Former ambassador L. Paul Bremer recently spoke at his local library renovation fund raiser in Weathersfield, Vermont.

Frankly, I don’t much think about L.Paul Bremer, former U S Ambassador and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. Probably hadn’t since  noticing in 2005 that he had a summer place in Southern Vermont. I found out this real estate fact when I came across a Washington Post article in the style section titled: From Diplomacy to Demi-Glace, His Classically Inspired Menu Gets Some Touches Acquired in Iraq. Bremer is a foodie too, classically inspired!  

He also once managed Henry Kissinger’s international consulting business and was part of a fix-it crew brought in at the “end” of the fighting in Iraq. This bunch, including Condolezza Rice, was advertised as the pragmatic second team who could supposedly clean-up earlier neo-con blunders.    

His talk, presented at the Weathersfield Meetinghouse to raise money for the local library renovation fund, was titled: Is America Still An Indispensable Nation? The VNews.com report doesn’t say how big a room it was, but it was said to have been “packed”.

So it seems the event was probably a success and good for the library fund. Happily, during the Q & A Martha Hennessey did stand in the front of the room with a sign reading simply: “Paul Bremer unindicted war criminal.” Thank you Martha.    

What'd he say!  

What did L.Paul Bremer have to say?  Well, in broad terms he claims we need to re-assert US power in the world conflict arena and suggests:

“We went from leading from behind to effectively sitting on the bench,”

The man who disbanded the late Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army rejects the idea that the new Iraqi army was not properly trained and blames Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the recent debacles in facing Islamic insurgents. He also must have misremembered some key recent history when he said:

…the decision of the Obama administration to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 directly contributed to the deteriorating security situation in the country today, where insurgents currently control large swaths of territory.  “It was a mistake,” Bremer said. “Effectively what it meant is we no longer had people on the ground to do counterterrorist training, to do intelligence collection, to help conduct special ops against targets.”

What Bremer doesn’t bother to recall (and the VNews correspondent, Zach Despart, or sadly his editors, don’t bother to enlighten readers about) is that it was not Obama’s decision. The troop withdrawal agreement that Obama implemented was signed in 2008 by George W. Bush and Nouri Al-Maliki. Certainly Bremer knows and remembers this inconvenient fact.  At the time, Mid-East expert Juan Cole said Bush’s agreement was :

The price the Iraqi parliament extracted for allowing the US troops to remain [2008] was an iron-clad guarantee that they would all be out by the end of 2011. Bush and his generals clearly expected, however, that over time Washington would be able to wriggle out of the treaty and would find a way to keep a division or so in Iraq past that deadline.

That is kind of an important detail for such smart man to um…overlook.  

This recent history is so quickly being forgotten and intentionally blurred by those in power at the time. It’s worth remembering the human toll and vast amounts of wealth poured into Iraq that were wasted.  

At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared.    The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces.

I, for one, would love Bremer explain those reports. Maybe he will another time at another library event.  

 Locally, candidate for Vermont Lt. Governor Dean Corren is highlighting the dangers of big money in his publically funded campaign. He says:  

“You have to believe who is paying the piper is calling the tunes,”

I had that in mind while reading this in NYTimes.com

Republican candidates for governor are in a strong position to retain their current 29 governorships and perhaps gain two or three. The improving economy and Obama’s approval rate are factors. One other weapon is a huge funding advantage.  

[…] campaign money is gushing into national Republican groups that focus on state capitals, including the Republican Governors Association, whose chairman, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, has set fund-raising records for the group even under the glare of multiple state and federal investigations.

A couple Vermont links pop up here and there in this drama. Chris Christie, New Jersey’s money-man, visited the VTGOP this past winter in an effort to boost money and morale. He seemed to fail to do much more than help them pay down some existing debts. Despite glowing reports following the closed-to-the-press fundraising dinner the Vermont Republicans were reportedly only “no longer broke”. That’s Christie’s magic, Vermont GOP-style.

Nationally he hauls it in…

But nationwide Christie hauls it in big-time.

The association raised $100 million during the 18 months ending in June, dwarfing the amount it amassed in 2010, and had $70 million in cash at the beginning of July. The chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont, said his group would be outraised by about two to one.

No slouch when it comes to fundraising, Peter Shumlin is left in Christie’s shadow.

Both groups get a share of corporate and billionaire money with the DGA getting more labor union donations.

The governors associations of both parties raise substantial amounts of money from overlapping lists of heavily regulated industries such as tobacco, health insurance, and telecommunications. But Republican groups have had far greater success this election cycle in persuading the party’s leading individual donors to invest in the relatively less glamorous world of state elections.  

By the end of March, eight individuals or couples — including the industrialist David Koch, the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the hedge fund manager Paul Singer — had contributed $1 million or more to the RGA. [added emphasis]

One million dollars or more from eight individuals could buy a lot of influence in governor’s mansions. You know it is just free speech according to the Supreme Court. I’d bet eight individuals are likely to get their calls answered almost one million times faster… or more.  

 Phil Scott is nervous says Vtdigger.com.

In an animated speech, Scott told members of the Republican state party recently he is dismayed that Corren has more money available for the lieutenant governor’s race than Scott has raised in donations from supporters in the past two election cycles.

“This is a formidable candidate who will be running against me with $200,000,” Scott said. [added emphasis]

At least for now it looks as if Republican Phil Scott will be facing a well funded candidate. Progressive Dean Corren has qualified for $ 200,000.00 in public campaign funding to run for Lt. Governor. He hopes to gain the backing of the Vermont Democratic Party and has gotten a verbal statement of support from Governor Shumlin. Although some of Scott’s good’ole Democratic allies have decided to cover his back and do what they can to keep Vermont’s number one top Republican in office.

In his last election Scott, according to a VtDigger.com data base enjoyed a substantial lead in contributions over his opponent Cassandra Gekas. Scott’s campaign bank account in 2012 was well over the now “formidable” $200,000.00.In fact it was stuffed full with over $350,000.00 to Progressive/Democratic candidate Gekas’ $90,000.00.  

Now 2014 rolls around and faced with an aggressive opponent in what funding-wise at least may prove to be the most level playing he has ever run on he is complaining loudly about it. So Lite Governor Scott is in what looks like a real race and he is complaining and dismayed about it. Guess races aren’t always easy,but don’t cry about it.  

The AFL-CIO reported recently that CEOs in the S&P 500 stock index are paid 331 times what the average worker is. Now a comprehensive university study provides evidence that higher paid CEOs often do worse for their companies in key areas. So not only are CEOs paid millions more than most mere mortals but they are also underperforming for the companies that hire them. The study by the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah used a larger data sample (1,500 big cap companies) than past efforts to track CEO pay to overall performance.

Specifically, the study discovered that the highest paid CEOs earn significantly lower stock returns for up to three years. Additionally, CEOs with an average compensation of more than $20 million are linked to an average yearly loss of $1.4 billion for their organizations.

The study didn’t feature the performance of individual firms, but a list compiled by the Wall Street Journal (available here) shows the highest paid CEOs and their company’s ranking. In 2013 the top twenties compensation spanned just over $75 million to a paltry $22.4 million. None of the top ten in CEO pay are in the top ten percent for business performance. And the highest paid CEO’s corporation is ranked no.152 for performance.    

A link between higher executive pay and more overconfident behavior in making decisions was also shown in the study. Overconfidence leads to increasingly risky aggressive mergers, acquisitions, bad projects, and wasteful corporate spending. The study’s author gently offers this caution:

“[…] this study doesn’t prove that increased pay is necessarily bad, it does show there is a link between increased pay and decreased financial performance.”

You know regularly overpaying CEOs by many gazillions of dollars isn’t necessarily the problem or even bad but  … The study suggests an obvious solution – reexamining the methods used to determine executive pay and incentives for maximize performance.

Will we see pay-cuts, haircuts, and smaller compensation deals at the top? Wouldn’t bet on it.

What we really want: more  investments in local-sized efforts.

Before Keurig Coca-Cola GMCR announced their new set-up deal in the state of Georgia, a Vermont business leader referred to them as a gazelles. Meaning they were growing and hungry corporations – big businesses that demand to be fed endlessly – always threatening to leap out of state at a moment’s notice. Some feed is supplied from Vermont’s limited VEGI tax incentive goodies and similar economic treats. Seven Days asked Frank Cioffi (head of the GBIC) if the State of Vermont through VEGI had the ability economically to compete with other states and nations. “Probably not” said Cioffi, but he supports VEGI spending. But why not stop buying into the gazelle corporate tax credits extortion racket?  

Vermont hand fed the Keurig GMCR gazelle about nine million dollars worth of assorted tasty tax credit bits since 2011. Vermont’s Working Lands Enterprise Initiative isn’t high on the corporate food chain, but greatly expanding such locally targeted efforts may be a better way to spend our resources. The cost is lower; almost a pittance by comparison (fewer than two million in two years), and the local effects could be almost immediate.

The two-year-old program is a cooperative effort of the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets; the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. Working Lands awards support grants and training to Vermonters engaged in agriculture, food systems, forestry, and forest product-based businesses: the working landscape. In the first year $986,500 was awarded; this year, with a slight increase, $1.1 million will be channeled directly to 37 farm and forestry projects scattered throughout Vermont. The funds provided are being used for a variety of projects, including a computerized weight data and tracking system for livestock, equipment to expand production at a goat farm,a portable sawmill and materials for solar-assisted lumber kiln.

And those being helped are definitely not corporate gazelles. In Greensboro, an apple orchard owner who applied for and received $20,000 to create an on-farm processing facility remarked,

“It’s not incredibly glamorous, (but) it’s setting the stage for the next 10 years,” he said. “It’ll really make us much more viable in terms of cash flow.”

And just for scale, here is a look at what things are like for one corporate gazelle: in 2012 Keurig GMCR gave their then-new CEO a onetime signing bonus of $600,000 in addition to roughly $3 million in stock. Also they kicked in $500,000 to relocate him to Vermont.

Who do you want to spend Vermont’s money on?      

After all the tax breaks and giveaways the State of Vermont supplied them with over the years should we be at all troubled (or even surprised) by this?

The maker of the Keurig single-cup coffee system said Thursday it plans to build its new cold-brewed beverage maker line at a plant in Douglas County [Georgia], creating about 550 jobs.  

Vermont-based Keurig Green Mountain will make its single-serving cold drink system at a plant in Lithia Springs, about 20 miles west of downtown Atlanta. The state and Keurig said the company will spend $337 million over five years on the project. […]

Keurig was offered and is eligible for tax credits for creating jobs as well as a sales and use tax exemption for machinery. The jobs tax credits alone could be worth up to $4.8 million over five years, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[emphasis added]

Data availability varies but according to Goodjobsfirst.org subsidy tracker Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (AKA Coca-Cola cold pod packing inc.) got $9,254,071 worth of assorted grants, low cost loans, tax credits and job training gifts here in Vermont, the majority since 2011.That’s a nice little bit of our limited state money put to work helping Keurig-GMCR’s bottom line and shareholders.  

I guess Vermont didn’t know that Keurig-GMCR might have had Georgia on their mind in 2012 when hitting us up for an additional $250,000 tax break on a cutting edge packing machine. Business savvy Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller championed the idea because:

“This is the type of production equipment we’re going to see more of in different industries,” Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller said  “And it’s those companies on the cutting edge that we want to attract.”

How’d that attraction work out, Secretary Miller?  

No injuries were reported. New Hampshire’s Donald Hall, former US poet laureate put his thoughts about Scott Brown into a no- holds- barred political haiku style poem. Simply said Hall is no fan of the former Massachusetts Senator.  

Get out of town,  

Scott Brown!  

Scott Brown the former Senator from Massachusetts is a candidate in New Hampshire’s Republican US Senate primary. About a year ago the VTGOP brought Brown in to speak at a $125.00 a head fundraiser in an attempt to rally their struggling party.  

I can see why Scott wouldn’t take the bait and run, this being a remarkably bad year for the VTGOP. But if he is ever seized with the uncontrollable ambition to gain the big office, the odds are heavily against a win.

Well at least according to a study of elections by the online magazine Governing, he might have tough time of it.They looked at electoral records of lite governors who ran for the governorship since the early 1990’s, excluding those elevated by death of their predecessor and found …

Democratic lieutenant governors were more likely to make a gubernatorial bid, with 37 taking the plunge, compared to 17 Republicans and one Independent. Still, lieutenant governors from both major parties had similar troubles winning gubernatorial races. Democrats won just 35 percent of contests and Republicans won 24 percent.

Phil Scott knows the odds, gets paid well, and, what the heck, being the big dog can’t beat having the time off for racing season.  

It is not hard to lose sight of the fact that data leaker Edward Snowden actually worked for Booz Allen, a private contracted company, not in fact for the National Security Agency. Snowden, as everyone knows, walked away from his Booz Allen job with more than a few top secret documents. Since then a “Where’s Waldo Snowden” theme has been the big story angle here. Constitutional questions and the wisdom of subcontracting out defense and intelligence-gathering tasks to for-profit companies are issues only starting to be looked at. Meaningful change, such as resulted from the Senate Church Committee hearings, seems a long-shot.

But what have the consequences been for Booz Allen and their Gulf oil spill-sized security leaks? Well, now months after the news broke, the NSA and Booz Allen still haven’t accurately accessed exactly what data was taken or how much. They assume it was a lot of information or perhaps even everything. Early on one insider revealed to the Washington Post the estimated size of the loss:

“They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” [referring to the NSA, where Snowden worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton]

The company’s effort to get some distance from Snowden is underway and may be paying off in the short term. In recent remarks Booz Allen CEO Ralph W. Shrader tries to walk away from it all.

“… He [Snowden] was not a Booz Allen person and he did not share our values.” Shrader continued. “We cannot and will not let him [Snowden] define us.”

Well of course not. Why should the fact that a low level employee walked away with “almost everything the place does” be a defining event. BA stock and profits are up!

At least for now the market has not punished the company or harmed the bottom line. Unbelievably in the latest fiscal quarter Booz Allen reports that the stock is up. (Booz Allen is majority-owned by private equity firm Carlyle Group.) Profits are headed up too, according to earnings reports, by 13.5 percent to $70.3 million for the three months ending in June. Good growth was attributed to “better cost management.”

Company officials basking in the warm glow of profits and a rising stock price report confidently that the massive security breech will not affect the company’s ability to land new government contracts. (Ninety-nine percent of the company’s revenue is from government contracts.) In his comments CEO Shrader speaks with emotion (or perhaps choking back tears or more likely stifling laughter) when relating the expressions of support Booz Allen is getting from government clients

[…] he has “been touched by the words of support from those in the business community and especially from our clients, showing that our long-term clients know the kind of company we are.” 

I can only imagine what the three top NSA officials (Booz Allen’s long-term clients and perhaps future board members and CEO’s) getting grilled while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday thought about Shrader. The company was well out of the glare of bright lights.

Somehow no one seems to want to blame it on the Booz.

Frankly I was worried sick. Entergy spokes flack Rob Williams’ capacity for generating logic-twisting Vermont Yankee press statements had seemed in decline of late. Was Williams about to shut down, perhaps be placed in SafeStor? Or would he simply be decommissioned?  

Well happily none of that has come to pass, as it seems that longtime Entergy Nuclear VY spokesflack Rob got back on game. Last week it was reported that four radiation monitors at the aging Vermont Yankee plant failed on two separate occasions in June to give “correct” readings. Four monitors had shown high levels of radiation in the primary containment isolation system. These monitors control the automatic ventilation systems of the reactor building. The NRC said of the incidents:

“Failure of the radiation monitoring equipment is a serious issue, and could have under other circumstances led to significant harm if the failed equipment had not detected a radiation release at the plant,” [added emphasis]

Understandably Vermont Governor Shumlin wants more information about the failure of the safety monitors. But Rob Williams wants to spin this clear: there is no “failure” at Vermont Yankee, Williams maintains:

[the four monitors were] “showing spurious signals, but they were still able to perform their safety function.”

And he adds this:

“To be perfectly clear, the monitors did not fail. They did not fail; they were generating false signals.”

Well, there you have it from the spokesflack artist himself: The radiation monitors did not fail; they were just generating false signals. Go ahead, say that with a straight face, I dare you! You see the gas gauge read FULL but the tank was Empty. The gauge hadn’t failed – and Williams would insist it is still performing its function. The device just happens to be, you know, wrong!

And as we all know, Rob Williams can never “fail” but he has been known to generate false signals.