Chris Graff Snuggles Up to Jim Douglas

Christopher Graff is busy proving how ironic his firing by Associated Press three years ago truly was.

AP dismissed Graff as its Montpelier correspondent after he distributed over the wire a column written by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, justifiably criticizing the Bush Administration's abysmal record on questions of open government. Graff joined AP in 1978 and had been in charge of its Montpelier office for 25 years.

The irony is that Graff is every bit the country club Republican in the manner of his mentor and pal, Gov. Jim Douglas. They overlapped as undergraduates at Middlebury College and Graf succeeded Douglas as president of the campus radio station.

[Full disclosure: The presidency of the Middlebury College campus radio station is something I have in common with Douglas and Graff -- and, like Graff, I am a former Associated Press newsman. I've met both of them; Graff might remember me but I am certain Douglas would not. I'm supporting Secretary of State Deb Markowitz for governor.]

Evidence of Graff's partisan regard for the governor as the latter gears up his reelection campaign came in the July 17 edition of Vermont Business Magazine, the newspaper of record for GOP chamber-of-commerce types. "Don’t veto a Douglas re-election just yet," Graff proclaimed, a cheeky allusion to the two veto overrides Douglas suffered at the hands of the Democratically controlled Legislature this year.

What evidence does Graff marshal in favor of the ongoing political viability of Douglas as he heads into his eighth year as governor? Two things: (1) the fact that Douglas is about to become chair of the National Governors Association, and (2) the fact that Douglas was nice to a stranger at National Airport in Washington.

The latter, Graff reported, is "the story of a young woman . . . who had been juggling her baby, the full range of baby paraphernalia, and assorted carry on items as she struggled to get through the TSA screening. . . . People passed by. None offered to help. A man then stepped up and helped her and her baby through the screening area. That man was Jim Douglas.

Acording to Graff, "[t]he story speaks volumes about the personal and political success of the governor."

Really? Graff notes that the person Douglas helped, though a stranger to him, turned out to be not just a Vermonter, but a new staff person at the Vermont Business Roundtable. As Graff points out, this is evidence of the kind of right-place-at-the-right time luck that Douglas has enjoyed.

But as someone who has been that kind of frantic parent at many TSA airport screening checkpoints, I hardly think the anecdote proves much of anything about the good character of the governor.

Most of us I suspect, would come to the aid of such a struggling parent if we could. But sometimes we can't -- we've got our own kids to shepherd through the ordeal, or we have frantic connections to make, or we're dealing with any of the gazillions of other stressors that sap one's reserve of goodwill and altruism while engaged in air travel. On the other hand, Jim Douglas doesn't have such problems when he travels -- his two sons are grown up and, let's face it, when you're governor you travel as a pampered VIP.

Nor do I buy the theory that the governor of Vermont rightly assumes noone will recognize him as he passes through National Airport, particularly if he is catching a commercial flight to Burlington.

Of course it is perfectly laudable that the governor was nice to a stranger at the airport. I'm just saying that it's pretty darned superficial journalism to offer this as prime evidence of why Jim Douglas may be headed for a fifth two-year term notwithstanding the widespread unpopularity of the policy positions he imposes on Vermont as a governor from a minority party.

Here's what Graff says about Douglas becoming the third Vermont chief executive to chair of the National Governors Association in the past 28 years: "Think about that. There are 50 states. So the rule of thumb should be that a state gets one shot at chairing the NGA every 50 years. Vermont has had three chairs in fewer than 30. . . .

"A listing of recent NGA chairs – Bill Clinton, Lamar Alexander, John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson, Mark Warner, Mike Huckabee and Janet Napolitano – is a who’s who of national politicians.

"And the timing is perfect for Douglas, whose Republican colors and conservative instincts have been most apparent in the debate over the state budget and state taxes. For the next year Douglas will be working with the Obama administration on key areas of interest . . . . I am not suggesting that Douglas is a shoo-in for re-election simply because he is the chair of the National Governors Association. But I do think it will defuse Democratic criticism, and help restore the perception that Douglas can be bipartisan, and is moderate on some issues.

That's not exactly unbiased commentary. A skeptic might regard Douglas stepping forward to head the NGA as an act of consummate cynicism. Douglas's televised visibility in the gallery during President Obama's address to Congress a few weeks after the inauguration was arguably just the opening gambit in a sophisticated effort by a conservative Republican governor, in the bluest of blue states, to fool the electorate.

Jim Douglas has always made me queasy. And it's not because he's a Republican. It's because the guy radiates a kind of insincerity and unctiousness that is fully consistent with the scenario in the previous paragraph. Other governors of the region -- the undisciplined and volatile Howard Dean, the arrogant and dismissive Craig Benson, the resolutely un-partisan and coolly strategic John Lynch, the supercilious and patrician Angus King -- all seem as if the public persona and the real persona are one and the same. Among Vermont Republican governors, Dick Snelling always seemed a lot more real to me, and a lot more bipartisan, than Jim Douglas.

Why would Chris Graff be so seemingly indifferent to the reality of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign? By all rights, a chief executive seeking years nine and ten of his governorship should be engendering Douglas Fatigue in an electorate that is far to the left of him. But Vermont is a state with three political parties and the inability of the Progressive and Democratic parties to unite around an alternative is what could leave Vermont with Republican governors for decades to come.

Farewell, Connecticut Valley Spectator -- Hello Reader Ownership . . .?

How ironic it is to read in the Local Daily Newspaper of the sudden demise of its only competition, the friendly neighborhood weekly known as the Connecticut Valley Spectator. Along with its parent company, and its affiliated daily newspaper in Claremont, the Eagle Times, the Spectator is now in bankruptcy. Today's is the last issue.

Among other things, this explains why the editor hasn't been returning my messages and queries. Since early this year, I had been writing a biweekly opinion column in the Spectator. (The whole oevre is here at http://www.n1303k.com/, in the unlikely event anyone is interested.) Then, a few weeks ago, editor Mike Peterson, the fellow who had recruited me, abruptly disappeared. His successor and I exchanged emails a few times but we never managed to connect; now it is apparent that she was only there as a form of hospice care.

Naturally I am really grateful to the Spectator for giving me a career as a columnist, however brief it was. It was pleasant to discover that I could indeed find a coherent opinion to express publicly every two weeks. It was exciting to feel as if I was playing a part, however small, in an effort to prevent the Local Daily Newspaper from gaining an absolute monopoly on news reporting in the Upper Valley. That struggle has, of course, now been lost.

A couple of interesting and ironic milestones in my brief tenure as a columnist are worthy of mention here.

The first was the time I submitted a column about the newspaper industry's death spiral -- and my modest proposal, about which more below, for addressing it. Mike spiked the column, confessing that the whole subject was a "third rail" with publisher and owner Harvey Hill. I have never had any contact with Mr. Hill, but I sympathized long before he sought protection from creditors in bankruptcy court for his failing newspaper conglomerate.

The second milestone was what turned out to be my last column, published about six weeks ago. It was about the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD), and it cost me my membership on the CHaD Family Advisory Board. The CHaD FAB did not like my factual observation that the Board is comprised almost entirely of hospital insiders -- employees or close relatives thereof -- and is thus serving the purpose of telling the hospital only what it wants to hear. Speaking that truth to those powers sure frosted a bunch of folks who proclaim they are committed to giving a meaningful voice to patients and their parents.

So now I get to leave to others the task of trying to cause a monolothic institution, so central to the life of the community and the health of my family, to others with more tact and equanimity. My quest, newly reinvigorated by today's news about the Spectator, is to figure out a way to make sure we all get the information about the public life of our community that we need. While I am concerned about the monopoly of the Local Daily Newpaper, ultimately the LDN is in the same toilet swirl as the Spectator. The investor-owned, for-profit newspaper, which subsidizes its news reporting efforts with advertising revenue, will soon be as extinct as the dodo bird.

An important fact about all of this is often overlooked. It was the loss of classified advertising, as distinct from display advertising, that really took the bottom out of the newspaper business. In other words, it is not the loss of support from retailers that is killing newspapers; it's regular folks like you and me. Once, we used the classifieds to connect with each other regarding the prosaic commercial transactions of daily life -- finding jobs, renting apartments, selling our cars, that sort of stuff. Then the internet arrived, and the newspaper became superfluous as that kind of community bulletin board. Fundamentally, what has broken down is the relationship between the newspapers and their readers, not the newspapers and the big corporate buyers of advertising.

So it is time to take the newspaper companies out of the mix and let the people themselves figure out what information they need as well as how they will pay for it. As I tried to explain in the Spectator, the answer is reader-owned, internet-based news portals that are organized as consumer cooperative societies. This model is vastly superior to the taxpayer-supported models commonly under discussion, usually in the context of turning newspapers into nonprofit organizations that are dominated by big and powerful foundations. That's just another form of outside control; the idea of government support is particularly pernicious because newspapers are supposed to hold government accountable rather than live off government.

Reader-ownership is also an antidote to the ethical lapses that have always bedeviled the newspaper industry, most recently the venerable Washington Post. The Post's own ombudsman has just issued a scathing public report on his employer, which apparently had set up a program of "salons" -- private social gatherings at which newsmakers were to pay big bucks for access to news writers. Shame! If the readers owned the Post, they could and would fire every last editor because none of them, apparently, raised a single dissenting voice.

As a board member at both the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society and the Cooperative Fund of New England, I spend a lot of time thinking about co-ops and talking with people associated with them. What I've found is a bubbling of interest, at least among board members, in figuring out whether co-ops can play a role in meeting the information needs of their members. It was, after all, a lack of available citrus fruit that led to the founding of the Hanover Co-op in 1936. Insightful news reporting is starting to look a lot like those oranges used to -- tantalizing but distant. I'm not saying that co-ops should launch news portals from scratch. But all of these co-ops have newsletters. What if they came out a bit more often -- and what if the big co-ops each hired just one staffer whose job it is to look outside the co-op itself for something to write about?

One of the ways in which co-ops can be especially useful in our economy is as an exit strategy for local, family-owned businesses when the inevitable life changes of the owners require cashing out. It's too late for the family business that ran the Spectator. But it's not too late for the family that owns the daily newspapers in Concord and the Upper Valley. Each place boasts an excellent consumer cooperative society with oranges for sale!

This Game is Our Game

"How many times in a single game is it necessary to assert one's patriotism?," asks Clyde Haberman in today's Times, in reference to a recently settled lawsuit over an incident at Yankee Stadium.

According to Haberman, the answer, apparently, is once: during the playing, and the singing, of Our National Anthem.

Haberman draws an unfavorable comparison between the current situation in Iran and what befell one Bradford Campeau-Lorion of Queens at a Yankees-Red Sox game last August 26. Bradford got bounced by the police -- not because he happens to be a Red Sox fan, but because he started to make his way to the men's room during Kate Smith's rendition of "God Bless America," a staple of the 7th Inning stretch at Yankee Stadium.

Apparently, though the Yankees deny there is any rule governing fan obeisance to Kate Smith and Irving Berlin, the security detail at the stadium made it clear that fans were obliged to stay put during the ritualistic enforced patriotism.

So, as the Red Sox were beating the Yankees on that August night, "they shoved me out the gates and told me to get out of their country if I didn’t like it,” Campeau-Laurion told Haberman. Campeau-Laurion called the ACLU, which filed a federal lawsuit on his behalf. According to the Times, the lawsuit has just settled, with the plaintiff getting $10,001 and his lawyers getting $12,000 in fees.

I find Campeau-Laurion's defense of his right to micturate rather than venerate at Yankee Stadium to be highly laudable, and not just because I too was once ejected from the same baseball edifice for an equally ridiculous reason (throwing peanut shells over the front railing of the upper deck, during a rain delay in which the stands were otherwise empty). Where I part company with Haberman is in conceding that one mandatory act of mass patriotism per game is acceptable. Why should one be obliged to violate the first of the Ten Commandments -- the one banning idolatry -- in exchange for the right to watch a baseball game?

Admittedly, I go along with the Star-Spangled Banner ritual because there is something vaguely pleasant about participating in a longstanding tradition with respect to starting off each game. But, when I attend Cape Cod League games and other contests at ballparks that persist with the "God Bless America" thing in the 7th inning (which apparently started in the wake of the September 11 bombings and has persisted at some but not all ballparks), I don't get up to pee. That would be too wimpy for me. I make a point of remaining in my seat.

Maybe I would feel differently if, on alternating nights, they gave Kate Smith a rest and, instead, played a version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," which he wrote as a musical rebuttal to the Irving Berlin song. Now that Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen have sung Woody's number on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the inaugural festivities in January, surely "This Land is Your Land" has as legitimate a claim on being a patriotic song as "God Bless America" does, yes?

We're going to watch the Sea Dogs in Portland on July 25th. During the 7th inning stretch, I plan to do just that. I'll be stretching, not standing, no matter what they blast through the loudspeakers.

An Occasion for Dancing in the Streets

BETHESDA, Md., July 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation announced today that all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have passed legislation requiring that all newborns be screened for cystic fibrosis (CF) by the year 2010.

Early diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening, genetic disease, can have a dramatic impact on the health of those born with the condition.

Newborn screening for CF was adopted nationwide at a rapid pace, following the aggressive advocacy efforts of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, its volunteers and many local and national interest groups. In 2005, only five states required that CF be included on the list of mandatory screening conditions.

After years of debate, Texas and Connecticut - the last two states without mandatory newborn screening - will now establish programs. Connecticut will begin screening Oct. 1, 2009, and Texas is expected to start in December.

"We congratulate Texas and Connecticut for joining a nationwide effort to ensure that every child born with cystic fibrosis gets the best possible start in life," said Robert J. Beall, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. "Newborn screening is critically important for this disease because early diagnosis is tied to better health. We extend our thanks to every volunteer and advocate who fought to establish screening programs across the country."