Hours after I post a diary about how Pollina’s campaign may think it knows this game, but if they want to play in the big leagues, they’re going to have to start dotting all their communications ‘i’s and crossing all their public-perception ‘t’s, lest the press and the public rip them to shreds, we get this news from Sneyd:

(Sneyd) Now, (Vermont Milk Company) whose founders hoped they could show a new way for farmers to control their own destiny, is regrouping.

A new investor who doesn’t want to be publicly identified has pumped $200,000 into the company.

Okay. Let’s get this straight. A politician backs off from electoral politics for a couple years and starts a business. He decides to run for Governor, largely on the success of that business. News comes out during the campaign that the business is in trouble, and the press reports on it in the context of the politician’s campaign. Within days an anonymous 6-figure contributor swoops in to bail out the business.

Holy crap!!

Who gave the money? What will they expect from Pollina if he is Governor? And what knuckleheads thought that this wasn’t going to stink to high heaven??

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!

It seems there are some posters here on GMD who are intent on blaming the Vermont Progressive Party and/or Anthony Pollina for every Democratic Party failure.

Shumlin couldn’t get elected Lt. Governor years ago? Blame Anthony. Dems can’t find a gubernatorial candidate? Blame Anthony.

Dems won’t stand up to Douglas or Bush and the big war machine? Dems sign on to stupid bankruptcy bills and laws enabling the government to spy on us? Dems won’t protect the nation by not only putting impeachment on the table but making use of it?

GODDAMN YOU POLLINA!

If only the Vermont Progressive Party and Anthony Pollina would go away. The flowers would bloom, children would behave and Santa Claus would come once a week.

Damn you Pollina.

The Alan Yandow Job Security Study.

A friend of mine calls the Lottery a tax on the foolish ,what are the odds 75000 to one ?

In hard economic times boosting a the lottery seems a poor idea at best .Let’s spent $150,000 to explore a tax on Vermont Yankee and Entergy .

Go where the money is for tax revenue not into some poor scratch ticket buyer’s pocket .

State to spend $150,000 on studying expansion of lottery

Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – Gov. James Douglas’ proposal to lease the Vermont Lottery never got much traction in Montpelier. But lawmakers are exploring whether the state can capitalize on the same profit potential that prompted Wall Street investment firms to offer the lottery buy-out.

The Vermont Lottery, run by a five-member commission appointed by the Governor, reaps close to $24 million in annual revenue for the state’s education fund. At the Legislature’s behest, the commission will soon embark on a wide-ranging study to see what Vermont can do to bolster its lotto revenue.

“(The study) would give us an idea of things we could change and an idea of what we could make,” Alan Yandow, executive director of Vermont Lottery, told lawmakers via speaker phone Wednesday. “I can’t quantify it now, but that is the thrust of the study.”

Correction from Times Argus

March 29, 2008

A story that appeared in the March 27 edition of The Times Argus reported that the Vermont Lottery Commission will embark on a $150,000 study to determine how to enhance lottery revenue in the state. In fact the commission has yet to approve the study, and will meet on April 9 to decide whether to proceed with the project.

Jon Margolis at 7 Days has moved quickly to differentiate the publication in the post-Freyne era. Where Freyne devoted a lot of ink to promoting Anthony Pollina’s gubernatorial candidacy and minimizing any potential competition, Margolis takes a more detached view – although one guaranteed to elicit howls of protest from the Progressive faithful whose dissatisfaction will undoubtedly be on display in next week’s letter column. Regardless, it clearly stands out as the definitive traditional media analysis of the Pollina/Prog/Dem dynamic to date. Readers of this site will find familiar rhetoric in Margolis’s piece; basically that Pollina can’t win, and the Dems are looking pretty damn bad:

But in this bizarre campaign, there’s another winner: Anthony Pollina, the Progressive Party candidate. He wins not because he is going to be governor – he is never going to be governor – but because he has flummoxed, outfoxed and humiliated the Vermont Democratic Party…

…Some Democrats are convinced not only that Pollina can’t win, but that he knows it, that he just likes running. It’s a plausible supposition.

This is the point where I disagree with Margolis, however. I think its clear that Pollina and company very much believe he can win, as I believe many still cling to a parochial notion that the great unwashed will recognize their rightousness and rise up to carry them to victory in defiance of the polls and pundits.

That’s not to say Pollina isn’t running a good campaign so far, but there are cracks. And in sizing up those cracks – in particular some apparent sloppiness in Pollina’s public comments, one gets the sense that there may be some unexpected turmoil ahead if they get their wish and get to be the left-wing option to Jim Douglas, in lieu of a Democrat.

To use the parlance of the Presidential primary, Pollina has never been vetted. Now, when Clinton makes such a charge against Obama nationally, it should be self-evidently ridiculous; being a major contender in a big election comes with press scrutiny and is a process of “vetting” in  and of itself – and the same is true at the state level.

Pollina is, at this point, an old pro at running a statewide election, so he and his team may well be comfortable in the conceit that they know the territory. But the truth is, they’ll be in unknown territory entirely if he is the one and only challenger to Jim Douglas. For the first time, the press will consider him a “major contender,” and where they couldn’t care less about his background before, they’ll be all over it in a one-on-one with Douglas. The recent piece at the far-far-right-wing Caledonian Record looking at purported troubles at the Pollina-founded Vermont Milk Company may simply be the first shot across the bow.

Pollina has always had a tendency to speak in very cavalier terms about what he has said and done, and the recent apparent contradiction between his statement to Philip Baruth that “at every step in that early process, we actually kept the Democratic party informed. We literally called them up to say, ‘We’re opening a bank account today,’ or ‘We’re gonna do this today.'” and VDP Chair Ian Carleton’s response that “Neither Pollina nor anyone on his behalf ever called the VDP to let us know that he was ‘opening a bank account today,’ as Mr. Pollina claims in the interview, nor was any such call made about ‘trying to raise the money,’ as Pollina also states.” suggests that cavalier approach may still be operative. If he is serious about being the candidate of the left, he’d be well advised to speak far more carefully in the future, as the down side to having the press actually listen to you for a change, is that they are the press… and when they do listen, they usually listen rather carefully.

crossposted at ibrattleboro.com

In the Winter Soldier testimonies, it has become commonplace to hear of US forces killing Iraqi civilians.

The Rules Of Engagement, outlined to soldiers before their shipping out, seem muddy at best. Many soldiers tell their stories of killing civilians by accident, but sometimes under direct orders. The shooting of farmers who violated curfew by being out after dark in their fields was by order. The mistaken firing on a wedding party was because they thought there was hostile gunfire.

These incidents also can turn friendly Iraqis into enemies, understandably, overnight.

This entire occupation is a mess, but to get the particulars on the hows and whys of it all, read on at:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2…

Nothing explains it like the soldiers who lived it.

crossposted @ www.vermontbloggernaut.blogspot.com

So the long anticipated, short-term fix to the Grand Isle Drawbridge has been completed. Where once traffic traveled over rust, the metal is bare and bright. No longer do Islanders traveling north and south have to worry about dropping through into the lake. VTrans did a good job of facilitating a solution, but most of the credit belongs to Engineers Construction Inc.

The workers from ECI were diligent in their work in spite of all sorts of adverse weather conditions, from rain, wind, snow, and extreme cold to a mini ice storm. After the ice they had to break the whole bridge free, before restarting their work. All the while, cars trooped north and south only a few feet away. That crew certainly worked hard for the money they earned.

Now that this chapter has closed in the story of our drawbridge, I wonder what the next one holds. After all, this is still only a temporary fix, and I have yet to hear what the state plans to do next. For that matter has anyone in the Islands heard anything? Of course not!  

There have been no public meetings on the future of the bridge. The state and VTrans are having their little meetings down in Montpelier, behind closed doors, without any input from islanders. It’s apparent that they only care to do what they want, not what we want. Where is our senator, where are our representatives?

Islanders please let you voices be heard! Talk to Senator Mazza, and Representatives Trombley and Johnson, voice your concerns. Don’t stop there! Contact the governor, VTrans, your local selectboard, your neighbors! Islanders need to be heard on a subject near and dear to their hearts, their drawbridge, our input is important!!

      Ian Carleton:  Big Money

In today's missive from the man who can't get a candidate for governor, Ian Carleton crows,

“Keep Big Money Out of Politics: Tell Jim Douglas not to block campaign finance progress.”

Frankly, Carleton's huffing and puffing is getting a little tiresome, especially since he can't come up with a viable candidate to replace Douglas.  To give him credit, it must be a most unenviable position to be the Chair of VDP at a time when his job is pretty much to blow air into a leadership vacuum.  Keep huffing and puffing, Mr. Carleton.  I hope the job pays well. 

Since the time I wrote on this subject in  Times Argus and Rutland Herald as well as here at GMD there have been no changes to the bill regarding Limitations of Contributions.  As I mentioned then, The US Supreme Court overturned Vermont's 1997 law because contribution limits were excessively low.  Justice Breyer argued that the rationale for preventing the appearance of corruption does not mean “the lower the limit, the better.”  In fact, the very low limits provide too much of an advantage to incumbents as well as self-financed candidates.

So what is “big money” according to Ian Carleton?  $1000.  

Probably about the same as one month's mortgage payment.  Any politician even appearing to sell out so cheap certainly would have made news by now. 

Not only would it be newsworthy if there was actual evidence of political corruption in Vermont, it would be equally newsworthy if there was even an appearance of corruption on the part of our political leaders based on contributions to their campaigns.  So far, no news.

Three years ago the United States Supreme Court sent AG Sorrell home empty handed in its rebuke of Act 64, the 1997 campaign finance law.  Given the minimal differences between Act 64 and the new bill, S.164, it looks as if Vermont Legislators don't give a damn what the Supreme Court Justices think.

[Cross posted to Broadsides.org]

There’s something missing in the Vermont Progressive Party’s platform. In fact, it’s also missing from the platform of Progressive Party gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina. And it’s no small matter – it’s the Iraq War.

Go and look for yourselves. I did, and I didn’t find one word about the Iraq War or its many associated ills even mentioned in either platform. Moreover, I did a word search in the Progressive Party’s 27-page platform and absolutely nothing turned up when I searched for “war,” “Iraq,” “peace,” “national guard,” or “soldiers.” Nothing. Zero. Not even a mention.

To be fair, I also did a similar search of the Vermont Democratic Party’s platform. And, frankly, I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole host of references to those very same search words. The word “peace,” in fact, was in the platform’s very first paragraph. But the Vermont Democratic Party didn’t just drop the peace words, they made sense with them. For example, consider this paragraph that appears under the headline, “The War in Iraq:”

a. We condemn the false claims that justify the war in Iraq, and the failure of current foreign policy to consider the historical, cultural and religious forces in the region.

b. We are committed to a sensible and clear strategy to bring those who still serve home from Iraq quickly and with dignity.

c. We are committed to an active policy to cooperate with other nations to support a financial and political commitment to stabilizing and securing Iraq.

d. All military personnel, veterans and their families must be recognized for their courage and service and are entitled to full medical, emotional and financial support.

See? That’s not real hard, is it? Or controversial, for that matter, since nearly 80% of Vermonters want an end to the Iraq War.

Why, then, would Vermont’s Progressive Party and its perennial candidate of choice, Anthony Pollina, refuse to even acknowledge the war in their platforms? In a word: Politics. Or, if you’d prefer a few more words: A failure to lead.

Back in late-2001 when this nation was in its bloodthirsty post-9/11 rage, the nascent Progressive Party set the stage for ignoring the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq by resorting to parliamentary maneuvers to squelch efforts by party activists to pass a resolution condemning the deafening drumbeats of war at the time. At its November 2001 state party convention, a resolution condemning the war talk was first passed by those in attendance. But then Progressive Party leaders, led by then-Representative Carina Driscoll, quickly maneuvered to “table” the resolution and – with breakneck speed – succeeded in killing it.

I remember it well. Because I was there. And I remember the confusion amongst those in attendance when one moment we thought the Progs were about to do the right thing by opposing the Bush war machine and then the next minute being undercut by underhanded maneuvers that effectively ended the debate.

At the time, I was a columnist for Seven Days so I approached Anthony Pollina and asked him about why the party leaders killed the anti-war resolution.

“We want the party to focus on statewide issues,” Pollina told me at the time. “9/11 and the response to it isn’t a Vermont issue.”

It was a mantra that the leaders had apparently agreed upon because they all repeated the same line as I made my way from one leader to another – from Driscoll to Ellen David-Friedman to Chris Pearson. They were in lockstep: The Progressive Party would not lead on the war issue – nor would they even mention it.

After the Party’s convention, Pearson sent out an email update to the Party faithful, declaring that there was “relief” amongst many that the Progs didn’t take a stand on the upcoming wars. The apparent “relief” they were feeling was about not wanting to “marginalize” itself from the voting population before Pollina was about to launch a run for lieutenant governor.

And so the war silence began for the Progs. Worse, that silence continues to this day.

To date, six Vermonters have returned from the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq in body bags. But the Progressive Party apparently still doesn’t believe it’s a “Vermont issue.” Moreover, according to the Policy Priorities Project, Vermont tax-payers have coughed up more than $680 million to fund the Iraq war, while Vermont’s Progressive Party or favorite son, Pollina, won’t even mention the war in their platforms. They’d apparently rather express “relief” in ignoring it.

Unfortunately, ignoring the war is a privilege many of us can’t share with the Progressive Party’s leadership. The six Vermonters who lost their lives can’t ignore it. Their families can’t ignore it. Those of us with an understandable sense of outrage over the Bush administration’s lies and deceit while marching us to war can’t ignore it. And those of who can think of much better ways to spend the $680 million can’t ignore it, either. Indeed, nearly 80% of Vermonters don’t want to ignore the issue of the War on Iraq – they want it ended, and ended now.

The Progressive Party’s “duck and cover” approach to the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq is in direct contrast to the rich history of bold leadership that has been found in alternative parties in this country. Its silence on the number one issue of the day should tell us a lot about the current leadership of the Progressive Party and its apparent “relief” in not leading.

Vermont’s Progressive Party should be ashamed of the deaf ear it’s turned toward the most pressing issue of our time. Because there’s nothing “progressive” about avoidance.

Per WPTZ:

MONTPELIER, Vt. —  A majority of nearly 7,000 Vermonters completing opinion surveys on Town Meeting Day said they favor same-sex marriage. 54-percent said they support allowing gay couples to marry while 37-percent were opposed.

That represents an 8-per cent jump in support for same-sex marriage in the last year, noted Johnson State College political science professor and state Sen. William Doyle of Washington County who compiles the results each March.

This is not a scientific sample intended to represent the opinions of all Vermonters, but an 8% jump in support among a similar demographic is a major deal.

Vermont Senate President Peter Shumlin met with the Valley News editorial board yesterday.He spoke about many other things but this popped up at the end of the article .

Shumlin, who lost a three-way race for lieutenant governor in 2002, in large part because of the presence of Progressive Anthony Pollina in the race, also said Democrats will likely field a “good candidate” to challenge Douglas in November.

But he said the likelihood that Pollina will also be in the race would be a major pitfall.

“I’ll be honest about the challenges. If Anthony Pollina is really going to run for governor, Jim Douglas is your next governor. Just go look at the history,” Shumlin said.

www.vnews.com

If Anthony Pollina is really going to run ?

Galbraith hasn’t said anything other than he is thinking about it.Vermont Democratic Party says to make nothing of the fact that we have no candidate at this time .Strange maneuvers.