Big trouble at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the Vermont company that’s been growing by leaps and bounds due to its popular single-cup coffeemakers (and the non-biodegradable K-cups they consume). Last week, GMCR stock took a tumble after it badly missed expectations for second-quarter profits. That, in turn, led to the latest bad news: Founder and Board Chairman Bob Stiller and lead director William Davis were removed from the Board of Directors after they were forced to sell big chunks of company stock during a time when such sales are prohibited by company rules designed to prevent illegal insider trading.

Well, ain’t that a sentence and a half. This is a complicated story, but it seems to indicate a real lack of judgment on Stiller’s part. And it’s one more black mark for a company that’s got more than enough on its plate already.

Stiller and Davis (especially Stiller) sold huge chunks of stock last week — five and a half million shares. They were forced to sell because they’d taken out big loans with their GMCR stock as collateral. The terms of the loans require stock sales if the stock price falls far enough fast enough. Which it did last week. More info on the practice from Bloomberg Business Week:

In general, executives take out loans backed by their stock as a way of obtaining funds without actually selling their shares. Loans are preferable to selling shares, which generate taxable capital gains and can look bad to investors.

If the shares decline in value, lenders will issue a margin call in which the executives must either pay down the loans or provide more collateral. If they fail to do so, the banks seek to recover their loans by selling some of the stock pledged as collateral in the open market.

Seems a bit iffy to me — taking out loans on company stock to avoid taxes — but apparently standard operating practice for top execs at successful companies. I’m going to focus on Stiller from here on, because he was by far the biggest borrower and the biggest seller. Before last week’s forced sale, he had put 12.5 million of his GMCR shares into margin accounts. Today, he still owns 8.3 million shares — and all but 1.9 million are in margin accounts.

In short, he borrowed huge amounts of money by pledging the lion’s share of his company stock. This worked fine as long as GMCR’s share price continued to soar, but spelled instant trouble if GMCR suffered reverses. And the forced stock sales would come at the worst possible time — when GMCR had just suffered a major reversal.

Is it just me, or was this a really, really stupid thing to do?

To me it looks like a fundamental violation of the first rule of personal finance: Never gamble with money you can’t afford to lose. And Stiller’s position was tenuous enough that he was also forced to unload eight million shares in Krispy Kreme to raise some emergency cash.  

In explaining his extensive borrowing, Stiller noted that he is officially retired and that his stock portfolio is his main source of income. Asked by the Associated Press about reports that he has lived a lavish lifestyle, he said…

“Maybe I shouldn’t do these things, but I’ve worked all my life building this company and it’s been successful,” said Stiller, 68. “I want to enjoy it. Whether it’s living lavishly, I think that’s all relative.”

Yes, it’s all relative. I’ll note here that while Stiller doesn’t draw a salary from GMCR, he did receive $175,296 last year in compensation for his duties as Chairman of the Board. That’s enough, by itself, to put Stiller in America’s top six percent for household income. But hardly enough to maintain an admittedly indulgent lifestyle.

And a huge comedown for a guy who was on the Forbes 400 list of American billionaires as recently as last September. Forbes estimated his fortune at $1.3 billion, mostly in GMCR stock. And more than 80% of that stock, as we now know, had been used as collateral in personal loans. This sounds less like something a savvy CEO would do, and more like the spending binge of a Lotto winner.

In response to Stiller and Davis’ exposed positions, GMCR revised its internal rules late last year, and no longer allows top executives or Directors to borrow against their company stock. (Stiller and Davis’ arrangements were grandfathered in.) Clearly, someone at GMCR saw potential trouble in their founder’s finances, and moved to prevent future recurrences.

Which is cold comfort for a company that’s heading into a very challenging time. It’s enjoyed a lovely period of rapid, almost uncontrolled growth thanks to its stranglehold on a popular market niche. But you can only sell so many of those K-cup machines, and GMCR’s patents will expire in September. They have high hopes for some new products, but the sharks are circling. And if there’s one thing harder than coming up with one hit, it’s creating an even better sequel. Just ask RIM, or Kajagoogoo, or Michael Cimino.  

Where to begin with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Other than to describe it as a can of worms, there is no way to do it justice.

So here, if you missed the individual items, is a brief rundown of some recent developments.

Closest to home, it appears that Vermont’s Public Service Board is prepared to challenge the NRC’s rather hasty relicensing approval for Vermont Yankee, on the grounds that the plant was not in possession of a valid Water Quality Certificate at the time of approval.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission violated Clean Water Act (Section) 401 when it granted (an Entergy Corp. subsidiary) a new federal license to operate Vermont Yankee without first obtaining the requisite Vermont-issued ‘401 Certification’ from (the company),” say legal papers filed by the state at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

The primary counter argument by the NRC and Entergy is pretty incredible:

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. and the NRC argue that the state and the NEC did not push hard enough during NRC hearings leading up the new license for the agency to force Vermont Yankee to get a new water quality permit. Entergy maintains that it got a water quality certificate in 1970 and that it remains in effect.

So I guess my driver’s license from 1972 ought to still be valid too?

…Especially so, since I haven’t been leaking tritium or elevating the temperature of the Connecticut River in the inervening years?

                                           

In other news, despite much urging not to do so, President Obama has nominated Kristine L. Svinicki for a new term on the NRC.  Ms. Svinicki, a Republican partisan, is a key figure in the power struggle currently underway within the NRC.

In December, she and other commission members told Congress that (Chairman) Jaczko had created a tense workplace and that women felt especially threatened.

Ms Scinicki is part of a power blok within the NRC, whose intimacy  with the nuclear industry has been an issue for some time now.  Originally a Bush appointee, she has actively advocated for the Yucca Mountain waste repository which Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada opposes.

As such, she has butted heads with Chairman Jaczko, a former Reid staffer; and among other things, urged an expedited relicensing of Vermont Yankee.

So it comes as no surprise that Ms. Scinicki’s re-appointment was opposed not only by Harry Reid, but also by Bernie Sanders, who explained his position thusly:

“The Commissioner has not supported full implementation of all post-Fukushima safety reforms recommended by an NRC task force, and has in fact voted to approve licenses for two new nuclear reactors without requiring them to implement these safety reforms.

                                        ………………………………………

Then, there is the Government Accountability Office study, commissioned by Democrat Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, which found that

“The N.R.C. appears to be inaccurately estimating the costs of decommissioning the nation’s nuclear power plants and inadequately ensuring that owners are financially planning for the eventual shutdown of these plants.”

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates told the New York Times that costs for BWR reactors, like that at Vermont Yankee, may be especially underestimated:

Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and frequent critic, evaluated the commission’s decommissioning estimate for Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant on Vermont’s border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He found that the commission’s estimates were sometimes lower for boiling water reactors, a type that will have a larger volume of radioactive debris, than for pressurized water reactors, which keep the radioactive materials in a smaller area.

                                       ………………………………………….

…And finally, one last stupefying demonstration of how the NRC has been systemically compromised by industry interests.  Enformable is carrying an internal NRC letter, stating that the results of radiation measurements collected by the NRC are the property of the plants and the regulatory agency is not at liberty to share them with the states or counties in question!  Here is just a snippet:

Grim.

Caught a little gem of deliberate obfuscation over at Vermont Tiger today. The Tiggers saw fit to post Bruce Lisman’s unavoidable commentary piece* on the end of the Legislative session. Basically, he bemoans the Leg’s failure to adopt “common sense” policies on health care, education, energy, and the budget. To put it another way, he bemoans the Democratic majority’s failure to adopt thoroughly Republican policies. Amazing!

*It’s been published absolutely every-damn-where over the past few days. Which is nice, because it’s not like Bruce Lisman has any other outlets for his ideas. Well, except for his $200,000-and-counting vanity project, Campaign for Vermont. Yeah, poor guy needs a little help promoting his agenda. Thanks, Vermont media!

But the real howler comes at the end, in the brief bio note identifying the author. This is how Vermont Tiger describes our favorite wealthy amateur politician and Republican-in-Nonpartisan-Clothing:

Bruce Lisman is the founder of Campaign for Vermont.  He was born in Burlington’s Old North End and attended Burlington public schools before going on to graduate from the University of Vermont.

Hmm. Hm, hm, hm. There’s a bit of a gap there. A gap of about four decades — the time he spent in the sunless canyons of Wall Street, amassing a skrillion-dollar fortune.

Somehow the Tiggers skipped over the two-thirds of Bruce Lisman’s life that had nothing to do with Vermont and had everything to do with making a huge pile in high finance. Which surprises me; I thought Vermont Tiger was solidly in favor of wealth. In Lisman’s case, they appear to be ashamed of it.

AFter the jump: Evidence of his wealth, and the collapse of his lifelong employer.

Nobody except Bruce and his team of accountants and lawyers knows exactly how rich he is. But we can offer one indication, in the form of his last known residence in Manhattan.

It was a lovely little pied-à-terre on 5th Avenue between 72nd and 73rd Streets. Overlooking Central Park. A few blocks south of the Metropolitan Museum. It featured four bedrooms and five bathrooms (?); he’d bought it for $13.125 million in 2006, and unloaded it in 2009 at a slight loss — $12.8 million.

My heart bleeds. Did something bad happen to the economy between 2006 and 2009? Something that might have caused a drop in high-end Manhattan real estate prices? I seem to recall some sort of close brush with global economic calamity during that time frame. Something to do with greedy bastards on Wall Street, I do believe.

A shame that it cost Mr. Lisman a few hundred grand on the resale. It may also have caused an early end to his Wall Street career. He’d spent pretty much his entire professional life at Bear Stearns, working his way up to the top ranks of the financial giant. He was in his 24th year in a plush Bear Stearns executive office when the corporation sadly cratered in 2008 due to its insane overexposure in the subprime mortgage securities market.

Here’s a little tidbit from the last days of Bear Stearns, courtesy of a Wall Street Journal postmortem:

In the middle of the afternoon, Bruce Lisman, the usually taciturn 61-year-old co-head of Bear Stearns’s stock division, climbed atop a desk near his fourth-floor office and demanded his traders’ attention. “Let’s stay focused,” he bellowed. “Keep working hard. Bear Stearns has been here a long time, and we’re staying here. If there’s any news, I’ll let you know, if and when I know it.”

Less than three days later, the wreckage of Bear Stearns was bought at fire-sale prices by JP Morgan, and Lisman made a soft landing in his new bosses’ executive suites. But then, a matter of months later, he retired. Which begs the question: did he really retire, or was he gently shown the door by a company that didn’t want to be encumbered by executives from a failed financier?  

That’s all rank speculation, of course. And I’m sure that’s why Vermont Tiger chose to pretend that Bruce Lisman’s New York years never happened — instead, portraying him as some sort of home-brewed hero, a son of the land, a Vermonter through and through.  

First of all, full disclosure:  I identify myself primarily as a Progressive, although I do generally support most Democratic candidates for statewide office.



When I write about the Vermont Progressive Party on GMD, I am always prepared for some grief and recognize that I do so under tolerance; but I think it is in both parties’ best interest to remain connected and in constructive dialogue on as many levels as possible.

For that reason, I wanted to share what I think is a pretty valuable perspective on the VPP and its significance in the greater scheme of things, from national labor organizer Steve Early, writing for In These Times

Mr. Early speaks of the strong economic-populist message of the Vermont Progressive Party that helps it recruit voters even in some traditionally conservative counties, where the elderly, low-income and rural populations particularly feel the bite of cuts to social services, and of income inequity exacerbated by questionable tax policy.

“We have a homeopathic role in the Vermont body politic,” says Ellen David-Friedman, a former organizer for the Vermont-National Education Association (NEA) and longtime VPP activist. “We’ve managed to create enough of an electoral pole outside of the Democrats to constantly pull them to the left on policy issues, by dispensing an alternative brand of medicine that’s become increasingly popular.”

Without that powerful VPP incentive, one has to wonder whether progressive issues like universal healthcare would be faring any better in Vermont than they are in the rest of the country.

In coordination with a strong grassroots movement, Sanders and the VPP continued to make single-payer a central political issue, keeping the pressure on local Democrats (at a time when their counterparts in neighboring Massachusetts were opting for lesser reforms that provided the model for President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).

Lacking a viable third party in other states, Mr. Early discusses an interesting alternative that has been tried to break the two party inertia on labor issues.

Elsewhere in the northeast, labor-financed Working Families Parties (WFP) were launched instead so “fusion voting” could be used, where permitted under state law, to reward the friends of union causes by giving cross-endorsed candidates an additional ballot line. Banned in most of the nation a century ago (as part of the corporate counter-attack against Populism), fusion allows major party candidates, in states like New York, to garner additional votes on each endorsing minor party’s separate ballot line.

In conclusion, Mr. Early is wistful for a national Progressive Party movement on the lines of the Vermont model

If there was more Left partying like this going in other states, at least one of our two major parties might feel greater pressure to better represent its own much-abused working class constituents.

The trivia questions in this month's Fletcher Newsletter were essentially picked at random, but their very real connectedness has been weighing on my mind for a while.

1. How many acres did each original landholder have to clear to retain property rights?
2. How many school districts did Fletcher have in 1880?
3. When did Fletcher first get electricity?

They all boil down to one word: community.

1. Answer: 5 acres (plus build a modest house) within 3 years (more or less after the Revolution).

I found that requirement to be very interesting.  The State granted land to people, but they had to do actually something with it. D Gregory Sandford (VT Historical Society) wrote:

Rather than promoting settlements of unfettered individuals creating farms in isolation across the landscape, early charters envisioned town centers, built around public meetinghouses, churches, and, in a very few cases, a town common…Private ownership and use of land were bundled with civic obligations to the community…The idea that civic rights and obligations followed private ownership of the landscape remained within all subsequent town charters…The scope of these obligations changed with time, though each offered a vision of community.

Note that civic obligation to community, which is right in line with our constitution's Declaration of Rights:

Article 9th: That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and therefore is bound to contribute the member's proportion towards the expense of that protection, and yield personal service, when necessary, or an equivalent thereto, but no part of any person's property can be justly taken, or applied to public uses, without the person's own consent, or that of the Representative Body.

Liberty comes not from unfettered freedom, but rather from rights and responsibilities within society.  That fundamental combination is explicitly codified in our founding documents.

2. Answer: 10 districts in a town of about 1000 people!

There was quite a lot of discussion last year about school consolidation, with Fletcher possibly no longer having its lone school any more in favor of merging with neighboring Fairfax.  While we ultimately rejected that option, it would've only been practical in this modern age of buses and carpools.  Consider this excerpt from A History of Fletcher Vermont:

The Beers Franklin County Atlas (1871) shows ten districts with a school in each.  For reasons unknown, there is no District 10, but there is District 11 in the northeast part of town…The buildings were so spaced throughout the town that no child, theoretically, would need to walk more than two miles to school, one way…Consolidation of schools gradually took place from the early 1930s, the Great Depression, through the next three decades until the new school was constructed ¼ mile south of Binghamville in 1962.

From the beginning of our Republic, education has been extremely important, as Ira Allen noted in hisHistory of Vermont:

The greatest legislators from Lycurgus down to John Lock, have laid down a moral and scientific system of education as the very foundation and cement of a State ; the Yermontese are sensible of this, and for this purpose they have planted several public schools, and have established a university, and endowed it with funds, and academic rewards, to draw forth and foster talents.

So it should come as no surprise that this, too, is codified in our constitution:

Section 68: [A] competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town unless the general assembly permits other provisions for the convenient instruction of youth.

Our town decided a few decades ago that we no longer needed 10 districts, and more recently decided that we still valued having one school for “convenient instruction.”  We were able to make an informed collective decision thanks to our School Board's due diligence, and these community members continue to work with our veteran principal and experienced school staff to tackle difficult issues in these difficult times.

3. Answer: East Fairfield got electricity in 1923; East Fletcher in 1939, Metcalf Pond in 1940, Buck Hollow in 1941.

I think the important takeaway from this trivial fact is that with the exception of East Fairfield, where PELCO (now part of CVPS) provided service from the Fairfax Falls generating station it built, most of Fletcher didn't get electricity from a for-profit company.  History of Fletcher again:

Other parts of town received their first electric service from Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc. which was initially financed by a federal agency, the Rural Electrification Administration.

Private interests bypassed us because we weren't “worth it,”  but FDR saw the value of universal electrification, as did Vermont Governor George Aiken.  The latter was, fittingly, a Republican not only in terms of party affiliation but also in the original sense of the word.  Gordon Wood wrote in The Creation of the American Republic:

Republicanism, with its emphasis on devotion to the transcendent public good, logically presumed a legislature in which various groups in the society would realize 'the necessary dependence and connection' each had upon the others…each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole. This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interests for the good of the community the eighteenth century termed ‘public virtue.’

Roosevelt and Aiken recognized it was often necessary to consider the common good, so went to great lengths to make sure even rural communities such as ours had electricity.  Of course Aiken was educated in Vermont where our constitution's section on schools begins:

Laws for the encouragement of virtue…ought to be constantly kept in force…

Education and civic virtue are intrinsically linked, and are the foundation of our success as a community.  That is most assuredly not a trivial thing.

ntodd

PS–I plan on serializing this over the summer in the Newsletter.

Some have tried to argue that the election of Barack Obama has ushered in a post-racial society. Others have angrily disputed charges of racism on the part of President Obama's opponents.

This might be a good time to let the facts speak for themselves, eh? Take a look at this post from Mother Jones, and look closely at the two pictures

One of them is an actual photograph of President Obama. The other is the same photo as published by a right-wing anti-Obama group called Vets for a Strong America.

Do you notice any difference?

Now tell me you think racism has nothing to do with the opposition to President Obama.

     Today in front of the Statehouse, Governor Shumlin signed two bills recognizing the Missisquoi, St. Francis Sokoki band of the Abenaki (Northwest VT), and the Koasek of the Koas Abenaki (Upper Valley VT) as Native American tribes in Vermont.  Since Shumlin has taken office, all four Alliance Tribes have been officially recognized by the State.  The other two, the Nulhegan (Northeast Kingdom), and the Elnu (Southern Vermont) were recognized last year.

    Finally recognizing these tribes is a HUGE step forward in righting a tragic history; one that includes the taking of land, war, and (in the last century), the forced sterilization of Abenaki women through a state sponsored eugenics program.  

    Recognition, in addition to respect, grants the Abenaki the right legally sell their trades as “Native American Made”, and qualifies them for federal education money.  Even so, the Abenaki, being demographically the poorest people in Vermont, still have many struggles before them.

    The quest for tribal forests, the need for a VT Indian Childhood Welfare Act, access to state grant writers (to qualify for federal grants), are just some of the challenges facing the now RECOGNIZED tribes.

    Even so, today was a historic day, and as Vermonters, both Abenaki and non-Abenaki alike, this is a day to be proud of.

*Folks who are interested in this issue should listen to Vermont Edition tomorrow (Tuesday, May 8th) on VPR.  The program will be focused on the Abenaki, and the struggles before them today.  The program is live at noon, and is rebroadcast at 7pm.

Below is a link to the relevant VPR webpage on the show:

http://www.vpr.net/episode/535…

***

ALSO

*If you are a Vermonter, please go to the below link and sign the petition in support of Abenaki Tribal Forests!

http://action.sierraclub.org/s…

*If you live in Vermont, please go to the below link and download an Abenaki Tribal Forest petition and have your friends, co-workers, families, and neighbors sign!

http://action.sierraclub.org/s…

 Promoters and fans of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) may be a buzz with this news but I would guess many Vermonters have until now remained unaware that the Vermont legislature  has passed  legislation that could bring Mixed Martial Arts and kickboxing matches to the Green Mountains. Coming afoot this session’s wrangling and occasional cries over perceived lack of civility one might marvel at their ability to quietly come together and allow martial arts and kickboxing.

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Senior Vice President of Government and Regulatory Affairs (and one time executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission) Marc Ratner said:

“We are thrilled with the state of Vermont becoming the 46th state to regulate the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. We look forward to working with their athletic commission in forming the rules and regulations of this great sport.”

Once called “human cockfighting”

They sport has cleaned itself up substantially since 1997 when Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting”. After McCain’s comments the sport prohibited controversial tactics, including hair-pulling, small-joint manipulation, head butts, groin strikes, kicks to a downed opponent and strikes to the back of the head and neck. Recently the UFC got an eight year exclusive contract with Fox TV. Viewership for the UFC’s programs like Unleashed,Knockouts and Countdown have in the past averaged  millions of viewers but have fallen in recent years.

The Vermont legislation contains the following definitions:  

“Kickboxing” means unarmed combat involving the use of striking techniques delivered with the upper and lower body and in which the competitors remain standing while striking;  

“Martial arts” means any form of unarmed combative sport or unarmed combative entertainment that allows contact striking, except boxing or wrestling;  

“Mixed martial arts” means unarmed combat involving the use of a combination of techniques from different disciplines of the martial arts, including grappling, submission holds, and strikes with the upper and lower body.

Large media markets New York and Connecticut remain “unregulated” for MMA and are likely the next match for the UFC’s Senior Vice President of Government and Regulatory Affairs Ratner. Alaska and Montana do not have the regulatory entities to oversee such sport.  

I’d like to thank Vermont’s Loudest Economist (TM) Art Woolf for pointing me to a very interesting little article at Bloomberg News. The subject is Bloomberg’s list of the world’s strongest banks. And, as Woolf notes in his latest “Around the Web” piece on Vermont Tiger, the list is dominated by Canadian banks. They account for four of the world’s six strongest banks (CIBC, TD, National Bank of Canada, and Royal Bank of Canada) and placed two more in the top 22 (Scotia Bank and the Bank of Montreal).

Mr. Woolf briefly noted the amazing phenomenon and offered a congratulatory note to our northern neighbor. However, he apparently failed to read far enough into the article to discover the reasons for Canada’s banking strength. The answer is downright embarrassing to an apostle of free-market economics writing on Vermont’s leading free-market blog:

Canadian banks invoke their strong capital levels, the country’s conservative lending culture and strict regulatory oversight under a single supervisor as reasons for their showing. The supervisor requires Canadian banks to hold a higher level of capital than do international standards.

Ahh. So our banks, relatively unfettered in a post-Reagan regulatory climate, came perilously close to crashing the world economy and needed a huge bailout to survive their own stupidity and cupidity.

Meanwhile, Canada’s banks, weighed down by the heavy hand of the country’s paternalistic regulatory structure, are among the strongest financial institutions in the world.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. Somehow I doubt that our Esteemed Professor will learn it.  

Vermont Republicans have apparently seized upon the GMP/CVPS merger as their best weapon against Governor Shumlin. More precisely, the utilities’ plan to repay a $21 million ratepayer bailout through some energy-efficiency investments. It was one of the key issues House Minority Leader Don Turner included in his last-minute list of demands that hamstrung Democratic attempts to pass its remaining legislation. It became arguably the single biggest anti-Shumlin talking point in the closing days of the legislative session.

And, considering that the issue is emblazoned on Randy Brock’s “Republican bear” mascot, it’s certain to be a key component of his campaign for Governor. (The bear could simply get a different T-shirt, of course; but Brock has also referred to it as his “$21-million bear,” which seems a pretty firm commitment.)

I’m not here to debate the merits of the merger, just to explore its place in the coming campaign. And, more precisely, the Republicans’ utter hypocrisy on the issue.

Now, I do believe that some Republicans legitimately oppose the deal on the grounds of fairness to ratepayers. But for the entire party to seize on the issue, and to try to portray itself as the friend of Everyman, is a complete joke. The VTGOP is pushing the issue out of sheer political opportunism; Governor Shumlin has outmaneuvered them on so many issues, and done a good enough job of keeping the state running through very challenging times, that the Republicans are desperate for a winning issue. And this is the best one they’ve been able to find.

Which is a little bit sad, frankly. And a whole lot hypocritical.

After the jump: an outbreak of politeness at Vermont Tiger, and consequence-free demagoguery in the GOP.

The force of this hypocrisy hit me when I read a mildly-worded commentary on Vermont Tiger by the staunchly conservative Bill Sayre. Who happens to be board chairman of CVPS. (And is also a partner in Bruce Lisman’s “nonpartisan” Campaign for Vermont. Just sayin’.) His essay offered an uncharacteristically understated defense of the deal, and some diplomatic bemoanings over the tenor of legislative debate.

(The Comments thread underneath Sayre’s essay is also quite uncharacteristically polite and tippy-toey by Vermont Tiger standards: full of delicately-worded arguments couched in expressions of mutual respect. It’s far from the fire-breathing outrage that accompanies the usual Tiger diet of anti-left screeds.)

Sayre had to be diplomatic because he suddenly found many of his “old friends and kindred spirits” on the other side. This is a man who has no trouble making full-throated attacks on the liberal/socialist/collectivist left, but he was put off stride when he had to argue with his fellow conservatives.

His discomfort is understandable, because his “old friends and kindred spirits” would — under any other circumstances — defend the merger deal and depict anyone who opposed it as an irresponsible anti-business liberal who was out to wreck Vermont’s economy. But in a year when Vermont conservatives are desperate for hot-button issues, they can’t resist this one. Even if it puts them on the “wrong” side philosophically.  

And they can comfortably do so because they know they are powerless to block the deal. Do you really think Don Turner wanted to intervene in the merger? He knew damn well that the Democratic House leadership wouldn’t accede to his demand, so he was free to demagogue the issue.

Republicans can’t do anything to stop or change the merger. And even if Randy Brock wins the Governorship in November (snort), the deal will have been consummated by then and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it even it he actually wanted to. Which he doesn’t.  

It’s an ideal opportunity for a little harmless rabble-rousing. Problem is, it’s not going to do them very much good. It may be the best issue they can find, but there’s no way they can convince liberal and moderate Vermonters that the Republican Party is an enemy of big corporations. It’s like when Mitt Romney was trying to convince Tea Partiers that he was really their guy. Doesn’t pass the smell test.

The Republicans are having some fun with the utility merger right now. But if they can’t find a better issue, they’re going to lose the election.