What's this? Art Woolf made a mistake?! In Wednesday's Free Press, Candace Page reveals a slight miscalculation in the report filed at the end of 2009 by Douglas' pet economists, Art Woolf and Richard Heaps.
Instead of increasing $241., the inflation-adjusted median income of Vermont couples filing joint tax returns actually fell $1,870. or 2.7 percent in 2008.
According to Woolf, the discrepancy came to light when he was
recently checking his calculations and discovered he had transposed two formulas.
The article goes on to say that Woolf thinks the corrected data "makes more sense." Duh! Observed Mr. Heaps:
Whenever I see Art Woolf's name on the op-ed page, I brace myself for another truly incredible argument from beyond the looking glass. His letter in the Nov. 30 Messenger (cross-posted on Vermont Tiger) once again renders me near speechless. He begins by observing that Vermont dairy farmers are "in a terrible pickle." Ignoring completely the role that dairy conglomerates and retail giants like Walmart have played in creating this "pickle," Woolf advances the following argument which barely alludes to the toll his beloved "free market capitalism" has taken on U.S. dairy farmers:
"Prices for their products are way down (in part due to the tremendous reduction in international demand for milk caused by the financial crisis and economic recession) and their costs keep going up. But it is disingenuous for Senator Sanders to suggest that despite being against allowing "guest" workers into the U.S., the predicament of the dairy industry in Vermont and elsewhere is so "desperate" that a guest worker program is needed to provide the farms with workers willing and able to do the manual labor jobs that farmers are unable to fill with local workers."
He then goes on to state the obvious:
"Agricultural laborer jobs just don't pay enough to attract Vermonters..."
and that
"If Vermont farmers had to pay a wage high enough to attract Vermonters, their economic plight would be even worse than it is today and even more farms would go out of business."
That said, Woolf's interest in the dairy farmers' plight and any consequent threat to local food security seems to have been spent as he moves quickly to the real meat of his matter; namely, equating small local dairy farmers with financial institutions that benefitted from TARP!
