For anyone not twittering or actively Facebook-ing who are trying to follow the national Occupy Wall Street  movement Greg Mitchell has been live blogging and  linking to a wide variety of sources daily since October 1.  Mitchell who writes the MediaFix blog for the Nation.com updates regularly. He was all over last week’s Oakland police crackdown and their injuring of protestor, Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen.

Apparently Mitchell’s electricity is off this morning, but back soon.  

Here are a couple recent bits

-Rainy and snow coming in NYC but still big turnout right now at Zuccotti, reports say….  NY cops all for rule of law and swinging batons when people get off sidewalks.  Now read about many implicated in ticket-fixing scandal — and their cursing prosecutors yesterday.

-….Weather forecast for Northeast getting worse by the hour.  Will be a real Valley Forge movement for occupations here.

 This could give the term corporate tax an entirely new meaning. The State of Illinois is now allowing certain corporations to keep their employees’ state income tax withholding for ten years. Recent Illinois legislation allows chosen companies to retain all of the income taxes withheld from new hires that expand payroll and half of the taxes for existing workers whose jobs are retained.

Moveon.org has a video (via Atrios) and here is an earlier article by David Cay Johnston.  

The Illinois deal shows how competition between the states, and with other countries, helps big corporations wring subsidies from state governments even as the states are being forced to fire teachers and other public workers because of a weak economy that has cost jobs and tax revenue.

Why would the state let companies do this? Most big companies pay little or no state corporate income tax, because companies arrange to take expenses in higher tax states and profits in states with little or no corporate income tax. So the only way to finance incentives without the state writing a check is to let the companies pocket their workers’ state income tax.

However while diverting tax taxes from public purpose to private use the State of Illinois is deep in red ink juggling its own finances. Turns out they are having trouble paying their bills. Three years ago they had a two-week turnaround on state payments, but now, late payments are the norm. In order to handle budget shortfalls they are deliberately delaying billions of dollars worth of payments for months at a time.The AP found almost half the outstanding sum was more than a month overdue.

It’s hard to imagine any corporation operating here in Vermont ever being shy in the endless effort to get what they must see as only their fair advantage (example here) – so it’s hardly out of the question this scheme in some form might not be lurking in our own future debates.  

IBM is again crying crocodile tears and threatening to hold its breath until it turns blue. Well it isn’t IBM precisely but a surrogate croc. Leave it to millionaire businessman  Jack McMullen’s fine tuned political instincts to pen an op-ed regurgitating the time worn “ IBM- may- leave- Vermont- if…” line at the very moment the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be peaking.  

59 percent of adults either completely or mostly agree with the OWS protesters according to an October National Journal survey reported by Atlantic Magazine. Also sympathy toward corporations is low as shown by a Sept. 2011 Gallup poll indicating 70 percent of respondents favor hiking taxes on corporations by eliminating tax deductions  

But with bullet point efficiency McMullen sobs out the alleged historic wrongs inflicted on poor IBM by mean old Vermont.

• you never gave us the circ highway you promised,

• you never got us the low power rate we wanted,

• you never gave us relief from act 250,

• you never gave us assistance in training insufficiently prepared new workers

Ah, but it’s his justification for an emotional tender spot that long ago bruised the fragile corporate heart that dredges up the grandest crocodile tears. Millionaire and twice failed US Senate candidate McMullen recalls the time Bernie Sanders actually gasp publicly criticized IBM.

Says McMullen:  

Its eventual extinction will have been caused in large part by the failure of political leaders to respond to clear signals from the largest private, taxpaying employer our state is ever likely to have.  

In the 1990s, then-Congressman Sanders launched a very public campaign [supporting IBM workers who were] criticizing IBM for [unilaterally] changing its 1960s-era pension plan to remain competitive with nimbler, newer entrants into the semiconductor business.  I am told by the same source [an unnamed most senior IBM corporate executive] that IBM’s then-CEO, Louis Gerstner, reacted to Sanders demagoguery with a statement something like: “Don’t the politicians in Vermont realize there are more than a dozen other states vying for our business?”

So take it from businessman Jack McMullen, the man who lost a shoo-in Republican primary to Vermont farmer Fred Tuttle, that IBM feels pain at not getting what they want.  

Who doesn’t, eh Jack? On the other hand, many go forward to other goals or find ways to compromise for the mutual good of the community, while others clutch old grudges, keep crying and holding their breath to get attention.  

Updated:

From Vermont View-it was just that tricky context thing!

Scott said he didn’t mean to suggest that Democrats were not working hard after Irene.

“I said it, but I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, I guess,” Scott said. “In retrospect, it wasn’t the best thing to say.”

His quotes were “taken out of context quite a bit,” Scott said.

http://rutlandherald.typepad.c…

Whoa now- that’s not right at all. Lt.Gov. Phil Scott certainly took a bad partisan skid at a Republican Harvest Dinner with this post-Irene observation on recovery work.

…. As I crisscrossed the state and witnessed recovery efforts, and saw the truck drivers, the equipment operators, the law enforcement personnel, the National Guard members, the municipal leaders… and it may have been my imagination, but I do believe most of them who were doing the work were Republicans.”

Normally a steady political driver, Scott then over-steered to the right and managed to get all four wheels off the road.

Scott concluded, “We’re the party of common sense. We are the doers. We’re the ones that get the work done…. Isn’t it ironic that with the majority of Vermonters declaring themselves Democrats, that Governor Shumlin would have to lean on Republicans like myself and Neale Lunderville to help steer the ship, to come up with common sense solutions during adversity to get things done.”

In August after revelations that leaking tritium from Vermont Yankee had reached the Connecticut River shoreline Governor Shumlin called for increased monitoring of the situation. However anyone that assumed Vermont State monitoring and coordination would quickly tighten-up might be mistaken.

A Brattleboro Reformer report about a Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel meeting to review VY disaster response (which VY  officials were too busy re-fueling to attend) reveals almost as an afterthought that some State officials were aware a month ago on Sept. 15th that dump trucks are relocating soil/silt material from inside Vermont Yankee to a Vernon gravel pit.

He [Vermont Health Department inspector Bill Irwin] said there was concern that the removal of those materials was not approved, but the inspection found Yankee has a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to trawl the Connecticut River and typically deposits the silt on site.  

Plant officials opted to hire a trucking company to remove the soil because of a lack of space within the station’s boundary after Entergy sold a portion of land to the Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) and instead took the materials to a Vernon gravel pit. Miller said the panel was not informed of the hauling.  

According to Irwin, inspectors took photographs of the sediment at the pit and analyzed samples of the soil, testing for hundreds of radioactive materials to identify any byproducts of the plant’s operation.  

"What in the soil is what see [sic] in all soils and sediment in the Connecticut River," Irwin said.

 

It is not made clear when exactly Yankee’s Army Corp. permitted river dredging took place.

Seems like prompt knowledge and explanation of this silt/soil relocation is just the kind of thing that would fall front and center for the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel.  

 A recent report to the State of Vermont on Entergy’s Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund shows the value continues to fall short, failing to meet projected requirements. The trust fund six month ago, at the end of April was $498,546,853. It was up slightly in May and then declined steadily. The fund as of the end of September 2011 was $472,346,906. This is a six month loss in value of almost $27 million.

The Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund was at $304 million in 2002 when Entergy of Louisiana purchased the plant. Entergy has not contributed to the fund which is intended to cover clean-up, fuel management and site restoration when Yankee closes.  According to past projections the decommissioning fund was supposed to have been $464 million by 2008 but has languished in recent years. It continues to be way below Entergy’s 2007 estimated plant decommissioning costs of $656 million to $991 million.

In 2010 a long delayed Vermont Auditor’s report

concluded that the current requirement for the State to review the adequacy of the trust fund to meet all cleanup obligations every five years is not frequent enough.

The new policy apparently is for the State to watch Entergy’s decommissioning trust fund’s value fall in real time, rather than slow motion.  

 That was the Vermont Trooper’s reply when asked if he had tried other methods to restrain an 86 year old man. ”No,not really” !

Should it be acceptable for the Vermont State Police to resort casually it seems to tasering an 86 year old man? Maybe a little review is in order.

John Simon was taken to into custody after he tried to bite and kick a trooper who responded to a report that Simon was allegedly trespassing on a property located on Ha’Penny Road in Peacham just before 5 p.m.  

State Police Trooper Lyle Decker used the Taser on Simon because he was kicking him, said Decker in an interview on Monday.  When asked whether the state trooper had tried to use any other way to restrain Simon, Decker replied “No, not really.” From the Vermont Press Bureau -paywalled

and also here    

 A couple days ago I read the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) had named both Rep.Charlie Bass(R) and Rep. Frank Guinta (R) of New Hampshire to their “Most corrupt members of Congress” list (ten Republicans, four Democrats). At the time I paid more attention to “local” seven-term Congressman Bass’ ethical problems from financial involvement with an energy pellet manufacturing company and legislation that he sponsored that may have benefited the firm.

But up and coming freshman Rep.Frank Guinta is the one I should have looked at, as he has a Vermont connection. Guinta not only made  CREW’s list of fourteen most corrupt congressmen but he will be special guest at the Vermont Republican Party at their Harvest Dinner fundraiser. According to VtBuzz the Vermont Democratic Party is understandably calling attention to this event and suggesting that the Vermont Republicans repudiate Rep.Guinta’s questionable ethics rather than honoring him at their Harvest fundraiser.  

Guinta is said to have fudged the facts around some campaign finance money by making a series of loans to himself. He loaned his campaign $355,000, yet his financial disclosure forms revealed that he didn’t have sufficient assets to cover this generous amount. Later he amended the disclosures to include his formerly unidentified ‘mystery’ bank account containing a balance of a quarter-million to a half-million dollars. He claimed his failure to disclose the account was “an inadvertent oversight.”

Commenting on the issue, Vermont Republican Party Chair Pat MacDonald noted that

“there has been no action taken.”

[against Guinta] and after mentioning an award Gunita won and some of his committee assignments, she adds

“We are just very excited to have him.”

He is no Reince Priebus but no doubt Guinta could offer some helpful firsthand do’s and don’ts on handling campaign funds. So who would be the watchdog that barks first, Jim Condos or Tom Salmon, hmmm?

Former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie may be dipping his financial biscuit into some consulting gravy. The Vermont Press Bureau (paywalled)reports Dubie Solutions LLC is now registered with the Vermont secretary of state and that even for a time the firm was represented online.  

It’s unclear whether Dubie Solutions, the limited-liability company registered by Dubie at the Secretary of State’s Office on June 27, has any paying clients. Dubie did not respond to repeated requests for comment.  

The company has its own website, however, saying “our team has the experince (sic) when you need results.”  

“We have made investments in relationships,” the site says. “Let us tap into our trusted relationships to serve your needs.”  

The site was up as recently as 2:30 p.m. Monday but had been taken down by 3:30 p.m. A cached version was still accessible via Google by searching “Dubie Solutions.”

Maybe the site was taken down to run a quick spell-check.

Even though Dubie was unavailable for comment on how this new business might affect his rumored desire for a rematch against Governor Shumlin State Republican Party chair Pat Mac Donald is still patiently waiting for a gubernatorial candidate.She expects to hear from the former Lt. Gov. by the end of the month. Will Dubie be the solution? Experience must count for something.  

The Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, six Democrats and six Republicans tasked with finding government savings of 1.2 trillion in the next decade or else, will have their first meeting this Thursday Sept 8. Also on that date Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who were chosen to lead the group. will have their first face to face meeting.

The two Capitol Hill veterans have never met each other. Not in the month since they were tapped to lead the vaunted “supercommittee,” nor in the preceding nine years that they jointly served in Congress, aides to both lawmakers say.

Maybe having two people who have never met or worked together run a massively important congressional super committee only looks bad to people unfamiliar with the mysterious ways of the congress. Maybe the super-committee’s super-staff relationships are where the rubber hits the road. After all aides say Hensarling and Murray have spoken on the phone and they speak about a growing sense of trust between the two. A senior Democrat aide said:

“Everything has been going as well as anyone could have hoped for”

Well that’s reassuring, depending on your hopes.

Maybe Republican former Sen. Alan Simpson, veteran co-chairman of the presidential deficit commission (AKA cat food commission) can offer a reassuring word or two to worried citizens.

“They’re both very bright people. They’re both very partisan people. We’ll see who wins.”

“They’re just the kind of people that hang tough,” Simpson said in an interview. “And they’re going to hang tough. And if they both hang tough-tough-tough, then it probably won’t get done.”

Thanks Alan, that’s as good as anyone could have hoped for from you. What could go wrong?

Tough-tough-tough.