[UPDATE: This story broke at the lunch hour, plenty of time for a wire report or evening news piece, and still we’ve seen no coverage whatsoever. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The incumbent Lt. Governor can be caught in a documented lie – and one that involved him lounging in Hawaii while he claims to have been be doing the people’s business – all only days before the election, with the general issue already very much in the headlines – and that apparently is not worthy of attention from a single news source if you’re a Republican incumbent chummy with the press corps. Un-freaking-believable.]

Matt Dunne’s campaign, recently nitro-boosted with the addition of campaign veteran Adam Quinn, wasted little time perusing the official schedule which purports to chronicle Lt Governor Brian Dubie’s time spent in serving the duties of the office. Despite a (presumably intentionally) significant delay in releasing the information, and the vetting of it prior to release before multiple sources (including GOP beltway insider Brady Toensing), Team Dubie screwed up – big time.

According to the Dunne campaign press release, Dubie’s schedule shows the following for the week of February 21st, during the time Dubie was actually in Hawaii (independently confirmed by a Feb. 24 Rutland Herald piece, currently behind their pay wall):

Tuesday Feb 21st

Private Appointment, 1000am 1030am Senate Convenes, 345pm 400pm Testify
FYo6 Budget house approps room 42, 400pm 430pm Committee on Committees
with Peter & Dick (here),

Wednesday

Private Appointment, Private Appointment, 1:30pm 200pm Senate Convenes,
500pm 800pm Julius Canns calling Hours (Union Baptist Church) (route 5
south)

Thursday

Private Appointment, Private Appointment, 1100am 1200pm Julius Canns
Memorial Service (Union Baptist Church (Route 5 south), 400pm 430pm
Senate Convenes, 500pm 700pm ??? – Blue Cross/Blue Shield Reception
(Cap Plaza), 700pm 800pm Private Appointment

Friday

Private Appointment, Private Appointment, Private Appointment, 800 am
830am Meeting with the Gov (Ceremonial Office), 1130am 1200pm Senate
Convenes, 1200pm 100p ???? Larry Dupont — ??? Lake Cham Cit Advis Comm
annual leg day – GOV CAN”T –???

[Click here to see a pdf of the actual document] Looks an awful lot like Dubie just made things up, and didn’t even put enough thought into it to make sure the story itself added up. In addition, his lawyers, such as national-GOP hack Toensing, would seem to be complicit in essentially perpetrating a fraud on Vermont voters.

By all rights, this should be a VERY big deal, folks. Let’s see if our Traditional Media — particularly WCAX — pick it up.

In the same press release, the Dunne campaign releases an exchange of letters between Dunne and Dubie directly, wherein Dubie demands Dunne pull his TV ads and apologize for the supposedly “misleading” content. That dog’s not gonna hunt after this latest bombshell, which calls not only Dubie’s credibility into question, but his honesty and integrity as well.

Click on “theres more” to view the text of the correspondence (bloggers just love non-copyrighted material!).

The three letters exchanged between Lt. Governor Dubie and Sen. Dunne
are attached.

##

Dear Lt Governor,

Below, find two letters we exchanged. In the first, you requested I
take
down my ad because you believed it was untrue. This was a poor attempt
to defend the negative ad you were about to release. It turns out your
ad is the one which is factually incorrect.  And ironically, your own
schedule only proves that you show up to the office less than a third
of the time.

Assembling your schedule required multiple lawyers (one of them a
high-priced DC lawyer) and three weeks. It should not have taken either
since you schedule should have been transparent from the beginning like
Gov. Douglas’

In addition, your own schedule only proves that you show up to the
office less than a third of the time. In point of fact, the entire
schedule’s credibility should be called into question.

It lists you attending 12 meetings, including testifying before a
senate
committee, during the week you were in Hawaii while the legislature was
in session. This fact alone impugns the credibility of the entire
schedule and therefore your own credibility.

Vermonters deserve a government of transparency that includes your
activities while Lt Governor. 

My ad lets Vermonters know they had a choice. They have a choice
between
someone who, for $61,000 per year of taxpayer money, showed up to the
office less than one third of the time and someone who would work
full-time, and make the office an office of action. It is factually
correct.

Your negative current ad is yet another example of why your credibility
should be questioned. By airing a factually incorrect and distorting ad
you continue to show that you, your schedule and your campaign should
not be trusted

As you know very well, I have worked very hard on healthcare, safe
neighborhoods, and protecting our environment. Vermonters should know
that while you were on vacation in Hawaii you missed important debates
on voyeurism, renewable energy, and cancer trials.

I request you remove your current negative ad, as it is factually
incorrect and distorts my record. Among other things it ends on a
picture of an empty Senate Seat- #14. I am #13. 

Sincerely,

Matt Dunne

Date: Wed, 1 Nov
Dear Lt. Governor Dubie, 

  Thank you for your letter.

In this election, I have emphasized that Vermonters have a choice. You
have chosen to work as a part-time Lieutenant Governor. You have stated
that you will continue to work as a part-time Lieutenant Governor. My
vision is to be a full-time Lieutenant Governor. I will use the office
in and out of session to bring Vermonters together and continue my
vision of Service Politics. 

You do not come to the statehouse with any regularity when the Senate
is
not in session. Your own staff left me a voicemail August 22nd of 2005,
saying that you “were not in the office regularly until January.” This
recording is available on my website. I even received an email from a
tour guide who has worked in the statehouse for 17 years and says she
never sees you when the legislature is out of session. People who are
regularly in the statehouse know that for much of the time, your office
is empty and closed off with a red velvet rope.

I stand by my ad, which highlights that for most of the year you do not
show up to work at the statehouse.

The focus of my campaign has been that Vermonters have a choice between
a full-time and a part-time Lieutenant Governor. I believe that for
$61,000 per year Vermonter deserve someone full-time who will make Lt
Governors office an office of action. There may be days when I travel
around the state, but I will be based out of the Capitol Building,
where Vermonters can reach me in person and where I can be an active
participant in state government in our state’s capital.

Sincerely,

Senator Matt Dunne

October 31, 2006

Senator Matt Dunne

P.O. Box 1135

White River Jct., VT 05001

Dear Senator Dunne,

I respectfully ask you to please pull your attack television ads off
the
air.  You have made slanderous attacks against my service as Vermont’s
Lieutenant Governor. 

You have made these erroneous attacks with nothing to back them up.

Furthermore, in yesterday’s AP Article by Lisa Rathke, you were quoted
as saying,  “I don’t believe you should be in the office everyday but
you should be sharing your calendar and be transparent about it.”  If
this is the case then why are you misleading the public about my
service as Lieutenant Governor?

In this same article, former Lt. Governor Doug Racine states that the
demands of the office frequently required him to be out of the office
when the legislature was not in session.

Senators from both parties have supported my record. “Brian did not
abuse the office of lieutenant governor. If anything, he worked as hard
as any Lieutenant Governor I’ve worked with. I want to get the record
straight,” said Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle.

I call on you to set the record straight with Vermonters and pull the
ad.  I also ask you to apologize for misleading Vermonters about my
service as their Lieutenant Governor.

Sincerely,

Lt. Governor Brian Dubie

This is a republic not a democracy.  Of all the right wing claims, this is the most insipid and meaningless.  It not only reveals the right’s contempt for democracy, but their basic inability to reason.

For something to be A and not B, A and B must be mutually exclusive.  One can say, in a silly example: this is an elephant not an ant.  Democracies and republics are not mutually exclusive.  Democracy refers answers the question: who governs?  Republic refers to the question: how is the head of state chosen?  The opposite of a republic is a monarchy.  In a republic, the head of state is chosen by some mechanism of choice.  In a monarchy, the head of state is determined by some form of the hereditary principle. 
Forms of government can range from democracies to constitutional non-democracies to the authoritarian and to the totalitarian.  All these forms of government can be found in republics in monarchies.  Fascist Italy was a totalitarian regime with a monarch as the figurehead; Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian regime that can also be called an absolute monarchy.  In either a republic or a monarchy, the head of state may either be a figurehead or also the head of government.  Monarchies that are constitutional democracies include the UK, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Australia etc.  Republics that are constitutional democracies with a figure head as  head of state include Germany, Israel, India.  Republics with a head of state who is also head of government include the US, Costa Rica, and South Africa.  Constitutional democracies may be based on the parliamentary model or the Presidential.  Although the President of South Africa is both head of state and head of government, the system is parliamentary.

In one respect, Republics and Monarchies do differ fundamentally and that is the issue of pomp and pageantry.  It is the theatrics of monarchy that are part of its very nature.  Republics eschew that pageantry.  It is most telling that the US Presidency is looking more and more like a monarchy all the time in its pageantry and the enormous budget of the White House.  The only purpose of supplying the head of government with a house is not to equal a palace, but it is way of saying that a head of government (in whatever system) is so important that he or she must, as it were, live above the store.  Had we had a President who understood this, we might well have avoided 9/11.  If we really do want a republic it’s time to sell the White House.

VDB has a post up today about why we must keep our heads down and continue working hard to elect Scudder Parker to be Vermont’s next Governor.

It’s a great read — linking Scudder’s run to the lessons learned about winning in the classic pool hall novel, the Hustler.

P.B. closes with this…

What Scudder Parker needs, more than anything, is for Democrats to come home.

If just five percent of whimsical Jim Douglas voters decide finally to throw their support to Scudder, the race will be dead even. In other words, the opportunity is here. A better one won’t come along for years. Parker has done his part, and more. He and his volunteers have raced the state from north to south a thousand times, and he’s hit Douglas on his record hard, every day for nearly a year.

But if he’s going to close the deal, he needs an entirely different sort of help.

Because it’s no longer about Scudder Parker, not really. It’s about all of us now, and our own cautious, uncommitted egos.

“You want to be a winner,” Eddie’s disgusted mentor Bert tells him, “you got to keep your head. And you got to remember that there’s a loser somewhere in you, whining at you, and you got to learn to cut his water off. Otherwise you better get a steady job.”

To which VDB says, Amen.

Yes, Amen.

And in case you doubt that Scudder is still in the game, just take a look at this polling chart from the great minds at Pollster.com.

Look closely at those thin blue and red lines that indicate the confidence intervals. And see how nicely they resolve into a point right around 45%.

Just remember, Jim Douglas needs 50% to prevent the Democratic controlled state legislature from deciding his fate.

So, let’s keep hustling.

I’m sure GMD readers have all been doing their duty, either by waving signs, getting signed up for get-out-the-vote phonebanks, knocking on doors, etc. If not – get yer ass out there. Here’s a link. And if you’re one o’ them readers who just hates all things Dem, call 862-1505 for Bernie’s office to get plugged in. Not sure where to vote? Here’s a link to a helpful VDP site (which should be linked from the VDP front page, folks… c’mon, now…)

If you absolutely cant do any GOTV shifts but you want to help the greater effort, MoveOn.org could use your help with GOTV calls from your home into targeted districts across the country. Click here to find out more.

From Martha Rainville: “I don’t think any candidate should just be jumping on a political bandwagon… That’s finger-pointing and grandstanding and I don’t think it’s helpful.” Nope, that’s not about the Republicans falling all over themselves to try and make John Kerry’s bungled attack on Bush a campaign issue, that’s about calling for Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissal ([Burlington Free Press, May 5, 2006). As far as Kerry goes, General Integrity is singing quite a different tune:

Rainville said late Wednesday afternoon that Kerry had not gone far enough in apologizing and asked all Vermont candidates to ask him to go further. [Times Argus, November 2, 2006]

Real class act, that Martha…

If you haven’t heard it yet, the Dunne campaign has a recording of an August 2005 voicemail message saying Dubie won’t be back in the Lt. Governor’s office “regularly” until the following January, and clearly indicating that an attempt to reach him during that period is problematic. If Dubie wants to argue that it’s not a full-time job and needn’t be, that’s one thing – but given that he’s decided to take the opposite track and argue that he does put in year-round hours, this recording is pretty damning. Bad call, Dubester (no pun intended)

Speaking of Dunne, Usual suspect political “expert” predicts Dunne victory. Middlebury PoliSci Prof Eric Davis, the go-to guy for political analysis from the Vermont media said the following on VPR’s midday report today:

Steve Delaney: Alright, lets look at the top of the state races

Eric Davis: I would say if there’s going to be an upset next Tuesday night it would be in the race for Lt. Governor. This is a race that really has just taken shape in the last couple of weeks. Matt Dunne has been coming on very strong. He’s gotten some high profile endorsements in the last week or ten days from former Governor Howard Dean, and from the Burlington Free Press editorial page. There’s momentum behind the Dunne campaign.

Hmmm… I’ve always thought this could be the race with an upset, but I’m not prepared to make an affirmative prediction. This bodes very, very well, though…

Our local street corner was decked out in garish orange and red this morning as a outbreak of Tarrant for Senate signs greeted the morning traffic. Unlike the long-time, Friday morning Stop the War crowd, or the few recent Dunne supporters last week, or the local House candidate showings just before primary day, these folks were all strangers to me. As I approached I had to think about how to greet… my usual honk, wave and thumbs up would clearly not be rolled out in this case. I did end up giving these folks a neighborly, polite but reserved Yankee wave, kind of a visual “ayup”. Not insulting, but certainly not committal to the cause. Hey, they look like they’re in town for the first time, let’s be polite at least!

Probably just trying to earn a day’s pay… Anyone have the story on if these folks are moved by their passion for RT’s health care plan, innovative energy proposals, or laser-like focus on bringing business to VT? …Or is their devotion more based on a campaign jobs-creation program?

Did he ever hand out those laptops to young volunteers this summer? I almost thought about asking my daughter if she wanted to earn a nice new iBook, but I didn’t want to start her off on that jaded path so early (plenty of time to become cynical about politicians later in life).

I just realized something amazing: more gay men voted for the Defense of Marriage Act than voted against it.

The idea being: no one’ll suspect I’m gay if I gay bash. 

When Republicans and others gay bash, it’s a confession.

Weissman’s law says it: people who are down  on gays in public have been down on gays in private.

How ironic that the key word preventing the completely fake John Kerry story from dominating the news cycle is “us.”

Had Kerry included “us” in his comment, none of this absurdity would have come to pass.

Had he not omitted that word, he’d have said “”You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well, and if you don’t, you get us stuck in Iraq.”

The joke on Bush would’ve been clear.

But, that single dropping of “us” allowed the Right Wing Noise Machine and the complicit Freak Show press to go into overdrive.

When I was very briefly (a week and a half, maybe) the Grand Leader of All Things Internet Strategy for Zephyr Teachout’s bid for the Vermont seat in Congress — since this potential run was in the news, I hope she doesn’t mind me talking about it — I advocated for using  “for U.S. House” instead of “for Congress” as her tagline.

I liked the “U.S. = us” reference — as opposed to the somewhat randy “congress.”

And, of course, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has since made a nice use of the “for US” underlined in  “for US Senate” in his campaign materials.

But, Kerry, by accident, skipped the “us” in his attempt at mocking Bush and all hell broke loose.

How absurd. And how sad. Because, all of “us” are in this together.

Except those who shamelessly bend the truth for political gain… And those, in the press, who enable them to do so.

That’s the headline of a story published on 11/2 on Guardian Unlimited, the website of the UK’s Guardian newspaper. The writer, Julian Borger, says that Bernie’s election to the Senate will be “an extraordinary political milestone.”
Read the full text here:
http://www.guardian….

I’d decided not to do any more diaries on the US Senate race, but then I read this in the Freeps endorsement of Tarrant:

His “rural technification” plan is a common sense proposal that includes expanding broadband Internet access to every corner of the state; and locating a branch of Vermont Technical College within commuting distance of every Vermonter to expand the state’s pool of trade and technology workers.

Regular visitors will recall the gleeful fun I made of this “technification” business – on the one hand because, as near as I can tell, there’s no “plan” beyond what you just read (sort of like calling my opinion that everyone should have health care my “universal health care plan.”) – but on the other hand, because he was talking about an education oriented plan using a made-up word. I checked the dictionary and could find no word from which “technification” could have been derived – no verb to tecnhify or technificate.

But I’ve seen the light! I found it! The definition of “technification!” It IS a real word, and I am here to offer my mea culpa. Here, dear readers, is the verb behind Tarrant’s eloquent plan, so endorsed by our state’s largest daily::

The word “technification” is a back-formation from the Spanish tecnificación. The practice of technification was spurred by the spread of coffee leaf rust to the New World in the 1970’s. (The coffee leaf rust, Hemileia vastatrix, is a fungal disease of coffee, known in Spanish as la roya.) Technification projects were assisted by the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.-AID). Technification goes beyond the intensive management of shade and shrubs to the application of agrochemical inputs and the introduction of higher-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of coffee that respond well to those inputs.

Well I’m sold. With the help of the US Senate and the leadership of Rich Tarrant, we can move beyond the intense management of the internet and Vermont Technical College to the application of agrochemical inputs and the introduction of higher-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of students and computers that will respond well to those inputs.

Sounds like a serious boon to the biotech industry to me!

In the meantime, The Times Argus has endorsed Bernie in the race, and while most of the piece reads as a positive argument as to why Sanders is the clear choice, a couple paragraphs read unintentionally (I assume) like a direct refutation of the Freeps editorial:

Tarrant attacked the campaign like a salesman, not a politician. An effective politician speaks and listens. Tarrant had a product to sell — himself — and he thought the wizardry of television would allow him to do it.

But the self he was selling appeared to be an off-the-shelf Republican, eager to parrot the talking points of the national party. He adopted the party’s electoral strategy, pretending he was an independent rather than a Republican and adopting an attack-ad strategy of innuendo and distortion. He tried to peddle the shopworn ideas of supply-side economics — the theory that when the rich get richer, their riches trickle down to the rest of us. This theory has created deficits of historic proportions and crippled the federal government.

Tarrant, too, has cut the Bush administration slack on the abuse of civil liberties, with bizarre fear-mongering statements about terrorists entering Vermont by night on Lake Champlain. And he does not believe in a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

‘Nuff said.

Rosemary “Rozo” McLaughlin, Democratic Representative from the Windsor-Orange-1 district (Tunbridge, Royalton) has passed away from cancer. From the press release sent out of the Speaker’s office: Until running for the House, Rozo’s life’s work had been running her family’s Hitching Post Farm in Royalton, where she was born and raised. Rozo stepped bit by bit into public service. When her daughter entered public school, she realized that a community thrives when its members are active and engaged, and it wasn’t long before she had a seat on first the school board and then the selectboard.

Rozo considered running for office a duty. “I feel that if there comes a time in your life when you have the ability, and you can possibly share a bit of yourself with the world around you, you should take your turn. It may be just volunteering as a mentor or a chaperone with a school group, or serving on a town board. We all receive the benefits of living in a community, so if we are able, we should give something to it as well.”
Rozo’s most recent work in the Vermont House focused on legislation to connect farms and schools, providing important outlets for farmer’s products and access to nutritious local food for students. She worked across party lines, with legislators and the Douglas administration, with the goal of engaging Vermont youth in becoming lifelong consumers of fresh, nutritious foods.
Representative Ann Seibert of Norwich, said of Rozo, “Who could not like Rozo? She was so open to everyone and everything, honest and truly genuine. Thinking of her reminds me of one of my mother’s old sayings, ‘She was all wool and a yard wide.’”

My own in-person contact with Rozo was limited to an extended walk through part of Randolph with her during the last election season after a campaign event (although we did speak on the phone from time to time). Rozo was wise, quick-witted, and had a real no-nonsense honesty to her. She was also very personable, easy to talk to and immediately likable. While she instantly inspired respect, she did so without seeming intimidating or superior in any way.

Rozo was a very good person who made a real impression on me, and the world truly feels diminished by her passing. I hope her example will inspire others like her to step up and take control of their communities’ destinies by running for public office. This world could use more Rozo McLaughlins.