A Voice from Beyond the Grave 
By Martin Harris

Back in the ‘80’s there was a semi-retired economist by the name of August St. John who taught at Adelphi College on New York’s Long Island during an abbreviated winter/academic session and "summered" in Manchester for the other ¾ of the year. I recite this bit of history not to offer examples of professorial workloads, but to recall how he had created his own little lecture circuit around the State (VT, not NY) and could be heard, no charge for admission, declaiming on a variety of subjects ranging from the gentrification of previously rural areas to governmental hostility-to-business. He was consistently dismissed as a crank by the Beautiful People in his audiences (yes the same BP’s he decried for their adverse impact on previously rural economies, agricultural and small-town) but, as time has gone by he has been proven right. 

Among other prognostications in the future-economy-of-Vermont area, he predicted (and was hooted at) that IBM would find Vermont a progressively (pun intended) less attractive as a place for capital investment and job-creation, and that Big Blue would therefore divert such future efforts elsewhere. Fishkill subsequently proved him right. Whatever the attractions –labor force, business climate, infra-structure—which drew IBM to the Winooski River urban corridor in the late ‘50’s, they were overshadowed by diplomatically unstated "other considerations" in the mid-90’s when Big Blue chose to make multi-billion-dollar investments in New York’s Hudson River urban corridor instead. Similarly, in the mid-00’s, when Del Computer was seeking a national headquarters site, it was North Carolina’s Forsyth County which proved more attractive than, among other venues, Vermont’s Chittenden County. St. John forecast that IBM would not simply abandon its at-that-time-three-decade-long Vermont investment, but would "use it up" by making no further substantive improvements before finally selling out. I’d guess that the recent behavior of Montpelier’s Golden Dome (GD for short) folks led by Senate President pro tem Peter Shumlin calling IBM’s representative John O’Kane a liar, couple with the GD folks’ on-going (and successful) efforts to convey morally superior levels of disdain towards Entergy Corporation’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, will help assure that St. John’s prediction comes fully true. From St. Johnsbury, here’s some of the Caledonian-Record’s op-ed commentary on the subject: 

"Once again, Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin has opened his mouth and inserted his foot. At a hearing on the Shumlin-engineered Senate demand that Entergy put up double, again, the $400 million that they already have escrowed to decommission Vermont Yankee at some point in the future, Shumlin called IBM lobbyist John O'Kane a liar. Shumlin claimed that O'Kane lied when he said that Vermont Yankee would have to come up with significant cash, now, to meet the requirements of the bill. O'Kane was insulted and left the hearing as Shumlin began to realize what a gaffe he had just pulled and started furiously backpedaling.

"Whatever the issue, Senator Shumlin is a statewide embarrassment. When he is hyper-soaked with righteous anger at, even hatred of, opposition to his one-track ideologies, he loses all judgment and balance. His popping-off at O'Kane was just another of his screeds against nuclear energy in general and Vermont Yankee in particular. This time, though, he went beyond his typical anti-nuke rant and insulted a representative of Vermont's largest employer. IBM must be made to feel welcome here, not insulted."

Whether the gentry-left GD politicians are ashamed (or not) of their leader’s choice of language, two underlying facts are pretty clear. One is that their Progressive mind-set enables them to believe that, indeed, they are smarter than those with whom they disagree, and that therefore their occasional frustrated outbursts are to be understood, not criticized; and the other is that, in their pursuit of a faux-bucolic economic vision for Vermont which definitely excludes any of the more complex elements at the upper end of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, they assume themselves to be fully entitled to create a legislative ambience aimed at encouraging both IBM and Vermont Yankee to shut down just as soon as they can put their affairs in order and leave. Do you suppose the spirit of the now-deceased August St. John is peering down at Vermont and smiling?
 

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights