the Democratic gubernatorial nominee needs:

“Dubie stands in contrast to his Democratic opponents on a number of issues: He supports the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant while they all oppose it. He is anti-abortion while they are pro-choice. He was against Vermont’s 2009 same-sex marriage law while they are for it.”

Source: Dubie kicks off campaign for governor, Burlington Free Press, 06/13/10

The last Douglas administration idea to improve the Vermont State Lottery was to lease it to Lehman Bros.

Now Scientific Games, the company that has run the Vermont State Lottery for ten years, is suing the State. The suit involves the handling of the contract process that will allow Intralot (an international gambling concern based in Greece) to run the lottery.

Scientific Games International Inc. alleges in a lawsuit that the state Lottery Commission, its executive director, Alan Yandow, and Attorney General William Sorrell have violated Vermont's public records law for about a year by refusing to provide the documents. Business Week

Also, some concerns are raised about the ability of Intralot to properly manage the lottery game.

The complaint quoted from the letter, which said a satellite-based lottery system "will very likely experience performance difficulties in Vermont due to the unique weather and foliage challenges."

Intralot International runs lotteries world wide. Intralot Australia made an embarrassing entry into the Australian instant lottery ticket market when it was found that all the new machines’ instructions were in Greek,literally.  

Serial republican party talking point repeat parrot Rob Roper had a post put up on the timid Tigger yesterday titled The Lottery Is A Winner. Roper performed two of his favorite twists of reality in the post by going after non-defunct ACORN* for being “the outfit caught on tape helping a pimp and prostitute set up a brothel filled with under-aged, illegal alien prostitutes” and the teachers’ union NEA.

I tried to post a response to right wing rob’s lies, but apparently the timid tiggers didn’t feel it was appropriate (they don’t mind liars I guess .. better talking points from liars than reality from honest folks). So here now is my response as I tried posting:

Let’s start with THE HUGE LIE: “you remember ACORN: the outfit caught on tape helping a pimp and prostitute set up a brothel filled with under-aged, illegal alien prostitutes”.

Nope, didn’t happen, all the evidence proves that. But you would know that multiple investigations by prosecuting attorneys from New York to California proved what I say is true IF you hadn’t stopped reading as soon as you read what you wanted to read.

All you’re doing, Rob, is repeating a huge lie. If you want a touch of reality: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7780 and http://www.politico.com/blogs/…

Secondly, Rob, you’ve been a major apologists for the Catholic Church regarding its active participation in covering up child molestation by priests. Your primary vehicle for this has been to accuse the VT NEA of doing the exact same thing.

So here’s a chance to give us one example of the VT NEA actively covering up for or defending a known child molester.

Try getting past the convenient talking points, Rob.

I’m not going to waste my time holding my breath … because you are full of crap republican rob the talking point repeat parrot.

*(hey … thanks weasel welch … still no apology for the damage you’ve help cause by joining your rabidly right wing allies in congress to attack a community based organization devoted to empowering those you and your rabidly right wing allies in congress have helped to dis-empower)

(Continuing GMD site policy of promoting candidate diaries. – promoted by GMD)

My passion for Vermont comes from our unique sense of community.

It was my home community that helped raise me when my father passed away and then elected me to the state House at age 22. All of my opportunities in life came from mentors and friends in this part of Vermont, and they are the ones that have given me the support to run for Governor.

Since it is the people of the community that know me best, we've asked them to share their stories about why they are supporting me as I run for Governor of Vermont.

Today we released a video, made by some volunteers, that shares my experience and history growing up in Hartland, through the words and stories of members of our community: local business people, former competitors, and life-long friends.

The community and the people from my past have played an enormous role in my life and have shared their stories with you through this video. Now, I'd be interested in hearing about your own stories. Who or what has played a role in shaping who you are and how has that affected the issues you care about or your involvement in Vermont? Leave your thoughts in the comments below or if you have your own story you'd like to share with the campaign, you can contact us and we can post your story on our supporters page.

I hope you enjoy learning a little bit more about my experiences and that you share this with your friends.

( – promoted by GMD)

(or Must really suck to be Vermont hater Dubie/Douglas)

THE UPDATE (thanks to The Vermont News Guy):

The latest issue  of  Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine named Burlington one of the “ten best cities for the next decade.” Praised  for its “creativity and entrepreneurship” Burlington was tagged the eighth best city for both living and working over the next several years. Austin, Texas, was first.

In addition, recently released  (or, perhaps more accurately, hitherto ignored) Census figures confirm that Vermont is one of the most affluent states, with a relatively low poverty rate, and one of the lowest rates of child poverty in the country. The statistics are from 2008, the most recent available.

The News Guy has the links in his post … so just click right here for more detail (story is titled Random Notes For a Monday).

END UPDATE

Not long ago I helped to expose the seamy underbelly of Vermont life by helping to spread this article from VermontBiz discussing, among other things, how business owners really liked Vermont … even despite having to (insert gasp of understanding here) pay taxes.

Now it is the turn of 7 Days’ own Shay Totten and the glaringly liberal (not) Addison County Independent.

From Shay we learn that “Forbes rated Burlington among the prettiest cities in the United States. But looks aren’t everything. The magazine also declared B-town to be the second most likely location in the U.S. to find a job this spring.”

And the Addison Indie? “Editor’s note – You’ve seen the headlines, you’ve heard the personal stories from friends and neighbors: Vermont needs to create more opportunities for its young people or else they will leave the state. But many young adults choose to stay here and many others return after a few years away.” So they’re presenting the first in a series about the (insert another gasp of understanding here) reasons people like Vermont.

Along with the reality that Vermont’s schools are regularly ranking at the top (or directly adjacent to it) in national rankings … why next thing you know politicians are going to have to start running on the “Vermont is a great place to live” platform.

Campaign notebook:

• Daniel Freilich turns to open condescension, if not quite open contempt, in his quixotic bid to unseat Patrick Leahy in the Democratic Primary for US Senate. From a press release: “After speaking at a South Burlington AFL-CIO meeting, I saw and heard Senator Leahy speak. My reaction, pity, surprised me, but reinforced the rationale for my challenging the 35-year incumbent.”
  
• Is the Vermont GOP quietly giving institutional support to former Douglas spokesperson Jason Gibbs over Attorney Chris Roy in the Secretary of State primary, or did former Party leader Rob Roper simply abscond with party resources when he left? It’s hard to see another option when considering the following:

  This past week, the Gibbs campaign delivered emails to Republican in-boxes throughout Vermont. As one denizen of the GOP cyber community (whom GMD notes is not supporting Jason Gibbs) explained to us:

  It is strange how I received Jason’s email because it didn’t come to my regular address. I have an email address that is on my business website. I use it for all of my personal or business emails. It is the [email] address I give to everyone, friends, associates, whatever. But I did not receive the email [from the Gibbs campaign] through my publicly available email address.  
  
  I have one other email account but I never use it to send emails to people and I don’t know any private individual who knows what it is. I use it for banking or to get my credit card statements or to logon to a few websites or to go online shopping, that type of thing. It is also the private email address I use on the VT GOP website for our newsletter.  I’ve never given it to any candidate though, only the party. But that’s the address he [the Gibbs campaign] is using.

  It is important to note that this email address is not in use in any capacity other than commercial online transactions, so it’s hard to imagine that the Gibbs campaign could obtain the email address from any source except the State GOP. The recipient indicated that he had not received any such communication from the Roy campaign to this point, despite the fact that Roy has been an active candidate far longer than Gibbs.

  Hardly conclusive, but it does at least suggest that Gibbs may have been given special access to Party resources, either from the Party proper or from Roper himself. Given that lists are considered things of value for campaign financing purposes, it does raise an eyebrow, even if it doesn’t cross into illegality. In any event, there may be some heated back and forth phone calls between high profile Republicans underway.

  (NOTE: The GMD byline represents collaborative work by multiple site contributors)

(Promoted, with some content shifted sub folda. We will look at these endorsements more carefully at some point, as there are some interesting ones. A NOTE TO CANDIDATES: As the campaign proceeds, we can reasonably expect an increase in the volume of press releases. Therefore, we’re announcing a tweak in site policy – simple carbons of press releases will not be promoted to the front page, but diaries that directly and personally engage the GMD community will continue to be (“borrowing” heavily from releases is fine – no need to reinvent the optimum language). – promoted by GMD)

Over the past months, Vermonters across the state have been speaking with me about the issues that are on their minds. From local service projects to community meetings, we are hearing of communities struggling and Vermonters coming forward with fresh, new ideas to move our state into a new era. Having served in the House and Senate for 11 years, I know how important it will be to work with innovative legislators from across the state.

That's why I am very excited that Tuesday, on the steps of Burlington City Hall, we announced the first round of legislative endorsements for my campaign for Governor of Vermont. Nine legislators from seven different counties expressed their support for the campaign. These nine individuals represent a broad range of constituencies and issues showing that our messages of jobs, technology, and change are resonating across the state.

For example, Senator Miller from Chittenden County, a successful business owner, discussed how she agrees that Vermont needs better innovation and more advanced technology to create strong local economies. Similarly, Representative Kesha Ram of Burlington, another one of Tuesday's supporters and part of Vermont's next generation of state leaders, emphasized that strong public service leadership is key for building Vermont's future. And Representative Dave Sharpe from Bristol praised my job creation plan and commitment to public education and a transparent government.

Additional legislators across the state – from Grand Isle County to Windsor County – and representing issues such as agriculture, education, civil rights and empowering Vermonters, also expressed support for our vision and goals.

The full list of endorsing state legislators included:

• Sen. Harold Giard – Addison County
• Sen. Hinda Miller – Chittenden County
• Rep. Alison Clarkson – Woodstock
• Rep. Mitzi Johnson – South Hero
• Rep. Kathy Pellett – Chester
• Rep. Kesha Ram – Burlington
• Rep. Dave Sharpe – Bristol
• Rep. Tom Stevens – Waterbury
• Rep. Jeff Young – St. Albans

I'm honored to have the backing of these distinguished state leaders – these are the types of people that we need to come together to move our state into the next era. Their words of support and encouragement show the continued momentum behind the campaign and the broad excitement for our new ideas for Vermont.

My local chief of police here in Norwich just sent out a no doubt well-intentioned missive on the town list serv warning of underage drinking in connection with the pending graduation parties. Fine, probably not a bad idea. But then this jumped out at me:

Some consider underage drinking a “Rite Of Passage”.  In Vermont, we consider it against the law.  With the continued emphasis on our budget to conserve every dollar, it is more important then ever to reduce the financial burden that underage drinking places on our stretched-thin budget.

I'm not sure I can follow his logic. Is he saying that parents should do the right thing because he doesn't have the money to deal with arresting their drunk kids? Does he really think that's the incentive that'll make parents act any differently?

Regardless, given his reasoning, I'm curious to know if Chief Robinson has a similar problem with the financial burden placed on his budget thru his required involvement in the pointless yet exhorbitantly expensive war on drugs? Imagine if he could stop spending time and effort (as he must, since in Vermont “it's against the law”) chasing responsible adults who grow, trade, or use marijuana? I wonder if that wouldn't have an even greater impact on his budget than parents telling their kids to put down the beer 'cause the police chief is running low on cash?

Of course, relieving him of the need to allocate resources to fighting the war on drugs would require a change in policy — either federally (yeah, good luck with that, given Obama's dismissive & derisive laughter at the notion of changing anything about his War on Drugs — it's going almost as well as his War on Afghanistan and his War on the Environment, so why should it stop?), or on a state level. The latter might be possible — particularly if citizens and law enforcement reperesentatives went to their state reps and asked them to take the futile and counterproductive task of enforcing pointless laws off their hands and out of the law enforcement budgets.

A crazy, far-fetched idea? Hardly. From the Marijuana Policy Project:

If this year’s town meeting day ballot in Vermont’s capital of Montpelier is any indication, voters in the Green Mountain State are ready for a change in marijuana policy. In partnership with the Vermont Alliance for Intelligent Drug Laws, MPP sponsored a town meeting day ballot resolution aimed at building support for decriminalizing marijuana possession. By a margin of nearly 3-1 voters implored state legislators to pass legislation that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Nonetheless, Vermont’s elected officials were apparently too busy looking for ways to close the state’s gaping budget holes to be bothered with such a sensible and fiscally responsible proposal.

Indeed. While such legalization could help save significantly on local law enforcement budgets (not to mention the judicial and prison system budgets), and while “the people” are clearly in favor of legalization, a majority of politicians, even in Vermont, don't seem to want to take off their blinders and make the obvious choice.

The argument that legalization will give us more trouble with kids getting into drugs is bunk, and has been debunked repeatedly. “The notion that we have to keep something completely banned for adults to keep it away from kids doesn’t hold up,” said Bruce Mirken, communications director of the MPP, quoted in an article in the Seattle Times, which specifically discussed the notion of suffering state budgets and the untenable perpetuation of the war on drugs.

Chief Robinson (and others like him) might find the courage from retired Vermont cop Tim Datig, former chief of police from Weathersfield, Bristol, and St. Albans, who now works with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and has visited Vermont repeatedly to lobby in Montpelier and educate acoss the state on the issue. According to this set of statistics, Vermont is second only to Alaska in marijuana usage, so decriminalizing it would like have a significant impact on law enforcement budgets.

Take a look at this image:

It’s something I just designed for my web site, to replace the old version of the site which I just thought looked nice, but outdated.

The thing is, it’s not a single image.  It’s 11 images, created on the fly from the web server based on random factors involving about 50 different images.  In fact, if you go to the website, you’ll see a different version of it every time you upload.

How did I do this?  I’ll explain, after the fold.

PHP is a great language for web building.  It works at the server side, which means it’s browser independent and you can even use it to create websites on the fly, having it write code based on a variety of factors.  Building images in PHP is not exactly EASY but it’s kind of fun.

So let’s start with the idea.  The base of the image is located here.  It’s just that circle in the background.

Then the script gets fun– I add each of the individual images for each category.  But those aren’t a single image.  They’re each one image pulled from a random list.  The music, menu, for example, is located here.  Every time you reload that image, it picks one at random from the list.  It does the same with several other directories– five of them specifically.  The advantage of this is that if I want to add or remove some of the random image choices, it’s easy to just go in and do that without changing the code further.

Then the title files: same concept: find the right place to put the files involved; those are simple xy coordinates.  Sometimes it takes tweaking.  You can even add random elements if you like.  I.e, choosing a range of 5 pixels in each direction that a piece of text or an image can be positioned if that’s the effect you’re going for.  I didn’t do that in this case, but toy with it sometimes.  

Then overlay the text images, such as this one.

Here’s the original source code that I use to build this.  You have my full permission to copy it and play with it, just be sure to use your own images and not mine.

There’s a real benefit to this approach: I could have created a single text map image in photoshop and make it look nice, but now if I want to change just one small element of the image, I don’t need to worry about going into photoshop and working backwards.  I can just make the tweak to the one image.  I can also use this to play with many variations of the same image while investigating how they work in combination with one another.  It stretches my mind a bit and gives me the chance to look at everything differently.

So– a couple tips: first, make sure you use all transparent png files as your base files if you want images to overlap one another.  Otherwise, there will be a square image overlaying your other images.

Second: go with the highest quality images to start with that you can find.  You can always output reduced quality images if you choose, but it’s better to start with the high quality and go down because you can’t go in the other direction.

Third: output to png can be a little tricky– if you make a small tweak to something you can create errors very easily without realizing what you’ve done.  

Oh, btw– I’ve been making some major changes to sites I’ve designed lately; feel free to give feedback on the sites and if you’re looking to have someone build you one, feel free to contact me.  

  FairPoint Communication’s Mike Smith is proposing less regulation for the bankrupt company he now represents. He is just in time to make his regulatory wish list known in the last days of the Douglas administration while his old friends are still in office.  

Seven months ago FairPoint hired the newly retired Smith, Douglas’s former Chief of Administration for their newly created job called Vermont State President.

One state Senator noted then that "He has a good working relationship with the Department of Public Service and the Public Service Board so it will probably will be helpful in that regard,"  

I guess it is helpful, because his old colleague Commissioner of Public Service David O’Brien (who represents Vermont customers before the PSB) and Republican State Senator Vince Illuzzi chime in sympathetically that Smith may have a point regarding easing regulations on the bankrupt company.  

The major problems cited for FairPoint’s troubles didn’t include over regulation but very poor management, service and a crushing burden of debt.  

Smith acknowledged that there are parts of Vermont where FairPoint is the only company offering certain services. He said he would like to see the state regulate the company specifically in those areas; but be less regulated in the parts of the state where there is competition.  

The state regulates the rates FairPoint charges customers and its expansion of Internet broadband in rural areas.  

"We're looking to the future," Smith said. "We wanted to get this conversation started."

Times Argus