Missed Votes by Member

• 64.1%
  • Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
    • Representing: Arizona
    • Votes: 412 votes missed (64.1%), 231 votes cast
• 48.4%
  • Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD)
    • Representing: South Dakota
    • Votes: 311 votes missed (48.4%), 332 votes cast
    • Note: Sen. Johnson suffered a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 13, 2006, and spent several months recovering. He has since returned to the Senate.
• 45.9%
  • Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
    • Representing: Illinois
    • Votes: 295 votes missed (45.9%), 348 votes cast

( – promoted by odum)

The Free Press reported today that the Lydall will close its St. Johnsbury plant due to a slowdown in the auto industry.  As a result, 190 jobs will be lost. We can only hope the dislocated workers find new employment.

But this unfortunate incident illustrates a fatal flaw in the state’s main “tax incentive” program. Lydall was awarded $362,000 in tax credits by VEPC over the years. We have no idea whether the job growth during that period would have occurred “but for” the incentives. More importantly, the money spent (foregone tax revenues) is now gone and we have nothing to show for it. [Note: VEPC’s “clawback” provisions have not been very successful.]

Tax incentives are not long-term investments of public funds (like infrastructure, housing, or job training). When market forces lead companies to cut back or close taxpayers are left with no assets to build on for the future. Isn’t it (finally) time to rethink this?

or Don’t we want to keep the Gov. away from this story?  

Field & Stream named Douglas a fishing “villian” this month.according to the Times-Argus

“The Vermont trout opener reportedly found the governor on the river and in front of cameras – flipping his hook back to a Fish and Wildlife official, who dutifully baited it for him,” according to the magazine.

That is not exactly what happened, said Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs.  

http://www.timesargus.com/apps… Its a long way from an issue but it is a basic illustration of how the Douglas team operates. If the work is dirty keep the Governor’s hands clean  

Two interesting things about this piece from the Rutland Herald:

Field & Stream named Douglas a fishing “villain” this month.

His crime? On opening day, Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Wayne Laroche gave the governor a hand with his fishing rod.

“The Vermont trout opener reportedly found the governor on the river and in front of cameras – flipping his hook back to a Fish & Wildlife official, who dutifully baited it for him,” according to the magazine.

This part is funny enough.  We’ve discussed this specific incident before, but the fact that Fish and Wildlife has gone after him for it is just hilarious.

But the other part I find interesting is how Jason Gibbs, who is serving as an official state-paid spokesperson for the governor, seems to be jumping in as a campaign spokesman here:

“The governor enjoys fishing a great deal, and as often as his schedule permits,” Gibbs said. “The Fish & Wildlife official was simply being helpful and polite. The untold part of the story is that the governor had baited his hook before this particular action and, in fact, had not only baited his hook hundreds of times, but has also baited the hooks of his sons, who he has enjoyed bringing fishing, as most fathers would.”

Hey, who needs campaign finance reform when you can get the taxpayers to pay for your surrogates?

Story in Wednesday’s edition of the Valley News (Lebanon, NH) comparing LIHEAP eligibility standards in New Hampshire and Vermont. Guess what? Vermont’s standards are significantly more restrictive!

The big drawback: Vermont imposes an asset test for eligibility for home heating assistance. Anyone with more than $5,000 in assets (excluding home, car, and life insurance policies) is just too darn rich to get help. Makes sense, no?

“This wasn’t meant to be an asset tested program. It was meant to provide support for low-income people,” said Philene Taormina, director of advocacy for AARP in Vermont. “We would like to see the asset test removed, absolutely.”

Taormina said the test unfairly targets the elderly, who are often on fixed incomes but may have savings accounts or family property that can’t be liquidated. Two years ago, she was part of a group that lobbied to have the asset test dropped from state law. Instead, Vermont legislators raised the cap from $2,000 to its current level of $5,000.

Now, that’s a relief. So how does the Douglas Administration explain this?

Those who run Vermont’s Fuel Assistance Program, though, call the resource limit a necessary iniquity, because it allows bigger payouts to the people who need them most.

(Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they didn’t actually use the phrase “a necessary iniquity.”)

“Vermont has the highest dollar amount of benefit of anybody in the country,” pointed out Steve Dale, commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and families.

It’s true, sez the Valley News; Vermont’s average payout was more than twice as high as NH’s. But does that compensate for the following?

As of now, its eligibility requirements are stricter than any other state in New England. Only four states in the country, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Michigan and Nebraska, have tighter income cut-offs.

And you thought Vermont was a liberal state.  

(This WAS good!

– promoted by Christian Avard)

I can’t help but wonder if this latest stunt (and that’s exactly what it is) by Pappy McCain (“canceling the debate”) is really the beginning of the end, like jumping off of the Titanic or something. Not to be a concern troll, becuse anything that improves his odds of losing is undoubtedly a good thing, but jeezuz, this is stupid by any stretch of the imagination. It boggles the mind. Obama should go to the debate anyways and debate a picture of McCain (like Ed Flanagan did with his run against Jim Jeffords years ago – I know, he lost…). It’d look like this:

UPDATE: John Cole knows why:

McCain’s entire campaign is composed of lobbyists, and they need to be in Washington to get their cut of the $700 billion.  They can’t miss this shot at the trough.

In my opinion, the likelihood of no candidate for Governor crossing the 50% threshold looms greater every day, meaning that the final decision goes into the Legislature’s hands. The two greatest impediments to convincing the Legislators to consider awarding the Governorship to the number two vote-getter in a close race – thereby respecting a voting majority’s rejection of incumbent Jim Douglas against the context of a split on the left are the Democratic Legislators and Anthony Pollina. That looks like it may be changing.

It’s common knowledge that Pollina and the Progressives were looking to such a scenario in his previous runs this decade – in 2000 and 2002. And yet, when asked about the topic this election season by Mark Johnson who was clearly on a tear to try and discredit the notion, he not only pulled a 180, but a full scale historical retcon when he said:

“The other thing is when you talk about, well, the legislature may elect the person who came in second – thats not a good signal to democracy, frankly. I don’t – I don’t – think – if that’s the strategy, then I think Vermonters ought to understand that the strategy is that Gaye Symington plans to come in second and expect the legislature to elect her. Boy I wouldn’t want to be the governor who came in second, to tell you the truth.”

Why the complete flip? I think this next line tells us:

“And the other thing is that that is totally contradictory to everything the Democratic Party said back in 2000 and 2002, when they made everyone commit to the idea that the highest vote getter should be the one who the legislature elects – that the highest vote getter should – and I agree with that, frankly. I don’t have a problem with that. But it would be interesting to me if now they would change their tune and say now – everybody – the legislature should elect the one who came in second.

I don’t know – to me thats exactly why – thats why I’m running, ’cause to me thats the kind of games that get played around politics which are why people dont pay attention and don’t get involved and not a good idea.”

As you can see, his continuing answer just turned into another garden-variety opportunity to criticize the Democratic Party. It seems likely that he saw the question as a chance to beat up on Dems, and who cares if, to do so, he had to contradict himself. Pollina has a hard time containing himself from rising to that that kind of bait – apparently even when doing so means a flip flop that works clearly against both his best interests as a candidate and those of Vermonters.

BUT…

…of the many things discussed in the VPR debate tonight – including many things of more substantive policy importance – the three candidates were asked where they stood on this very issue. Did Pollina respond as the candidate from 2000-2002, or was it the I-oppose-this-and-have-always-opposed-this/we-have-always-been-at-war-with-Eurasia Pollina of earlier this year?

Nope. His response was non-committal. Said he’d leave that up to the legislature, should it come to pass.

Now that’s progress. Time to work on the Legislature…

Burlington – The Vermont Workers’ Center’s “Healthcare is a Human Right” campaign is looking to hear from Vermonters about their healthcare horror stories.

For months volunteers for the Vermont Workers’ Center have been surveying Vermonters from all across the state, about their experience with the healthcare community. The results have been clear: Vermonters believe that healthcare should be a human right.

The state, however, has come up woefully short on this issue. More than 11 percent of all Vermonters are without health insurance, including more than 11,000 children. Thousands more are grossly under-insured, and cannot afford their costly premiums and co-pays,which are only rising as the cost of healthcare soars.

The Vermont Workers’ Center is currently undertaking its “Healthcare is a Human Right” campaign to help end this injustice. The goal of the campaign is to spread awareness and build a movement that can help reform the state’s system so it will guarantee care to all Vermonters, regardless of income. In order to better understand the system’s failings, the Workers’ Center is asking Vermonters to tell their stories about the healthcare system.

Have you ever been denied treatment or surgery does to a lack of money or insurance? Have you had to declare bankruptcy or put off needed medical care? Have you or anyone you know become sick due to a lack of access to quality, affordable healthcare? Any other ways you feel your

basic rights were denied under the current healthcare system?

If any of this applies to you, or if you have other experiences with the system that you would like to share, please call us toll free at 866-229-0009, or email healthcare@workerscenter.org and put “My Horror Story” in the subject line.

“In speaking to Vermonters, we have found that many have suffered greatly, both personally and physically, when they try to navigate through a a healthcare system that leaves so many behind,” said James Haslam, the director of the Vermont Workers’ Center. “We are asking Vermonters to help tell these stories, so we can better address this problem and fight to have healthcare be treated as a human right, and not as a commodity.”

Please join our effort to fight for a just healthcare system that

values human lives over profit.

For more information visit: www.workerscenter.org/healthcare.

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In yesterday’s installment, we drove around the world on dollar bills.

Today we’re going to play 2 more games: “Barrel Full o’ Dollars” and “One of These Days, Alice!”

Let’s start with the easy one.

Go get all the money you have in your house – dollar bills, pennies, whatever. Do me a favor and bring the coins to the bank and get ’em changed into bills – they get heavy. As a matter of fact, get everything converted into singles. Get everyone in your family to do the same.

Count that money.

Let’s say you have 100 dollars. Keep $7 of it, and put the other $93 into that big red wheelbarrow I’ve conveniently placed by your front door.

OK, I’m now taking the wheelbarrow to your neighbor’s house, and waiting while he does the same thing. Then to the next house, and so on. If I pass any homeless people, I’m taking their money, too. Ditto for apartment dwellers.

Done.

I’ve now got the biggest wheelbarrow to ever grace the face of the Earth. It’s REALLY big. This wheelbarrow is more than 250 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall – plus a little extra for the handles and wheel.

Being about the size of a NYC block full ‘o skyscrapers, it’s a bit tipsy. Next time I’ll get one that’s wider and not so tall, and maybe add some more wheels…

There are 300 million people in the US, and I just took almost every penny they had – $0.93 from every $1. If everyone in the your family combines what’s left (unless you’re one of the homeless folks), you may be able to squeeze a nice last dinner out of the remainder.

What I took is $700,000,000,000.

Does that number look familiar?

It’s the amount being asked for in the bailout. Ironically, it turns out that there is currently $750,000,000,000 in circulation as cash in our economy.

Of course, since that $700,000,000,000 is a moving window, I should have taken the rest of your cash – because it will be taken as soon as the treasury gets around to it after the first round of bailing.

One interesting thing to note about the chart – it’s hard to see, but between roughly 1992 and 1999 there was a little bit of a plateau in the printing of money – it slowed a bit.

Then it skyrocketed again.

This means a couple of things – the treasury is using a LOT of ink (barrels full), and the “stable” stock market has actually been losing value due to inflation (let’s pretend it didn’t take a bath last week).

The stock market has been hovering around the same level for the entire Bush administration. Sometimes it spikes higher, sometimes it drops lower, but generally it stays in the same neighborhood. Maybe it has agoraphobia?

Anyway, the Dow, for example, has been somewhere around $10,000. It’s a nice round number to work with, so let’s use it.

If on November 2, 2000, you invested $10,000 in a fund that holds all 30 stocks traded on the Dow Jones, today you’d have had roughly $10,080 with little bumps up and down for the last 8 years.

Or would you? See, the Dow’s value isn’t listed in inflation-adjusted dollars.

That $10,000 in the Dow in 2008 is worth $7,860 year 2000 dollars. You’ve lost $2,140 in purchasing power. Oops!

But enough of that. I’m ready for a new Apollo Project…

Yesterday I mentioned the $10,000,000,000,000 (ten trillion) dollars of bets known as over-the-counter derivatives. They are in trouble, because an awful lot of these bets were bets that housing values would continue to go up. Then housing prices went down. So now a very large percentage of those bets went in favor of the house, and the bettors don’t have the cash to pay off their bookies.

Well, the casino has another cool game that became all the rage in the last few years: CDSs – Credit Default Swaps. You can kind of figure out their purpose from their name: If you give someone credit, and they default, you can swap it for something else. It’s insurance on debt – if the debt goes bad, the folks you bought the insurance from will make it up to you.

So say you loan your brother $10 and he doesn’t pay you back. If you bought a CDS at the same time, then the folks you bought the CDS from will pay you something equivalent to $10. (It may not be actual dollars, it could be some bonds, or something else of equivalent value.)

So let’s say that every time anyone who knew about this “insurance” bought insurance every time they issued or purchased debt, debt like the mortgage sludge on the merry-go-round, debt like municipal bonds, debt like credit card debt or car loans. Really, any debt instrument at all.

How much money in these CDS insurance policies would be floating around out there?

I’ll give you a hint: $62,000,000,000,000 ($62 trillion).

If you took each of those dollar bills and taped them together end-to-end, you could make a dollar bill rope 31,000,000,000,000 feet long (31 trillion – note: I’ve chopped .14″ off each bill to make them an even 6″). I’ll make it double-thickness, so it’ll be nice and sturdy. Now it’s only 15,500,000,000 (15.5 trillion) feet long.

I don’t know if you recall, but a few years ago, Bush proposed sending a manned space-craft to Mars. The moon had worked out so well for Kennedy, he figured that he’d be even MORE popular if he got someone to Mars, which is much further away (120 million miles). Apparently, Bush didn’t “get” that the whole purpose of the moon mission was to perfect the ability to get a rocket out of the atmosphere and back into the atmosphere – which would be necessary for long-range warheads. Sadly for Bush, going to Mars would do exactly nothing to further any technological needs, so no one wanted to do it – not even NASA… But I digress.

Since there’s no useful technological purpose to sending a manned rocket to Mars, we may as well save the rocket fuel.

Let’s get a Mars rover to tape one end of our double-thickness $62,000,000,000,000 rope to Mars.

The only problem: the rope would be WAAAAY too long. We could make 129 ropes that stretched all the way from Earth to Mars, and have a whole bunch left over.

Back to the Credit Default Swaps:

Every time a debt goes bad, someone is owed a piece of that 15-trillion foot long double-thick rope.

The 15-trillion foot long double-thick rope is not sitting in a bank vault (or even several thousand bank vaults) ready to be paid out if something goes wrong. As a matter of fact, most of it doesn’t even exist (remember there’s only one-bailout’s worth of actual printed cash in the entire economy).

It’s just a promise. A handshake. A deal between two people.

And now a lot of debts are going bad. Houses. Car loans. Credit Cards.

People are losing their ability to pay, and they’re defaulting in record numbers. Heck, an entire city recently declared bankruptcy.

Be sure to savor that meal you bought with your last $7.