( – promoted by Sue Prent)

Senator Sara and candidate Mike (me) were out knocking on doors a bit in the cold rain this afternoon after taking my nephew and her grandson to the St. Albans City Halloween festivities. A chorus of “I just can’t take any more negative ads.” was heard loud and clear. There was also, however, a very friendly welcome from nearly everyone, even those who obviously don’t vote for Democrats like us very often.

I have to get back to the phones, but before I do I take a moment to remind you that most candidates on your ballot have done a lot of work to earn your vote. Whether they deserve that vote or not is up to you as a voter, but I hope you’ll get out and play your part in the great dance of democracy. Please vote on Tuesday (if you haven’t already). If you like any of us enough to give a bit more time, please come and hit the phones with us by signing up for a shift here.

http://my.barackobama.com/page…

This breaking NPR two part report I think is a must read/listen and I would love to know if people know much about ALEC’s history in Vermont.  My understanding is that a number of VT legislators are members.  

—

By Laura Sullivan

“When you walk into the offices of the American Legislative Exchange Council, it’s hard to imagine it is the birthplace of a thousand pieces of legislation introduced in statehouses across the county.

Only 28 people work in ALEC’s dark, quiet headquarters in Washington, D.C.  And Michael Bowman, senior director of policy, explains that the little-known organization’s staff is not the ones writing the bills. The real authors are the group’s members – a mix of state legislators and some of the biggest corporations in the country.

“Most of the bills are written by outside sources and companies, attorneys, [and legislative] counsels,” Bowman says.

Part 1: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…

Part 2: Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…

From the Free Press:

The video shows Salmon doing field dexterity tests and submitting to a roadside alcohol breath test that recorded an 0.095 percent blood-alcohol content. The legal limit for driving in Vermont is 0.08. Salmon, according to the video, initially tells the officer he had two drinks, but later admits he had five.

At one point, Salmon asks the officer if he knows who he is.

“You know I am the state auditor, right?” he asks. “You know, like state treasurer, governor or lieutenant governor.”

The trooper responds that he understood who Salmon is and is just “doing my job.”

Rob Craig, candidate for State House in Groton, Newbury, and Topsham is a “Vermont Tea Party Patriot,” which, of course, he’s entitled to be.

He’s running against Chip Conquest, who’s just put in a terrific first term, after ousting Bud Otterman (who apparently found the sessions so compelling that he developed quite a reputation for sleeping through them). Chip’s ability to bring people from all sides to consensus has earned him a reputation as a hard-working, effective legislator. If you’re a voter in Groton, Topsham, or Newbury, I’d strongly encourage your support for Chip.

So, anyway, back to the tea partier: Craig is part of a group that decries government spending, but he is also the recipient of almost $400,000 in tax-payer subsidized loans in the last 2 years:

One loan for $172,300, one for $206,000 and most recently an additional [warning: PDF FILE] $15,000, for a grand total of $393,300 from 2008 to 2010.

So, let’s see if I’ve got this right, he’s against government spending, wants to cut yet more taxes for the wealthy, but is happy to take nearly 1/2 million dollars that is only available courtesy of the taxpayer.

And how many jobs does this nearly $400k windfall support?

2.

Yup. 2.

That’s just shy of $200,000 per job. His business, Sunapee Precision is listed in Hoover’s as an aircraft parts and equipment manufacturer (a Dubie connection, perhaps?).

But it gets better: Sunapee Precision appears to have disappeared. A little digging on the web shows two addresses at different times:

The first appears to be an empty space in Newport, NH, at the back of a dance studio. The former owner of the dance studio says Sunapee Precision used to be there. It’s hard to discern whether there’s anything there, now.

The second is an empty storefront in a boarded up building in Woodsville, NH.

So, this begs the question: are there still any employees? If so, where are they? Sunapee Precision hasn’t, as far as I can tell, filed for bankruptcy (though they could be at a point in the process that hasn’t made it to the public filing stage, yet). Perhaps they have moved again? If so, why have their address and phone info not been updated?

It’s also interesting that he’s running in VT on a platform of supporting small businesses in our state, but his own business is located out of state. And if his business does happen to be going down the tubes, is it really the best idea to campaign on his business background? I mean, if $400k can’t keep 2 people employed for 2 years, what does that mean in terms of his understanding of budgeting – a skill that will be excruciatingly important in the coming session?

On top of all this, his “likes” on facebook make me wonder if he’s not a little too extreme for Vermont.

One of them is particularly entertaining: SCHOOL CHOICE Vermont! a group that wants to use taxpayer money to send kids to private schools. Why is this so amusing? Because Mr. Craig is also running on:

“Furthermore, we must demand a first-rate education for the next generation of Vermonters, but we need to deliver it at a lower cost.”

Sounds good, but it turns out Mr. Craig has never bothered to vote on school funding for either of the school budgets that affect the town. He doesn’t go to the school board meetings to learn what’s being discussed and offer his own ideas. Nope, he just spouts an opinion based only on his own imagined reality of school budgeting, and wants us to kick in some more of our cash so his grandkids can go to private school. Of course, he wants that money to come out of the budget that would give public school kids an excellent education (you know, most of the kids – the ones who can’t afford the difference between the subsidy he seeks and the private tuition).

I’d give more links – for example, the one where he links to the extremist site redstate.com, but  he’s hidden the “wall” on his facebook page from non-friends since I last looked, so I can’t get to it anymore.

However, his “likes” are still visible. In addition to the Tea Partiers, he lists a few other choice beacons of right-wing lunacy. It’s a little hard to see, the way facebook lays out the list, so I’ve bolded the choicest morsels:

Groton Timberworks, Vermont First, Vermont Energy Partnership, Park Restaurant, Vermont Fall Foliage, Tom Salmon for State Auditor, Kevin Mullin For Senate, Tea Party Patriots, Vermont, Newbury, VT, Groton, VT, Charlie Smith for State Senate, Charles Krauthammer, Charity Lodge # 43 F&AM, Thompson Hill Campground & Country Store, “Walking through life” tv show, Kristin Sohlstrom for State Representative, Angela Chagnon for State Representative, Phil Scott for Lieutenant Governor, NFIB Vermont, The American Conservative, promoteVT, Bennington GOP, Allard For The House, Breakwater Cafe & Grill, Jason Gibbs for Secretary of State, Derby Historical Society, SCHOOL CHOICE Vermont!, Vermont Libertarian Republicans, Kleinhans Keller 2010, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Paul Avella, New Hampshire Libertarian Republicans, Michelle Malkin, Young Republican Network, Snelling for Lt. Governor, Shelly Roche, Windsor GOP, Thomas Jefferson – American, VTDigger.org, Len Britton, Americans Against Acorn, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – USA, Vermont College Republicans, Robert Craig, Republican Governors Association, Sean Hannity, Support Our Troops, Chris Roy, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, The Heritage Foundation, Vermont Republican Party, Brian Dubie, Wounded Warrior Project, Boston Red Sox Fans, Green Mt Monogram Inc., The West Point Candidate Book, Northeast Kingdom Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Vermont Made Products, Charlie Bucknam for State Senate, BestCigarPrices, Six degrees of separation in Vermont, Biz_In_Vermont, Spread The Wealth, Vermont’s Northland Journal, The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case, Lake Morey Resort, Cup Of Joe For A Joe, Vermont.com, Vermont Business and Industry EXPO, Inn of the Six Mountains at Killington, Deborah T. Bucknam & Associates, PC, United States Military Academy, West Point Association of Graduates, Army Football at West Point, The Weekly Standard, True North Radio

I’m curious as to what Mr. Craig has done with $400k of taxpayer money in the last 18 – 24 months. I’m curious about why he feels we should subsidize private educations for children of the well-to-do, and I’m curious as to why he thinks his brand of reactionary extremism is going to fly in Vermont.

FROM A PRESS RELEASE OBTAINED FROM THE CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL CAMPAIGN

Date: October 29, 2010
Contact: Kristina Borjesson
Tel: 802 644-5898

CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL

Dennett: Sorrell Invoked Public Records Law to Keep Yankee “Whitewash” Report on Buried Pipes Secret.

Cambridge, VT, Oct. 29 –  Candidate for Attorney General Charlotte Dennett charged incumbent William Sorrell with deliberate obfuscation and misleading the public in the matter of a report on Entergy's misstatements on buried pipes which a State Commissioner called “whitewash.”  In a Vermont Public Radio debate Sorrell said he never objected to releasing the report. In fact, Sorrell originally withheld it from 7 Days reporter Shay Totten and from the Constitutional Law Foundation.   The Conservation Law Foundation eventually had to go to court to get the report released.

Said Dennett. “He should never have denied requests by the press and the Conservation Law Foundation for the report. In effect, he broke the public records law.”

Commissioner David O’Brien of the Department of Public Service – has publicly criticized the report as a “whitewash.”  The report in essence absolves Entergy of false statements made before a state oversight panel regarding pipes which could be leaking tritium.  The report holds that Yankee officials were only answering questions about a certain kind of pipe in the ground.  The pipes turned out to be of a different kind, according to Yankee's definitions, which were discovered to be leaking tritium.

“First he cited his criminal investigation as a reason for not giving the report to Totten and the Foundation,” said Dennett.  “Then, a few weeks later, he again told Totten that he couldn’t have the report, citing the confidentiality agreement he had made with Entergy. That’s why I used Vermont’s public records law for the confidentiality agreement, to see when it came into effect and what it covered.”

The agreement is dated February 17, 2010 and gives Sorrell “sole discretion” to release the report and any other documents that would be “otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”

This pattern of obfuscation and misleading statements is continuing in Sorrell’s office, Dennett charges, citing Deputy Attorney General Michael McShane’s cover letter to Dennett accompanying the report:  “With regard to the Morgan Lewis (Entergy) report, the attorney general’s office did not object to the public release of the report by Entergy” [Our italics].  “That’s not what I was asking for,” says Dennett, “The issue is not Entergy withholding the report, the issue is Sorrell withholding the report for two whole months after he had received it, despite requests he release it.

The confidentiality agreement is actually a letter to Sorrell from Entergy’s Robert D. Sloan outlining the terms of their document exchange.   It is attached to this press release. It states in part, “Entergy understands that the Attorney General’s Office will maintain the confidentiality of the Confidential Information and will not disclose it to any third party, except to the extent that the Attorney General in his sole discretion determines that disclosure is otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”

“The truth of the matter is this,” Dennett said. “Vermont’s public records law and the Vermont Constitution require a state agency to turn over documents, with some exceptions that are not applicable here. The central purpose of 1VSA Section 315, the public records law, is to allow the public to ‘review the action of a governmental officer even though such an examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment.’

 RESPONSE TO VT PUBLIC RECORDS LAW REQUEST FOR CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT BETWEEN ATTORNEY GENERAL AND ENTERGY.

FROM A PRESS RELEASE OBTAINED FROM THE CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL CAMPAIGN

Date: October 29, 2010
Contact: Kristina Borjesson
Tel: 802 644-5898

CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL

Cambridge, VT, Oct. 29 –  Candidate for Attorney General Charlotte Dennett charged incumbent William Sorrell with deliberate obfuscation and misleading the public in the matter of a report on Entergy's misstatements on buried pipes which a State Commissioner called “whitewash.”  In a Vermont Public Radio debate Sorrell said he never objected to releasing the report. In fact, Sorrell originally withheld it from 7 Days reporter Shay Totten and from the Constitutional Law Foundation,  citing a confidentiality agreement.  The Conservation Law Foundation eventually had to go to court to get the report released.  Dennett has obtained a copy of the confidentiality agreement between Sorrell and Entergy under the VT Public Records Law.

Said Dennett. “He should never have denied requests by the press and the Conservation Law Foundation for the report. In effect, he broke the public records law.”

Commissioner David O’Brien of the Department of Public Service – has publicly criticized the report as a “whitewash.”  The report in essence absolves Entergy of false statements made before a state oversight panel regarding pipes which could be leaking tritium.  The report holds that Yankee officials were only answering questions about a certain kind of pipe in the ground.  The pipes turned out to be of a different kind, according to Yankee's definitions, which were discovered to be leaking tritium.

 The story was picked up by the New York Times last February when it reported:

Plant officials had testified under oath to two state panels that there were no buried pipes at Vermont Yankee that could leak tritium, although there were.

“First he cited his criminal investigation as a reason for not giving the report to Totten and the Foundation,” said Dennett.  “Then, a few weeks later, he again told Totten that he couldn’t have the report, citing the confidentiality agreement he had made with Entergy. That’s why I used Vermont’s public records law for the confidentiality agreement, to see when it came into effect and what it covered.”

The agreement is dated February 17, 2010 and gives Sorrell “sole discretion” to release the report and any other documents that would be “otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”

This pattern of obfuscation and misleading statements is continuing in Sorrell’s office, Dennett charges, citing Deputy Attorney General Michael McShane’s cover letter to Dennett accompanying the report:  “With regard to the Morgan Lewis (Entergy) report, the attorney general’s office did not object to the public release of the report by Entergy” [Our italics].  “That’s not what I was asking for,” says Dennett, “The issue is not Entergy withholding the report, the issue is Sorrell withholding the report for two whole months after he had received it, despite requests he release it.

The confidentiality agreement is actually a letter to Sorrell from Entergy’s Robert D. Sloan outlining the terms of their document exchange.   It is attached to this press release. It states in part, “Entergy understands that the Attorney General’s Office will maintain the confidentiality of the Confidential Information and will not disclose it to any third party, except to the extent that the Attorney General in his sole discretion determines that disclosure is otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”

“The truth of the matter is this,” Dennett said. “Vermont’s public records law and the Vermont Constitution require a state agency to turn over documents, with some exceptions that are not applicable here. The central purpose of 1VSA Section 315, the public records law, is to allow the public to ‘review the action of a governmental officer even though such an examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment.’

 RESPONSE TO VT PUBLIC RECORDS LAW REQUEST FOR CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT BETWEEN ATTORNEY GENERAL AND ENTERGY.

Dennett Facebook

Dennett website

A friend of a friend writes the Suburban Empire blog.  Occasionally I read it, more often than not, I simply look at Akira Patton’s great artwork that graces the banner.  The blog itself is edgy and gritty, so if I do read, it is usually for only a paragraph or two.

Tonight’s post though is worth a read, and the photos are certainly worth a look.  

Dubie’s David Dust Debut: Money Well Spent by Vermont’s GOP.

The softcore gay porn industry thanks Vermont’s Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Brian Dubie, for his support and wishes him the best of luck! Posted October 29th, 2010 by kevin

When I first checked out the site tonight after a friend called me and I read the post about the GOP running Dubie ads on gay porn sites, all the links on Suburban Empire worked, but when I tried again just now as I got ready to post, most of the Dubie banners were down, so I don’t know what you will find.  

Luckily the writer took a screen grab of the Dubie ad on the pro-abortion site.  Guess Dubie has gone more than pro-choice after his Sunday rally for women in Battery Street Park.  I wonder how this expenditure will sit with his conservative Republican base?

Check it out HERE at Suburban Empire.

Vermonter Selected To Participate in United Nation’s Review of US Government’s Failure to Ensure the Human Right to Healthcare

Burlington, VT – A representative from the Vermont Workers’ Center’s Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign has been selected to participate in a national delegation traveling to the United Nations in Geneva to report about the status of human rights in the United States. Mary Gerisch, who lives in Bennington, has been an active leader of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign for over two years. Next week Ms. Gerisch will travel to Switzerland to take part in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the human rights record of the United States, and will inform representatives from other countries about the struggle for the human right to healthcare in Vermont and across the United States.

The Vermont Workers’ Center has collaborated with groups across the country in submitting a report to the UN on the status of economic and social rights in the United States. The 26-page report “Toward Economic and Social Rights in the United States: From Market Competition to Public Goods,” is released today in an updated version, which includes a case study of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign. The report documents evidence of the denial of human rights in education, health, housing, work, and social security. The report’s authors call on the government to use public dollars for the benefit of the people, and to strengthen the public sector in order to meet everyone’s needs, leaving no one behind. Earlier this year the Workers’ Center also gave evidence at a consultation organized by the U.S. Department of State, held in New York City. These submissions, along with Ms. Gerisch’s upcoming presentations at the United Nations, form a strong body of evidence showing that the United States and the state of Vermont have failed to live up to their human rights commitments.

“It is disgraceful that the federal government does not recognize that we all have economic and social rights,” said Mary Gerisch. “Vermont should lead the way and ensure that people’s fundamental needs, such as healthcare, housing, and education, are met. At the Workers’ Center we are fighting to make that happen, and I will do my best to represent Vermonters in Geneva.”

The UPR is a new human rights monitoring mechanism of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. Every four years, the UPR assesses each country’s adherence to its human rights obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various human rights treaties. The first Universal Periodic Review of the United States will take place on November 5 in Geneva, Switzerland.

RESOURCES:

– VIDEO interview with Mary Gerisch about her upcoming trip to Geneva where she will to testify at the United Nations on the state of healthcare in Vermont and the efforts of the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign – http://vermontworkerscenter.bl…

– REPORT to the UN Human Rights Council, Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America: “Toward Economic and Social Rights in the United States: From Market Competition to Public Goods”- http://www.nesri.org/UPR_Repor… .

– Vermont Workers’ Center video submission (one minute clip) to the U.S. State Department’s consultation, February 26, 2010: http://www.vimeo.com/10229823

– UNITED NATIONS website for the Universal Periodic Review: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodi…

BACKGROUND: In 2008, the Vermont Workers’ Center launched the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign to change what is “politically possible” for healthcare reform. On May 1, 2009 over twelve hundred people participated in the Healthcare Is A Human Right rally at the Vermont Statehouse and was reported to be the largest weekday rally in the history at the state capitol. On the first day of the legislative session, over 200 hundred people attended a rally to deliver 5000 postcards to Senate President Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith calling for Vermont to lead the country by developing a healthcare system that works for everybody and treats healthcare as a public good. Momentum for action grew throughout the session, until S.88, a bill that was previously considered to be going nowhere, passed with overwhelming support and was allowed to go into law by Vermont’s Republican Governor. This new law, Act 128, requires the design of a healthcare system based on human rights principles, which is to be implemented by July 2012. This summer the Vermont Legislature hired the world’s pre-eminent healthcare system architect, Dr. William Hsiao and his team of the Public Health Department at Harvard University to develop the healthcare system designs. The failure of the federal healthcare reform law to address the roots of the healthcare crisis has turned attention once again to Vermont and this new opportunity to lead the country in developing a health system based on human rights.

Wanna help get out the vote but don’t want to make calls?

Through the votegreengov.org project of the Vermont League of Conservation Voters, there’s a nifty tool available that I want to encourage readers to check out. Yeah, I’m gonna toot my own horn, here, and take credit for the concept, but it’s the PowerThru folks that made it work.

VLCV has a list of IDed green voters. When you go to this site and put in your email address, you can enter your zip code and see if there’s anybody you know on that list. You can then click on them and send them a personalized get-out-the-vote email message that comes from you, not some distant, generic, out of state automated-gotv-spam machine. It’s simple, form-driven (so nobody’s email address is hanging out there to be scooped up  by a third party) and includes no contact information, so as not to get into the issue of hanging personal info out there.

I’m excited because it brings true GOTV to the web, as opposed to just making a lot of generalized noise and content to drive as much traffic as possible to persuasion and GOTV sites. CHeck it out, spread the word (and let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t work right).

Here again is the link.

Over in the comments thread in a Vermont Tiger piece, David O’Brien goes to bat for Entergy, yet again.  In the midst of a blatantly anti-Shumlin screed, he throws out the following:

Does anyone find it ironic that Entergy management is continously described by Senator Shumlin as dishonest and not to be trusted? I must say Entergy has been tough to work with, nobody knows that more than I. However, when we went after them aggressively about the flawed disclosure of unerground pipes, Entergy conducted an internal investigation and disciplined five high ranking employees, at least two losing their jobs permenantly.

Funny how that discipline took place after Entergy was pushed on the issue and it was revealed that there had been misleading statements.   And funny how, at least one of these people who lost their jobs, “permenantly” wasn’t as much fired as he was reassigned.  Jay Thayer, in fact, is now “on Loan” to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

You’d think that O’Brien would know this, considering that he and Thayer are friendly enough to have Thayer over to his house for a holiday dinner.