of responsibility and cooperation with other prosecutions.

We have seen over the years that the War on Drugs has shredded our constitutional rights. It has inflicted terrible devastation on individuals, families, and communities. Now, we now see that for people unfortunate enough to be trapped into working for the government, the War on Drugs can be fatal.

Certainly there are reforms that could be introduced in the system of confidential informants and asset forfeiture, but the real problem is the War on Drugs itself. As long as we continue this pointless and futile effort we can expect that the battleground will be covered by the bodies of its casualties.

Denial continues to be the biggest obstacle to effectively addressing the continuing risks at Fukushima Daiichi.

This is the inevitable outcome when corporate interests control what amount to national security risks. TEPCO is still trying to make money…or, more correctly, not to lose so much money.

In spite of everything, the  #1 priority of the company continues to be shielding its controllers from “unnecessary” financial exposure.

This priority flies in the face of its obligation to the wronged Japanese people.

Despite the fact that the Governor of Fukushima has said in no uncertain terms that neither Fukushima Daini nor Fukushima Daiichi will ever be allowed to operate again, TEPCO is actually pushing for the remaining reactors there to be reopened!

In the wake of revelations that over 3,000 workers at the crippled Daichi facility wore lead-shielding on their dosimeters to defeat the devices’ radiation recording function, TEPCO is now said to have turned to the Yakuza to supply workers for the dangerous jobs associated with clean-up and keeping the crippled reactors barely simmering rather than boiling dry.

A league of gangsters, well accustomed to doing  dirty work for Japanese business interests,  the Yakuza would hardly be most people’s first choice as recruiters for the kind of sensitive and highly skilled labor that is necessary to avoid escalating disaster at Fukushima.

TEPCO has sent out their messengers to gather as many workers as possible, officials in Fukushima reportedly told local businesses, “Bring us the living dead. People no one will miss.”

Those hapless and unskilled workers are facing a danger of unknown proportions.  

Fairewinds Associates’ Arnie Gundersen has just returned from a visit to Japan, where he discussed with members of the Diet, lawyers and citizen activists, the status of the devastated Fuskushima facilities.   Focussing especially on the spent fuel pool in Reactor 4, which many experts agree is continuously at risk of boiling dry, he told an audience in Kyoto that the reason the US extended its evacuation zone recommendation to an 80-km radius was because of this specific risk:

“In 1997, the laboratory did a study showing that if a nuclear-fuel pool were to boil dry, it would release enough radiation to cause the permanent evacuation of those living within an 80 km radius (of the complex)…The Fukushima plant’s reactor 4 (pool) has 1,500 fuel bundles. That’s more cesium than was released into the atmosphere from all of the nuclear bombs ever exploded, (which total) more than 700 over a period of 30 years.”

It’s like a bad plot from a drive-in double feature.  All that’s missing now is Godzilla.    

Well, I’ve just read Randy Brock’s “health care plan,” all five-plus pages of it. And now I understand why he released it the way he did: under the radar, with the least possible fanfare.

The plan is a disgrace. On many levels.

First, it’s riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. (Example: It refers to Vermont’s health care plan for children as “Dr. Dinosaur.” Er, Randy, that’s “Dr. Dynasaur.” I detect the fine hand of one of your expensive out-of-state consultants.) That’s inexcusable for a position paper on the biggest single issue in your campaign. Geez, Randy, you’d paid Darcie Johnston $64,000 as of August 15, but you can’t afford a proofreader?

Second, it’s loaded with vague proposals,  off-the-rack conservative rhetoric, and ad hominem attacks on Governor Shumlin’s plan.

Third, it’s got quite a few provisions that would actually increase the cost of health care and/or the size of government. Strange.  

Fourth, it’s not a coherent plan —  it’s a goddamn laundry list of every idea under the sun. None of them are quantified, and many are presented with qualifiers like “encourage,” “explore,” and “review.” Which means that he has no idea whether those ideas are even practical.

Fifth, it’s got way more than its share of really dumb statements. Real headscratchers.

I could spend a lot of time parsing out the ins and outs of RandyCare, but there’s so little meat on these bones that it would be a dry and thankless task. Instead, I’ll focus on the dumb stuff.

So here, as a public service (so you don’t have to read this… thing), are my Top Ten Dumbest Things in RandyCare.  

The Wastrel Elderly. Brock calls for relaxation of “community rating,” which would allow insurance companies to charge lower rates to younger, healthier people than to the older and sicker. Part of his rationale is that community rating “requires healthier young families with children and mortgages to subsidize the premiums of their older, sicker, but sometime (sic) much wealthier patients…”

Jeezum Crow. Those evil, shiftless olds with their mattresses stuffed with loot! They’re the real problem! Yep, old people just have it way too easy. Let ’em pay through the nose if they want to stay alive.

Visit Vermont: Fall Colors and a Tummy Tuck! Randy wants to bring together hospitals and the tourism industry to promote “medical tourism.” You know, create vast new revenue streams by creating luxury medical services for the well-to-do. Yeah, get your elective surgery and go skiing!

Wait, that won’t work… Hmm…

Bring a chicken to the doctor. Randy wants to encourage Vermonters to buy low-cost high-deductible insurance coupled with tax-deductible health savings accounts. He explains, “When informed consumers themselves pay more of their health care expenses, their pressure will drive efficiency, innovation and affordability among providers.”

Because it works so well when you go to the hospital and start dickering over the bill.

The free market works so well that the state will have to help consumers deal with it. He wants the state to add new programs to advise Vermonters on how to stay healthy, how to shop for insurance, and how to avoid the pitfalls of the free market.

Hmm. On the one hand, Randy wants to unleash the power of competition by lifting insurance regulations, thus allowing insurers to flood the market with fine print-laden policies full of exceptions and hidden costs. On the other, he wants the state to guide consumers through the free-market maze. Apparently government is incompetent to manage health care, but it’s capable and trustworthy in advising the public.

Cut regulation — except when it should be increased. Randy says we should “Ensure that the Health Insurance Exchange… is easy to use, clear and has an abundance of choices.” So we’re going to liberate the insurance companies, but mandate clear, simple language in policies and contracts? Who’s going to review the language? Who sets the standards? And to paraphrase Mitt Romney, are we really going to depend on BUREAUCRATS to ensure ease of use and clarity?

The buffet approach. Randy wants to “allow consumers to purchase coverage ‘a la carte.'” So if I’m a single man — or, even better, one half of a gay male couple — I don’t have to buy ob/gyn coverage? Sweet!

And how far does the “a la carte” thing extend? If I don’t have any genetic markers, can I decline coverage for Lou Gehrig’s Disease? If so, how costly would ALS coverage become?

Price tags. He calls for “full price transparency, so that consumers can see the price at various providers for similar services.” So we’re supposed to check prices and drive to different facilities for different services, based on price? And do we really want medical centers cutting corners wherever possible so their posted prices are the lowest?

This also gets to the issue of quantifiability. It’s easy to list a price for a simple procedure, but it’s almost impossible for complicated conditions or treatments. And that’s where most of the health care dollars go.

One test per customer, please. He wouldn’t want a patient to undergo the same test twice, even if the patient is transferred from a local hospital to a tertiary care center. As he says, “If we cannot trust testing in community hospitals, we shouldn’t allow them to test in the first place.”

Which is wrong on all accounts. When a patient is transferred, it’s because the community hospital isn’t equipped to handle the case. Their testing standards are fine for routine cases, but when a patient moves up the chain, more thorough testing is usually needed. If you had, say, an MRI at Rutland Hospital and they ship you to Fletcher Allen, you might very well need another MRI conducted by more skilled, experienced specialists.

Also, a patient’s condition isn’t a static thing. It changes over time — often rapidly. Retesting is often required to track a patient’s progress. This idea is meaningless at best, dangerous at worst.

An army of bureaucrats? He wants “independent performance audits to examine every cost and the health-effectiveness of every mandate.” Has he really thought that through? That would be an immense task. Would he want the state to do that? Or the insurance companies? Oh yeah, we can trust them…

Health care, health care everywhere. He’d like to see “around-the-clock non-emergency room access to basic health care within one hour of every Vermonter.” Nice idea. We need more access, especially for low-income Vermonters who’d (under RandyCare) have cheap, high-deductible insurance coverage. Which means they wouldn’t be able to pay for non-emergency services. That’s the problem with high-deductible plans: they incentivize people to stay away from health care service until their problems become acute. So who pays for the services? And who pays for establishing this intensive network of urgent care facilities?

So there’s my RandyCare Top Ten. As I said at the top, now I understand why Randy released this “plan” very quietly, and why he wants people to stop paying attention to it. It’s a bloody disgrace.  

I’ve been reading these books from Kellogg-Hubbard’s Entertainment table about the Golden Age Of Hollywood in the thirties and forties.  Most every book addresses the Fear and PANIC of film studio heads when the HUAC started to ‘investigate’ Communist-theme movies in the late forties.  Movies such as Crossfire & Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947), and Home Of The Brave (1949), and even some half-hearted attempt to go after The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946).  Well, you all know about the Hollywood Ten and others who were blacklisted.  The Lefties back then sort of stampeded into the closet, and that gave Joe McCarthy the bright idea that hunting for Communists would be as All-American as…well, Gary Cooper.

Cooper testified before the HUAC that he thought Communism was “not on the level,” but by the time he did High Noon in ’52, it was hard for a movie audience to tell whether the MILLER GANG was supposed to be the Commies or the McCarthyites.  I go with the MILLER GANG being the McCarthyites, because, in the church scene in High Noon, Marshall Kane (Cooper) has to answer a question from a certain Mr. Trunbull? (or Trumbo?).  Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter blacklisted until 1960.  Carl Foreman was a screenwriter for High Noon.  Foreman wound up on the HUAC shitlist and had to leave the country before High Noon hit the theatres.  I’d like to think the church scene in High Noon was a parody of the HUAC committee hearings, and that reference to Mr. Trumbull? (Trumbo?) was something even ole Gary Cooper was in on.

The Frightened and PANICKY townspeople in the church scene in High Noon remind me of how the so-called White Radical Left has acted over the decades.  TALK.  But don’t ACT.  And, if you stay above it all, why, the PEOPLE will make REVOLUTION, and then YOU can RULE.  Screw the Marshall.  He should just go away, and “there won’t be one bit of trouble at all.”

Well, Obama certainly ain’t no Gary Cooper.  We wish.  But we do have the MILLER GANG coming back.  Let’s see…McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and now Romney/Ryan.  Looks like Obama’s going to need “all the deputies” he can get.

The Leftie purists say:  “Obama Sucks.  Let Romney get elected.  Then the PEOPLE will make REVOLUTION.”  Hmmm…Duh.  Ain’t no fucking Revolution EVER going to happen in this country!  EVER!  It is the ‘privilege’ of the ‘patrician’ Left to think so.  To write and talk about the PEOPLE as though they are stupid clods just needing to be LEAD along by good old-fashioned (and now irrelevant) Marxist/Leninist/Mao thought.  (Sorry, Martha)  And thus the American Left does absolutely NOTHING.  Like the townsfolk in High Noon.  And the PEOPLE?  Well, fuck them too.  Maybe after 8 more years of the MILLER GANG, they’ll get some balls.  We can watch them take to the streets from the church, our ‘vigil’ accomplished.

But what our current MILLER GANG is about is no less than dismantling any and all remaining power the people might have to be able to do something about where our nation is headed (down the shithole).  So, the question is, what is the right thing to do?  Vote?  Sit out the election?  Vote for Jill Stein?  Roseanne?  The Socialist Anarchists Workers Anti-GMO/Free Mumia candidate?  Hmmm. (again)  I’ll probably write-in Roseanne if Vermont’s a sure thing for Obama.  Exercise my patrician privilege.  But if it gets really close, then that’s too close to home for me.  I’ll have to put on a deputy’s badge.

Anyway, here’s a funny little ‘theme song’ about it:

DO NOT FORSAKE ME, ALL YOU LEFTIES

Do not forsake me

All you Lefties,

On this Election Daa-ay

I know you’re pure

But you must be brave



You know his gang’s

A band of killers

Oh I know you want

A Revolution Nation

But now’s not the time

For convoluted obfuscation

Look at them raping

Our Constitution



What will you do?

Do not forsake me

All you Lefties,

Remember all

The hateful things

They’ve said

Go and vote

Don’t be a dolt…’thumpa, thumpa, thumpa, thumpa, thumpa, thump…………

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

So, remind me again: What exactly is Randy Brock getting for his big investment in campaign consultants?

It’s certainly not a well-run, credible campaign.

Last Thursday, Brock quietly unveiled his health care reform plan in a late-afternoon e-mail to journalists and supporters. Since then, he’s been continually on the defensive over the plan’s reliance on extreme free-market models (like Maine Governor Paul LePage’s), its lack of specifics, and its oddly low-key rollout. And now he’s promising more details “in a week to ten days.” (Back in May, he promised a full plan in early June. If he keeps to the same schedule, the additional details should arrive just in time for Christmas.)

His latest misadventure: he’s begging everyone to stop looking at his plan because the focus ought to be on Governor Shumlin’s. This, he says, is why he soft-pedaled his plan’s release:

In thinking about whether or not to do a formal dog and pony show, we decided that in a way takes the emphasis off what we should be talking about, which is problems with the Shumlin health care plan.

When Randy says “dog and pony show,” apparently he means “full discussion and examination of my plan.” (And I can’t resist observing that he may not like “dog and pony shows,” but he has no problem appearing at public events with a teddy-bear mascot. Bears yes, dogs and ponies no.)

Health care reform is supposed to be the single biggest issue in Brock’s campaign, and he’s asking us not to look at his own views on the subject. That’s leadership, folks.  

 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?  

  The State Health Department and Department of Agriculture announced this past week that it has begun aerial spraying the pesticide Anvil 10 + 10 to kill mosquitoes, some of which may be carrying West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis  (EEE).  An 87year old man from Brandon died from the EEE virus and a Salisbury man (another reports the location as Sudbury,which is nearby) has been hospitalized suffering from the virus.

Parts of Rutland and Addison county were chosen for spraying with the pesticide Anvil (not this Anvil) after the state found traces of EEE in mosquitoes in that area. The pesticide is neither benign nor guaranteed to work VTDigger reports. The Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture noted

“There’s a 10 to 90 percent rate of efficacy,”

so Anvil may not always crush its intended target. Therefore providing funds for careful and routine monitoring of the mosquito population is a key part of managing this growing health problem.  

With federal funds for monitoring sharply cut back a difficult public health and safety issue for Vermont has been made more complicated. This is what starving the beast style budget cutting looks like at the state and local level.

To assess the effects of the spraying, the state will need to heavily survey the mosquito populations of those areas. Funds for such surveillance, however, are shriveling up.

Erica Berl, Vermont infectious disease epidemiologist, said that the state mosquito surveillance program is working with nearly a quarter of the federal funds it had a year ago.

“We received $190,000 last year, and we got $50,000 this year,” she said about cuts to the federal “arbovirus” surveillance program, which is administered by the CDC. Arbovirus stands for arthropod-borne virus.

In 2006 when the state of Massachusetts 2006 first used the pesticide Governor Mitt Romney had to declare a health emergency. Aerial Spraying of Anvil for mosquito control is much more common now yet it carries warning that exposure can cause vomiting, central nervous system failure and tremors. Anvil can also effect bee populations. Objections have been raised in New York City over spraying and recently a Massachusetts environmental group has is claimed spraying violated the Federal Clean Water Act.  

From news reports it would seem that Vermont health or agriculture officials and not the governor ordered spraying but who exactly signed off on it and under what authority isn’t spelled out. Governor Shumlin was out of the state for much of the week which I assume left Lt. Gov Scott as acting governor.  

Oh boy, oh boy, a delicious little tidbit comes to us from Terri Hallenbeck of the Freeploid’s vtBuzz politics blog.

As you may recall, the VTGOP did a lot of last-minute scrambling to put together a statewide ticket — pulling Jack McMullen out of mothballs to run for AG, settling for no-name no-hopers to run for Congress, and really, settling for party lifer Randy Brock to be, apparently, its sacrificial lamb in the governor’s race.

And failing to identify a candidate for Secretary of State.

Well, in all the fuss over the Progressive Party recount, nobody thought to check on the Secretary of State’s race until Hallenbeck looked into it. And found the answer.

Jim Condos is your Republican nominee. Yep, more Republican voters wrote in Jim’s name than any other.

As Hallenbeck points out, this is the same Jim Condos who was basically accused of corruption and/or mismanagement yesterday by VTGOP chair Jack Lindley.

Hey, Jack: meet your newest candidate! Hope you put up a good fight on his behalf.

(Condos is also the candidate of the Progressive and Working Families parties. I’d say he’s the heavy favorite to win a second term.)

Hey, remember the news about the new conservative PAC, Vermonters First? THe brand-new group that’s about to pour $70,000 into a two-week barrage of TV ads on behalf of Republican candidates?

Well, I was wrong about one little detail.

They’re not supporting Randy Brock.

As Seven Days’ Paul Heintz reports,

The group plans to run two 15-second commercials spotlighting Republican state auditor candidate Vince Illuzzi and Republican state treasurer candidate Wendy Wilton.

Two observations. First: it’ll be interesting to see if this big-money conservative backing takes any of the “bipartisan” shine off Illuzzi.

Second: 70 large, and not a penny for ol’ Randy? That means one of two things: either Vermonters First is working its way up to Brock… or they’ve already given up on the guy, and see Illuzzi and WIlton as the hopefuls who might actually win if they get a little help. (Phil Scott doesn’t look to need any outside assistance.)  

Sigh. Well, the deep-pocketed rats might be leaving Brock’s sinking ship (Titanicampaign?), but at least he’ll always have his furry little friend.