Friday afternoon brought a big dump o’bad news, as state officials told lawmakers that the federal dollars promised for rebuilding/replacing the Waterbury office complex may not materialize.

The state had budgeted $63 million of the projected $183 million cost of new state offices and replacement mental-health facilities. It had received assurances from the feds that somewhere close to 90% of the remaining $120 million would be covered by FEMA.

Well, as Ron Nessen would have said, those assurances are now inoperative. VPR:

…state officials said they learned recently that the full funding may not come through, and if it does, the federal checks may be delayed for months.

“We’ve been working on this for months. Our patience is wearing thin,” said Deputy Administration Secretary Michael Clasen. “We’re frustrated.”

He says the state’s has heard different interpretation of FEMA rules from different FEMA officials. He says the funding situation is now uncertain.

…Buildings Commissioner Michael Obuchowski has been working with FEMA for months. He says the state may face a $120 million funding gap if the FEMA funds it had hoped for don’t come through.

“Depending on what the gap ends up we may have to go back to the drawing board in relation to the state hospital and the Waterbury complex,” Obuchowski said.

So wait, did FEMA rehire Michael Brown or what?  

FEMA official Steven Ward explained the situation with all the clarity of a bureaucrat trained by Talmudic scholars:

“And there are some very challenging policy issues that include determination of the floodplain, what the state requires as far as codes and standards,” Ward said. “There are a lot of different aspects to developing the final number and we are in the process of going building by building through the Waterbury complex.”

A tantalizing hint was offered in the Vermont Press Bureau’s account (paywalled in the Times Argus):

The possible ineligibility is due to whether FEMA is interpreting the state hospital as “destroyed” and whether state repairs to a heating plant canceled federal aid, state officials said.

Hmm. Remember last fall, when Governor Shumlin categorically vowed that the State Hospital would never reopen? Even as many suggested that the Hospital could be rehabbed above the ground floor? Well, maybe Shumlin’s  steely resolve was misplaced, eh?

As for the Governor, he sought to tamp down the bitter disappointment his own staff had delivered to the Legislature. He told the Freeploid that “There is no new story here; FEMA has never given us a final number.” And…

Shumlin said he remained confident “we will get the money we deserve.” …

The state has to go through a negotiating process with FEMA, Shumlin said. “This is not going to be a smooth ride. No one thought it would be.”

Which doesn’t explain why his own staffers were so gloomy earlier that same day. Methinks the Gov has begun a diplomatic campaign to convince Washington to fork over the moola.

There was also bad FEMA news for the town of Bennington. FEMA has rejected the town’s request for reimbursement of about $4 million in post-Irene emergency work. The Banner:

Town Manager Stuart A. Hurd and Planning Director Daniel Monks said town officials learned of the FEMA rejection on Thursday. They said work completed on the Roaring Branch, known as emergency protective work, has been deemed to be ineligible for reimbursement. The rejection came as a shock because FEMA regulations given to the town, and FEMA officials themselves, had led the town to believe the work would be at least partially reimbursed, they said.

Monks added that the problem seemed to be an interagency tussle over reimbursement between FEMA and an Agriculture Department agency. Which is cold comfort for Bennington. If they can’t get the decision overturned, town taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill.

You know, this kind of bullshit is why so many people hate the government — even people who depend on government programs. I realize the United States is a huge, complex institution; but if it could only be a bit more people-friendly, transparent and simple, it might be easier to get people to vote Democratic and support taxation adequate to fund government services.  

Opponents of universal health care are fond of quoting horror stories about the quasi-holocaust known as the Canadian health care system. They natter on and on about lengthy waits for elective surgery, lack of modern technology, and probably Soylent Green as well. My favorite recent example came from Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, trying to defend Governor Paul LePage’s IRS/Gestapo comparison:

“I’ve got friends of mine who came here [from Canada] because they couldn’t get their knee replaced in eight months,” he said. “That would be the only way you could tie [the IRS and the Gestapo] together.”

Ah, the sweet breath of Republican reason.

But here’s a very different take on Canadian health care, from a recovering conservative who had to move to Canada four years ago, and “was somewhat disgusted” at the prospect of government health care, which she saw as “a violation of my freedom.”

And now, after multiple pregnancies?  

I had better prenatal care than I had ever had in the States. I came in regularly for appointments to check on my health and my babies’ health throughout my pregnancy, and I never had to worry about how much a test cost or how much the blood draw fee was. With my pregnancies in the States, I had limited my checkups to only a handful to keep costs down. When I went in to get the shot I needed because of my negative blood type, it was covered.

…I started to feel differently about Universal government mandated and regulated Health care. I realized how many times my family had avoided hospital care because of our lack of coverage. …

Here in Canada, everyone was covered. If they worked full-time, if they worked part-time, or if they were homeless and lived on the street, they were all entitled to the same level of care if they had a medical need. People actually went in for routine check-ups and caught many of their illnesses early, before they were too advanced to treat. People were free to quit a job they hated, or even start their own business without fear of losing their medical coverage. In fact, the only real complaint I heard about the universal health care from the Canadians themselves, was that sometimes there could be a wait time before a particular medical service could be provided. But even that didn’t seem to be that bad to me, in the States most people had to wait for medical care, or even be denied based on their coverage. The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow. In Canada, the wait times were usually short, and applied to everyone regardless of wealth.

Somehow, I don’t think this person will be a guest on Common Sense Radio or speak at an Ethan Allen Institute event anytime soon.  

Update: This afternoon all members of the State Committee received a meeting reminder from the State Chair with a copy of letter from labor representative Jeff Fannon in which he says that “Different unions have differing reasons for their positions on the Attorney General race, but on this they are united: a candidate who reflects such basic insensitivity to a major Democratic constituency does not deserve the supermajority support of the Democratic Party's State Committee.”

There appears to be more trouble for Bill Sorrell with organized labor.

  If you're a regular reader you know that T.J. Donovan has been scooping up labor endorsements right and left. The Vermont Labor Council (AFL-CIO), the State Employees' Association, the Vermont Troopers' Association. Pretty much every labor organization in the state that's taken a position so far is supporting Donovan.

You could say that those are all situations where the union just likes Donovan and hasn't been given any particular reason to side with Sorrell. This week, though, Green Mountain Daily has learned that Sorrell has actively alienated labor leaders, and at a very bad time.

If you've spent any time around politics, or at least Democratic politics, you know that when you're printing flyers, brochures, or other literature it needs to have what?

The union bug. 

Here's a picture of a union bug: 

The union bug guarantees that your job was done at a print shop that provides its workers good wages, benefits, and working conditions. Since the working people of the country are one of the most important constituencis of the Democratic Party, it is vital for Democratic candidates to have their jobs done at a union shop and have the union bug printed on them.

There is only one union print shop in Vermont, First Step Print Shop in Underhill, and they've done printing for unions and Democratic candidates all over the state for many years.

 Here's the problem. We haven't seen it yet, but GMD has learned that when the Sorrell campaign sent out an appeal from Howard Dean last week it did not have the union bug.

Big mistake and union members are pissed. 

The Vermont Democratic Committee is meeting in Montpelier on Saturday and on the agenda is a proposal to endorse Bill Sorrell. The committee has already endorsed Donovan, but up until now the endorsement for Sorrell has looked like a shoo-in. As the story of the missing union bug circulates among the union members and other activists on the State Committee, though, that endorsement may be in doubt.

 It's very hard to understand how any statewide campaign could make this kind of mistake. It couldn't be an intentional snub, but in light of the successful work Donovan has done to attract union support it sure can't help.

 Of course Republican Congressman Darrel Issa of California is a busy man, but in past years and again this week he found time to propose legislation that would name 3.4 million square miles of ocean and 90,000 miles of U.S. coastline after Ronald Reagan.  

In 1983 President Reagan expanded the US ocean boundary by presidential proclamation and established what is called the Exclusive Economic Zone. The EEZ according to the USGS is an exclusive economic zone, the outer limit of which is a line drawn in such a manner that each point on it is 200 nautical miles from the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.  

Issa reintroduced his bill Wednesday to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.  

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has introduced the bill multiple times in past sessions of Congress.  

Under the proposal, references to the EEZ in U.S. laws, regulations, maps and other documents would carry Reagan’s name.

Issa’s proposed Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone (3.4 million square miles of ocean!) escalates the scale of naming honors for the former president. There is already a Reagan international airport and the Reagan federal building which is one of Washington DC’s largest buildings. And one day the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Reagan  may set sail over the Reagan Ocean.( please note: an earlier version of this said the USS Reagan was a submarine this was an error )  

Delightful little soiree coming up on July 31. (So sorry I shan’t be in town.) The Ethan Allen Institute, the vastly influential (in its own mind and that of its founder, El Jefe General John McClaughry) Ayn Randian propaganda outfit, is sponsoring a discussion on…

How one small village in Vermont decided to convert its public school into an independent school – and the obstacles placed in its path.

This would be the North Bennington elementary school, which has stoutly resisted the forces of  centralized government and fought the relentless pressure of the evil bureaucrats in Montpelier, who have been pressuring small schools to fold themselves into the hives of collectivism known as Regional Education Districts.

That bureaucratic push to centralize the schools was launched in 2006.

Hmmm. Who was Governor in 2006?

Oh yeah, renowned socialist Jim Douglas.

Well, I’m sure the panel discussion will be fair and balanced. As fair and balanced as everything else EAI does.  

An important message from Steve Crowley, Chairman of the the Vermont Sierra Club:

JOIN US IN CALLING FOR A TAR-SANDS-FREE VERMONT!!!

Sunday, July 29

Burlington, VT

12:00 noon, City Hall Park, join the parade

2:00 gather at Battery Park

2:30 or so:  Human Oil Spill

Fellow Vermonters,

    Welcome to the summer of 2012.  This may go down as the season in which there was no longer an excuse for ignorance, no longer an excuse for keeping our collective head in the sand.

*Record setting heat waves across the USA.

*Drought conditions covering 56% of the nation.

*A third to a half of the nation’s corn crop lost to the drought.

*A second year of unprecedented wildfires.

    Sound familiar?  If anyone’s paying attention, it should sound familiar.  This is not just a list of this month’s headlines; it’s also straight out of the climate change playbook.  These are the conditions that have been predicted for over a decade by government agencies and academics modeling most likely outcomes.  They weren’t necessarily going to happen all at once, and they definitely weren’t going to happen this fast, but here we go.

    The bad news, if that weren’t uncomfortable enough already, is that it gets worse.  One of the hidden features in these models, the ones that have accurately predicted what’s happening now, is that when more greenhouse gases are first added to the atmosphere, it takes a while for the ocean/atmosphere system to heat up.  Today’s heat, and drought, and fires, are the result of CO2 levels two decades ago.  Increases since then have yet to show up in our climate.

    The good news, if it can be called that, is that we do not have to just sit and let it happen.  There are things we can do.  Certainly, as many of us in Vermont are doing, we can and must look at our own energy use, and that in our communities, schools, and businesses, and work at getting our energy use of all kinds to a minimum.  We can install and support renewable energy.  I hope we’re all looking for those opportunities.

    But there is something else that’s equally important.  As many are aware, there are a number of relatively new sources of fossil fuels that are being developed.  Mountain top removal in the Appalachians, oil shale, hydrofracturing to release natural gas.  While some see these as a way to pave our energy future, they also pave a path towards an ever deepening climate crisis.  And worst of all may be the Alberta tar sands.  This is a huge deposit of potentially recoverable fossil fuel.  Climate scientists have looked at what’s there, and have said, if this deposit is fully brought into the world’s energy system, the resulting carbon emissions would spell the end of anything useful we could do to avoid the worst climate scenarios.  “Game over,” the much repeated quote from NASA’s James Hansen.

    It happens that we in the Northeast have a chance to make a statement about this, and perhaps have a small impact on the outcome.  To use the tar sand deposit to its capacity, there has to be a way to get the tar sands oil, a form known as bitumen, to its refineries and markets.   Last year, the Keystone XL Pipeline, intended to serve this purpose, was much in the news as the subject of massive protests at the White House, and eventually delayed by President Obama.  Now, another plan is in the works, to reconfigure the use and flow of several pipelines in Vermont and other states and provinces to bring the bitumen to the east coast.  The Trailbreaker Pipeline, as it’s called, includes a pipeline that traverses Vermont from near Troy, runs close to Lake Willoughby, and crosses into New Hampshire near Guildhall.  Just last year, a similar pipeline in Michigan, owned by the same company, ruptured, causing widespread damage that has still not been fully cleaned up.  We don’t want this happening in Vermont.  And we certainly do not want to add the carbon emissions.

    As the New England Governors and eastern Canadian Premiers gather next weekend  for their annual meeting in Burlington,  we are taking the opportunity to speak out.  While Governor Shumlin has expressed his opposition to this use of the pipeline, we want to be sure he and the other leaders know about how serious this is.

    We ask you, as a caring and concerned Vermonter, to join us in making this statement.  On Sunday, July 29, as the conferees gather at the Hilton in Burlington, we will be there.  After gathering at noon at City Hall Park, we’ll be marching down to Battery Park.  After words from a few speakers (here’s the fun part), hundreds of us, dressed in black t-shirts, will create the world’s largest “Human Oil Spill” alongside Battery Street, across from the conference.

    So, please come join us, ready to have an afternoon of comraderie and purpose, as well as a bit of fun.  Come join the crowd at City Hall Park, and look for the Sierra Club banner.

    Let’s not wait until the Northeast Kingdome turns into the kind of tinderbox we saw last year in Texas, or this year in Colorado!

Steve Crowley

Chair, Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club

***

If you are not already a member of the Vermont Sierra Club, now is the time to join!

You can become a member of the Vermont Sierra Club by going to the below link:

http://action.sierraclub.org/s…

SOLIDARITY!

So, this whole state trooper/overtime/pension-padding thing. (And Randy Brock’s ham-fisted effort to cash in on it.) A few thoughts to pass along…

Governor Shumlin’s initial handling was brilliant. He got word that the story of Sgt. Jim Deeghan’s alleged time-sheet falsification was about to break, and within a few hours he’d called a news conference with Tom L’esperance and Keith Flynn and Michael O’Neill of the troopers’ union closing ranks behind him. He took what could have been a damaging election-year scandal and owned it — in political and managerial terms.

This is one of the things that Peter Shumlin does best, and it’s one of the most important things an executive has to do. I don’t always agree with the decisions he makes, but he is decisive. The buck stops here, don’t ya know.

It would have been easy to let the story come out, issue a statement through a spokesperson, and let Flynn shoulder the load. Then, of course, he would have been back on his heels playing defense, and handing a nice juicy “wasteful government” issue to Randy Brock, who desperately needs an issue.

(And who made a royal hash of this one. First, the timing: he waited two full days after the initial Deeghan revelation, and then he held his belated news conference right after Maine Governor Paul LePage had left a turd on his doorstep. Brock’s issue, naturally, got buried in the LePage fallout. Completely foreseeable. Second, the substance: his figures included the last six months of the Douglas Administration, and the first six of Shumlin’s. The waters were muddied from the very beginning. Which is why Jeb Spaulding’s response to Brock’s charge was basically a horselaugh.

Yeah, those expensive consultants are really earning their keep.

Speaking of which, $48,000 in salary for Darcie Johnston? For four or five months of work? Astounding.)

Anyway, Shumlin got off to a great start, setting the hounds loose and promising a thorough and transparent investigation. Deeghan was indicted within a few days.

Now comes the hard part: the follow-through.

The state is looking at six years of Deeghan’s time sheets, six months’ worth of sheets from the Williston station where Deeghan worked, and three months of sheets from other VSP posts. And Shumlin is sounding a bit optimistic: (Warning: link will take you to the partially-paywalled Freeploid.)

“So far, it is our belief, based upon what we’ve seen, that this is an isolated challenge,” Shumlin said at a news conference Tuesday.

…”What we’re looking at now is, since it appears – it’s alleged – that that system was abused, what went wrong. Was it a system problem, or was it a personnel problem?” Shumlin said. “I think probably it was a personnel problem.”

Yes, he hopes it’s a personnel problem — a bad apple in a healthy barrel. But frankly, I’d be surprised if it’s not a system problem. The system seems to contain ample motive and opportunity for overtime-fudging. If Deeghan is the only one who took advantage, that’d be somewhat remarkable.

From what we know so far, Deeghan (allegedly, allegedly) claimed absurd amounts of overtime, fabricated incidents that never happened, and screwed around with the VSP’s contract for policing the town of Jericho. He reportedly approved his own time sheets. If all this is true, then the system gave Deeghan an unconscionable amount of freedom to play fast and loose with his own salary.

And his potential reward: a pumped-up lifetime pension based on the two top-earning years of his VSP career. Now, I understand there are good reasons to base a pension on top earnings, to reward a loyal soldier who rises through the ranks and has an honorable career. But when a person has an opportunity to claim overtime pay without any review, basing a pension on top pay is like a bank putting its vault on the sidewalk and leaving the door open all night.

It may turn out that Deeghan was the only one taking advantage of the system. I hope so, and Governor Shumlin certainly hopes so. But that wouldn’t mean there aren’t severe problems with the system itself.

This is an important issue for us liberals. We believe in a government that provides a broad array of services that make our society a better place. We believe in fairly compensating the public workers tasked with providing those services. Scandals in public-sector pay are doubly damaging — to the liberal official in charge, and to the cause of liberalism. Nothing erodes the public’s faith in government and in unions like a public-sector worker charged with defrauding the taxpayer. For Shumlin’s own political sake, and for the liberal cause, I hope he follows through on his initial response to this issue.  

The heading on page 5A in today’s Freeps carried the message that big pharma wants us to read and accept:

Study: Medical marijuana ineffective

End of story; but not quite.  

A more thorough reading of the article reveals that nothing has been accomplished by the University of Arizona “study,” except to demonstrate that there is insufficient data available to prove conclusively that marijuana is an effective treatment for a laundry list of ailments, including anxiety, depression, migraine, and post-traumatic stress disorder.  

As  Dr. Sue Sisley, a medical doctor and assistant professor of psychiatry and internal medicine, also at the University of Arizona, observes, scientific evidence of efficacy is an

“…unattainable standard”  because it is very difficult to perform peer-reviewed studies on drugs that the federal government says have no medical uses.

Witness the University’s own policy with regard to cultivation of medical marijuana.

While the use of Medical Marijuana is legal in the state of Arizona, Cannabis spp. remains a Schedule 1 illegal drug under Federal law and as such, Arizona Cooperative Extension cannot be involved with this plant in any form or context-including advice on appropriate applications of pesticides such as insecticides, herbicides and fungicides to control pests or of growth regulators, fertilizers or other substances to improve the growth of Cannabis spp. plants, or advice on appropriate engineering controls or design, growing conditions or environments, and other information used to grow, propagate, manage or enhance production of Cannabis spp.

Assistance with medical marijuana plant health questions will not be provided by Extension faculty.

Individuals requesting such information will not be provided referral information

Dr. Sisley points out that Arizona’s state health director, Will Humble who together with Arizona’s Republican governor Jan Brewer, opposes medical marijuana, is relying on this obstacle to continue supporting his position.

“He knows we’ll never be able to do that (prove its efficacy),” said Sisley.

But I suspect the overarching story, once again, is the power of big pharma’s long arm of research funding.

It’s a familiar pattern to anyone who has taken a look at other university “research” projects whose findings all too predictably reinforce the position of corporate funders.  

We saw that with MIT’s highly publicized and tainted study that supposedly “proved”  no harmful effects from exposures to low-level radiation over long periods of exposure.

What was glaringly evident of MIT’s bias, ie. the tremendous investment and embedding of nuclear industry interests in its research efforts, can no doubt also be observed in big pharma’s relationship with the University of Arizona research facilities.

In short, the headline should read:

“Big pharma continues to get the results it pays for.  Patient needs be damned.”

This one flew under the radar, in the midst of the Rutland County GOP’s own goal and Monday’s blizzard of campaign finance reports. But, according to an Associated Press story distributed yesterday, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito has quietly scotched the Corrections Citizens’ Advisory Group.

The CCAG was formed in 2005 after a series of inmate suicides and deaths of people in custody, and was designed to provide an outside perspective on prison operations. But Pallito sees no point in continuing:

Pallito said that given the way the Corrections Citizens’ Advisory Group has been operating in recent years, it has become a waste of time and resources.

“I suspended the CCAG for just a period to step back and take a look at whether or not it’s really having the desired outcome,” Pallito said in an interview, adding he expected to make a decision about its future by fall.

After the jump: Ineffective, or hamstrung?

Okay, so maybe the CCAG has outlived its real purpose. Fair enough.

Oh, what’s that?

The decision drew fire from one member of the panel, while another had sent an email to Pallito indicating frustration that the panel didn’t seem to be having much of an impact. 



Committee member Gordon Bock of Northfield said it was disheartening that in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration, which “has prided itself since taking office on a commitment to transparency and open government, the Department of Corrections makes it look like it wants to be imperious and clandestine.”

CCAG member Alan Taplow has complained of “several cancellations and postponements,” which indicate to him “that CCAG is hardly one of the Commissioner’s priorities.”

Hm. We appear to have a chicken/egg situation: is the CCAG superfluous, or is it hamstrung because Pallito wants it gone?

Pallito claims that his department gets enough public scrutiny through the Legislature and via public posting of DOC policies. But at least one member of the Legislature’s Corrections Oversight Committee, Bill Lippert, believes the citizens’ panel should continue. The legislative panel has a meeting tomorrow, and Lippert says the issue is likely to come up.  

There’s not enough information for me to choose sides here, but I’m generally skeptical of governmental bodies and officials who want to limit public review of their activities. Especially when the body in question has a troubled past.

Note: After this original post was written, RCGOP chair Rob Towle issued a real, actual APOLOGY. Details after the jump below.

Awwwww. The Rutland County GOP has apparently dumped its Facebook page. You know, the one famous for definitely racist and all-but-racist anonymous postings in the name of topical humor?

Well, it’s gone. Thankfully, we preserved their excesses in the posts linked above.

Ever since GMD first brought the Facebook posts to light on Sunday, Rob Towle, the tone-deaf chair of the RCGOP, had issued a strong of absurd defenses, non-apologies, and attacks in apology form. I guess things finally got too hot for him — especially since the national media is on the case. First Huffington Post, and now NBCNews.com.

Might also have had something to do with VTGOP chair Jack Lindley’s evident displeasure at his southern brethren’s comedic diarrhea, as reported yesterday by VTDigger:

As for an official apology, Lindley said, “I haven’t actually seen it, so it’s a little hard for me to be able to say that I’m issuing an apology.” He repeated that it wasn’t part of “civil discourse” several times, however, also calling it “most inappropriate.”

…”If I had any control over it whatsoever, that would never see the light of day. But I have no control over it, obviously.”

I can almost imagine him hanging up the phone and mixing himself a nice tall Jack-and-Maalox. The last thing he needed, what with the fallout from Paul LePage’s visit and the disastrous campaign finance reports filed by his candidates, is another self-inflicted injury.

Farewell, Rutland County GOP Facebook Page; we hardly knew ye.

Later update: After two full days of defensiveness, false apologies, and attacks in the form of apologies, RCGOP chair Rob Towle has finally — FINALLY — learned the art of the apology. From the Rutland Herald:

“I want to let everyone know that I am truly sorry about the stupid and insensitive post that I reposted to the Rutland County page Sunday,” he wrote. “It was a case of bad judgement and anyone that knows me, knows that the post does not reflect my personal values, nor does it in any way reflect the values or beliefs of any GOP official, Candidate, GOP worker, or any person that I am friends with or associate with. At no time was any person other than myself involved with this post and I wanted to make sure people understand I take full responsibility.

“In writing this statement (with a heavy heart and great sorrow), I hope this message will reach those offended and will take this apology for face value and find it in their hearts to forgive.”

Touching. And I’m glad he finally came clean — not only in his recognition that the “joke” was offensive, but also that he was, himself, responsible for posting it.

Still, the fact that it took him two days does him no credit. And I suspect it came only after heavy pressure from state and/or national GOP officials.