Second quarter FEC campaign finance filings are available, and VTbuzz’s Nancy Remsen and Vermont Press Bureau’s Hirschfield sifted through the reports so you won’t have to, unless you want to. There aren’t any surprises reported, and the summary is almost completely predictable. Senators Leahy and Sanders have plenty of money on hand. Governor Shumlin is also doing very well for campaign cash. While the Freep highlights the $101,000 Rep. Welch pulled in this quarter from 67 PACs, a spokesman for the congressman counters that 68 percent of the new contributors were individuals. Well, that’s some good summer reading just before a nap.

With an eye on fall fundraising and next year’s campaign season, Hirschfield at Vermont Press Bureau (available free here) reports that a potential rematch between Vermont’s Attorney General Bill Sorrell and Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan has “generated the most early interest.” No hint on who, what, or where  this early interest generation happens to be sourced.  

Sorrell and Donovan had a frustratingly close primary battle in the last election cycle, with only 700 votes dividing them. Donovan, it is noted, has kept a pretty high profile since returning to his job as Chittenden AG. And TJ sounds hungry for a rematch:

“There are many nights I’m waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about how I could have made up those 700 votes,” Donovan said.

Sorrell says he is concentrating on the job and isn’t thinking of politics until this fall. But when you listen closely, despite his disclaimers, he actually does sound like a man with politics on his mind, especially how much happier he’d be without having to bother with them. Sorrell mentions how much more pleasant it was this year not to have to march in six different parades on the fourth of July. He adds most stoically:

“I won’t let the fact that campaigning is not always enjoyable be the determinant factor in whether or not I run again.”

Even so, Sorrell likely will not allow Donovan to steal a march on him in a possible rematch primary campaign. He said last year that he’d learned his lesson after being spanked by the Vermont Democratic State Committee’s vote against endorsing him.

Sorrell speaks like a man who is late for an appointment. Maybe make that, he sounds like a man  late for a ‘re-appointment.’ Perhaps an appeal to Governor Shumlin for a non-elected job? Maybe Shummy could use another ‘former Attorney General’ in his stable of personal lawyers.

Why bother with paychecks?  A growing number of low-wage workers are no longer getting paychecks but receive prepaid cards from their employers that work like debit cards.

At first glance this might seem like a helpful option for “underbanked” low-wage employees, who may not have bank or checking accounts. However, bank charges and fees are tacked on when workers use the paycheck debit cards to accesses their money. Fees can range from $1.75 for each withdrawal to $2.95 for a paper statement and a $6 charge to replace a lost card. In some cases, an “inactivity fee” is deducted if the card is not used often enough. These charges take unwelcome bites out low-wage earners’ already tiny income.  

The debit payroll cards are supposedly optional, but many employees are not aware they have a choice; other companies are not even offering standard payroll services. Not surprisingly, this option for employees is a big cost saver for companies and a substantial money maker for card issuers.

Companies and card issuers, who include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup, say the cards are cheaper and more efficient than checks — a calculator on Visa’s Web site estimates that a company with 500 workers could save $21,000 a year by switching from checks to payroll cards. On its Web site, Citigroup trumpets how the cards “guarantee pay on time to all employees.”

[emphasis added]

The NYtimes.com reports that dozens of major companies – including Taco Bell, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart – offer pre-paid cards to workers. In 2012 there was $34 billion on 4.6 million active cards. One business research firm estimates by 2017 there will be $68.9 billion loaded onto 10.8 million payroll cards. Each card generates fees for the bank that issues the card in addition to whatever the bank charges a company for their employee payroll card service.

The largest issuer of payroll cards is NetSpend, based in Austin, Tex. Chuck Harris, the company’s president, says it attracts companies by offering convenience to employees and cost savings to employers.  

NetSpend is a 14-year-old company that pays its execs handsomely. The publically traded company shelled out $3.4 million in salary and stock compensation to president Charles Harris. In addition, CEO Dan Henry got base pay of $401,500, but with “bonus” and “incentive” compensation and stock equity payments, his earnings for 2012 were up at $2.4 million. As you might expect, none of the executives here are “underbanked”- if anything, they are overbanked. They are definitely not paid in debit cards.  

 “We've traced the call… it's coming from inside the house. Now a squad car's coming over there right now, just get out of that house!”

If I even thought about it, I assumed that security and defense contractors had monitoring systems (like in the movies) to prevent a lower level employee such as Edward Snowden from walking away with the family jewels. But if they do, that system isn’t working – turns out ‘the calls’ are coming from inside a broken system.  

Public revelations by Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden about government phone record and data collection may have the security/surveillance-state industrial complex spooked. Booz Allen and businesses like them may be worried that because the information came from one of their own – from inside – their reputations are tarnished beyond polishing, their potential for leaks beyond the power of self-adhesive pipe wraps to prevent.

And now Sphere of Influence of McLean VA, specializing in “big data” and behavioral analysis, is attempting to capitalize on the crisis and fear. Sphere of Influence is a small company (and likely not the only one) looking to get a new piece of a huge pie and hoping their software catches on in the surveillance market.  

Sphere of Influence says cyber security breaches are a red herring – the real threat is “abnormal behavior”

Chris Kauffman, managing partner and director of R&D at Sphere of Influence: “Fundamentally we are talking about abnormal behavior in and among the workforce. The insider threat is an industrial security problem, and detection needs to focus on behavior, not breaches.” The new software will analyze and detect subtle behavioral anomalies and will alert security contractors to possible threats from a company’s own employees.

The number of people now “guarding” secrets and whose “subtle behavioral anomalies” may now be monitored is huge. As of last fall, almost five million people held government security clearances. More than one third of the 1.4 million people with Top Secret clearances are private contractors. And in true MAD Magazine Spy v. Spy style, most of the background checks are done by private contractors.

Most of the news stories about this issue today will probably be about where Edward Snowden is located, and not about the information he made public. Since there is so little talk of reining in or reforming the laws that allow BoozAllen and similar big data gathering missions, maybe Sphere of Influence’s dream of capitalizing on watching the watchers isn’t too outrageous.  

 The Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development has rejected a plea by EB-5 investor-financed project DreamLife to reconsider the project’s cancelation. The ‘final’ decision to end the state’s authorization for  the plan to build high-end assisted-living units in Vermont was recently reported in the Free Press.

[Vermont] – unswayed by an appeal from DreamLife, an EB-5 project to build assisted living homes around the state – has finalized its cancellation of the project.

DreamLife Retirement Resorts proposed building six, 160-unit high-end assisted-living facilities in Vermont. Using the EB-5 investment program they were seeking to raise $144 million cash from 300 foreign investors seeking green card visas.

The EB-5 project arrangement with the state was initially canceled March 27th because of “material misrepresentation” by DreamLife. Four individuals representing the company in Florida claimed to be attorneys but were not licensed to practice law in that state. As long ago as last September, the state had canceled a memorandum of understanding with Dreamlife over the company’s failure to provide proper notification of expanding development plans.

Now the  promised “detailed response” by DreamLife’s head Phil Mooney to the state’s concerns has been rejected and cancelation made final, according to Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller.

However Mooney is not giving up the company’s Vermont dream easily, according to the Free Press. He would like to meet with Secretary Miller about salvaging his investment scheme.

“We maintain that our project brings substantial benefits in employment and quality of life in several communities in Vermont,” Mooney said. “We have hope of being able to bring the benefits of these projects to Vermont.”

Phil Mooney took up the DreamLife leadership from Richard Parenteau, the founder who remains a “background” investor. Parenteau, a Canadian, was convicted of perjury in Quebec last summer in a dispute over a will. In an earlier diary about DreamLife I noted that Parenteau was serial business starter or creator.

Over the last 20 years, Parenteau has created and dissolved more than two dozen companies in Florida and Vermont […] Five of the entities bear the DreamLife name, including an insurance company, a real estate firm and a finance company, all three of which are now inactive.

And now Phil Mooney also seems to have his head in the endless dream life cloud. But in this case, the clouds are full of rain.  

 Here is another in what seems to be a steady stream of polls in past few years that show confidence in Congress continuing down. Gallup found that Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution down to just 10%.

The pollster telephoned almost 1,600 adults and asked: Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself have in each one – a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little. The results place Congress last for four years running on a list of sixteen societal institutions.

This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record.  

While Congress –  one of the country’s major democratic institutions – continues to unravel, according to Gallup four distinctly undemocratic institutions receive the highest ratings. The military, small business, the police, and the Church or organized religion are the four top institutions eliciting the most confidence.

Americans remain most confident in the military, at 76%. Small business and the police also continue to rank highly, with 65% and 57% of Americans, respectively, expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in these institutions.

The Church or organized religion in the Gallup poll ranked fourth at 48%. All this may not be a good sign for the future when confidence in Congress lags so far behind the military; the police and even small business-not that all three in aren’t deserving institutions in their own way. It seems as if a democracy that is functioning well and in balance would have institutional confidence levels more evenly divided.  

more data after the jump

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is hosting the latest G8 summit this June in County Fermanagh Northern Ireland. As part of the UK, this region of Northern Ireland is suffering 24% youth unemployment and other “benefits” of Cameron’s strict austerity policies.  

The G8 meets regularly to cooperate and coordinate policies for their mutual benefit. Together the G8 nations are the world’s wealthiest and compromise 50.1% of 2012 global nominal GDP (market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year).

However this area of Northern Ireland is looking a little too run down for the G8 leaders sensibilities. So close to $500,000 is being spent on propping up the scenery as if it were a movie set.

Gum is being scraped off sidewalks. Roads will be freshly paved to ensure a smooth ride for convoys of world leaders. Virtual Potemkin villages are springing up on the road to the Lough Erne Resort, where heads of state will gather to discuss tax evasion and reforms, food security, trade deals and the crisis in Syria.

The fluff-up will include pasting life-sized photographs of well stocked stores over closed shops and storefronts. Irish Times reporter Dan Keenan told PRI’s the World:

What they’ve done is they have filled the shop front window with a picture of what was the business before it went bankrupt or closed. In other words,grocery shops, butcher shops, pharmacies, you name it, they have placed large photographs in the windows that if you were driving past and glanced out the window, it would look as if this was a thriving business.

[…] It’s nothing of the sort. That door has been locked shut for well over a year because that particular business went bust this time last year, and that is an image to make it look as if everything is normal in the town and in the county, but unfortunately it’s not.

The G8 leaders will huddle together in a freshly painted town with false storefronts to plan trade deals, discuss tax evasion and reforms. The leaders of the World’s wealthiest nations may not realize it but they are getting a grand bargain on this latest attempt at reality evasion. In 2010 at a G8 summit in Canada the price tag for a false lake made especially for the event was $2 million dollars. However the security to protect the leaders and staff from real world threats in 2013 will reportedly cost $78 million.

VPR’s Bob Kinzel recently did a short news piece on Vermont tax reform. It was a follow up on Speaker Smith and Governor Shumlin’s previously announced efforts to work on solving their disagreements on tax reform over the summer.  Kinzel says:

The two sides do agree on one thing. To determine a person’s tax burden, they want to shift from using an individual’s “taxable income,” to what’s known as “adjusted gross income.” This number is larger because it comes before applying a series of deductions.  

If you use this “adjusted gross” number, and most states do, you can lower the tax rate without changing a person’s tax burden.[added emphasis]

What is so often called a burden was once known as our common shared tax obligation. No taxes are fun to pay but we all know at one level these obligations support public services-roads schools, fire and police that benefit everyone-the common good.

But faced with a choice of using the term tax obligation or tax burden VPR’s Kinzel opted for calling it a burden. So the loaded term tax burden supplants tax bill or tax obligation even on Vermont Public Radio.  

Now VPR certainly is not part of a government, and its funding is voluntary, not mandatory. But what if, for fun, VPR’s fund raising terms were forced to reflect Kinzel’s preferred loaded language. Making a onetime gift of any amount would become a onetime pledge burden to VPR. Sustaining VPR members who pay monthly by credit card, so important to funding, would be aghast to find themselves under a sustaining member burden.  

Expanding on this concept might hit VPR’s endowment hard. If the estate tax can so easily morph into something called a “death tax” what might VPR’s subtle funding suggestion; “remember VPR in your will” become ? Updated it might be recast as a death pledge – “when creating your will don’t forget the possibility of making a VPR death pledge”  

I could even imagine calls coming in from loyal listeners begging for pledge relief. People who would normally contribute happily would think twice about taking on an onerous pledge burden – even for that spiffy travel coffee mug gift or bumper sticker.