And no, that isn’t a rhetorical question. The answer is not as plain as one would think.

There is a push to literally do away with our local schools coming from our Governor’s office, the state General Assembly and the state Board of Education. YOUR school boards are trying like hell to tell you about this, but few, particularly the general community, seem to be listening.

So where do I find this “pro-put Montpelier directly in charge of everything regarding education” movement? Act 153; the “Challenges for Change” drive to force arbitrary commissioner of Education defined budget cuts onto the schools; and the acceptance of the Common Core Curriculum by the state board of education.

I think the most pernicious of the big three is Act 153 (link), a bill that moves a substantial amount of the local boards’ authorities up to the supervisory union level BY MANDATE!. Negotiations with the teachers’ union will no longer be subject to approval by the local boards – moved up to the supervisory union; curriculum will no longer fall under local board review – moved up to the supervisory union. Staff hiring and firing will no longer be handled by the local boards – moved up to the supervisory union. That’s not an exhaustive list: even school busing can now be taken away from the local board by the supervisory union.

A school board’s greatest policy document is the budget and how it allocates financial resources. Spending decisions such as salary and benefits and curriculum and busing and more all directly impact the fiscal document folks across Vermont are used to voting on every spring: their local school budget. The budget, more than anything else, provides the community’s guidance to the school board and, more than anything else, reflects the policy priorities of the local school board.

Supervisory union budgets are not subject to approval by any community local or otherwise – these budgets are fait accompli – period. And the SU boards do not reflect the relative financial contribution to the supervisory union pot of gold.

The above two paragraphs display what is so pernicious about Act 153: the law pretends to provide a choice in consolidation by holding out the promise of monetary bribes carrots; but the law goes on to say quite clearly “[Doesn’t matter if you want to consolidate, however, because your local boards are going to become nothing more than student hearing committees anyway.]”

And the publicity has gone to the pretensions of voluntary action in the new law.

“Challenges for Change” budget cuts and acceptance of the Common Core Curriculum are the state Department of Education’s kick in the local school district groin. In the first instance we at the local level are told to cut back even further than has been done REGARDLESS our local circumstances, and in the second instance we are told our local budgets will have to absorb extra costs involved with the soon to be implemented, brand spanking shiny new, latest and greatest set of standardized instruction and testing regimes (aka Common Core Curriculum).

Nice.

It’s good to see push back on at least some of this as evidenced by the local boards from the member districts of the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union:

The letter, signed by the chairperson from each school board in Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, accuses Act 146, or Challenges for Change, of using “our youth’s education as a political football,” and passing the responsibility onto local districts because the legislature is “seemingly unable to make tough decisions.”

(Boards express budget frustration in letter, Bennington Banner, 10/04/10)

Recently the Williamstown school board passed a resolution stating in part ‘Regarding your proposed “Challenges for Change” 2012 school budget cuts of which the Williamstown School District has been directed to find $125,409: We, the Williamstown School District board of directors, decline to participate.’ (You can read the whole letter in this GMD post, What the Williamstown school board had to say ….)

I hope folks are paying attention to all this because the eradication of the local school district has become (not “is becoming”) a reality that has the full backing of the politicians in Montpelier.

In New York, Carl Paladino Acts Like a Mob Boss by Threatening to ‘Take Out’ Reporter; In California, Meg Whitman Is Exposed as Hypocrite on Volatile Issue of Employing Illegal Immigrants; In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell Is Caught Lying on Her Job Resumes

GOP CANDIDATE FOR N.Y. GOVERNOR THE TONY SOPRANO OF POLITICS? — From the day he won the his party’s nomination, Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (left) made good on his promise that the campaign to become New York’s next governor — already nasty — would get a lot nastier: Not only has he accused his Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo, of infidelity, but in an extraordinary confrontation captured by TV cameras, the Tea Party-backed GOP nominee acted like the fictional New Jersey Mob boss Tony Soprano (right) when he made a threat against Fred Dicker, state news editor of the New York Post, telling Dicker, “I’ll take you out, buddy!” When the equally tough-talking Dicker asked him how he’d “take me out,” Paladino replied, “Watch!” (Photos courtesy Buffalo News and HBO)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, October 5, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

With just a month to go before the November 2 midterm elections, the campaign has been jolted by a series of controversies involving Republican candidates, in what appears to be a repeat of the scandal-plagued GOP campaign of 2006.

In quick succession over the past week, Carl Paladino, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for governor of New York, made headlines for hurling lurid accusations against his Democratic rival, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, accusing him of infidelity after Paladino acknowledged his own extramarital affair — and threatening to “take out” a reporter who challenged him to provide evidence.

On the other side of the country, Meg Whitman, the GOP nominee for governor of California, suddenly became embroiled in a scandal when her former housekeeper, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, sued Whitman for anti-Latino discrimination and her attorney accused Whitman — who has talked tough on the campaign trail about employers who hire illegal immigrants — of rank hypocrisy.

And in Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate running for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat — already plagued by one controversy after another over her past history as a Christian Right activist — was caught having lied about her education on her job resumes.

PALADINO ACTS LIKE MOB BOSS — IN FULL VIEW OF TV NEWS CAMERAS    

Paladino took the campaign for New York governor into the gutter on Wednesday when he accused Cuomo of having “paramours” — only hours after he told a reporter for WNYW-TV, the Fox station in New York City, that the already-nasty race would get a lot nastier. “I don’t mind being nasty, okay?” Paladino told the station.

“Has anybody asked Andrew Cuomo about his paramours?” Paladino asked in an interview with Politico.com, referring to Cuomo’s 13-year marriage to his former wife, Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

“When he was married — or asked him why his wife left him or threw him out of the house? Has anybody ever done that?” Paladino — who admitted having an extramarital affair of his own a decade ago that produced a daughter — demanded.

But, in fact, it was Kennedy who was having an extramarital affair — with Bruce Colley, a New York restaurateur and socialite. Colley confirmed the affair in 2003 just days after Cuomo and Kennedy announced they were ending their marriage.  

Challenged by a New York Post reporter to provide evidence to back up his accusations against Cuomo, Paladino — in full view of television news cameras — accused the reporter of working for the Cuomo campaign and, acting as though he were Tony Soprano, the fictional New Jersey crime boss in the acclaimed television series, “The Sopranos,” warned the reporter, “I’ll take you out, buddy!”

When the equally tough-talking Fred Dicker, state news editor of the Post and the dean of the Albany press corps, demanded to know how Paladino would “take him out” — widely interpreted as a threat of bodily harm — Paladino replied, “Watch!” before he was hustled away by his aides while an indignant Dicker shot back, “Are you threatening me?”.

Paladino admitted the following day — after his confrontation with Dicker made front-page headlines across the state — that he had no proof of Cuomo’s alleged infidelities, acknowledging that he made the accusation out of frustration with questions about his own affair.

CUOMO STRIKES BACK AT PALADINO — HARD

For his part, Cuomo said Friday that Paladino’s claims that he was unfaithful to Kennedy was “hurtful” and “destructive” to his three children. “Now he says it was a baseless accusation,” an angry Cuomo told reporters during a campaign stop inthe New York City borough of Staten Island.

The Cuomo campaign struck back hard with a blistering TV ad that accused Paladino, a Buffalo-area real estate developer, of having “given almost a half-million dollars to politicians and who gets insider deals from Albany.”

The ad claimed that Paladino “got a 1.4 million-dollar tax break to create jobs, but his official filings show that only one job was created.” and blasted the Tea Party-backed Republican as “a welfare king who got rich by milking New York taxpayers.”

PATERSON, PALADINO CAMP IN ANGRY WAR OF WORDS

Meanwhile, Governor David Paterson denounced Paladino as “unfit for public service” at a business breakfast, citing a series of pornographic and racially offensive e-mails Paladino sent to friends before launching his gubernatorial campaign six months ago. One of those e-mails included an image of President Obama dressed as a pimp and First Lady Michelle Obama dressed as a prostitute.  

Paterson, who shared the dais with his predecessors, George Pataki and Elliot Spitzer, said he understood the anger over taxes and government excess that is powering the Tea Party movement, but that such anger  should not feed the “shrill and . . . pedestrian antics of individuals who are unqualified to hold office at all, let alone be governor or United States senator.”

Paladino’s campaign spokesman Michael Caputo blasted back at Paterson, calling the governor, who is legally blind, “addled” — a derogatory term for a person with attention deficit disorder, or ADD, which Paterson does not have — and pointing out that Paterson was investigated for taking free tickets to the World Series and for getting involved in a domestic-violence case against a top aide who subsequently resigned.

“Nearly all New Yorkers are counting down the days until he stops embarrassing this state,” Caputo said.

WHITMAN ROCKED BY SCANDAL OVER HIRING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HOUSEKEEPER

In California, the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who spent months on the campaign trail talking tough against employers who hire illegal immigrants, was rocked to its core Wednesday by Whitman’s bombshell admission that the billionaire former eBay CEO and her doctor-husband had themselves employed an illegal immigrant as their housekeeper.

Whitman insisted that she didn’t know that her nanny and housekeeper of nine years, Nicky Diaz Santillan, was an illegal immigrant until the housekeeper acknowledged her undocumented status last year, to which Whitman said she responded by firing her.

But Diaz, in a emotional press conference in Los Angeles with her attorney Gloria Allred, told reporters that Whitman was dismissive when Diaz asked for her assistance in obtaining legal immigrant status and told her upon her dismissal, “From now on, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”

Whitman “treated me like a piece of garbage,” a tearful Diaz said. “She treated me as if I were not a human being.”

Allred said that the Social Security Administration had alerted Whitman and her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, back in 2003with a latter notifying them that Diaz’ Social Security number did not match the number the agency had in its database — which, the attorney said, should have served as a “red flag” about Diaz’ legal status.  

Whitman hotly denied ever receiving such notification, and a campaign spokesman blamed Diaz. “Nicky handled all of the mail into and out of the house,” Whitman spokesman Andrea Jones Rivera said.

But almost immediately after Whitman’s denial, Allred produced a copy of the Social Security Administration’s letter, dated April 2003, in which the agency informed Whitman and Harsh that, “We can’t put these earnings on the employee’s Social Security record until the name and Social Security number you reported agree with our records.”

The copy of the letter included a handwritten note addressed to Diaz that read, “Nicky please check this. Thanks.” Allred said the handwriting was that of Harsh, which the attorney said proved that, at the very least, Harsh knew that there was a problem with Diaz’ status with the Social Security Administration. Harsh acknowledged that the handwriting on the letter was likely his, but said that he has no memory of receiving the letter.

The revelation about Diaz came only a day after Whitman and her Democratic opponent, former Governor and current state Attorney General Jerry Brown, clashed over immigration in their first televised debate, with Whitman saying she “wouldn’t support a path to legalization” for illegal immigrants and that “we have to secure the borders” and called for the imposition of tougher sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

The fallout from the Whitman scandal was swift. A conservative political action committee issued a statement Thursday demanding the arrest of both Whitman and Diaz for “numerous immigration and employment law violations.”

William Gheen, president of the right-wing Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC) demanded that Diaz “be charged and deported” and that Whitman “face the existing penalties under current U.S. law as well.”

IN DELAWARE, O’DONNELL CAUGHT HAVING LIED ABOUT HER EDUCATION ON JOB RESUMES

Ever since she scored a stunning upset victory in the September 14 Delaware Republican Senate primary over former Representative Mike Castle, Tea Party-backed nominee Christine O’Donnell has endured one embarrassing revelation after another, primarily video clips of controversial remarks on social issues stemming from her past role as an arch-conservative social activist with ties to the Religious Right.

O’Donnell, who first gained national exposure in the mid-1980s as a spokeswoman for conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly’s Concerned Women for America, had been dogged by her statements on masturbation, the use of condoms, the fight against AIDS, the role of women in the military, and even witchcraft.

But now, O’Donnell has come under fire for apparently having made false statements about her education on her job resumes.

Oxford University in Britain and Claremont Graduate University in California both denied O’Donnell was a student in their institutions, contrary to statements on her resumes that she was a student at the two schools.

Rod Leveque, a spokesman for GCU, issued a statement to TalkingPointsMemo.com declaring flatly that “Claremont Graduate University has no student or education record for an individual named Christine O’Donnell.”

In fact, O’Donnell received a Lincoln Fellowship in 2002 from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank which is not related in any way to Claremont Graduate University.

The university’s denial came just days after it was revealed that O’Donnell falsely listed Oxford University in the educational record portion of her profile page on the professional social network, LinkedIn.com. The page has since been taken down.

Actually, O’Donnell was a student of the Phoenix Institute, a conservative Christian educational organization which rented space on the campus of one of Britain’s two most prestigious universities — home of the world-famous Rhodes Scholarships.

The new controversies come on the heels of earlier questions about O’Donnell’s tenure at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative think tank which O’Donnell sued for gender-based discrimination. O’Donnell’s $6.9 million lawsuit claimed that ISI “violated its promise to allow Miss ODonnell time to take Master’s degree classes at Princeton.”

But O’Donnell’s campaign manager, Matt Moran, later acknowledged in a statement to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine that O’Donnell did not have her Bachelor’s degree at the time she filed her lawsuit and only audited one undergraduate class at Princeton.

NEW CONTROVERSIES AN EERIE ECHO OF SCANDAL-PLAGUED 2006 GOP CAMPAIGN

The sudden eruption of controversies involving Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections is eerily reminiscent of the scandal-plagued — and ultimately ill-fated — GOP campaign in 2006 to keep control of Congress.

Remember Mark Foley? The Florida Republican congressman resigned in disgrace after revelations that he had sent sexually suggestive e-mails to teen-aged male Capitol Hill pages.

Foley later claimed that he was gay, but sources familiar with Foley told The ‘Skeeter Bites Report that they could not recall Foley ever having had relationships with adult gay men and that, to the contrary, strong evidence emerged elsewhere that the disgraced former congressman had a pedophile, rather than homosexual, orientation.

Then there was Representative Don Sherwood (R-Pennsylvania), who in 2004 allegedly assaulted Cynthia Ore, a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. No criminal charges were ever filed against Sherwood, but Ore later filed a $5.5 million civil lawsuit against Sherwood, accusing him of repeatedly assaulting her during their relationship. On November 8, 2005, Sherwood and Ore ended the lawsuit by reaching a settlement, the terms of which were not released.

The relationship became public only when Veronica Hannevig, who ran against Sherwood on the Constitution Party ticket in 2004, distributed copies of the police report to several newspapers and television stations. As in the Foley case, the House Republican leadership knew about Sherwood’s indiscretions, but took no disciplinary action against him. Sherwood subsequently lost his bid for re-election.

The Republican Hall of Shame class of 2006 also includes:

# Then-Representative Jim Gibbons, the 2006 Republican nominee for governor of Nevada, who was dragged into a scandal in which there were allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward a woman on the night of October 13, 2006 — a Friday — and assaulted her outside a Las Vegas restaurant when she refused. Despite what came to be known as the “Friday the 13th scandal,” Gibbons won the election, only to see his tenure as governor plagued by continued controversies. He lost his bid for re-election in the June 9 GOP primary.

# Representative Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who was brought down by the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. Ney was forced to resign from Congress after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the scandal. Ney was identified in the guilty pleas of Abramoff, former House Minority Whip Tom DeLay’s deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon and former Ney chief of staff Neil Volz for receiving lavish gifts in exchange for political favors. Ney now hosts a radio talk show in West Virginia.

# The chief of staff of Representative Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana), whose former page was one of the first to receive inappropriate e-mails from Foley —  who was sued by a former member of his staff for sexual harassment. Royal Alexander (no relation) was accused of engaging in “a course of misconduct” toward Elizabeth Scott, who worked as a scheduler for Representative Alexander form 2005 to 2006. including “inappropriate sex-based comments, ogling and touching.” The congressman’s office maintained Scott made her claims in retaliation for having been demoted by Royal Alexander for incompetence. Within months following Royal Alexander’s unsuccessful run for Louisiana Attorney General in 2007, the case was dismissed.

NEW SCANDALS LIKELY TO MAKE GOP’S GOAL OF RETAKING CONGRESS MUCH HARDER

With the new scandals roiling an already volatile campaign, the GOP’s sky-high hopes of retaking Congress have suddenly been thrown into doubt. And the fact that these new controversies have erupted right at the beginning of the all-important final month of the campaign — perhaps the 2010 edition of the long-dreaded “October Surprise” — could not come at a worse time for the Grand Old Party.

But with the electorate still very much in a throw-the-bums-out mood over the continued sour economy, it remains to be seen whether this latest turn of events will translate into a third consecutive anti-Republican backlash at the polls.    

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

During this election season, it’s interesting to consider the Republican political bench of the future, which is already turning into the face of Vermont Republicans today. It wasn’t that long ago when it was hard to imagine where their candidates would come from. There were not many names in circulation from the depleted legislative corps (a corps largely depleted because the efforts of the state party during the last decade were largely slaved to the needs of Governor Douglas, to the ongoing depletion and detriment of the legislative caucus).

Just last cycle we were left to wonder who exactly the other team had? Randy Brock still wants to stay in the game, but is clearly on the decline. Skip Vallee took his first shot and failed. Wendy Wilton fired up the far right base, but then evaporated. Going back another cycle, there was a lot of speculation on the future of former Speaker Walt Freed, but he too seems like yesterday’s news. Tom Salmon? Puh-leez. There’s a guy who has peaked if there ever was one.

But there are a few new GOP-ers already in circulation who, though running for “lesser” offices now, are likely the stars-in-making who will be the Vermont Republicans candidates for Governor, US Senator, and US Rep – not necessarily in that order.

Washington County Senator Phil Scott is one, and blunting his ascension/graduation into the Lieutenant Governor’s spot this time around is no small task for Democratic candidate Steve Howard (go Steve!). Scott has a well-earned reputation as a nice guy, so it’s not easy to beat the guy up. He’s also got a record as a moderate, which the weeniecrats self-described conservative Dems just looooove (cause apparently nothing shows what a free thinker you are than to be the only one among your self-described Demmycrat buddies that voted for a Republican. Barf.).

Scott is the exception in this list, being the only one emerging from that skimpy legislative bench. For others, the GOP has had to work non-traditional paths of ascension. Jason Gibbs was Jim Douglas’s spokesman until he went on the administrative resume building boot camp into the office of Forest and Parks. No one has been more obviously groomed for ascension by the Douglas crowd than Mr. Gibbs, who may well be encouraged to go for the top spot next time out if (when) Dubie loses to Shumlin (assuming Gibbs defeats Democratic candidate Jim Condos for SoS – which, honestly, I’d have to bet against Gibbs on, assuming Condos starts getting out there more visibly, and soon)

Finally, there’s the other Dubie – and another in the long line of Frankenstein monsters created by the state Democrats (the Democratic majority really didn’t have to help him along by voting him into the position, did they?). Michael Dubie holds the same position Martha Rainville (for whom it was clearly a political stepping stone) did before her run for US Representative, and he too would seem at a glance to have US Representative candidate written all over him. Perhaps if his brother does win (not gonna happen), he’ll respond to growing murmurs about the appropriateness of having a sibling team in charge of the state Guard by saying “fine, I’ll step down and go for Peter Welch’s office….”

The emerging threesome – and no doubt there are more. What other GOP rising stars are there to watch out for…?

(A grouchy old man’s take on The Playoffs.)

something bad is going to happen

you can see it in the players’ faces

some kind of dirty fix

lines of people turned away

on account of rain

on account of some fuck-up

one bad call is all it takes

and the whole country goes to shit

while the world watches

our fucking national pastime

turned into a farce

for the sake of a freak show

well throw one at their heads for me

tag the bastards in the crotch

and clear the benches

used to be you could enjoy the game

before they got so greedy

now they’re all millionaires

just to do what I can do

with my little kid on a Sunday

on his new computer

so fuck ’em all to hell

I’m not even gonna watch anymore

not until they go back to playing it right

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

Is this the beginning of a sea change? We’ll see. Blogger and State House candidate Ntodd Pritsky has broken the taboo and engaged the Vermont Commons crowd directly in a discussion of the implications of allying with white supremacist secession groups such as the League of the South. Here’s an excerpt:

Anyway, Odum has forcefully brought his opinions to bear, as he always does, and in our exchange he challenged me to “disavow any racist associations.”  I’m not entirely sure this will count, but I will try:

I think racists and white supremacists are evil.  I think one should call them out.  I think having such people in leadership positions of an organization like SVR is actively aiding and abetting said evil. There is much on the now-outed SVR mailing list I explicitly disapprove of, particularly the Rothschilds-related conspiracies which are anti-Semitic bullshit warmed over, any threats of violence, embracing capital punishment, misogynist remarks, and so on.

Sure its not exactly a “let’s talk about this” and more of a “there, I did it already” kind of post – but he still has crossed the line. Maybe he’ll light a fuse that could lead into a “clean” secession movement.

Or maybe it’ll just get yanked down (note: the diary is not displayed on the main blog site and – as such – will only be read by a handful in its current form it’s up front now), and maybe ntodd will get tossed into the SVR scrapheap along with the others who have dared question these affiliations (Bill McKibben, Robert Riversong, Dan DeWalt, Frank Bryan). After all, from the very beginning (at least its beginning at this site), the then-cooly and clinically expressed concerns and objections were met with personal attacks and harassment campaigns. One hopes the SVR leadership is capable of learning that such an approach has not helped their cause any.

In any event, Todd (or is it ‘n’?), thanks for stepping up and speaking the truth in what is bound to prove to be an unpopular way o’er yonder. Well done.

Friends, In these trying times, sometimes we need to laugh:

Enjoy! BD

One of the most important things about canvassing isn't trying to get somebody's vote or a great spot for signs: it's having the chance to listen to constituents.  As Ericka remarked to a supporter yesterday, I have opinions on everything and I can filibuster with the best in the history of the US Senate!  What I need is opinions, concerns, and ideas from the people I aim to represent–not just during the campaign, but all the time.

(x-post at Todd for Vermont House)

I thought today’s Krugman in the New York Times was a fascinating description of how the right wing is funded in this year’s elections.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…

As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News.

and

Arguably, this shouldn’t be surprising. Modern American conservatism is, in large part, a movement shaped by billionaires and their bank accounts, and assured paychecks for the ideologically loyal are an important part of the system.

What can Progressives do to overcome such a cash disadvantage?

 Did this take place almost under the radar? Even without Jon Stewart it sounds as if sanity was the goal just the same this weekend as an estimated 175,000 demonstrators gathered in Washington for the One Nation rally.

Composed of labor union members, teachers, gay activists and other liberal groups the event seemed to get little news play here in Vermont ,but I was somewhat out of my normal news feeding routine this weekend so that may not be the case.

The four hour program – made up of speeches, poetry, musical performances and readings of historical speeches – was broken into three segments, highlighting jobs, public education/ civil rights, and justice.

The account describes what might be an almost timeless scene that took place when peace activists with banners walking from one area to another encountered some DC tourists.  

When the peace activists walked from the festival ground to the One Nation site – disrupted by confused looking tourists on Segway tours of the National Mall – some were met with resistance.

“Fucking hippies,” said a passerby sporting a popped collar, pointing to a group of longhaired peaceniks carrying signs demanding job creation.

“I bet they never had a job anyway."

At the Mall, however, the diverse array of activists coalesced into a united front.

Like that last bit.  

A few funny things, actually.  I thought I’d share some of the more interesting moments from the “all-candidates” debate this afternoon at St. Mike’s:

Even before the debate began, while the candidates were assembling on stage, Cris Ericson appeared to be reading Shumlin’s palm. (I wonder what she saw?  Victory in his future?)

During the debate, both major candidates stuck pretty well to their skits (although, notably, Shumlin started off his opening remark by addressing the tenor of the campaign, noting that it was a radical departure from the civil discourse of Vermont politics) and did not really say anything new.  

As for the minor party candidates:  I feel like Dan Feliciano and Dennis Steele were the most on-target of the four who attended.  Feliciano kept it purely to business (his trade) and was almost, as my friend commented, like a salesman.  He seemed very much focused on getting us to buy his ideas.  And admittedly, he said a lot of things that made good solid sense and was a good presenter.  If he had an elected office under his belt, or a history of public service, I’d be interested.  

Steele was brilliantly clear in his message and was a very clear presenter as well.

Em Peyton and Cris Ericson both skipped around a lot, esp. Peyton.  I think a one-on-one with Peyton would be a lot more illuminating than hearing her in a timed debate.  She seemed very flustered.  

Ericson made some good points, but had some odd moments as well.  And very wonky.  In order to come across powerfully in a quick answer, you really need to focus on big-picture it seems.  Towards the end, she hammered Shumlin on his apparently anti-marijuana stance (despite his earlier response that he would decriminalize small amounts) and then turned to Dubie (who is explicitly anti-pot) and said she hoped he would run for President in 2012 (to which he replied: “No.”)

But in general it was good to hear the other ideas get out there.  No matter what, it seems the debates really aren’t going to be that meaningful (either you have just Dubie and Shumlin duke it out, the same lines, every other night… Or you have one-minute responses and lots of off-topic remarks), so you might as well hear from everyone, every once in a while.  

Best line of the night though: When Feliciano said he had no problem with decriminalizing a small amount of pot, “whatever you call it these days…” Shumlin chimed in: “I believe it’s called a Doobie!”