ONLY IN VERMONT

Congratulations to the founders of IDX, Richard Tarrant and his ex-wife Amy, and Robert and Cynthia Hoehl, who will share more than $380,000,000, a reward for their hard work, creativity, and perseverance. For decades they toiled, young Horatio Algers, going without, pursuing their dream.

Only in Vermont could this great example of the American Way be deemed a liability. This headline from the Burlington Free Press: "Tarrant's wealth may be a political asset, liability." Nancy Remsen writes:

"(Middlebury College political science Professor Eric) Nelson agrees (with whom, the paper does not say) Tarrant's financial windfall (like he won the lottery or something) will be a liability in a race against Sanders.

"'For Bernie, this is a godsend,' Nelson said. It is no problem for Bernie to play class politics. He wants to run against Richie. Richie is the perfect target for him.'"

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

It should be quite easy for the Tarrant campaign to deal with class politics. Bernie and Richie are both poor boys, Bernie is from Brooklyn a child of immigrants, Richie is from Northern New Jersey, a child of immigrants, separated at birth from Bernie only by the Hudson River. Both came to Vermont to find their way. Richie found success in computer technology, building products people and hospitals needed, creating jobs, opening IDX offices across the country and the world, selling out for a hundred million.

Bernie became a millionaire plying the political waters, running nearly a half-dozen times before slurping swill from the slop trough while doing great constituent work to create a loyal following and identifying and working issues people cared about. Each is on his second wife. Their stories are not dissimilar.

This is a simple story for the Tarrant campaign to tell, taking any "class" war out of the picture. Then to issues. If you want help solving health care, you have one seasoned veteran who has worked and is still working in that area, Mr. Tarrant, and you have demagogue Bernie. If you are interested in jobs, you have one person who has created thousands and another who attacks the job creators.

MONEY TALKS

In politics, it is said that money talks and bullsh*t walks. Money is "the mother's milk of politics." It is strange to read that Professor Davis thinks that money will be a burden. Wow!! He also says, "Richie has locked up the nomination. He can blow Dubie out of the water."

Really. Dubie has name recognition, followers, election success, and grass roots support. For the Vermont Republican voter Dubie is right on the issues and Tarrant is wrong: abortion, civil unions, guns, faith, and family values. Tarrant's buying his Silver Cloud, divorcing his wife and marrying his assistant a generation younger, and standing nervously in corners will not sell well to primary voters. Then there is the cross over votes; which candidate if you were Bernie would you prefer to run against? Who will the thousands of Democrats who are not expected to have a significant primary contest cross over and vote against?

BERNIE TO THE RESCUE

We have told this story before, but heading into this election for United States Senator, it deserves re-telling. Years ago, your editor had a query of the Pentagon. He approached Senator Jeffords's staff to ask if they would please write a letter to the Pentagon for an answer to a question that was important to him. He was told, "We do not like to do that sort of thing."

A week later he bumped into Congressman Sanders at Uncommon Grounds coffee shop near Sanders's office on the Church Street Mall. He asked Bernie, "I have an issue with the Pentagon, can we talk about it." Bernie said, "Call my office and make an appointment to see me." He did. He sat down with Bernie and made his request. He looked your editor right in the eye and said, "Your Congressman will help you."

And he did. He wrote the letter. He had Don Edwards, his military staffer, call me weekly to give me an update, and within six weeks came the answer. Bernie earned your editor's vote though he has never received it.

RIGHT WINGERS FOR BERNIE

Talk to some old curmudgeon in the Northeast Kingdom. He will rant and rave about how bad government is, how Franklin Roosevelt ruined the country. Then out of the blue will come, "I love Bernie though, he takes care of us seniors." Strange partners.

Recall the election of 1998, Sanders versus Mark Candon, Dean versus Ruth Dwyer. Dwyer received 41.1 percent of the vote, Candon 32.8 percent. Therefore 8.3 percent of the people who voted for Dwyer or 18,986 crazed Vermonters voted also for Bernie. Strange bedfellows.

Bernie is out campaigning and doing a wonderful job. He picks his issues, sticks with them, hold "town meetings" often feeding folks in the process. He stops by and talks with the local denizens, meets with the local newspaper. He is more visible than usual.

THE COLONEL RUNS

In a chat with DPR, Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie said, "I am in!" Then the caveats. "Well, some things could possibly come up that I cannot foresee. And I have formed an exploratory committee which means that I can only explore and cannot declare." Word has it that Karl Rove in the Casa Blanca got the call that Dubie is in.

PUTNEY, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Peter Shumlin has three times dressed for the ball. Each time, unlike Cinderella, unanticipated shyness froze his feet. Five years ago he called a press conference at which many thought that he was going to toss his hat into the Congressional ring to challenge Bernie. But he blinked. Family called.

Four years ago he called a press conference to announce the end of his expected race for governor, electing instead to ascend to lieutenant governor. Doing this for the good of the Party. Vermonters looked askance at Shumlin and chose Brian Dubie.

THREE STIKES, YOU ARE OUT

For months this year Shumlin has maintained that he is in the race for Congress to replace Bernie for keeps, money was no problem for him, and he hired Dean's former staffer and key campaign aide Kate O'Conner as his campaign manager. Last week he ventured to Washington in search of money and power only to find that all the money and power was committed to the candidacy of Senator Peter Welch. Suddenly Shumlin developed a fear of flying and bailed out, suggesting that he would enjoy returning to the Vermont senate but not as a leader.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY

Kate O'Conner was Howard Dean's longest serving and most loyal and fanatic aide. She not just went through fire for him, she willed his victory at the polls in spite of an often lackluster effort from the candidate. So now Kate goes to Washington to see old Waldo who pulls a foldo and will not help her new boss, Peter Shumlin.

Shumlin has approached the governor's office about an appointment should a current senator retire. Ha, fat chance! Ironically, the leading candidate reportedly is Kate O'Conner's mom who hosted a Democrats for Douglas fundraiser.

WELCH WELCHS

In the spring, congressional wannabe Peter Welch howled when Speaker Dennis Hastert made a visit to Vermont to raise a few dollars for the Vermont Republicans. Welch said on that occasion, "I am amazed that Speaker Hastert comes to Vermont as though he is in the witness protection program."

Come late summer and Welch changes his tune when House Democrat Whip Steny Hoyer comes to town to raise money for Peter. The undemocratic Democrat Hoyer said, "In Washington, we have made a determination to come out early in support of Senator Welch even though I had never met him until tonight." Guess that it just takes one ambulance chaser to know another.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Robert Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post, June 15, 2005, "Europe as we know it is slowly going out of business. Unless Europe reverses two trends, low birthrates and meager economic growth, it faces a bleak future of rising domestic discontent and falling global power. Europe's birthrates have dropped well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children for each woman of childbearing age. For Western Europe as a whole, the rate is 1.5. (Consider the much higher birthrates of the Muslim and African immigrant population and understand that the native European birthrate is therefore even lower.)

"No one knows how well modern economies will perform with so many elderly people, heavily dependent on government benefits. But Europe's economy is already faltering.

"One way to revive economic growth would be to reduce social benefits, taxes and regulations. But that would imperil Europe's 'social model'. (It is the social model which also protects and enables childless couples that may ask if there is any benefit to reproduction. Each seems to say, fix the problem with the next in line, just leave my benefits in place.)"

A VERMONT PROBLEM

Vermont has the second grayest population in America and its lowest birthrate. More and more retired people are moving to Vermont; more and more of our very expensively educated youth are heading out of the state. State economist Jeffery Carr wrote, "During the 1990's, Vermont lost its young people at a rate that was nearly four times the United States average.

"In addition, 27.5 percent of the population is between 45 and 65 years old, the highest percentage for any state in the nation." Who is going to pay the bills, create the jobs, and have children?

LORD JIM TO THE RESCUE

Governor Jim Douglas told DPR in an interview, "Our demographics challenge employers to find enough qualified workers. One employer recently told me that the state should stop trying to create more jobs as there are not enough workers to go around as it is.

"Ten years from now we will have 18 percent fewer high school graduates. In Montpelier public schools they have been graduating around 100 children a year. This year's kindergarten enrollment is only 40 children.

"We welcome retirees. But we need to do more to keep our young people. We need more of them to go to college here in Vermont. Many people make their home in the vicinity of where they go to college. We have so many wonderful colleges in Vermont. But we need to keep our kids here."

THE AARP STATE

Later at a press conference highlighting the creation of the Commission on Health Aging, Douglas said, "Vermont has approximately 78,000 residents age 65 and older. We expect that Vermont's population will grow 8 percent this decade. Notably, Vermonters who are over 85 is expected to grow 27 percent. In addition 88 percent of Vermonters over 65 have at one or more chronic conditions."

Actuarial tables suggest that harboring an aging population is expensive. Perhaps all retirees moving to Vermont will be the picture of health, will work, pay taxes, and live long and productive lives. However heath care studies conclude that 50 percent of all health care costs occur in the final six months of life.

Jeffery Carr continued in his report, "The aging population also means increased pressures on the already stretched state housing stock, the ballooning state Medicaid budget, and the burgeoning need for long-term and other senior care services."

THE DEMOGRAPHIC PLAN

Jason Gibbs, the governor's spokesperson, told DPR, "Vermont has the fastest aging population in America. The older folks come in part because of the peace, serenity, and tranquility which Vermont offers. Yet those are also three reasons that younger people leave; they want some excitement. We need to move Vermont from a nursing home commercial to a Mountain Dew commercial."

The administration is hard at work to flesh out their demographic proposal. The governor promised a plan in his address to the legislature in January or sooner. The plan will include a proposal to gear Vermont's advertising towards a younger generation, incentives to go to college in Vermont, and the creation of a rubber lasso to keep in touch with young Vermonters who go out of state to college to hopefully pull them back to the Green Mountains. Gibbs continued, "Many of the folks who settle in Vermont started out as tourists. We need to target our tourist advertising toward the 25-35 year old market."

CHANGE VSAC?

We asked if increasing the inheritance tax or limiting VSAC (Vermont Student Assistance Corporation) grants to Vermont colleges were in the works. The answer was a resounding no. Vermont is one of the few states which allow its grant money to follow the student wherever he/she decides to go to college.

France has similar problems and in moving to address them. The government recently announced a 47 percent increase in monthly stipends to any parent who takes a one-year-unpaid leaves from work after the birth of his/her third child.

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE KIDS

For the first time in memory, the teachers' negotiation and strike in Colchester has clearly been about the best deal for teachers, not about the kids. That is a step forward in itself. For years the teachers always maintained that it was about the kids. A Colchester teacher was quoted, "I need to look out for what is best for me and my family."

The demands of the teachers are pricey. Top scale teachers currently receive $62,000 for a 190-day work year as compared to the usual 290-day work year for the rest of us. That would make the teacher's salary $95,000 on an annualized basis. Add to that generous health care and pension benefits and the package is now over $105,000 per year.

For starting teachers the rate is just over $30,000 but annualized that is almost $46,000 plus the same benefit package lifting the cost to the town to over $55,000. What other group in Colchester has a guaranteed job starting at $55,000 and going up to $105,000? None. We have one gold plated crowd and a lunch pail crowd.

THE DEMAND

The teachers are asking for a 5.8% annual increase for each of the next three years. That would raise the top rank to $73,425 per 190-day year or $112,000 annualized. The teachers are also insisting on no higher co-pays or increase in their share of premiums.

The union cry in Colchester is that they are the lowest paid teachers in Chittenden County. As we have written before, teachers, unlike their students, have school choice. They can go work someplace else to better meet their needs. And if their demands are met, then some other school district will be the lowest and so on ad infinitum.

Brian Lavallee and Laurie Pelcher summed up the thinking of many. Brian wrote, "It is time the teachers look around and realize that any raise at all is better than none. I have not seen a raise in two years. It is time that the teachers wake up, smell the coffee, and join the real world."

Laurie said, "A lot of teachers are my friends and some of them live in the community. They have families and they have needs, but damn it, so do we."

TIGHT HOME BUDGETS

A recent article in the Free Press explored the property tax problems in Colchester. "The owners of six mobile homes in Colchester owe more than six years of back taxes. Mobile homes make up about 1 percent of the town's tax base but about 20 percent of the town's uncollected taxes."

DON'T COMPARE TO BURLINGTON, TRY ORLEANS

The Free Press writes, "Colchester teachers want a salary increase in line with surrounding districts." According to Mapquest, Orleans is only a 60-mile drive from Colchester, a surrounding district. Their teachers went on strike in the spring and settled for a new contract where starting teachers reportedly would receive $28,096 and the top salary would be $52,382. Looks like Colchester's teachers already have a good deal.

THERE IS A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN

In September's Vermont Business magazine there was an insert from the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. In it there was a message from the new President Duane Marsh. He suggests that the go-alone, get-alone chamber strategy of the past failed to protect its members.

"During this past session, the private sector and the associated market-based philosophy that finds the equilibrium between supply and demand, and controls costs and quality, was essentially disregarded and dismissed. Legislation to limit competition was passed to protect certain home health care providers and to limit private sector participation in early childhood education.

"The trend is clear; our state's taxpayers and private sector job providers are increasingly viewed as 'deep pockets' to fund a social agenda that is becoming unsustainably costly and, ultimately, harmful to the very people whom some think it will help."

BEWARE THE IDES OF FAROOQ

Ethan Allen Furniture's President Farooq Kathwari has closed another plant. This one in Bridgewater, VA. The governor though worried about Ethan Allen's plants in Orleans and Beecher Falls told DPR that Vermont's Ethan Allen's plant has received some of the equipment and business from a recently closed New York State plant. We sure hope that Douglas has a plan for the eventual closure of Beecher Falls. Without a new job within miles, Beecher Falls could become a ghost town.

NO MORE JOBS

As reported above, a Vermont businessman told Governor Douglas recently, "Please do not create more jobs. I cannot find enough good workers for the jobs I have."

That is a sorry commentary on the state of our schools. Peter Berger has long been writing the Poor Elijah's Almanac column for local newspapers. Seems in the old days he was quite the liberal; today not so.

"Today schools increasingly function as social services clinics. Reformers demand an end to homework, reject objective standards, and denounce suspending disruptive students as excessively punitive. All this has come at the expense of children, public education, and society.

"Our graduates are unprepared for a world that is not 'student centered', where working for somebody frequently means doing what you are told. We do not need 1970's rhetoric, we do not need facilitators; we need teachers. A science teacher is not supposed to 'teach adolescents about life and how it relates to science'. He/she is supposed to teach them science."

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN WE NEEDED YOU

Amazingly, a decade later, the Vermont Supreme Court has found that maybe Act 60 failed to produce equal educational opportunity and instead might just have imposed disproportionate tax burdens on towns. Wow, you think they got it? Naw, they're just playing with you.

IT'S ABOUT CELEBRITY

This is just an opinion: the New York Times reporter Judith Miller's going to jail was about celebrity and money and not about freedom of the press. With great fanfare and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and President Clinton's attorney Bob Bennett at her side, Ms. Miller said, "Believe me; I did not want to be in jail. I know what my conscience would allow and…I stood fast to that." We chose not to believe her.

She went to jail for refusing to identify her source for a story which she did not write about nuclear components in Niger that did not exist. Her "source", I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had let her out of her promise not to reveal him as the source long before she went to jail. He told her that she could identify him, that he did not mind, and even signed an agreement to that affect.

"We signed a waiver more than a year ago," said Libby's attorney Joseph Tate. Miller's lawyers had called just before she ended her prison stay to suggest that there was a misunderstanding and could they once again sign a waiver.

Any chance we will soon see a tell-all book written in prison about the life of principle or would it be about the expectation of principal?

WCAX RIOT TAPES

»» Andy Potter, Burlington: I enjoy reading your web report but disagree that Channel 3 intended to put itself above the First Amendment, as implied when you wrote:

"...Where is the part about not having to comply with a grand jury order, a court order, or a judge's opinion? Not here. And what could possibly be wrong with being a citizen. Is there a higher calling?..."

Channel 3's primary concern about the order to turn over the tapes was being forced into the position of a de facto agent of the police and prosecution. You have to expect that any news organization would challenge that kind of legal precedent. It wasn't as if the TV reporters and photographers at the scene were the only witnesses to the riot. The issue certainly warranted a hearing by the state Supreme Court, although this was not a case of "Jail me if you must, I'll never turn over the information." Upon the ruling Channel 3 promptly complied. Please understand that I speak only for myself, not the station's management.

MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT US

»» Lyle Edwards, Westfield: Jim, I must say I like checking out your website. It is definitely interesting. However, I do object to you doing what most conservative publications do, and that is painting liberals as un-Christian and un-American. It is unnecessary and dishonest. Conservatives are no more patriotic or more moral than liberals. I do applaud you for actually bringing up issues such as health care though, as long as you don't sneak in elements of demonizing liberals to explain your different positions. There is an underlying myth out there that there is only a liberal media, which has been replaced by the term MSM, (Mainstream media). When you have 20 million people a week listening to Rush Limbaugh, I would say conservative media is well represented.

DON'T LIKE US!!

»» Linda Curtis, Newport: My husband and I are the main opponents of the installation of Verizon antennas in the steeples of St. Mary's Church in Newport.

1.) It is not only in Vermont that people are fighting the installation of these antennas in residential areas.

2.) The contract was signed behind closed doors.

3.) We are not living beside a cell phone, we will be living beside a cell base station. Most if not all the studies that suggest it is safe to live near these cancer sticks are all paid for by the same telecommunication companies that are putting up the antennas?

4.) We are not against cell phone antennas just the placement within a Holy Building and/or a residential area.

5.) Electrical fields can make you sick.

A GOVERNMENT agency has acknowledged for the first time that people can suffer nausea, headaches and muscle pains when exposed to electromagnetic fields from mobile phones, electricity pylons and computer screens.

The condition known as electrosensitivity, a heightened reaction to electrical energy, will be recognized as a physical impairment.

A report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to be published next month, will state that increasing numbers of British people are suffering from the syndrome. While the total figure is not known, thousands are believed to be affected to some extent.

Although most European countries do not recognize the condition, Britain will follow Sweden where electrosensitivity was recognized as a physical impairment in 2000. About 300,000 Swedish men and women are sufferers. The acknowledgement may fuel legal action by sufferers who claim mobile phone masts have made them ill.

The HPA has now reviewed all scientific literature on electrosensitivity and concluded that it is a real syndrome. The condition had previously been dismissed as psychological. Special cables are installed in sufferers’ homes while electric cookers are replaced with gas stoves. Walls, roofs, floors and windows can be covered with a thin aluminium foil to keep out the electromagnetic field the area of energy that occurs round any electrically conductive item.

"There currently is no good scientific study that determines whether or not cell towers on fire stations are hurting our members, so a study must be done," says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. Until the health effects are truly tested and known, the IAFF believes no additional cell towers or antennas should be positioned on or near fire stations.

It is the general belief of international governments and of the wireless telecommunications industry that no consistent increases in health risk exist from exposure to radio frequency radiation.

Sarah-Kate Templeton, Medical Correspondent

[The forementioned article was from The Sunday Times - Britain, the 9/11 issue: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1774586,00.html]
 

For a full copy of the IAFF report on the potential risk of cell tower radiation, click here. http://daily.iaff.org/

THEY LIKE US

»» Paul McGoldrick, Littleton, NH: Your last issue was the best, most delightful, entertaining, and insightful edition to date!! Have a glass or two on me.!

»» Anne McClaughry, Concord: I read the DPR this AM. It's your best yet. Great writing and analysis.

»» Julian Harrison, Stowe: "We hate George Bush" [Media Watch] is one of your best.

OH CANADA

"As my old chum Christie Blatchford memorably put it, Canadians too often mistake the sidelines for the moral high ground." --Mark Steyn, Western Standard, October 3, 2005

http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=1047

I GOTTA RIGHT

"A fat Texas guy went swimming in the waves off Galveston for a pre-hurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. You'd have to be crazy to decide you were going to go swim in the ocean as a hurricane comes. But in the America where I grew up, you were allowed to be crazy. If we give government all authority then we are giving them all power.

"It is the government's job to warn and inform. It is not government's job to command and control and make micro-decisions about the lives of people who want to do it their own way." --Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005

IT AIN'T THE 60'S ANYMORE

"There is nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster." --Dr. Evil, Austin Powers

IS THERE A REPUBLICAN IN BRISTOL?

"I am disgusted by the vitriolic letters aimed at President Bush concerning a horrific natural disaster. Shame on you all. Your hatred has descended into pure irrational spite." --Deb Mager Rickner, Bristol, Burlington Free Press

GOVERNMENT, JOB CREATOR

"French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that he would abandon France's plans for tax cuts so as to provide money for job creation." --The Economist, June 11, 2005

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