Speaking from experience-

Or how I wasted most of the morning online while some paint dried. But the internets are great for research and one of the best time wasting tools I know of.

Vermont’s Peter Shumlin says VtBuzz
is among six other governors named in an article: Rookie Governors: Who's Doing Very Well?

Well good enough, that’s something I agree with more often than not. Nice little blurb for the Governor, but who is handing out this honor? Following the link from VtBuzz takes you to
Governing Magazine which is found on a serious looking think-tanky website. Digging around I found a couple of the editors have early backgrounds with Forbes and Ladies Home Journal. The new director of The Governing Institute (Governing Magazine’s parent) is the former long-term auditor and one term mayor of Kansas City. He was the first mayor not to win re-election since 1920 and was almost recalled ahead of the vote. Among many of his troubles while in office was the appointment he made of a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (an anti-immigrant group) as the Kansas City parks and recreation commissioner.

So who or what is behind this online magazine and this think-tankery?

Governing Magazine is a longtime publication that changed hands three years ago and is now associated with E.Republic an online publisher of Government Technology, Emergency Management and Public CIO. E.Republic is owned by the Church of Scientology which amidst some controversy purchased Governing from The St.Petersburg Times in 2009. Surprisingly the Times had been running a lengthy expose on Scientology prior to the sale.

Does any of this matter much in this case? Probably not. But why not know who the owner/funder of a think tank and associated publication may be? And it helped pass the time this morning while some paint dried.