WE WON’T HAVE WALDO TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE

It was an amazing performance, both rising further and falling faster than any Vermonter might have imagined. John Kerry came back from the dead, gaining thirty-two points in New Hampshire in three weeks to seal the deal. Dean spent over $50,000,000. Frugal flinty Vermonters contributed more to this campaign than to any other in Vermont's history. Many of these folks have asked DPR, where did my money go? We cannot tell you today, maybe tomorrow. 

CAMPAIGN 101

Dean seemed to know how to do it. He spoke years earlier of his belief in message, staying on message, and keeping your powder dry. When he ran for governor he would question most every bill, demanding receipts. When he ran for president, he threw the checkbook to media guru Joe Trippi. And of course media they bought, along with polling, mailings, focus groups, and high priced consultants. We expect that Joe is now not just a media star, but a millionaire media star. Thank you Vermont.

Wayne Johnson, long experienced Californian Republican political consultant, shared his secret to success in the February, 2004 issue of Campaigns and Elections: “Do not let your opponents dictate your strategy, and treat your client’s money as if it were coming out your own pocket.” Somehow Trippi translated this to “answer every attack and treat your client’s money as your own.” 

EVERYBODY HAS AN ANSWER

In the end, except his family and the Dean-heads, nobody liked him. Neighboring New Hampshire polls showed forty percent of voters had an unfavorable view of him. William Greider of the Nation wrote, “I remarked to a group of media, you guys saved the Republic from the doctor. Yes, they assented with giggly pleasure.”

He angered the DNC, the DLC, the Clintons, the House and Senate, the whole Washington elite, and farmer Dale. Farmer Dale Ungerer spoke to Dean at a Q & A in Hawkeye, Iowa, “Please tone down the garbage, the mean-mouthing or tearing down your neighbor and being so pompous.” Guess that Farmer Dale was speaking for lots of Iowans. And of course Dean told him to sit down and shut up. 

GORE GORES DEAN

Or vice versa. Nobody seemed to like either of them. An Opinion Dynamics Poll taken January 8, 2004 asked if Gore’s endorsement made you more likely to vote for someone or not? Only twenty-two percent said that it did. 

DEAN LEGACY

We have written of Dean’s legacy here in Vermont and the likely possibility that once America learned what he did to Vermonters, they would not want him to do the same to them.

This week we saw his legacy on parade. The Kerry campaign said, "(they are) the most crooked ... lying group I've ever seen." Dean taught them how to hate, how to stir up the angry juices, and how to use his hyperbolic, exaggerative, arrogant phraseology. That this use of language did not yield positive results for Dean seems lost on Kerry. 

WHAT WILL WALDO DO?

He has said that he will not practice medicine again; he has not kept up with the literature let alone the license. He will not be governor or lieutenant governor again. He will not be president though maybe he could be a presidential candidate again. 

According to Stowe’s Trudy Erhard, owner of the Golden Horn of Aspen, CO and Kneeland Flats, VT, he will not be a dishwasher. This from the Denver Post, “He was a very mediocre person when he worked for us. I remember him well. He was just a loser.” Kerry will promise Dean any job in the administration in order to obtain his e-mail and donor list. Once in hand, Dean is toast.

He can't go home again. Gotta move forward. 

WE HARDLY KNOW YOU

John Kerry has a problem. He schussed from thirty points back lying in the weeds to a stunning victory in two months. For all his success, he has left no footprints in the snow. Not having defined himself, it gives the Republicans a good chance to do so. This will soon happen. 

The Americans for Democratic Action grade all senators on the liberal scale, 100 being perfect. Kerry scored a 93, Ted Kennedy just an 88. That makes Kennedy the conservative senator from Massachusetts. In that Kerry has no matching funds, loans to pay back, and is generally a tight wad, he may give the Republicans the opening to allow them to fill in the blanks.

And of course Kerry is a leading gymnast, the flip-flop champion. 

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?

According to a report from Inside Track, Republican National Committeeman Skip Vallee is stepping down this spring. Rumored to possibly replace Skip are former Chairman of the Vermont Republican State Committee Joe Acinapura, Representative George Schiavone, Chittenden County Chair Rand Larson, and longtime activist Jack Lindley. 

This should lead to change. The main role of the National Committeeman for a decade now has been to raise money. One of the problems with that has been the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. This has given the party a two headed hydra, two parts not usually working in tandem. None of the candidates mentioned to date are known as money men. While the party will have to re-adjust its efforts to hit up major donors themselves, this will give Chairman Jim Barnett and ultimately Jim Douglas responsibility for the Vermont Republican effort. Of course, then comes the accountability part. Ouch! 

OLD WORLD WACKINESS

England’s Court of Appeals confirmed a lower court ruling that “sacked staff can sue for hurt feelings.” The fired worker was reportedly reduced to a state of despair and received a six figure settlement for “the blow to his self esteem, humiliation, and damage to reputation in the community and to family life.” Experts say the ruling’s costs will be “colossal.” 

CRADLE TO GRAVE

The Department of Inland Revenue in the UK is going after paper boys and girls. Government had a history of not bothering childrens’ casual wages, “under-16’s”. No longer. “There is an obligation irrespective of age. Everybody is liable to tax from the cradle to the grave.” 

THAT’S A DAM GOOD VIEW

As you wander up I-91 through Ryegate and turn into a Vista Point, the PG&E dam majestically holds back the flow of the Connecticut River. It is a damn good view. Pressure is not just on the dam but on the governor and the legislature to act from editorialists, lobbyists, and the never somnambulating senior senator from Essex, Orleans, Lamoille, and Franklin counties.

Beware of the damn good view though. Recall what happened when Governor Grey Davis last negotiated with PG&E? He soon became ex-Governor Davis. And what happens when there is a drought? Do we not have to make our bond or debt payments? 

JOBS JOBS JOBS

Like a laser, our governor is focusing on jobs. Recent press releases emanating from the vaunted fifth floor reinforce that image: “Vermont jobs recovering faster than the rest of the nation.” 

About a hundred new jobs coming to IBM, IDX’s new United Kingdom billion dollar contract, Williston’s Triosyn $4.9 federal contract, another Pentagon contract for helmets at Gaudet in Newport, a government contract for Applied Research of Royalton for robotic mine removal and soil penetration devices, and a $3.5 million Pentagon contract for the Microtechnology Center in Bennington.

Is it just us or does this sound a bit like welfare. Not that folks are not creating new and interesting things. But is the only growth industry in the country the government? The last jobs report had the national job increase at 21,000 new jobs, all government. Now again, who gives the government money? 

THE GRAND OLD PARTY AT WORK

The Microtechnology Center grew in large part through the efforts of junior Bennington County Senator Mark Sheppard-R. This from the Bennington Banner, “The center will be the first of its kind in the country. We worked for more than a year with Senator Mark Shepard. Shepard, a Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate, used his connections with RPI’s officials to spark their interest. Representative Joe Krawczyk, R-Bennington, said, ‘The old-line manufacturing jobs are gone forever. This is the new beginning for manufacturing here.’” 

THE DO NOTHING YEARS

The last few years of the Dean era did not actually exist; Dean had flown the coop on his way to his two terms in the White House. Jobs are still leaving Vermont therefore with Burton Snowboards moving their clothing products from Burlington to Irvine, California, National Life laying off one hundred and sixty-eight, and Union Institute of Montpelier laying off seven.

In Dean’s last year, Vermonters’ family income fell for the first time in a ten years according to a report by the Northern Economic Consulting group, falling almost three times the national average. 

EVERY ACTION HAS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE

National Life Insurance Company of Montpelier announced that it was joining IBM and others to outsource work offshore. They tempered the bad news with the hope that their outsourcing company in the United States may move much of its work back to Montpelier, hiring many of the folks losing their jobs. One reason is that Vermonters do not tend to hopscotch from one job to another as they do elsewhere.

One of the drivers of outsourcing may be the Patriot Act. As recently as 2000, there were over 500,000 H-1B visas available for high tech people to move to the United States for work. In that year, the entire 500,000 annual allocation was used up by our then personnel-starved technology companies in one month. Now the annual allocation according to the Economist is only 65,000. All those good minds are not going to waste. They are creating jobs in their own countries instead of here.

It is not just prideful when you read that the new presidents of Georgia and Greece were “American educated.” Not just is our collegiate system respected, it gives off values and experience on how civil society, rule of law, freedom of the press, and democracy can work. As fewer folks are allowed into this country, there will be less of this.

A Taiwanese colleague here in Bristol recently submitted a paper for review by a conference committee at Harvard in his field, Buddhist studies. He paper was selected for presentation. He applied for a visa to the United States and it was denied. So much for taken advantage of globalization. 

CABLE TO GO LOCAL

The Douglas Administration announced that Adelphia has agreed to add up to 20,000 rural homes by the time the next decade unfolds. This is not a big deal. Vermont leads the country in television dishes because cable is not available in the boonies. And Internet connectivity is going wireless. 

GO WIRELESS YOUNG MAN

According to DPR’s Council of Economic Advisors "Wireless data" is going to be huge and in all likelihood the driver of economic growth during the rest of the decade. Most of the conversation in Vermont about "wireless" has involved cell phones and towers, whether or not they should be allowed. But the real imminent tragedy for Vermont is not about cell phones. It unfolds as data starts to flow over that proto-network. Wireless data will be an absolutely critical business application. 

”Vermont sat out the 1990’s technologically - this has been a disaster. If Vermont sits out the 2000s, it will be a catastrophe.” 

THE REST OF THE WORLD

“In most of the rest of the world wireless data already accounts for a substantial share of the revenues earned by wireless carriers. According to a recent Merrill Lynch study, United States’ wireless service ranks last in the world. The cell phone came of age in the 1990’s. Now beginning: the decade of wireless data. 

”Being last is an artifact of our regulatory history. European and Asian carriers have been allowed to own 80 to 90 megahertz of spectrum--enough to build out voice services with room to spare for wireless data. Until the beginning of this year by contrast, the American carriers were capped at 55 megahertz. Carriers overseas got a jump on deploying data-capable network hardware. European wireless customers are exchanging 30 billion e-mails a year, 20 times as many here.”  --Peter Huber, Insights, December 22, 2003. 

WE’RE SO SLOW DUDE

The South China Morning Post cites an International Telecommunications Union report: What takes 20 minutes in Japan with an ADSL link of 26Mbps, 26 minutes in South Korea on a very high-data DSL link of 20Mbps, takes 44 minutes on the ITU leased line of 12Mbps and 6 hours with a 1.5Mbps cable modem in the United States.

According to the Wall Street Journal, we are only 11th in high speed Internet usage. “In Japan you can download movies in twenty minutes. In America where most people are still using 56K modems and copper-wire phone lines, that task would take more than seven days.” 

THE VERMONT WAY

The need to transmit and receive bigger and bigger chunks of data is obvious to anyone dealing with modern reality. Over typical Vermont dial-up connections, a large file would require nearly two weeks (13 days) to download. This kind of stone-age telecommunications system has caused some to invent a new phrase: "Vermont broadband," burning the stuff onto a CD and sending it by FedEx. 

YOU DO NOT GET WHAT YOU PAID FOR

One reason for this pending catastrophe is that, in spite of spending more money on education per student than any country in the world, we rank 19th in math and 14th in science according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Why you ask? Here is a theory. In our schools, the history of the redwood, why Bush hates Kyoto, and why Barney disappeared passes for science. Not of course does learning the Table of Elements, experimenting with the inclined plane, or knowing how to reduce electrical resistance. 

There is a trend away from courses with a focus on replicable knowledge, be it history or science. The trend is towards self-esteem, even discussing drama activities towards helping self-esteem. Tests are bad, feelings are good. It may be the revenge of the unsuccessful. 

Stereotype ahead, beware. For many teachers, school was not their most successful period. They generally were not cheerleaders, varsity sports participants, prom royalty, or national merit scholars. They did not attend Ivy League quality schools. Their self-esteem fell. 

It is also the fate of the unaccomplished. More stereotype, sorry. Many a school board member, well meaning, may be a leading member of our trust funder community, but a person at least who has the time to serve in this time demanding time we live in. But they are not necessarily accomplished in the real world. The teachers unions and their own instincts to be fair have created an unaccountable privileged teacher corps.

Of course, folks are voting with their feet according to a report in the Free Press, “Vermont leads nation in declining youth population. The number of youngsters in Vermont is declining faster than in any other state in the nation according to the U.S. Census. The number of Vermont children younger than 5 declined 8.71 percent between 2000 and 2003, and the number of children in Vermont ages 5 to 13 declined 9.1 percent.” 

Even though “between 1997 and 2003, Vermont public school enrollment declined 6 percent to 99,978 students,” bet your school budgets have not decreased. 

MEDIOCRITY WORKS

In an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution Marquis Harris, a 22-year-old recent college graduate, described being turned down for a job teaching in a public school. “Recently, I interviewed with a school in the Atlanta area. I received an e-mail from the principal stating, ‘Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become.’" 

THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT

Two of the world’s billionaires spoke recently. George Soros was asked at the Davos World Economic Forum if he might not be too rich. He of course said no, that he had played by the rules, took risks, and used his skill, intellect, and knowledge. But by ending inheritance taxes he said you are giving the potentially unskilled benefits and advantages which we thought that we had left behind in the Old World, the perpetual landed and money class, having nothing to do with skill. We are creating the new aristocracy. 

Fellow curmudgeon Warren Buffet then addressed his annual letter to shareholders excoriating the government for cutting his taxes too much. “If there is class warfare, my class is clearly winning.” 

MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

As always we would hope that more people will find their way to our pages and web site. If you can recommend us to a few of your friends or associates, we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks. 

BUILDING A FREE PRESS IN A FREE SOCIETY

French reporter Alain Hertoghe believes that French newspapers recreated "the war they would have liked to have seen." For this and other utterances in his book called "La Guerre á Outrances," Hertoghe was fired from his post as deputy editor at the Web site of La Croix. 

"The papers wanted disaster," he said. "Le Monde became 'Saddam's Gazette.' It gave a picture from Baghdad of Saddam's units perfectly controlling the situation. When the Americans made their move, we read how they were massacring the Iraqis. The explanation for the collapse was that Saddam's fedayeen had so much compassion for the population that they stopped fighting." 

BUILDING A FREE PRESS, TAKE # 2

Stowe’s Bob Arnot called NBC News’ coverage of Iraq biased. Arnot referred to an e-mail from Jim Keelor, president of Liberty Broadcasting which owns eight NBC stations throughout the South. Mr. Keelor had written NBC, stating that "the networks are pretty much ignoring" the good-news stories in Iraq. "The definition of news would incorporate some of these stories," he wrote. 

"What happens if NBC is wrong" he wrote. "What happens if this is a historical mission that does succeed ... that transforms the Middle East ... that brings peace and security to America. What if NBC’s role was like that of much of the media in general ... allowing the terrorists to fight their war on the American television screen, where their stories of death and destruction dominate rather than that of American heroes?"

Arnot wondered why the network was not reporting stories of progress in Iraq. "As you know, I have regularly pitched most of these stories to Nightly, Today and directly to you," he wrote. "Every single story has been rejected." --New York Observer, February, 2004 

JOHNNY COMES LATE TO THE DANCE

Vermont Press Bureau’s Darren Allen used his nearly first annual writing to tackle the gay marriage issue. He knows all Vermonters with any "decency" support gay marriage. The year 2000 was a year of struggle for most, working their way through this very issue. There were thousands of people of decency on both sides of this issue. 

SEND ME IN COACH

He writes about denying folks “a basic civil right,” a view not shared by most in the actual Civil Rights movement. He writes about how Laura Bush found gay marriage “a very shocking issue” for many people. Yet before his time, Howard Dean said that he was "very uncomfortable as everyone else is" with gay marriage/civil unions.

When Attorney General Bill Sorrell said, “There is no constitutional right for gay marriage. If another states allows marriages between ten year olds, should we?” Allen writes, “Of course we shouldn't, they are not adults.” 

FIGHTING SPECIAL INTERESTS

»» John McClaughry, Kirby: In his farewell speech ex-Governor Howard Dean said with great emphasis, "We stand against the special interests who are opposed to change!" I hope that means he will be coming home to Vermont to lead the battle for parental choice in education. 

SAME STRIPES

»» Susan D. Auld, Stuart, FL (former Vermonter): Why should you be surprised at Norman Runnion's actions. He endorsed Howard Dean at the Brattleboro Reformer way back when I ran for Lieutenant Governor against Howard. He has remained true to his commitment. 

MAN WITH A PLAN

»» Paul Chandler, Newport: So now Howard Dean thinks life for Iraqis was BETTER under Saddam Hussein? Are all those mass graves figments of someone's imagination? Fred Tuttle was better suited to be a United States Senator than Howard Dean is to be president of the United States. Maybe he has a new career as star of all of Michael Moore's future films. 

THEY LIKE US

»» Hank Buermann, Brookfield: I believe that it is critically important that you continue your work on the DPR. IF we ever get off our duffs and use it, the information will be critically important to those of us who would really like to recapture our state.

»» Emilie Mattesich, Burlington: Great reporting on Dean. Living in Burlington I am barraged by pro-Dean media and some friends (only a few, thank goodness). It's really refreshing to read a thoughtful and accurate analysis. Many thanks. 

THOSE WERE THE DAYS MY FRIENDS 

"Howard Dean has enjoyed being his party's front-runner with the national exposure that comes with it, but now he is crying foul after being attacked by his Democrat rivals and wants his party to step in and make the other campaigns stop. While campaigning in Iowa on Sunday, Dean (D-VT) suggested that he has a lock on his party's nomination and that Democrat National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe should step in and stop the attacks he is receiving from his rivals before young voters turn away from politics in discouragement." -- Talon News, 12/30/03 

DEAN ON PRIME TIME 

“Howard Dean did not break into his opponent’s campaign headquarters, or trade guns for hostages, or dally with a bimbo, or turn a surplus into a deficit, or bungle his way into war. He committed the high crime of being enthusiastic, and his wife committed the crime of being employed.” --Marjorie Drysdale, The Herald of Randolph, February 5, 2004 

DEAN'S VISION 

"Dean says Vermont is the way America should be. You mean a land of broken-down farms for the natives and weekend homes for the wealthy? Where everyone in the eastern half drives out of state to shop, work and get medical treatment? Where the only kind of business is boutique mail-order specialities ­ the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Ben and Jerry’s Premium Ice Cream, Cold Hollow Apple Cider?" --Mark Steyn, Spectator, 2/7/04 

THEN WAS THEN 

“What do you call a born again, pro-life, pro-gun, Southerner who disparaged lawyers and big government? A Republican you say, why not President Carter?” --Ron Faucheux, Campaigns and Elections, February, 2004 

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