Freyne Land

Caught these fine gentlemen today sharing good wishes in a key Montpeculiar crosswalk right next to the Pavilion Building.

Hey, it's a small town.

Montpelier fixtures are they, for as long as I can remember. Damn baby-boomers!

That's Lobbyist Steve Kimbell of Kimbell Sherman Ellis [on the left] shaking hands with whatshisname, oh yeah, the Governor of the State of Vermont, the Honorable Jim Douglas!

However, the hot action under the Golden Dome Wednesday wasn't being generated by elected officials, but rather by the 200-plus folks who packed the Cedar Creek Room and Room II - doctors, nurses, patients, seniors - folks who took off from work, folks who won't take "no" for an answer when it comes to seeing Vermont make real progress on healthcare reform.

This year they want H.304, the global-hospitalization bill, to move. They insist it's not only doable, but includes everyone and cuts costs, too.

The Democrat leadership and the GOP Guv say fuggedaboudit.

More later...

"Gonna say anything about that?" we asked Vermont's Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders the other day before he departed for Africa with Sen. Tom Harkin.

Bernie was heading off during the congressional recess to take an up-close-and-personal look at where our chocolate actually comes from.

Not a sweet story.

I asked Ol' Bernardo if he will get involved in the 2008 Vermont gubernatorial race which now has Progressive Anthony Pollina's hat in the ring and still - still - no Democratic Party candidate [though several insist they are considering thinking about considering thinking about running].

Replied Sen. Sanders:

"At a certain point I sure will. I’ve known Anthony for many years. He worked for me when I first came into the House. Anthony is obviously a very bright guy, very articulate, and very knowledgeable about a whole lot of issues and I’d think he would be a good candidate."

And Sanders agreed that were a Democrat to jump in as well, making for a three-way race, Incumbent Republican Jim Douglas would have a smooth sail to victory lap #4.

"If you had a Democratic candidate and a Progressive candidate like Anthony, obviously that would be counterproductive."

"Obviously?"

Even to Democrat Party State Chair Ian Carleton?

The elected people's representatives from every corner of Vermont get down to business today under Montpeculiar's Golden Dome. It's Year II of the biennium.

Whoopee!

The first year was noted for all it did not achieve, for the impasse between our Republican governor and Democratic Legislature. For the vetoes that were sustained. For the lack of communication.

The second half kicks off with the real meat-and-potatoes issues being voiced loudest by folks outside the building - regular Vermonters.

With every passing day, more people get fed up with our healthcare system. Both people experiencing it as patients and people administering it as doctors and nurses.

Let's get real.

And after almost 40 years of building more courts and more prisons, more and more gray-haired folks, including prosecutors and cops, are willing to acknowledge the absurdity of our illegal-drug policy. It's costing us a fortune and creating more crime while doing nothing to reduce drug abuse.

If there was one bill you could sponsor AND get passed by the Legislature and signed into law this year by the Guv, what would it be?

C'mon.

Seriously....

I realize just about everyone is focusing on the New Hampshire Primary. Even Mark Johnson's taken his WDEV morning radio talk-show to Manchester, New Hampshire for Monday & Tuesday!

However,  for mental health reasons, yours truly has tuned it all out. Life's too short. Had more than enough of the presidential pack, though I could not avoid Sam Hemingway's piece in the Freeps about our ol' pal, Mad Dog Jim Barnett of Barre. Mad Dog's about to do for John McCain in New Hampshire what he and The Boy Wonder Neale Lunderville did for Jim Douglas in Vermont back in 2002.

Gov. Douglas was the guest-of-honor at Monday morning's Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce breakfast. Good turnout - 300-plus. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it sure sounded like all previous the gubernatorial legislative kick-off Chamber Breakfasts I've had the pleasure of covering since the early 1980s.

Filed a story for WDEV News off this one, as well, BECAUSE, Gov. Scissorhands made no bones about it - he will be proposing that the Democratic Legislature lease/sell the Vermont Lottery to Wall Street for $50 million.

"I think it’s a good idea," said Gov. Douglas. "I think it makes a lot of sense."

AND one of the attendees in the packed audience listening was none other than Progressive gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina.

Said Pollina to Freyne Land afterward:

The only idea that I heard was to sell the lottery to a hedge fund, someone who would give us a one-time payment in exchange for taking away an asset the state of Vermont has.  In a couple months maybe we’ll hear about selling the local fire departments or the state police?

It’s an idea that makes you think the governor is grasping at straws. It’s an idea that Vermonters I talk to think is just off the wall and inappropriate and not good policy.

That's Democratic State Sen. Hinda Miller over Tony the Prog's shoulder. Did not get the name of the gent he's talking to. Sorry. Nice tie on Tony, eh? 

He'll be wearing more of them in the months [and years?] ahead.

Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t the only member of the Vermont troika doing some official traveling during the current congressional recess.

With the intense US media saturation-coverage of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary, our war in Iraq may have slipped some people's minds.

Word from Capitol Hill just now that Democratic Congressman Peter Welch is heading for Iraq today. Ol’ Welchie, according to the e-mail release from his Press Secretary Andrew Savage:

“will also travel to Jordan and Lebanon as part of the trip organized by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on which he serves.

“The delegation will examine the political and military situation in Iraq, investigate the status and quality of U.S. taxpayer-funded reconstruction projects (a topic of recent Oversight and Government Reform investigations), visit U.S. troops currently serving our country in Iraq, and seek to further understand the Iraqi refugee crisis in the region.

"Welch traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan last March.”

The Democrats have been unable to come up with a candidate to challenge GOP Gov. Jim Douglas.

But the Republicans have been equally impotent in coming up with a legitimate challenger for Rep. Welch.

Interesting, eh?

When yours truly made it to the Church Street Marketplace in Burlap this afternoon, Anne O'Brien of Richmond had already been on the street more than three hours. The Democratic "activist"  from the Burlington 'burbs showed no sign of being down after her candidate, Hillary Clinton's third-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses behind Sens. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards.

"I think it was great," O'Brien told yours truly. "I think Obama's great. John Edwards is a good guy. And Hillary will be the nominee," she added. "I'm just sure of it."

[Wonder if a person so gifted with certainty goes to Saratoga in August?]

Why is she behind Hillary Clinton?

"She’s smarter," said O'Brien. "She has the resume, aside from everything else. Take away race, gender  Put up the resumes for who you want to be the CEO of the country - she’s it!"

Think we can handle a woman president?

"Absolutely. We need one."

Anne then asked a passing mother and daughter if they'd sign the petition to get Hillary on the Vermont Primary ballot.

Jane Helmstetter, 55, of South Burlington was happy to sign [right]. What was her reaction to Hillary's surprisingly poor Iowa finish?

"I was shocked a little bit," she answered frankly. "Surprised, certainly,  that she didn’t come in ahead of Edwards."  But she noted that, "Iowa doesn’t always signify what’s going to happen later on."

Her daughter Maria Diferdinando, 22,  [behind her] also signed on.

"I think people find it easier to slander Hillary," said Maria. "That’s why she’s having a harder time. It's easier to say bad things about her because she’s been in the spotlight. There’s been more stuff about her out there and decisions that she’s made."

And what If Barack were the nominee?

"I’d be fine with that," replied O'Brien the Clinton for President volunteer. "I will vote for the Democratic nominee."

He's been a Montpeculiar fixture since the early 1970s, but we bet most of you don't recognize him, eh?

In Vermont's political world, he's a veteran insider, a powerful player and he keeps a very low profile.

Smart.

His past includes Middlebury College, the U.S. Marines (captain), getting Jim Jeffords elected to the U.S. House in 1974, a brief stint in the Legislature, followed by seven years on Gov. Richard Snelling's staff followed by many years as the Statehouse lobbyist for the Vermont Bankers Association.

The election of Jim Douglas in 2002 has been the icing on the cake for this Fifth Floor maestro - the one and only Tim Hayward!

Here's GOP Gov. Scissorhands' chief-of-staff as we caught him outside the palace yesterday in the state capital.

Tim was so kind, he even took off his sunglasses for Freyne Land!

Tough guy, Ol' Tim.

No hat.

Here's himself, King James of Vermont, happily striding into his 11 AM presser this morning on the Fifth Floor in Montpeculiar. One could sense his excitement, looking ahead to the legislative kick-off next week. You can tell he loves what he does for "work."

Reporters, lobbyists, staffers - both his and those of the Democratic Legislative Leadership [the two in the back behind the TV camera] - packed the room. Both the state Democratic Party and the Republican Party had someone there videotaping the show. That's Chuck Storrow, veteran lobbyist with the white hair, a managing partner at Kimbell Sherman Ellis, seated at the press table behind Gov. Scissorhands' elbow.

A first! Next they'll be asking questions, too.

Jim Douglas has been getting elected since 1972 (to a House seat). He served as secretary of state and state treasurer, too. Currently, he has no Democratic opponent in this year's governor's race - it'll be his fourth. Declined to say how much money his campaign has raised thus far, but did acknowledge, with a wide smile, that he's doing pretty good.

Yep.

It had been billed by Democratic State Sen. Peter Shumlin, the president pro tem, as an "informal" sort of  "conversation" with the press, but the crowd of attentive onlookers in the formal Cedar Creek Room at the Statehouse included hired-gun business lobbyists and organization reps, as well as the chairman of the Vermont Republican Party who had a young fella with him making a digital video of the event!

 Shummy said Vermonters are "frustrated with government" and want to see the legislature get results. How original, eh?

”So we’re gonna pass two energy bills, the first that creates an all-fuels, energy-efficiency utility and saves Vermonters money by reducing our dependence on oil, that implements many of the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change’s recommendations which really are extraordinary.
   
"The second piece is we want to pass a health care bill that expands Catamount so that any Vermonter can buy into it, have affordable insurance at an affordable rate."

Shumlin did not have an answer, however, when asked by reporters how Democrats would pay for it all and that omission drew the attention of Vermont GOP Chairman Rob Roper:

“He said that a year ago and the economy’s only slowed since then. Any new program has either got to come out of something that doesn’t exist or existing programs.

"I think right now Vermonters are worried about, you know, staying in their homes, heating their houses, keeping their health insurance on money that they have or can they expect a huge tax increase?"

Sen. Shumlin also said there will be action in the session ahead on decriminalizing possession of 1/2 ounce of marijuana while increasing penalties for possession and sale of harder drugs like cocaine and oxycontin.

Actually, Shummy of Putney played down hopes for any significant health care reform progress, even though he said he personally supports moving toward a single-payer system like the rest of the modern civilized world where folks get better results for half the cost!

Sorry, Pedro, a lot of folks ain't buying it. We've had good intentions on health care for the last couple decades and our system is drowning in bureaucracy, deteriorating in quality and costing a bloody fortune.   
"Take Back Vermont Health Care," says Dr. Deb Richter, "is a network not an organization."

This is the sign that went up yesterday in front of her Montpeculiar home. Their website, she tells us, links hundreds of Vermonters including health care professionals, doctors and nurses who actually are determined to see real health care reform actually happen. They've had it with all the talk!

Despite the current lack of support from either the Republican Fifth Floor or the Democratic Statehouse leadership of House and Senate, Doctor Richter tells Freyne Land the inescapable reality is, "Our health care system needs major surgery."

"This movement is a work in progress and it's not going away," says Richter in a phone interview late Wednesday afternoon. "We’llmultiply in February, and just wait 'till March. We’re just gonna keep ongrowing."

The missing ingredients?

"Courage and leadership," says Dr. Richter.

H. 304, the bill sponsored by GOP Rep. Topper McFaun of Barre Town, the bill the GOP Guv and the Democrat Legislative Leadership both brush aside, would reduce premiums by 40 percent and guarantee that everyone - repeat: EVERYONE is covered for hospitalization. It would cut Vermonters annual hospitalization bill by $56 million, according to Dr. Richter. "A dedicated tax would pick up the tab."

"That's why it requires courage and leadership," says Richter, who emphasizes, "It is money we're already paying, but we'd be paying less!"

Shocking, indeed, eh?