Jason Gibbs, one-time PR flack who got promoted to head up the Dept of Forest Parks and Recreation is running for secretary of state.
Gibbs prior experience came from Boston’s Big Dig, which sort of explains a lot about why Gibbs prefers activities that use private contractors and outsourcing than government employees.
Gibbs seems to think that one of the best things he did in his last job was to promote more deforestation through timber sales in order to reduce the budget of the forest service.
Should we expect a similar approach to the Secretary of State’s office? Perhaps we could sell excess ballots to the highest bidder in order to help fund elections?
A few days ago, I posted the following in a comment thread:
I like Dunne, but I wish he’d run for Lt. Gov instead. I think he’s got some good ideas, but his responses at the forum I live blogged made me feel like he might not be quite ready for the top slot. There was a lot of commentary about how he’s a great candidate because of things his parents did, which I think of as very weak answers.
When I say I “like” Dunne, I mean I like him a lot. I’ve had conversations with the man and I think he’s a really great guy.
He dropped me a note and asked if I’d be willing to talk for a few. We connected this afternoon and a good conversation. Fair note: I did not tell him I would be blogging about this (nor at the time did I expect to be) but we also never addressed the conversation as “off the record” in any sense and I do not expect that he will be offended or upset by anything I have to say in this post.
So we had a really good conversation, one in which I pointed out a few things that I thought of as fairly serious problems about his messaging. One was the issue I mentioned above, referencing his parents. I don’t think that’s necessarily settled, but I can see where he was coming from on it.
The other thing I brought up was that Matt made multiple references to his experience as administrator of AmeriCorps Vista during the forum I live blogged. I can see why he’d want to bring up administrative experience but I didn’t get the sense that he understood much about child care or early childhood education. He said during our conversation that he did a lot to support early childhood education through AC Vista, and I asked him if he could articulate any specific examples of that.
Now– to be clear: I am a teacher. Asking people to articulate examples is a huge part of what I do. It’s kind of a crucial element. I am never convinced that someone understands a concept until I hear specifics.
So that’s why I asked.
I got an answer I didn’t expect.
Matt rattled off a series of examples of ways in which his organization supported early childhood education. He cited specific research about the various ways we can support parents and children in need. He spoke with an intense amount of detail about these issues and genuinely knows exactly what he’s talking about.
I’m not saying I was wrong above. In that forum, at that time, he did not articulate this depth of understanding, but that forum was just a few weeks ago. This is not the sort of information and understanding that you glean by drilling yourself on it over a few short weeks. I found myself extremely impressed with the conversation we had. I did, of course, have to mention that I never got the sense that he understood early childhood education to the extent that he clearly does during that forum and I wish he had been more articulate about it at the time. Even with a three-minute timer, if he’d just rattled off a few of those statistics during the forum, he would have swayed a lot of people in attendance, so I consider that to have been a missed opportunity.
But, that said, I’m writing this to give Matt props for listening to what I had to say and being willing to have a fairly uncomfortable conversation with someone who had kind of slammed him in a public forum. I’m still undecided, but now instead of being undecided between Shumlin and Racine, I’m undecided between Shumlin, Dunne and Racine. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t really be thanking Matt for this, but really, I know I should.
So… to Matt, more like what I heard from you today. You’ve got a more complicated mind than I gave you credit for. To Peter and Doug, you may have your work cut out for you at the other early childhood forums. If Matt brings his A game to those forums, you might be in some trouble.
If you want to know your chances of having your political dreams become a reality, ask yourself this: How much money have you given to your politicians lately? If, like me, the answer is “zero,” well, to paraphrase a GMD-front-pager: sit down, shut up and enjoy the show. And if you just gave a little, enjoy the show from the back of the line.
Ah, but if you’re lucky enough to “max out” with your political contributions, you don’t just get to enjoy the show, you get to run it.
Right now in Vermont, political pundits are not-so-hard at work reporting on the lowest common denominator of politics: The money. And almost all of the coverage goes something like this: He’s got more. She’s got more. He’s got less. She’s got less.
Well, to be fair, you also have sleepy folks like Eric Davis, Chris Graff and Kristen Carlson serving us up “analysis” like this: “Having more money means being able to buy more things.” Wow. Thanks.
But there’s almost no effort put into shining a spotlight on the insidious nature of all this money (and attention) being put into this unseemly side of politics. There’s very little attempt to uncover the obvious favors and policy bending done for the donors by the politicians. Nor, with the exception of Totten and the News Guy, is there a discussion about Vermont’s embarrassingly lax campaign finance laws.
Isn’t this the time to be putting these office-seekers on the hot seat with regards to their positions on issues like campaign finance reform? And, in the case of a gubernatorial election field filled with lifetime politicians, shouldn’t we be asking them why they’ve dithered, dathered and/or simply failed to address this most important issue in their years of public service?
As the system stands now, we – the people – should interpret headlines about Dubie raising a million dollars and his Democratic challengers raising a million and a half dollars as follows: Dubie Owes $1 million in Favors, Dems Owe $1.5 Million in Favors. Because that – sadly – is the reality in today’s politics. Yes, even in Vermont.
The duplicitous nature of the money-in-politics game is best exemplified by the illogical partisan nonsense spewed by the cheerleaders of the two-party duopoly. It goes like this: Your money is bad, but our money is good. And, sadly, this works to both fuel the game further and, perhaps worse, continue to distract from the real issues that need to be addressed.
Notice, for example, that regulars at this site have understandably denigrated Brian Dubie for having contributors that may have “dealings with the State” (um, who doesn’t?) but then turn around and cheer their candidates’ money gathering as a mere “show of support.” Frankly, it’s juvenile.
For a sobering reminder of what the impact of money in politics is, take a minute to watch the Bill Moyers video below. And then help start to change the dialog, beginning with a renewed and centrally-focused commitment to the issues, only the issues, and nothing but the issues. Sure, money is included in that – but only in the negative.
Brian Dubie reported $943,960.72 to date and has spent $455,116.18 leaving $488,844.54 on hand.
The Democratic candidates combined have raised a staggering $1,491,404.35, indicating a lot of financial support among a lot of people to turn the Governor’s office Democratic. As long as the losing candidates open up their fundraising lists for the winner, the Democratic nominee should be able to compete fine financially when it counts.
In the Lieutenant Governor’s race, Democrat Steve Howard reported $50,804.17 raised. Republicans Phil Scott and Mark Snelling reported $47,458.85 and $78,906.80 respectively. Democrat Chris Bray did not file a report by the deadline.
In the Auditor’s race, incumbent Tom Salmon has raised a paltry $10475, which isn’t appreciably more than newly announced relative political unknown, Democrat Doug Hoffer who reported $8135. Democrat Ed Flanagan reported no fundraising, but has a $27,087.15 rollover from his previous campaigns.
Secretary of State reports will be forthcoming, as well as more detailed analysis by the various GMD front pagers as emails, scans and musings have been in a little more circulation.
(NOTE: The GMD byline represents collaborative work by multiple – but not necessarily all – site contributors)
And I’ve come to hate this primary. No, I still think primaries (and this primary) are good ideas (although 5 candidates, I’ll grant, is a bit much) for all the reasons I’ve mentioned in the past.
But I’ve come to hate this primary. Why? Because there’s more than one candidate I want to vote for. Worse yet, there’s more than one candidate I really wouldn’t ever want or expect to vote against. And I hate that. Over the coming days and weeks, you’ll be seeing more front pagers making their varied endorsements (as Sue did here) with their varied rationales
But you won’t be seeing one from me. The hate is flowing. By the time the primary gets here, I may well have a “Darth” attached to my name.
The Markowitz campaign meets financial expectations. From a press release:
Today, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz announced that 1812 Vermonters from 177 cities and towns across the state have invested in her campaign to jumpstart Vermont’s economy. Markowitz raised nearly $524,000, which is twice the amount raised by her nearest Democratic opponent.
[…] More that 1440 voters gave less than $100, and the average donation of these sustaining donors was $64.50.
In addition, Susan Bartlett reported raising $70,919.73. This puts her at a fundraising level not too far off from Doug Racine, who’s to-date total included only about $100,000 raised during the same period (since last summer).
As most GMD readers probably are already well aware, tonight ORCA Media is hosting a Democratic Gubernatorial primary candidates debate at Montpelier City Council chambers at City Hall from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM.
Being informed that there will be no wifi available on site, plus with it most likely being both crowded and hot there, I will be viewing the debate via local cable access TV as well as also providing live blog event coverage to Vermont Watch from the comfort of home.
If there are GMD front page bloggers as well as potentially others who will be viewing the debate via either local cable access TV it will be airing live on or the live stream available online and whom would like to be considered as possible guest bloggers during the live blog, please let me know via: morganbrown (at) vermontwatch (dot) net (note correction of e-mail address).
If anyone is attending the debate in person and will be tweeting by text via cell phone, iPhone or Blackberry using Twitter, let me know and I can add your tweet stream within live blog as well (use above e-mail address or if I am already following your tweets, DM me @vtwatch).
Yesterday NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko made an unprecedented trip to Vermont to meet with seven intervenor and environmental groups to discuss ongoing safety and aging management issues at Vermont Yankee.
Jaczko had a 90-minute discussion with representatives from the New England Coalition, Citizens Awareness Network, Conservation Law Foundation, Vermont Public Interest Research group, Safe and Green, Nuclear Free in 2012, and the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance in Brattleboro followed by a private tour of Vermont Yankee and meeting with Entergy officials.
While I had a meeting and could not listen to the whole event on the phone bridge provided by NRC, I did hear the first few minutes during which Chairman Jaczko thanked Vermont State Representative Sarah Edwards for setting up this meeting with the representatives of the seven groups. This statement received a round of applause from a majority of the group in attendance. In addition to the seven groups given time to speak, there were a myriad of observers from the press, the Congressional Delegations, state employees like Department of Health health physicist Dr. Bill Irwin, various elected officials, and concerned individuals. I have asked for a transcript and will post it when it is available. In the meantime Nuclear Free Vermont and VPIRG have sent me copies of their statements which are posted in their entirety below the fold.
James Moore of VPIRG was the last to speak and closed with the following points agreed upon by the seven groups. Moore said,
To that end I have been asked by the group to share four requests with you:
1. Cease consideration of ENVY’s relicensing application promptly, and turn all regulatory focus toward ensuring safety during the transition to closure of the Vernon reactor, and implementation of comprehensive waste storage procedures. NRC should act with transparency to enforce its regulations and maintain strict vigilance so as to ensure against accidents, mishaps, and accidental releases in the interim.
2. Compile and disseminate a detailed plan for closure of Vermont Yankee. This plan should include a list of tasks and a timeline for their completion, in anticipation of closure in 2012. This plan should reflect NRC staff expertise, lessons learned from other reactors, and the particular expertise of people who have worked at Vermont Yankee or who have relevant knowledge of its operations.
3. Work with the licensee, state and local government officials, Entergy workers, independent experts and affected citizenry to form an advisory panel to advise and monitor activities directed toward a safe transition to closure.
4. Prepare and distribute monthly reports to update the public and elected officials about the closure process.
Ed Anthes of Nuclear Free Vermont, who posts often on Green Mountain Daily had the most detailed comments regarding Vermont Yankee’s key safety and reliability issues due to its age and condition. He quoted specifically from the Legislature’s oversight of VY and its reliability issues. See these and more information regarding Entergy’s response below the fold.
Ed Anthes of Nuclear Free Vermont focused on the recent assessment of VY ordered by the Vermont Legislature. See Anthes entire statement at the end of this post.
In 2008, the Vermont Legislature enacted a law requiring an inspection of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, to help ensure that legislators could make a responsible, informed choice when deciding if Vermont will switch to renewable energy sources, or allow Entergy Nuclear to operate their reactor in Vernon for twenty years past its design life.
A summary of the NSA inspectors’ evaluation is Appendix B, Vermont Yankee Benchmark Report. The Benchmark Report compares Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee to all other reactors in the US. ENVY ranks in the worst group of reactors in half of the benchmark measures compared. These include:
•Plant Overall Performance
•Production Cost
•Recordable Injuries
•Number of Systems Supervised by each System Manager
•Industry Equipment Reliability Performance
ENVY vs. Sister Plants Equipment Reliability Performance
ENVY ranks 10th worst of 12 similar reactors
ENVY vs. Entergy Fleet Equipment Reliability Performance
ENVY ranks 11th worst of 12 Entergy reactors
Equipment Reliability Index
The NSA report states: “The ER Index performance does not meet industry standards.”
In addition, the inspection report identified high personnel turnover, significant staffing vacancies, and poor levels of experience in two key departments: Maintenance and Equipment Reliability. As ENVY enters its final operating run, the importance of some of these critical deficiencies loom larger.
During the group’s closing remarks, VPIRG’s James Moore began his discussion emphasizing who VPIRG represents and then delineating breaches of NRC trust. In VPRIG’s entire statement pasted at the end of this post, Moore said,
I am the clean energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG). VPIRG is the largest consumer and environmental organization in Vermont and we have worked on Vermont Yankee related issues since 1972, when Vermont Yankee reactor was commissioned.
We are here today in part because Vermonters have good reason not to trust Entergy Vermont Yankee, and because we have good reason not to trust the NRC.
This mistrust has grown out of NRC’s actions and apparent willingness to side with the nuclear industry at the expense of being straight with the public and putting safety first. Vermont Yankee is one of the oldest reactors in the country and we need a real cop on the beat.
Not all Vermonters have been happy with Chairman Jaczko’s meeting with the nuclear safety advocacy groups that both the press and the industry try to portray as simply biased anti-nukes.
•Yesterday the Brattleboro Reformer posted a nasty editorial criticizing anti-nuclear activism and theatrics,
•The Vermont Energy Partnership sent a letter to Chairman Jaczko and the different newspapers and blogs criticizing the Chair’s private meeting.
•Finally, pro-nuke blogs from around the country, led by Vermont’s own Nuclear Energy Institute’s connected Yes Vermont Yankee, also jumped in to condemn the NRC meeting with the Intervenors.
It is especially interesting to note that according to Source Watch the allegedly independent Vermont Energy Partnership includes Entergy Nuclear, IBM, Green Mountain Power, and former Governor Tom Salmon as key members.
Pro-nuke blog Yes Vermont Yankee is written by an industry insider who makes her money working for the industry as does Rod Adams with his Atomic Insights. Although they all portray themselves as independent concerned citizens, all receive income from the nuclear industry and are part of an online group that spreads the same biased throughout the country. Like the Vermont Energy Partnership, these blogs are heavily connected to the lobbyists and nuclear industry groups of which they claim to have an unbiased opinion. [Don’t believe what I say, do the research yourself via SourceWatch and Google.]
The pro-nuke blogs are similar to the resurrected I AM VY site, which features plant employees supposedly telling their own stories, although former Entergy legislative liaison Dave McElwee is no longer featured. You may remember that he was the Entergy employee who denied the existence of buried underground pipes carrying radioactivity to the legislature and condemned my firm Fairewinds Associates, Inc for bringing this critical environmental issue forward to the Joint Fiscal Committee in a report and testimony.
Apparently not everyone is as eager to endorse the location of F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport as were members of the legislature in May. The Stop the F-35 Coalition is raising serious concerns about the environmental impact of F-35 flights, which it hopes will draw more scrutiny to the proposal.
It has been argued that location of the F-35 jets in Burlington will upgrade our Vermont National Guard, as well as bring economic opportunities to the surrounding communities. No doubt these enticements were the primary reasons why the Legislature hurried to support the proposal in May before even the Air Force’s own Environmental Impact Study had been released.
Beyond concerns regarding noise pollution from the jets, which are said by some to be substantially noisier than the deployed F-16 fighter, Jared Wood of Burlington suggests that tying Vermonter’s economic future to the F-35 may be just plain bad business:
“It’s a compromise that’s not going to make anybody happy,” he said.
Last month, the soaring price tag of the Lockheed Martin plane triggered a congressional breach for military procurement overruns – which in turn has prompted a corporate “restructuring” of the project.
I quickly leafed through various studies and documents available on the internet and find that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support Stop the F-35’s noise concerns. So why not seek some more independent environmental impact analysis?
An April 4 VPR broadcast on the topic featured Lt. Col. Chris Caputo, who dismissed a study of F-35 noise conducted at Elgin Airforce Base in Florida that provided much of the evidence regarding acoustical impact from the new fighter jets:
“You cannot compare the information in the Eglin EIS, to the current EIS going on right now. It’ll be based on the most, latest and greatest noise data conducted at Edwards Air Force Base – test data, dated April ’09 that has been publicly releasable.”
Caputo says the latest data show that the F-35 is n average 5 to 7 decibels louder than the F-16, but that many variables have to be taken into account in that measurement.
That got me to thinking about the “variables.” I’m no scientist, but it occurs to me that the topography, geology and other factors, which are specific to the region over which the F-35’s are to be deployed, might have a critical relationship to how the decibel level might play out in that region.
So I had a look at the general land features of Edwards Air Force Base which yielded the more benign test results favored by Caputo. That Air Force Base is located on the edge of a great salt desert; hardly similar to the land features surrounding Burlington. Then, too, neither Airforce base is in the civilian center of the busiest city of the state.
The decision as to where the F-35’s will be deployed is expected in 2011. I sincerely hope that, should Burlington be selected, short-sighted economics and a vague discomfort at countermanding the desires of Vermont’s National Guard do not preclude some serious independent evaluation of all the environmental and other implications before deployment is accepted.
(Continuing site policy of promoting candidate diaries. – promoted by GMD)
Today, I announced that if I am elected governor I will eliminate the daily meal allowance that currently comes with the job. Vermonters are suffering and our state budget is suffering. That means that this is a luxury that Governor Douglas, and governors before him, enjoyed that is fundamentally out-of-touch and unaffordable.
Vermonters pay our governor a good salary, so a meal stipend is an unnecessary luxury at a time of belt-tightening statewide. 23,000 Vermonters are suffering as our economy fails to rebound. I know the savings realized by ending the governor’s per diem is small in the context of the entire budget, but it sends an important message: Shared sacrifice is important and Vermonters want a leader that understand the struggles they are going through.
If packing a bag lunch from home is good enough for working Vermont families, it should be good enough for our governor.
Shay Totten first reported that Vermont governors are currently entitled to a meals allowance of $61 per day not only when they are traveling on state business, but also on ordinary days when working in Montpelier. That perk costs taxpayers around $16,000 per year.
Vermont house and senate members are entitled to a per diem when they are in Montpelier attending sessions. Under current practice, however, governors receive the per diem every day they work. The governor should receive an allowance when traveling representing Vermont, but at a time when we irresponsibly cut some social services, it simply seems wrong to spend this money.
It’s a small gesture, but an important one. Money is tight for everyone these days and being careful with the public’s dollars has to start at the top.
I hate 