On Tuesday, the Governor came to St. Albans to sign the Working Landscapes Bill.  

This is as it should be, to crown departing Democratic Senator Sara Kittell’s years of dedicated toil on the Agriculture Committee with a final significant achievement.

For me, though, the St. Albans signing was filled with irony.  Had this recognition of the tremendous importance of agriculture to our economic future come somewhat sooner to Franklin County, we might not now be looking at what could well be the end of farming in a significant area of prime agricultural soils adjacent to Exit 20 of I-89.

This summer, City and Town residents wait expectantly for work to begin on the first big box retail store in the county.  With retail space totaling roughly 160,000-square ft., this Walmart will be the biggest one in Vermont.  If it is the first, it will certainly not be the last.

Despite the developer’s PR to the contrary, casual conversation reveals that support for the project is probably almost evenly divided.  Some will find it convenient, but dread the traffic; others recognize this to be just another nail in the coffin of our local economy.

For me, it signals the beginning of the end of the very working landscapes S.246 is meant to support.  Without strengthening their weight in the Act 250 permit process, the effect of this bill is largely a moot point here in St. Albans, as “development pressures” always seem to close the deal.

One of the failings of the permit process is that it allows developers to trade-off on working landscapes through a mitigation scheme which, while intended to protect  environmentally sensitive areas and ag soils, is often exploited in the permit process in order to get around a preservation requirement.

So, while we celebrate the spirit of the Working Landscapes Bill, let’s not forget a moment of silence for the working farms and ag soils that will continue to disappear from Franklin County in the relentless push for development at all costs.

The first few months of the 2012 legislative session were largely devoid of disputation and controversy, as the Legislature disposed of some pretty serious issues — Irene cleanup, the budget, the Vermont State Hospital and state office complex replacements, the next step on health care reform.

But in the last few weeks, things went sideways. And the lion’s share of the dysfunction was in the State Senate. Which raises the question: What kind of job did John Campbell do as Senate President Pro Tem? And should he be given another chance in 2013?

Some facts are inarguable: the House maintained a good pace and moved through a lot of legislation more or less on time, while the Senate played a frantic game of catch-up in the closing days of the Legislature. Most of the visible conflict came on the Senate side. And, where there were differences between the two bodies, the House won out on almost every issue.

In a look-back on the past session, VTDigger’s Anne Galloway concluded that Speaker Shap Smith had emerged as the dominant force; she quotes one lobbyist who said that Smith is “in charge of the building.” On the other hand…

Lobbyists and lawmakers say Campbell, who is well-liked, had difficulty controlling the Senate calendar. Instead of marching through the day’s orders, no one knew what legislation he was actually going to take up on a given day. They say he came across as too eager to please, disorganized and willing to change his position on a whim.

That’s pretty damning stuff, evidence that Campbell was failing at basic tasks of leadership.

After the jump: amendments, subamendments, and a horse’s ass.

Galloway then noted, in Campbell’s defense, that the Senate is full of strong personalities, “many of whom are newbies,” particularly Peter Galbraith, who “showed an unrivaled penchant for grandstanding.” But Galbraith aside (this guy used to be a diplomat??), I saw a lot more disruption from the old guard, particularly Dick Sears and Campbell himself. Methinks the Senate vets are used to doing things their own way, whether it makes sense (or even follows the rules) or not.

And besides, it’s Campbell’s job to ride herd on strong personalities. If he can’t do it, maybe someone else should try. And there’s no excuse for a lack of control over the calendar. More Galloway:

Important bills got stuck in committee and then appeared as amendments to other bills that were eventually ruled germane, or not, depending. …This led to long days of debate on the Senate floor because senators were concerned that bills hadn’t been fully vetted for prime time. Hallmarks of the debate included constant points of order, amendments to amendments and subamendments, and recesses at the sign of any conflict (sometimes as many as seven in a single session).

One of those recesses featured a compelling example of Leadership In Action. This is from the Vermont Press Bureau, published May 3, story hidden behind the Herald/Times Argus paywall. (I subscribe. You’re welcome.)

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell and Sen. Dick McCormack butted heads on labor legislation that would allow childcare workers to form a union and collectively bargain with the state.

Campbell, a fierce opponent of the bill, has repeatedly passed over labor-related bills on the Senate floor that McCormack could have attached his childcare union amendment to.

McCormack rose on the Senate floor and asked whether Campbell intended to “run out the clock” on the labor bills to block the childcare union legislation.

Campbell took offense at the suggestion, and Sen. Dick Mazza asked for a recess.

After Campbell and McCormack left their seats and came together on the Senate floor, Campbell told McCormack: “You’re such a horse’s ass.”

McCormack fired back: “Don’t call me a horse’s ass.”

Wonder if there were any school groups in the gallery that day. I’m tempted to give Campbell a new nickname: Senate President Pro Tem John “Horse’s Ass” Campbell. But I’m a forgiving type (snort), and I’m sure Campbell was driven to extremes by McCormack’s brazen insistence on pushing a piece of legislation that Campbell was unilaterally blocking in a fit of pique over union lobbying tactics.  

The disarray in the Senate was bad enough that some are talking of a possible challenge to Campbell. Anne Galloway:

Campbell last week declared in no uncertain terms he will be running for the Senate and the Pro Tem position again, but a number of Statehouse mavens interviewed for this story said his leadership of the Senate could be challenged come next January.

…The other names bandied about for the top job? Claire Ayer, Ann Cummings, Tim Ashe. Cummings, in an interview, said she was interested in the top job before and would be again. The others demurred.

Usually, Vermont tends to be a “go-along, get along” kind of place that will put up with shortcomings in its incumbent officeholders (cough*BillSorrell*cough). For there to be this kind of open talk about Campbell, you know this is serious.

The name “Tim Ashe” is an interesting one. Some Statehouse observers saw numerous examples of the Prog/Dem cozying up to the Old Lions of the Senate, which seemed rather uncharacteristic at the time. If he’s pondering a move against Campbell, the cozying suddenly makes more sense.

(And if he does grab the gavel, won’t Seven Days just be littered with disclaimers?)

So… should Campbell stay or should he go? And who should take his place?  

I couldn’t just let this one slip by, without a brief visit on GMD.

Between 1978 and 2006, Kodak, the company that brought us the Brownie then held a near monopoly on photography through most of the twentieth century, secretly had a nuclear reactor tucked away in the basement.  

Though unbeknownst to the good people of Rochester, New York going about their daily lives all around it, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assures us that they knew all about it.

Matt Pearce of the LaTimes made this wry observation:

A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Los Angeles Times that the company had enriched 1,582 grams of uranium-235 up to 93.4%, a level considered weapons-grade. Good thing Kodak isn’t in Iran; that’s the kind of thing Israel’s been threatening to go to war over.

The company, which is now in bankcruptcy proceedings

ditched the uranium in 2007 with the coordination of the U.S. government, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Great.  One has to wonder what exactly has become of the waste, and how provision for decommissioning will be built into the bankruptcy.   Is it going to be stockholders first and the people of the State of New York only second?

Neil Sheehan, a commission spokesman, told The Times that he doesn’t know how many private companies have weapons-grade uranium but that Kodak’s situation was rare. “This was a unique type of device they were using at Kodak,” he said.

I’m sure the folks in Rochester New York might now agree that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not be trusted as the sole decider when it comes to nuclear safety.  

Retired Wall Street kingpin Bruce Lisman has made a big splash in state politics with a blizzard of advertising from his self-funded right-wing advocacy group, Campaign for Vermont. (Well, it’s supposedly nonpartisan, but its issues are clearly conservative.) Of necessity, those brief ads are short on specifics and long on buzzwords and right-wing dog whistles.

It’s unclear where Lisman wants to go with this; he might be a future self-funded candidate a la Rich Tarrant, or perhaps a conservative sugar daddy a la the Koch Brothers. But the question is, what does Bruce Lisman really stand for? And if he did actually wield political power, what would he do?

The answers can be found in a May 2010 speech entitled “Finding Skin: How Vermont Can Become Its Own Version of an Economic Powerhouse Without Abandoning Its Values.” “Skin” is an allusion to “skin in the game,” a Warren Buffett coinage referring to organizational insiders who use their own money to buy stock in their enterprise. But the advertisement for the event included a mugshot-style photo of Lisman that made him look like he meant “finding skin” in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way.

The talk can be viewed online thanks to Channel 17/Town Meeting Television. I’ve watched the whole thing, which is not exactly fun; as a public speaker, Lisman is halting and colorless. But the talk reveals his outlook in detail, and the details are by turns striking, disturbing, and appalling. A full rundown follows, but suffice it to say that Bruce Lisman’s worldview is a pure Wall Street product (unsurprising in a person who spent two-thirds of his life there).

Lisman is a capitalist in the literal sense: he believes that capital is the most important thing for a society’s health. He believes that economic growth is the solution to all our problems, and that fostering growth is government’s primary job. He repeatedly emphasizes “transparency” and “accountability,” but he’s short on specifics. He seems to believe that government should run like a business — an article of faith among tycoons-turned-politicians, which has failed to work in real life whenever it’s been tried. (viz. Craig Benson’s brief, unhappy reign as Governor of New Hampshire.)  

Details after the jump, including Sh*t Bruce Says and The Lisman Agenda.  

The highlights: Sh*t Bruce Lisman Says

Here are some of the most outrageous things he said in his 2010 talk. First, as I previously reported, he described the 2008 economic collapse — which his own employer, Bear Stearns, had a big role in creating with its risky investment practices — as “this thing that happened,” a “Darwinian asteroid,” a catastrophe arriving from elsewhere, for which no human or institution could possibly be blamed. Which indicates either a tragically limited understanding blinkered by years of immersion in the culture of Wall Street, or a near-sociopathic level of disingenuousness. But let’s move on.

On the role of government, Lisman says:

“We need to declare that economic growth and prosperity is of first-magnitude importance to the welfare of our state, and is the ONLY answer for what might ail it.” … “The Governor needs to lead the economic development effort personally. The Governor has to make it the most important thing on his or her schedule every day.”

Wow, really? The Governor shouldn’t worry about recovery from Tropical Storm Irene, or health care reform, or social services, or corrections, or legislative relations, until after he caters to the needs of businesses and investors? Yeah, that’s not radical at all. Now, on to taxation:

“Any opportunity to lower taxes should go to capital gains and corporate taxes, not to individuals. The most precious thing in the galaxy is capital at risk. In exchange for risking their capital, they ought to be rewarded for that. If we care about economic prosperity and growing companies that create it, then we should reward them.” 

Gee, I thought the reward for risking capital was PROFIT, not a tax break. And I thought investors and corporations should bear responsibility for supporting the society that fosters their success. The rich are already richer than ever, and corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash. But if they get a tax break, then somehow capital will flow freely?

I’m no Wall Street genius, but I know that people invest because of opportunity. Our system is based on supply and demand — that’s Economics 101. If you don’t have demand, it doesn’t matter how strongly you goose the supply side. It won’t work. Now, on to taxes for the 99%:

“The taxpaying base is quite thin. Because of the progressive nature of it, there’s a cutoff that excludes more than 50% of potential taxpayers from paying taxes. My view: I think everyone is either in the enterprise or they’re not. You’d want everyone to pay something in.”

The Lisman prescription: tax cuts for the 1% and tax hikes for the poor and working class. Also, that “more than 50%” is an exaggeration of a common right-wing lie. It’s usually put at 47% who “pay no taxes” In reality they pay no income taxes, but they pay a variety of other taxes: payroll (including Social Security and Medicare), property, and sales taxes, if nothing else. And the reason many poor people don’t pay income tax is because of the Earned Income Tax Credit — which is meant to encourage the poor to work, even at low-paying jobs, because they get to keep the paltry wages they make.

As for social programs and supporting those in need, Lisman issues a superficial endorsement: he says we have an obligation to uphold the “social contract.” But he goes on to blow the dog-whistle of conservative complaint about the cost of the “social contract”:

“We need to define our social contract better. What does the social contract cost?” …  “If you were to take all our programs in the social contract and compare them to the national average, you’d get a glimpse of how much it’d cost to do the things we say we want to do. If we did that, we could decide how much we want to spend.”

Really? Comparing to the national average is your silver bullet, your big idea? No matter whether the comparison is relevant or meaningful? Would it be relevant to compare Northfield Savings Bank to Wells Fargo, and to run NSB in the same way? Of course not. Lisman also implies that the social contract ought to be a private matter instead of a government operation:

“Kindness and caring are in our gene pool. It’s embodied in something called the Social Contract — our obligation to help those who require kindness and caring.” …”If we can connect those defining traits with two others that make us true Vermonters, practicality and frugalness, we can renew that other great trait of Vermonters: balance.”

Implying that our current social safety net is “out of balance,” i.e. too generous. Lisman follows his call for “practicality and frugalness” with a childhood anecdote about his father distributing food to families in need. He doesn’t overtly argue that we should dismantle government aid programs and return to the salad days when we all cared for our neighbors, but the implication is there. (And private aid was never up to the task. The good old days, as Otto Bettmann said, were horrible. Private charity never came close to meeting the need, and a lot of people suffered and died for lack of help.)

I also like that casual reference to “us true Vermonters,” coming from a guy who’s spent only three of the last 40-odd years in Vermont, and has clearly assimilated the Wall Street worldview.

And now, let’s take a look at Bruce Lisman’s prescription for fixing what ails Vermont.

The Lisman Agenda

In his talk, Lisman ticked off a list of things that should be done to turn Vermont into that “economic powerhouse.” Here are some of them, with my comments.

“Declare that economic growth and prosperity is of first-magnitude importance to the welfare of our state, and is the ONLY answer for what might ail it.”

Really? Growth is the only answer? Who’s asking the questions here, bucko? Economic growth is the solution for environmental degradation, climate change, urban decay, racism, sexism, crumbling infrastructure? Hell, I’d argue that even when you’re talking growth and progress, the free market isn’t always the best driver. Example: the Erie Canal. It made a huge difference in the course of America’s history by providing the first opening to the West. Until the canal opened, America was a narrow strip between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains. Without the Erie Canal, westward settlement would have been delayed for who knows how long. European powers would have had the first opportunity to stake claims to the continent, and North America’s political map could well have been permanently divided.

The Erie Canal was completely funded, organized, and built by the State of New York. The Bear Stearnses of the day refused to touch it.

“We should pursue [economic growth] with the same sense of purpose that we have pursued a more perfect safety net.”

Gee, I didn’t know we had a perfect social safety net. I thought our progress had been slow, halting, uneven, and fraught with political divisions. If we pursue economic growth in the same way, then our economy’s going down the crapper.

“Declare that our government is a government for all the people, and we can prove it by pursuing remarkable transparency.”… “How can a state that is so small and so intimate keep us in the dark about so many things? Like our taxes and where our taxes go. It’s a complete mystery to us.”

Is that really about a lack of transparency, or a lack of desire on the part of citizens to find that stuff out? People are busy, distracted, and (if voter turnout is any indication) disinterested in government. They are certainly uninterested in the details of policy and budgeting. If state government were transparent, how many would avail themselves of the information?

I agree that Vermont needs more transparency. But I doubt that it’s the answer to all our problems, as Lisman seems to believe.

“Pursue performance-shaped budgeting. If you run a business and you invest $100, you want to know if it worked. Performance-shaped budgeting would tell us where our money is being spent and would tell us if our money is being well spent.” … “Every agency and spending program should have goals and ways to measure success in some defined period of time.”

A popular shibboleth of the “run government like a business” crowd. The problem is, government is fundamentally NOT a business. The vast majority of government programs don’t have well-defined beginnings and endings. They are ongoing in nature. You could analyze specific new initiatives, but not most of government. How do you determine success of social services or corrections or transportation or homeland security?

There then followed the previously mentioned call for redefining the social contract, with an apparent eye toward making it cheaper and less comprehensive.

“Finally, we need to embrace economic growth and prosperity but we shouldn’t try to predict the future. We shouldn’t choose companies or industries.” … “Rather, we should build a platform that provides equal opportunity for all kinds of companies and industries to do business here.”

Apparently Lisman would have opposed the auto industry bailout; better to let Darwinian forces determine whether we have an auto industry or not. I assume Lisman would also oppose local property tax breaks for individual developers, government subsidies to specific industries (nuclear power, take a bow!), agricultural price supports (there goes the Vermont dairy industry), or any of the other billion or so ways in which the public sector tries to influence the course of economic growth. And for the sake of consistency, I sure hope Lisman opposed the government bailout of Wall Street in 2008. Let that Darwinian asteroid hit full force!

The fundamental problem is that Lisman ignores the messy complexity of real life, and frames everything in terms of finance and economics. “The most precious thing in the galaxy is capital at risk.” Really? How about love, beauty, spirituality, creativity? How about serving humanity or the planet? Entrepreneurship and ambition? How about our precious freedom? “Give me capital at risk, or give me death!” Now that’s an inspiring slogan. Not everything in life can be boiled down to dollars and cents. In fact, most of the good stuff cannot be.

In sum, Bruce Lisman is a dangerous man, shrouding himself in moderate, common-sensical costume while seeking to promote a truly radical agenda that puts business in the center of everything, and government in the thrall of business.  

Postscript. I’m putting a lot of weight on a two-year old speech. And you might say, well, this is an old speech and may not reflect Lisman’s priorities today, My response:

— It’s the only thing we have to go by. Lisman doesn’t speak in public at length very often. His views as reflected in CFV propaganda are sketchy and often deliberately misleading.

— The principles in his speech line up very closely with the stated priorities of CFV. The speech goes beyond what CFV has publicly advocated, but there is little or no disagreement between the two.

— He’s very big on accountability. Well, he says some remarkable, and at times appalling, things in the speech. He should be held accountable for them.

A word on the title: “The business of government is business” is a quote from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” It is often falsely attributed to Calvin Coolidge — sometimes rendered as “The business of America is business” — and has helped define him as a heartless arch-conservative. His actual quote, however, is “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” Which is quite a different thing. And when you see the actual quote, you have to conclude that, on financial matters, Bruce Lisman is to the right of Calvin Coolidge.

 Former President George W. Bush and seven others from his administration were found guilty of war crimes in a symbolic Kuala Lumpur tribunal of conscience. Included in the guilty verdicts are former Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; Bush/Cheney administration legal counselors Alberto Gonzales and David Addington; Defense Dept. counsel William Haynes II; and Justice Dept. lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Victims of torture told a panel of five judges in Kuala Lumpur of their suffering at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among the evidence, Briton Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, said he was beaten, put in a hood and left in solitary confinement. Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi said she was stripped and humiliated in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is a symbolic non-governmental entity established in 2007 by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohmad.

Tribunal president judge Tan Sri Lamin Mohd Yunus said the eight accused were also individually and jointly liable for crimes of torture in accordance with Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter.

"The US is subject to customary international law and to the principles of the Nuremberg Charter, and exceptional circumstances such as war, instability and public emergency cannot excuse torture."

The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal findings will be publicized and submitted to the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Security Council. Tribunal members hope nations will be reluctant to invite “war criminals” from the Bush years to their countries. Maybe expecting a vigorous effort to deal with Bush/Cheney administration’s possible war crimes here in the US was always a quaint concept. But for now justice has swerved, at least symbolically, to Malaysia.  

With Democratic Senator Sara Kittell announcing that she will not run again this year; and Randy Brock already out of the picture, Franklin County’s senate race is wide open.  Former Democratic Senator Don Collins has already thrown his hat in the ring, and now Caroline Bright of Fletcher has announced as well for the Democratic party.

The 21-year old graduated yesterday from St. Mike’s and, fulfilling a long-standing ambition, announced her candidacy on the same day.   A sorority alum who favors pearls and polished nails, Bright’s style appears a departure from the usual for young Vermont Democrats.

Republicans are fielding two candidates for the Senate as well:  Norm McAllister of Highgate, a ten-year veteran of the House,  and Joe Sinagra of St. Albans Town, a former housing industry lobbyist who now owns a bounce-house rental business. (How’s that for irony?)  

Mr. McAllister is a goat farmer who distinguished himself this past session as the only member of the House Agriculture Committee to oppose labelling of genetically engineered food.  He himself grows a GMO crop of corn, so it’s not surprising that he voted contrary to the majority opinion in Vermont.

Franklin County politics is definitely becoming a youth movement.   Dynamic Franklin County Democratic Chair, Mike McCarthy is just 28 years old, and the St. Albans City Council now boasts a 25-year old Alderman from Ward 5, Ryan Doyle.

Of course the long-term commitment that comes with election to office must outlive the glamour of a brief campaign.  There are persistent rumors about another of Franklin County’s  “young turks,” Republican Rep. Dustin Degree of St. Albans City, who has just finished his first term and is looking for a second.  It is said that he is not very good at showing up for committee meetings on which he is expected to serve.  One has to wonder if, at twenty-five, he really was mature enough to make that commitment.

Limited experience isn’t necessarily a liability and can provide all of the advantages of an open and inquiring mind. What is essential is intelligence, curiosity, some humility…and excellent mentors.

I was pleased to read in Ms. Bright’s bio that, even though she did not grow up on a farm,  she is particularly interested in agricultural issues and favors “diversification.”  Let’s hope that she’ll avail herself of Sara Kittell’s vast reserve of experience in this area.  If she does her homework well, perhaps Ms. Bright can make short work of Mr. McAllister.

According to her official bio,  Ms. Bright has an impressive record of service over her brief career; and the public nature of some of her endeavors means that she has most certainly gained poise and political skills that will no doubt serve her well.  

The temptation to underestimate her simply because she is a beauty queen will not be so great for her Republican challengers as it might have been had Sara Palin not stunned us all with her meteoric rise.

I have to admit, though, that my concern is more with her politics than her youth.

It is a little hard to avoid stereotypical assumptions about the strength of Ms. Bright’s progressive politics; but she apparently has some Democratic chops and I think we have to hope that, win or lose, as she finds her stride, she won’t be co-opted by the Blue Dogs of Franklin County.

Philip Baruth and the St. Albans Messenger are reporting that Sara Kittell will be stepping down after seventeen years representing Franklin County in the Vermont Senate.

Because of her committee assignments first in the General Affairs and Housing and then in the Health and Human Services committees I had the chance to work with Sara on a number of bills. I was always impressed by her instinctive empathy for and understanding of tenants, people labeled with mental illness, and others who are structurally powerless in our society. This is something that you don't necessarily see among everyone, even Democrats, and even people who come around to support you intellectually. In fact, it's rare.

There's one story, though, that really says all you need to know about Sara. David Moats, Pulitzer Prize winning writer from the Rutland Herald, tells it in his book Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage. In 2000, after the Vermont Supreme Court's Baker decision, when civil unions were the big issue in the Legislature, things were really ugly. Legislators who were known or suspected of supporting civil unions were getting threatening calls and even messages from constituents telling them that they would be going to hell; good legislators lost their offices in the Take Back Vermont backlash because of their support for civil unions. Then as now, Democrats had a strong majority in the Senate, and since Sara comes from a conservative county the Senate leadership went to her and told her that there were plenty of yes votes in the Senate, they didn't need her vote, so it would be okay if she voted no to avoid the almost certain personal attacks and potential loss of her seat. Sara knew what was right, and she was right there voting yes no matter what the cost. She later told a colleague, Mark McDonald, another civil union supporter, that it had never occurred to her to do anything else.

She was reelected anyway, but she certainly didn't know that at the time. This was a true profile in courage.

I'll miss Sara when the Senate returns next year.

The State Committee of the Vermont Democratic Party met yesterday in Randolph, and probably the issue that drew the most interest was the endorsement of candidates for statewide office.

On yesterday’s agenda were requests to endorse Doug Hoffer in his second run for Auditor of Accounts and TJ Donovan for Attorney General.

The Hoffer endorsement was pretty straightforward, and nearly unanimous (there was one “no” vote). Doug spoke to the committee and expressed his desire to be the guy who actually wants the office he’s running for, unlike Tom Salmon, who seems to be interested in just about everything except doing the job he was elected to do.

The bigger question was the endorsement of TJ Donovan, and that’s probably what brought the press out (Andy Bromage from Seven Days was in the front row). Part of the question was that there was a motion to endorse TJ, but there was no motion before the body to endorse Bill Sorrell, who was also in attendance. Consequently, some members raised the question of whether we should endorse one candidate, and what that would mean for the candidates and the message it would send to the public.

This all arises from the peculiar endorsement rules for the State Committee. Our bylaws provide that we can endorse more than one candidate for a single office, and we have done that in the past. For instance, in 2010 all the Democratic candidates for governor received the endorsement.

Still, the question was whether endorsing one candidate in May and another candidate at our next meeting, probably in July, would send the signal that the party is favoring Donovan over Sorrell.

To be absolutely clear, that’s just wrong. Many speakers specifically said they were voting to endorse Donovan yesterday and they intended to endorse Sorrell at our next meeting.

On the other hand,this is more evidence that TJ has gotten his campaign organized ahead of Sorrell’s. They were both present with their teams at yesterday’s meeting and at last week’s David Curtis Award dinner. Yesterday they both gave good speeches that were well received, and they are both lining up lists of important and prominent Democratic supporters.

Still, The fact that he got his petitions in first seems to be an indication that Donovan recognizes that he has to work hard to unseat an incumbent.

Does that mean it’s a sure thing? Absolutely not. For one thing, it’s always hard to defeat an incumbent. For another, TJ indicated yesterday his support for the drug database access bill that never became law this year. He argued that the bill was not the civil liberties nightmare its opponents painted it to be, but his support of this legislation may cost him support among the Democratic base.

This should be an interesting race.

Finally, one last observation: I always enjoy going to these meetings at Randolph Elementary School because of the great, large-scale student artwork on display, and yesterday was no exception. Randolph, like so many Vermont schools, clearly understands that schools are more than just test-taking machines.

It appears that my sister in Portland, Oregon can relax a bit; but friends in Japan, not so much.

Fairewinds Associates have an intriguing new video uploaded on their site, in which Arnie and Maggie Gundersen discuss the nature of “hot particles” and radiation with Marco Kaltofen, founder of Boston Chemical Data Corporation.

Boston Chemical Data has been analyzing automobile filters and childrens shoes collected from Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

In the new video, Mr. Kaltofen explains the nature of “hot particles” and radiation, and the manner in which they have been distributed to human beings following the accident.  He tells us that the size and nature of the radioactive particles affect their potential for damage, and describes a complex topography of radioactivity that was produced at Fukushima.

Mr. Kaltofen also debunks the tired old truism that dismisses concerns over the effects of radiation on human health by suggesting that so-called “background radiation” is harmless.  Take the time to watch the video and you will understand finally why YesVY’s tiresome banana analogy is an absurd proxy for arguing that the potential hazards to human health from nuclear radiation are insignificant.

It appears that automobile filters collected in Fukushima City, Tokyo, and Seattle in April 2011, have revealed that radioactive “hot particles” were heavily distributed to Fukushima City, just 65-kl from the accident site; much less heavily distributed over Tokyo; and almost not at all to Seattle.  

The distribution in Japan of these potentially destructive particles was widespread.  Mr. Kaltofen speculates that it was the smallest, and potentially most invasive, particles that travelled the furthest.  

His findings corroborate those of the test samples Arnie Gundersen collected at locations in Tokyo, including a previously decontaminated playground.  “Decontamination” has been demonstrated to be an imperfect solution that must be repeated in order to remain effective, as dirt and dust becomes disturbed over time, redistributing new contamination to the surface where children play and adults labor.

The power of the human mind, when faced with facts or realities at odds with long-held beliefs, to find ways to deny said facts or realities, is a wonder to behold.

Case in point: Bruce Lisman.

Lisman is the native Vermonter who spent decades in the executive suites of Wall Street before retiring to his home state in 2009. Last fall, he created Campaign for Vermont, the self-described nonpartisan, common-sense organization that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on clearly conservative issue-advocacy ads.  

In May of 2010 Lisman gave a talk in Burlington, which bore the verbose and mildly creepy title “Finding Skin: How Vermont Can Become Its Own Version of an Economic Powerhouse Without Abandoning Its Values.”

This talk can be seen online thanks to the good folks at Burlington’s Channel 17/Town Meeting Television. I’ve watched the whole thing, and I’ll have a full report in the near future. (Suffice it to say, Lisman reveals himself as (1) a lousy public speaker and (2) a hard-core free-marketeer whose policy prescriptions wouldn’t be out of line in a speech by Paul Ryan.)

For now, I wanted to pass along one little nugget from the talk. Remember that Lisman spent almost his entire career at Bear Stearns, the financial firm responsible for many of the iffy investment vehicles that almost brought down the global economy in 2008.

In his talk, Lisman gave the following description of the 2008 calamity:

“This thing that happened to us in ’08 and ’09 was not the ordinary garden-variety recession. It was a Darwinian asteroid that hit us. It was big enough to topple countries.”

Oh. My. God. Where do I begin? “This thing that happened,” this “Darwinian asteroid” (whatever the f*ck that’s supposed to mean). This Act of God. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it was an unforeseeable catastrophe that suddenly manifested out of nowhere. “Sure, we ran the Titanic through iceberg-infested waters and ignored 21 separate warnings of hazardous ice in its path — but who could have possibly foreseen its collision with an iceberg? Yeah, the sinking of the ship, the loss of 1500 people, it was this thing that happened.”

There are only two explanations for this piece of utter claptrap:

1. Bruce Lisman is in the grip of a magnificent delusion triggered by the collision of (a) his devout belief in the unsinkability of the free market and (b) the fact that Wall Street ran into an iceberg of its own making and had to be rescued by the government.

2. Bruce Lisman is a goddamn self-serving liar.

You make the call.

More on “Finding Skin” coming soon in this space.