(As always Mike Abadi gets to the heart of the scene, here in an interview with GMD front pager John Walters. Enjoy! – promoted by NanuqFC)

John Walters has been a GMD Frontpager since December, and he has been incisive and prolific. Oh what the hell, I’ll also call him “two-fisted” in case he ever seeks higher office. But seriously, his background in print, radio, and as an author have immeasurably enriched the GMD reading experience.

We spent a fair amount of time discussing the keeps getting more interesting Attorney General’s race. In an odd convergence, The AG quoted John at his campaign kick off event as John was documenting the burnishing of Bill Sorrell’s wikipedia entry.

Our focus moved to some other stories John’s followed: Paul LePage’s visit to Vermont, Randy Brock’s campaign, and “Lismania,” the Campaign for Vermont fever that is (was) sweeping the state. John approaches his work with such care and wit that the result is nutritious and delicious.

We took some time to discuss John’s book Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives. This collection of life stories is tied together by the idea that “the pursuit, the vision, is more important than the reward.” So if you pick up the book, you may be “encouraged to pursue your own Road Less Traveled.”

As we enter campaign season, John’s work will be indispensable in helping sort out the truth, the lies, the half-truths, the white lies and the hypocrisy.

(This is a conversation whose time has come.  We would be remiss not to front page it. – promoted by Sue Prent)

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And we all have blood on our hands.

When will we have the courage to stand up to the ‘gun’ lobby? When will we have an honest conversation about the limits to ‘freedom’ when it comes to personal firepower?

In a country where it is legal to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition online, (just wait for Amazon’s sameday delivery!), order up near(ly) assault weapons at will, couple them with large magazines, and Fed Ex deliver enough explosives and gear to outfit a small security detail, why are we shocked that these events happen over and over again?

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All of those things dear to any patriot were stolen from those killed and injured in Colorado.

When will we work to guarantee those three things for all? And in that order?

There is really nothing new about the latest scandal emanating from Fukushima.

Industry manipulation of radiation data has been a recurrent theme throughout the history of nuclear energy; but this story gives us some idea of one of the ways in which it can be done.

media reports have confirmed that subcontractors were told to cover their dosimeters with lead shields in order to manipulate or underreport their radiation exposures.

Previously in the region surrounding Fukushima, we have seen radiation data to determine evacuation zones deliberately hamstrung in its accuracy and completeness.

At each house the inspectors measured two spots-in the yard and at the front door-at heights of about 20 inches and one yard (one meter). In choosing the spots, the inspectors were warned to stay away from areas such as drains, shrubbery and rainspouts, where radioactive elements tend to gather, potentially skewing results.

In the astronomically costly aftermath of Fukushima, the nuclear industry is desperate to maintain the illusion that it’s product can be cost effective.  It therefore is vital that something be done  to eliminate the “inconvenient truth” that, in the event of accident, vast areas of habitation must be evacuated and lost from productive use. Consequently, the dose of radiation deemed “acceptable” was raised in Japan, and industry bedmate, MIT helpfully produced an extremely flawed study that would seem to support the hypothesis that evacuation might not even be necessary!

Doesn’t that just make you feel a whole lot safer?

What’s this I see about perennial butterfly, Vince Illuzzi?

Now that he has finally settled upon an office to seek, it unfortunately highlights some of his own self-auditing issues:

Democratic candidate for State Auditor Doug Hoffer today said the July 16 campaign finance report of Vince Illuzzi is at odds with his July 2011 filing and that an amended report may be required to clear up the confusion.

According to documents available on the Secretary of State’s website, the report filed by Mr. Illuzzi in July 2011 reported a carry-forward of $30,923 from his Senate Campaign account.[1]

Mr. Illuzzi’s July 16, 2012 finance report shows a contribution of $13,105 from his Senate Campaign Account.[2]  It is characterized as “surplus” which suggests that it is all that remains from that account.  Since there has been no election for Senator Illuzzi since July 2011, there remains a question about what happened to the other $17,818 from his Senate campaign account.  Mr. Illuzzi did not file a finance report for his Senate campaign.

“There may well be a good explanation for the inconsistency but it is for Mr. Illuzzi to clear it up.”

OUCH!  One more strike against the feisty senator’s credibility.

Why’d you ever give up the safety of your senate seat, Vince?

A little free advice for our two-fisted Attorney General: Make some calls. Pay a few visits. Send some flowers, maybe a nice note. Kiss up.

Bill Sorrell has a big problem. It’s not any one thing; it’s not failing to get the endorsement of the state committee, it’s not failing to use a union print shop (he used one with family connections, his supporters note), it’s not failing to make courtesy calls to state committee members, it’s not not showing up for the meeting or the Hamburger Summit. It’s not not knowing about the meeting until the day before. It’s not anything specific about his record as AG.

It’s all of those things. It’s the appearance that he’s lost a step, he’s lost his edge, and he’s taking his position for granted. Fair or not, this is the narrative that’s taking over the race, and may well force Sorrell into an unwanted retirement. And his reaction to the state committee indicates that he doesn’t get it. VTDigger:

“The minority chose not to determine that I’m a credible, legitimate Democratic candidate and I think that’s unfortunate,” Sorrell said.

“I’ve been elected seven times as a Democrat,” Sorrell said. “If I’m not being partisan enough for some, then I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s consistent with what my oath of office is. The administration of justice in an even handed way is important to me, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do. I’m looking forward to the last five weeks of the primary campaign. I have every expectation of being the Democratic nominee for attorney general in the November General Election.”

No, Bill. That’s not going to help matters, not at all. You still sound like you’re taking it for granted — the office, the party, the voters. This probably wouldn’t matter in a general election, but it matters a whole hell of a lot in the Democratic primary.

This isn’t about right or wrong, or the dignity of your office, or the deference you seem to think you are due. This is a simple matter of basic politics. If you want the support of your party and the voters, you have to care about gaining their support — or at least act like you care.

There’s a little more than a month until primary day. You are in the race of your life. You’d best fire up the speed dial, get out your walking shoes, and try to mend a few fences.  

I couldn’t help noticing a few “off” notes in the Freeploid’s story about the state Democratic Committee’s failure to endorse Bill Sorrell. Hints of desperation and insecurity from Gannett’s Biggest Little Paper in Vermont (New and Improved, With Lots of Bright Colors to Distract You From the Shallow News Coverage). First, this:

With 28 committee members voting, Sorrell needed 19 votes to win the two-thirds majority required for an endorsement. When the votes were tallied he received 16 votes. The Burlington Free Press first reported the results via Twitter shortly after the vote, then on www.burlingtonfreepress.com.

Isn’t that just a little bit tacky, to congratulate yourself on getting the scoop? Not once, but TWICE? “Hey, looky here! Serious news organization, breaking the news!” As they say about excessive touchdown celebrations in football, when you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.

But was the Tweet in full color? We 21st Century readers can’t absorb content without lots of purty pitchers to soften the harshness of pure text.  

The Freeploid then went out of its way to avoid mentioning certain political blogs, first in quoting TJ Donovan:

“Bill Sorrell is a good Democrat,” Donovan said Saturday afternoon while attending a political bloggers’ picnic at North Beach where the committee’s earlier vote was a buzz of conversation.

If the Freeploid were being consistent about this, it would have referred to the Democratic Committee meeting as “a gathering of top Democrats.” And it would have described the venue as “a public recreational facility on a lakeshore.”

It again went generic in quoting the picnic’s co-host and grillmaster (well, co-grillmaster, with Arnie Gundersen):  

“I would say stunning is the word, to not be endorsed by your own party,” said state Sen. Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden, who was hosting the political picnic at North Beach on Saturday afternoon and is a Donovan supporter.

That generic “political bloggers’ picnic” was, of course, the annual Hanburger Summit, a tradition of several years’ standing that not only rousts Phil and us GMD folks out of our mothers’ basements every summer (despite our fear of the bright yellow ball in the sky), but also attracts a goodly swarm of top politicians. It has a name, Freeploid, and we have a name.  

Among Democratic Party activists at the Hamburger Summit, some of whom attended Saturday morning’s VDP State Committee meeting, the overall perception was that Attorney General Bill Sorrell is campaigning badly. A few even suggested he’s “phoning it in,” whether from ineptitude, laziness, or a sense of entitlement. Several themes emerged in discussions of Sorrell’s endorsement loss.

[Note: the vote was reported to us as 16 for endorsement, 12 against, 2 abstentions; 19 yes votes, or two-thirds, were required for the endorsement motion to pass; the motion failed. The “No” voters of the Committee were given several opportunities to request a reconsideration, and no one volunteered.]

Among those themes:

• Sorrell failed to file his endorsement paperwork on time to receive a co-endorsement with TJ Donovan in May, despite outreach from the VDP staff to facilitate that outcome.
• None of the State Committee members received a call from the candidate asking for their votes (a Tip O’Neill moment).
• The candidate didn’t come to the meeting, citing a prior commitment to a parade in Lyndonville (Northeast Kingdom, where no doubt there was a ton of Democratic primary voters).
• Sorrell used a non-union shop for printing campaign materials which have been in distribution for more than a week.
• Sorrell’s surrogates, campaign manager Mike Pieciak and Chief Deputy AG Janet Murnane, did not do a good job selling the candidate or his approach to issues raised by State Committee members.
• Sorrell has a long history of refusing to contribute to the coffers of the Coordinated Campaign.

The overall impression is that the incumbent Sorrell has barely moved into campaign mode, although his campaign staff was on board more than three months ago. Further, several observers characterizeded Sorrell’s approach as “taking it for granted” that he would be endorsed.

[After the jump: what happened at the meeting.]

 

Pieciak opened his presentation by ineffectively apologizing for his candidate’s absence, saying, in part, “We only just found out earlier this week that this meeting was happening today …”

And that is the sort of political ineptitude that keeps happening for Sorrell’s campaign, and is unexpected from a 15-year incumbent. Although, one observer noted that Sorrell was appointed to the position (once his predecessor was moved on to the state Supreme Court) and has rarely faced opposition since.

The questions raised at the meeting included Sorrell’s recent court losses on state control of the Entergy Yankee nuclear power plant’s closure, campaign finance regulation, and protection for physicians from data-mining based marketing by pharmaceutical companies.

The ethics of Chief Deputy A.G. Janet Murnane’s status as an employee campaigning for her employer was also questioned, along with Sorrell’s inaction on other states’ DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act) cases.

Murnane sprinkled some form of the word “active”  throughout her explanation of her office’s current activities, about every sixth word: “Bill Sorrell is actively pursuing …” “We are taking an active role on …” But the argument was obviously not convincing.

In the committee meeting there was a lot of discussion as to the meaning of a State Committee “endorsement.” The process originated as a way to support Bernie Sanders’ first run for the Senate; without a state party endorsement, he could not receive help from the DNC. In a couple of cases since then, it has also allowed the committee to keep Republican ringers out of the state party’s campaign funds and off the Democratic ballot line. The bylaw provision is, said VDP Treasurer and longtime activist Linda Weiss, more of a certification that this person is a bonafide Democrat. (Or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, someone Democrats should and would support due to shared values.) 

In an odd twist that led to yesterday’s vote, the committee is allowed to “endorse” multiple candidates for the same office.

Rutland County Democratic Committee Chair Kathy Hall apparently shared Sorrell’s expectation of an easy and automatic endorsement. Visibly and audibly angry at the results, she said she was leaving, because the vote did not reflect explanations of the meaning of the “endorsement” vote she heard at the May meeting where T.J. Donovan was successful. She walked out of the meeting and sat in a hallway, despite a plea from Weiss to stay.

“We’re Democrats, this is what we do: we fight with each other,” said Weiss. “We don’t walk out, we sit down and try to figure out how to make it better.”

In reaction, we expect Bill Sorrell to discount the importance of the vote and maybe even to denigrate the State Committee rather than take responsibility for his own campaign errors.

There’s a faint chance that Sorrell’s pre-primary campaigning in the Republican-friendly Northeast Kingdom instead of among his own party activists, may be a counter-intuitive strategy: courting Republican voters to cross over to vote for him in the Democratic primary.

If he wins the primary, the State Committee’s no-confidence vote will likely come back to haunt its members.

Among Democratic Party activists at the Hamburger Summit, some of whom attended this morning’s VDP State Committee meeting, the overall perception was that Attorney General Bill Sorrell is campaigning badly. A few even suggested he’s “phoning it in,” whether from ineptitude, laziness, or a sense of entitlement. Several themes emerged in discussions of Sorrell’s endorsement loss.

Among them:

• Sorrell failed to file his endorsement paperwork on time to receive a co-endorsement with TJ Donovan in May, despite outreach from the VDP staff to facilitate that outcome.
• None of the State Committee members received a call from the candidate asking for their votes (a Tip O’Neill moment).
• The candidate didn’t come to the meeting, citing a prior commitment to a parade in Lyndonville (Northeast Kingdom, where no doubt there was a ton of Democratic primary voters).
• Sorrell used a non-union shop for printing campaign materials which have been in distribution for more than a week.
• Sorrell’s surrogates, campaign manager Mike Pieciak and Chief Deputy AG Janet Murnane, did not do a good job selling the candidate or his approach to issues raised by State Committee members.
• Sorrell has a long history of refusing to contribute to the coffers of the Coordinated Campaign.

The overall impression is that the incumbent Sorrell has barely moved into campaign mode, although his campaign staff was on board more than three months ago. Further, several observers identified Sorrell’s approach as “taking it for granted” that he would be endorsed.

[After the jump: what happened at the meeting.]

 

Pieciak opened his presentation by ineffectively apologizing for his candidate’s absence, saying, in part, “We only just found out earlier this week that this meeting was happening today …”

And that is the sort of political ineptitude that keeps happening for Sorrell’s campaign, and is unexpected from a 15-year incumbent. Although, one observer noted that Sorrell was appointed to the position (once his predecessor was moved on to the state Supreme Court) and has rarely faced opposition since.

The questions raised at the meeting included Sorrell’s recent court losses on state control of the Entergy Yankee nuclear power plant’s closure, campaign finance regulation, and protection for physicians from datamining-based marketing by pharmaceutical companies.

The ethics of Chief Deputy A.G. Janet Murnane’s status as an employee campaigning for her employer was also questioned, along with Sorrell’s inaction on other states’ DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act) cases.

Murnane sprinkled some form of the word “active”  throughout her explanation of her office’s current activities, about every sixth word: “Bill Sorrell is actively pursuing …” “We are taking an active role on …” But the argument was obviously not convincing.

In the committee meeting there was a lot of discussion as to the meaning of a State Committee “endorsement.” The process originated as a way to support Bernie Sanders’ first run for the Senate; without a state party endorsement, he could not receive help from the DNC. In a couple of cases since then, it has also allowed the committee to keep Republican ringers out of the state party’s campaign funds and off the Democratic ballot line. The bylaw provision is, said VDP Treasurer and longtime activist Linda Weiss, more of a certification that this person is a bonafide Democrat. (Or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, someone Democrats should and would support due to shared values.)  

In an odd twist that led to today’s vote, the committee is allowed to “endorse” multiple candidates for the same office.

Rutland County Democratic Committee Chair Kathy Hall apparently shared Sorrell’s expectation of an easy and automatic endorsement. Visibly and audibly angry at the results, she said she was leaving, because the vote did not reflect explanations of the meaning of the “endorsement” vote she heard at the May meeting where T.J. Donovan was successful. She walked out of the meeting and sat in a hallway, despite a plea from Weiss to stay.

“We’re Democrats, this is what we do: we fight with each other,” said Weiss. “We don’t walk out, we sit down and try to figure out how to make it better.”

In reaction, we expect Bill Sorrell to discount the importance of the vote and maybe even to denigrate the State Committee rather than take responsibility for his own campaign errors.

There’s a faint chance that Sorrell’s pre-primary campaigning in the Republican-friendly Northeast Kingdom instead of among his own party activists, may be a counter-intuitive strategy: courting Republican voters to cross over to vote for him in the Democratic primary.

If he wins the primary, the State Committee’s no-confidence vote will likely come back to haunt its members.

At today’s meeting of the Vermont Democratic Party State Committee, Bill Sorrell’s petition for the committee’s endorsement failed to attain the required two-thirds of members present and voting.

More to follow later, but the gist is as follows:

The Committee had its bi-monthly meeting in Montpelier this morning, and its first order of business was endorsements. The vote against Sorrell’s endorsement followed the successful vote to endorse Congressman Peter Welch.

The State Committee’s endorsement process has been in place since 2006; this is the first time a sitting Democrat has not received the party’s endorsement.

The State Committee previously voted to endorse challenger T. J. Donnovan at its May 2012 meeting.

Bill Sorrell did not attend the meeting but he did send his campaign manager and an attorney from the Attorney General’s office to speak on his behalf.

Analysis and commentary to follow later.  The Staff of GMD is currently at North Beach eating burgers and drinking beer/soda/etc.

Well, after state officials rang the alarm bells about FEMA possibly reneging on $120 million in Irene recovery funds, one of those officials later sought to unring most of the bells.

We also got more clarity on why FEMA funding might be lower than expected for replacing the state complex in Waterbury — and yes, it mainly has to do with the Shumlin Administration’s quick decision to abandon the Vermont State Hospital.

First, the updated money count, courtesy of the Vermont Press Bureau and published in the Saturday Times Argus, but not (as of this writing) posted on the Times Argus website:  The worst-case scenario is not a $120 million shortfall, but $45 million. And state officials don’t expect the final figure to be even that low.

Which doesn’t explain how Administration staffers got their signals so badly wrong yesterday, but let’s move on.

The replacements that FEMA is now questioning are the Vermont State Hospital ($28 million), a state heating plant ($16-18 mil) and about $2-3 mil for demolition of abandoned buildings. Times Argus:

The apparent change comes as FEMA reinterprets whether the Vermont State Hospital was “damaged” or “destroyed,” state officials said.

…The cost for relocating a heating plant at the Waterbury Office Complex also is likely ineligible because the state made certain repairs to the structure, state staffers said.

Administration officials and lawmakers are angry over FEMA’s apparent change in position. And who knows what assurances were given when and by whom, and what the federal rules (which are apparently so Byzantine that the Byzantine Empire looks like a blank canvas by comparison) actually state. But there’s at least the possibility that the Shumlin Administration shot itself in the foot here.  

First, immediately after Irene, Shumlin vowed to shutter VSH even though many believed that the bulk of the building could be restored. Was this a sound policy decision, or was it a case of Shumlin seizing on the Irene opportunity to rid the state of a troubled facility and start over again — with federal funds picking up the tab? That won’t look too smart if, indeed, federal funds don’t pick up the tab, and Shumlin’s grand plans to revamp mental health care have to be scaled back.

As for the heating plant, I have no knowledge of the situation aside from the Times Argus story. But why would the state conduct repairs on a structure it planned to abandon? There could have been good reasons; maybe there were dangerous conditions that had to be addressed immediately. But if the repairs cause the state to lose a nice chunk of FEMA money, then that’ll be a significant administrative error.

And the Governor doesn’t need any of those in an election year.