In August of 2009 the Douglas administration launched its own aggressive sounding initiative dubbed “Tiger Teams”.The “Teams” were comprised of about 35 high-level executive branch officials.The bureaucratic tigers were charged with combing state agencies in a search for  government savings.

Now,months later Finance Commissioner Reardon has received no actual reports from the teams .Maybe Governor Douglas will find time to look into the “Tiger Teams” lack of success at finding wasteful spending after his overseas travel is completed.

Lawmakers on the Joint Fiscal Committee had expected some information about potential savings that “Tiger Teams” might have identified. The Douglas administration said it would create teams to scour state government for ways to save money given that big deficits are projected next year even if tax revenues stabilize.

“I have yet to receive the actual reports,” Reardon said.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

 Today the Times Argus takes an unusual position for a news organization .They came out   editorially supporting   Obama’s criticism of Fox “news” as having crossed the line from a news organization to a rightwing propaganda mouthpiece.

The Obama administration’s war against Fox News could be a worrisome precedent, except we know from experience the pernicious methods that Fox uses to distort the news.

The media wagons most often circle up in defense of their brother media when a powerful politician criticizes. Fox must have crossed way over the boundary to the right and out of the mainstream.

The Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald have felt the wrath of the Fox and Bill O’Rielly. Several years ago Fox’s O’Reilly attempted to bully the papers  because they had not  shared the stand on Jessica’s law that Fox/O’Reilly were pushing. It was a time of extremely high tensions and O’Reilly’s film crew at one point harassed a state legislator in an attempt at intimidation. Vermont was solidly on O’Reilly’s target list. Both papers were added to Fox’s “worst newspapers” list. The lines were drawn.

Aw shucks Brian, O’Reilly?

With lines drawn back then  Lt.Gov. Dubie made an appearance before the Fox man himself offering a tribute of maple syrup . O’Reilly said

“Dubie is a pro-life Republican who supports Jessica’s Law, proving there is diversity in the land of Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders,  far-left Senator Patrick Leahy.

Last week candidate Dubie participated in conference call and toured the emergency bridge closure site.  In a manner he must have thought reassuring he declared among other things an understanding of the importance of bridges and left.

“…I know first hand the importance of the Champlain Bridge to the economic and social well-being and safety of Addison County.”

Just another spoken reminder that the prime time spotlight is not his comfort zone.  Reinforcing his documented  habit of ducking debates he started his campaign with a curious unorthodox email announcement . These are not winning tactics for the Republicans.

Even as one elder Vermont commentator  declares Governor Douglas’ new lame-duck status may actually give him “the mantle of statesman” with the legislature, one has to wonder seriously about the anointed Republican candidate Dubie’s rightwing positions and a skill set needed to campaign for higher office.

http://www.timesargus.com/arti…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0…

http://www.vermontbiz.com/news…

http://www.vermontbiz.com/arti…

 In 1776 tough sentencing laws and a need to deal with prison overcrowding led to an “innovative” solution. The English Parliament passed an act authorizing for two years   that decommissioned naval ships (hulks) would serve as “temporary” holding prisons. This practice lasted 80 years.

Given Vermont state’s existing relationship with private for profit prison services and budget pressures it is worth taking note of recent trends nationwide in extreme privatization of government functions. Vermont currently has about 680 inmates in out-of-state prisons, mostly in two facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both are owned by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest for-profit prison vendor.

Recently a female prisoner died (the second in several years) from lack of access to medicine while in state custody but under the care of a for profit prison medical service  Prison Health Services Inc.  

Razing Arizona state prisons?

Arizona State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

 The state’s death row inmates could become the responsibility of a private for Profit Company. A truly mind boggling move when one considers the potential for abuse. There must come a time when state governments will again shoulder the responsibility and cost of actually running the government rather than subcontracting it out . Taxing though it may be.

The privatization effort, both in its breadth and its financial goals, demonstrates what states around the country – broke, desperate and often overburdened with prisoners and their associated costs – are willing to do to balance the books. Arizona officials hope the effort will put a $100 million dent in the state’s roughly $2 billion budget shortfall.

………

For advocates of prison privatization, the push here breathes a bit of life into a movement that has been on the decline across the country as cost savings from prison privatizations have often failed to materialize, corrections officers unions have resisted the efforts and high-profile problems in privately run facilities have drawn unwanted publicity

http://www.7dvt.com/2009vermon…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…

(More incompetence and shoulder shrugging by the Douglas-Dubie Administration. – promoted by NanuqFC)

As the costs of budget cuts and deferred maintenance on local infrastructure are driven home by the emergency closure of Champlain Bridge, Vermont Gov. Douglas,other state officials and executives from Vermont businesses left the country (as far as we know).

As part of a previously planned trip they have flown to Asia in an effort to attract foreign business investors to the state. How will the news of the areas crumbling infrastructure impress potential foreign investors?

While the governor is gone state officials from New York and Vermont are left to deal with the declared emergency surrounding the Champlain Bridge closure

The Champlain Bridge was known to be in bad repair, studies were in progress and the bridge had been shut down to one lane within the last year .It seems though that few contingency plans had been made about what to do about 4,000 people that pass over the bridge daily if the bridge needed to shut down completely as is now the case. Business owners and workers on both sides of the lake are worried about the financial effect of the closure.  One local hospital has patients and employees on both sides of the lake in need of transportation.

Before leaving Governor Douglas took the time to share his expert reading of the situation “Detours are time consuming and costly. This is not just about convenience; this is an economic burden as well as a safety issue,”

Extra ferries have been added and are running longer hours but winter is swooping in quickly. Hopes for a temporary bridge were put to rest by the VT Agency of Transportation spokesman John Zicconi who said

What the state isn’t likely to do, he said, is put in a temporary bridge. He said the lake is an international waterway and such a bridge would block it, something the federal government is unlikely to approve. He also said there were safety concerns with such bridges on the lake.

No safety concerns were cited about possible problems with increased ferry traffic.

At a public hearing in Addison on Oct. 8, residents had ridiculed the idea of substituting ferry service for the ailing bridge. Vermont Transportation Secretary David Dill made no suggestion that ferries would be anything but a short-term alternative to people driving 100 miles to work in another state.

The initial estimate was that a new ferry would require a round-trip ticket price of $131, Dill said. But it might be possible to get a federal subsidy for the additional ferry route, thus reducing that price, he said – but not compensating affected individuals or companies directly for their expenses during the declared transportation emergency, he said.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…

http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…

( – promoted by JulieWaters)

  Did  the Vermont Public Service board just propose eliminating  the sales tax on the sale of 4,310 major appliances?

“Funds for  fridges” The State of Vermont has submitted for US Department of Energy approval a plan which would offer rebates on the purchase of new energy efficient appliances, including washers, refrigerators, air conditioners, and also certain gas furnaces and water heaters. Documentation that the old appliance was properly recycled would need to be provided.

The Burlington Free Press reports,

The proposal calls for rebates, ranging from $75 to $150, on efficient clothes washers, refrigerators and air conditioners. … The state’s plan allows for 4,310 such appliances to be sold through the rebate plan.

So far so good. Trade up to an energy efficient appliance with the aid of a government run program. However they hope to piggyback the program on the state’s one-day sales tax holiday. Perhaps cleverly generating publicity but also losing any revenue the state might have garnered from the increased sales of new efficient appliances over the course of the program.

If approved by the Energy Department the rebates would be  offered in a one-day event on Vermont’s next “sales tax holiday,” slated for March 10, piggybacking on the attention paid to the day free of sales taxes, the filing says. Efficiency Vermont would develop lists of the eligible products Jan. 1, the documents state.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

( – promoted by odum)

Vermont’s lame duck and thrifty Governor Jim Douglas is headed off to the Far East (is it still called that ?) on a Fall harvest trip seeking EB-5 investors for his business friends but first he had to get one of the earlier taxpayer funded flu shots(seasonal flu) before taking flight .

VtBuzz had the ironically sickening details  

Douglas said he got his flu shot courtesy of the state employee wellness program. That’s the program that was proposed for elimination during the administrations unsuccessful negotiations with the Vermont State Employees Association.

Always ready to reassure Douglas it is noted  ….

he said he doesn’t take offense if someone prefers to nod, rather than shake.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

 

(Update)Doug Hoffer has pointed out in a comment below that part of local Vermont Chamber membership dues go to the US Chamber.

Here is a link with a bit titled U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The Right Wing’s Right Hand in D.C. about the national chairman Tom Donahue http://www.alternet.org/story/…

The US Chamber of Commerce is rated the top spending lobbying group in the country according to watchdog group Open Secrets. Almost double the spending of the second place AMA.Their website ‘take action’ page urges opposition to proposed Congressional climate change policies, a Financial Protection Agency a shareholder bill of rights and the Employment Free choice Act (EFCA).

Chamber out of the past?

The  chambers  ‘about us’ web-page  may lagging or just feeling nostalgic for friendlier days  when they  state

“Over the past year, the  chamber hosted more than 2,500 programs, meetings, seminars, and forums with various participants, including President George W. Bush and his Cabinet, members of Congress, and dozens of international leaders.” [emphasis added]

All is not unity  for the  members with the position on climate change.

Rep. Markey of Massachusetts says of the  chamber’s attitude “Unfortunately, while the chamber says they are for everything the Waxman-Markey bill addresses, they are just not for the bill itself; the chamber should listen to the companies who would rather leave the group than wait for it to back up their talk with action.” [emphasis added]

Five major companies have left the organization over its opposition to aspects of climate change efforts: Excelon corp., PNM Resources Inc., PG&E Corp., Apple Inc., and Nike Inc. One business observer noted that the divide did not fall along traditional players versus technology players but was across the board, suggesting a deeper rift. US Energy Secretary Chu and Greenpeace have praised the companies that took the leap from the chamber. This is on the heels of an earlier call by one chamber official for a new “Scopes Monkey Trial” to examine the EPA’s role and look at whether human activities are actually causing global warming and the damage attributed to them.

Recently Obama has restated his desire to move on climate legislation after he and Sen. Majority Leader Reid warned that it would most likely not happen until next year and certainly not before the Copenhagen conference. Some shakeup of the membership in the chamber crowd may help save this legislation from the delay that health care has suffered from but it is only a glimmer in a long battle.

“Whoever owns the shoe”

October 14 the chamber will launch the Campaign for Free Enterprise, a $100 million dollar effort in what is being called a war on Democrats. When Chairman Thomas Donahue was asked about this, he said “First of all, it’s not a declaration of war against anyone. The issue is very, very clear. This is going to be very positive program.”

Shortly after accentuating the positive this telling exchange took place:

Q) Much of it does seem to focused on wanting to limit regulation, limit government, limit taxation at a time when there is obviously a lot of discussion in Washington about whether more reforms or regulations are needed to prevent many of the excesses we’ve seen in the last year.

“Well, if the shoe fits, whoever owns the shoe ought to wear it.” [emphasis added]

http://www.uschamber.com/about…

http://www.businessweek.com/bw…

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2…

In light of the Republican reaction to the Nobel Prize awarded earlier today to President Obama and as a general public service I have taken the time to research Hyper-cerebral electrosis HCE and post four of the major warning signals on How to tell if your head is about to explode .

 1.  Do you sometimes find yourself unable to get a thought out of your  

head?

 (This is a possible sign of too much electrical activity in the

cerebral cortex)

2. When you get angry or frustrated do you feel pressure in your temples?

 (Friends of people who died of HCE say the victims often complained of head pressure in times of strong emotion)

3. Does your head sometimes ache when you think too hard?( Head pain can indicate overloaded brain circuits)

4. Do you ever hear a faint ringing or humming sound in your ears?

 (It could be the sound of electricity in the skull cavity )

At least two Republicans have entered the red zone and I fear may be in danger .

Rush Limbaugh called it a

“greater embarrassment” than losing the Olympics.

Former acting UN Ambassador John Bolton

“I was nominated three years ago and I’m still waiting for the call.”

Quotes from http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…

HCE warning signs  from Weekly World News special health issue

( – promoted by odum)

The Vermont Medical examiner  found Wednesday that  a 23 year old female prisoner held in Swanton last August died of a heart condition caused by anorexia,bulimia and because she was denied her medication to treat it. “Denial of access to medication”while in State of Vermont custody was a cause according to the Vermont medical examiner. An independent investigation by the state Defender General’s Office found that a nurse ordered to give Ellis potassium for an eating disorder failed to do so.

An investigation is still underway but a state prison official has stated quite clearly

The Department of Corrections’ staff never dispenses medication – a task he said is carried out solely by Prison Health Services, the private contractor that gives medical service to the state’s prisons.

A private contractor provides health services to the Vermont State Corrections Dept.

Prison Health Services (PHS) a subsidiary of American Service Group a Tennessee based publicly traded company. They have provided services to Vermont for the last four years. In 2006 while renegotiating a money losing contract with the state (a bid described at the time by a state officials as “possibly too aggressive”) in the face of a one million dollar loss they were faced with substantial fines and penalties for not meeting contract obligations. Replacing the required registered nurses on some shifts with licensed practical nurses was one area of concern.  

Recently PHS has defended itself regarding the Swanton death in state custody but will not seek to renew their contract. A PHS spokesman says of this “It’s a business decision” The Corrections Commissioner also states the obvious “I suspect they now know that in all likelihood they would not win the bid again,”

America Service Group Inc. of Tennessee parent company of Prison Health Services, Inc and Correctional Health Services, LLC

has a market cap of $150.1 million; its shares were traded at around $15.9 with a P/E ratio of 30.4 and P/S ratio of 0.3. The dividend yield of America Service Group Inc. stocks is 1.2%.

http://www.timesargus.com/arti…

http://www.vermontguardian.com…

Wonderfully timed in the same week Douglas completes his plan to lay off 300 state workers the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation has a “My Turn” piece in the Free Press .Commissioner Gibbs’ noted earlier triumph had been to put up a Facebook page for the Dept.. Now he shamelessly borrows language reminiscent of the New Deal and recalls the CCC .One can only marvel at the moxie of these small government fellows.

At Gov. Jim Douglas’ direction, the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is doing everything it can to generate economic activity and create jobs. We’re pleased to report that your investment of tax dollars is achieving important results and producing meaningful returns.

Earlier  the Governor  took a stand against placing  inexpensive (signs can cost as little as $300.00) ARRA  signs notifying state run Federal stimulus funded highway projects .He was reportedly angered when a photograph of him at an event was published with one of the orange signs in the image.  

Jason Gibbs is not orange but is much more costly  and basically serves the same purpose as the scorned ARRA stimulus road signs.

The Governor’s personal human signage continues ………..

Our projects meet the strictest definition of “shovel ready” and are moving forward swiftly. We’ve targeted long-term, infrastructure projects that create good trade jobs — carpentry, plumbing, masonry, electric, excavating, roofing and others — critical to immediate and sustained economic growth. And we are transparent. It is important that taxpayers and policymakers see the immediate economic and lasting environmental values of investing in these natural resources.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…