Just a short central Vermont public service announcement
The city of Barre approved tasers for their PD.
Barre’s police chief plans medical evaluations for the first 10 people tased by his police department.
Mayor Lauzon joked “We’re hoping that the first 10 people will take upwards of five years,”
Funny guy .
http://www.timesargus.com/arti…
After the fat tax cutting years of the Bush regime would it be ungracious to suspect that maybe the rich have eaten their fill pushed themselves away from the table and some are able to feeling like sharing? Burp.
A recent study from the University of California-Berkeley shows that, in 2007, the wealth disparity grew to its highest number on record, based on US tax data going back to 1917. The top 0.01 percent of earners in the US are now taking home six percent of all the income, and a whopping six-fold increase since the start of the Reagan administration
Tax me more please is unlikely to be the next big thing among the moneyed but a group called Wealth for the Common Good has called on President Obama and Congress to rescind the Bush tax cuts immediately According to their website’s latest update they have more than 1,000 signers. About 300 of them are from high-income households. Good for them, because as the familiar saying goes “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society”. The Bush tax cut would sunset at the end of 2011 automatically if left unchanged.
Commenting on the Wealth for the Common Good concept the Wall Street Journal noted that the recession weary rich may have already suffered enough and naturally aside from having greater ability to pay them, the rich, you know just don’t like taxes . First, the rich pool has been drained markedly by financial crisis. And second, the wealthy — like many Americans — don’t really like paying taxes.
The head of an organization called Wealth for the Common Good is hitting the airwaves to urge wealthy Americans to sign a petition that would reverse the Bush-era tax cuts on household incomes of more than $235,000.
The group seeks an increase of the top tax rate to 39.6% from 35%, which it estimates could raise $43 billion in tax revenue a year. “We believe high-income households want President Obama to move our country toward stability, fiscal responsibility and sensible taxation and investment,” the group states.
One of the group’s co-founders is Chuck Collins, great grandson of hot dog magnate Oscar Mayer, who has been a vocal proponent of the rich sharing more of their wealth with society. In 2003, he co-authored the book Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes with William Gates Sr., father of the founder of Microsoft.
http://online.wsj.com/article/…
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…
http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews…
Maybe the big money in the health care debate is the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room that isn’t being covered adequately in the news. Coverage of the disturbing traveling circus that is the public side of the debate lately has focused largely on town hall disruptions .That certainly is where all the shouting has been. The media follows the shouts. However as this astro-turf sponsored war rages some record breaking lobbying is going on in Washington. Big money, big medicine and it works quietly. One republican media consultant said “If we slow this sausage-making process down,we can defeat it.”
According to the Blog of Legal times Wal-Mart is adding to its health care lobbying team. The lobby firm Wal-Mart uses includes…………. senior policy adviser David Russell, a former chief of staff to ex-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska); senior policy adviser Jennifer Stewart, who worked for Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.); and former aides to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), both Republican whips. Wal-Mart spent nearly $2.6 million lobbying in the second quarter of 2009. About $340,000 went to seven outside lobbying firms, including the Podesta Group, Patton Boggs, and Miller & Chevalier.
Here are some other superlatives from Bloomberg.com. This may explain the pause in the health care legislation momentum . There are 3,300 lobbyists who have lined up to work on the issue that is six lobbyists to every 535 members of the House and Senate.
According to Senate records, and three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense.These groups spent $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009, according to the Center for Responsible Politics a Washington-based research group, more than any other industry. They spent $241.4 million during the same period of 2008. Drugmakers alone spent $134.5 million, 64 percent more than the next biggest spenders, oil and gas companies.
The health-care industry also contributed $20.5 million to federal candidates and the political parties during the first six months of the year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who is up for re-election next year, received $382,400, more than any other lawmaker.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…
Governor Douglas is flying off to Korea and other Asian nations this October. With his delegation of business leaders Douglas is off to sell not just investment in Vermont but citizenship in the USA through investment. For $500,000 dollars (half the amount required in other areas) and 10 jobs later and you can get to be a citizen through the Federal EB-5 program.
Foreign travel is always good for broadening ones horizons and policy experience but show us the jobs Jim, the ones this program may have already created. The EB-5 program has been in use in Vermont already and according to the gov. benefited Vermont tremendously so take the time (the trip is in October) to document why this is in fact working for the state as a whole. Justify your flight; show your numbers flash your stats .How many jobs have been created by EB-5 investment to date, how long do they last, what are the wages paid? What has the EB-5 done for Vermont to date? Justify it with some facts, then go, enjoy. But don’t forget to let the Lt. Governor know you are headed out of state.
Governor Jim Douglas announced he will lead a delegation of Vermont business leaders seeking investors for their companies, especially through the EB-5 program, on a mission to Asia in October, which will include stops in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program gives preferential consideration for permanent resident visas to immigrants who make qualified investments in a new commercial enterprise that will create at least 10 full-time jobs. In most areas of Vermont the required investment is only $500,000 – half the standard $1 million required in most other areas of the country.
“Vermont’s economy has benefited tremendously from the investments made in our businesses through the EB-5 program,” Governor Douglas said. “This trip will allow us to showcase the opportunities for investors here in Vermont, as well as to promote general trade with these countries.”
(Thanks to BP for pointing out this eye-rolling piece. What really seems to irk this guy more than anything about the state is that Vermont had the gall to grant full rights of citizenship to gays and lesbians, as he’s harped on the topic before. – promoted by odum)
The Free Press has a sad lament by a man claiming he must leave Vermont. This is the second I believe in a series the Free Press is running. Sort of an ongoing Festivus style airing of the grievances on Why Vermont has failed me theme. Today’s public lamentation goes a step further than some noting multiple areas that Vermont has allegedly failed this poor and long suffering fellow. Taxes, naturally are in the mix, trivialization of the institution of marriage makes the list but new and perhaps foremost is the perceived lack of pride in America by Vermonters.
Our apparently soon to depart uber-patriot questions; Are Vermonters still proud to be Americans? Thus adding failure of being properly proud to his list. He does note that perhaps many Vermonters are still proud of America, but the pervasive attitude seems to him
“a grievance mentality that indicts America at every opportunity. It’s a mentality that cheers President Obama as he travels the world apologizing for America. That mentality expresses itself in many ways, chief among them the tendency to assert moral equivalency between America’s enemies and America’s defenders. This mentality has been especially offended by the forceful and successful actions taken by the Bush administration after 9/11 to protect the American people from the terrorists who would kill them.”
This fellow is truly grieved by the grievance mentality he imagines to surround him. A grievance mentality, high living costs, taxes and perceived lack of proper pride are moving motivation for some. I would suggest a tolerance mentality might work wonders and save expensive moving costs.
He does however strike a conciliatory note at the end and even hints that he may not actually be leaving at all. I guess he sees a glimmer of hope that one day we will walk in lock step with what he sees as the proper way.
No doubt Vermonters offended by the things I’ve said will want to tell us not to let the door hit us on the way out. Well, we won’t be leaving soon, and there’s still hope that Vermont can recapture the spirit of personal independence that made this nation great. We fear, however, that the majority of Vermonters are increasingly embracing personal dependence on government.
Easy fast and fiendishly diabolical!
We can all be Kenyans now
Kenya Birth Certificate Generator
Is a Vermont captive insurance company is jeopardy? Vermont is business home of one of the larger groups of captive insurance companies in the World. The Cayman Islands is the second largest,Bermuda number one .
Captives are financial risk management insurance companies which insure investments of a parent companies. Burlington based Customer Asset Protection Company, known as Capco has drawn some attention in several newspaper articles and from U.S. Senate regulators recently regarding its ability to cover its obligations to the now bankrupt Lehman Bros. .Capco is owned by financial giants Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo banks and smaller brokerage firms.
New York Times reports
“It has become clear that this entity is thinly capitalized Senate Finance Committee, Robert Menendez wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Geithner.
Capco, he said, potentially posed “systemic risk.” Capco was created in 2003 by Lehman and 13 other banks and brokerage companies as a kind of marketing tool. The pitch was that while Capco would not insure customers against investment losses, it would compensate them if the firms failed. Capco promises to provide virtually unlimited coverage above the $500,000 offered by the Securities Investors Protection Corporation and its equivalent in Britain.
The New York State insurance department reviewed some industry estimates and Capco could face nearly $11 billion in claims but has only about $150 million with which to meet them.
Vermont Deputy Commissioner of Captive Insurance David Provost said to the Burlington Free Press that he believes those figures are inaccurate, but could not elaborate, citing privacy regulations. No one mentioned when the last audit was performed.
In an article about the state of South Carolina’s concerns with its own captive insurers it was noted that yearly audits are desirable but the frequency of audits in Vermont can be flexible. Vermont’s captive law allows the state to expand the examination period from three to five years if the captive has been audited, and the division has used that flexibility to smooth its examination load.
All this should make for an interesting 24th Annual meeting of captive insurance professionals in Burlington on August 11-13 titled Building Better Captives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07…
http://www.businessinsurance.c…
http://www.burlingtonfreepress…
Even with expectations lowered to an acceptable level,reality rears its ugly head. I now recognize that at the end of January the unfamiliar emotion I experienced was perhaps a species of optimism .Not unqualified optimism(can’t,wouldn’t admit to that)but a practical brand, “cautious optimism ” or maybe it was only the utter relief that eight years of the Bush regime had ended.Yes,that’s all it was.
That was six months ago and the papers today are not exactly a breading ground of hope.
Healthcare appears headed if not for failure at least to a severe watering down to the point of meaninglessness.
The health system overhaul largely rests on six senators who have tossed aside core Democratic priorities like a government-run plan
And this
As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut assumes a central role in the debate over health care, the pharmaceutical industry has helped finance efforts to bolster his image back home as he braces for a potentially bruising re-election contest.
Big-time Wall Street banks have happily and with little new oversight taken up their high risk trading again.Goldman Sachs earlier was granted a change in official status by the feds that allows it access to Federal Reserve funds then ……
Goldman then applied to the Federal Reserve for an exemption to the rules, saying that it takes time to alter a business model. The exemption was granted in February — and Goldman went on to take even greater risks
Guantanamo is still sitting there almost as before.
The delays – involving those who cannot be tried – raise questions about whether the White House can close the prison by January, as President Obama pledged when he took office.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07…
Blue-Green Algae Bloom Detected in Missisquoi Bay
July 21, 2009
BURLINGTON – Elevated levels of toxins detected in a blue-green algae bloom on the eastern shores of the Missisquoi Bay has prompted the Vermont Department of Health to advise boaters, swimmers and residents to take the following precautions:
• Avoid contact with algae-contaminated water.
• Do not swim or bathe in the water. Remember that children are considered to be at higher risk because they are more likely to drink the water.
• Monitor water intakes for private residences. If you see algae present near the intake, switch to an alternate safe source of water.
• Do not use algae contaminated water to prepare meals or brush teeth.
Boiling water will not remove toxins.
• Do not allow pets in algae-contaminated water.
http://www.vermont.gov/portal/…
Green rating site that gave Gov. Douglas his 8th Greenest Gov. in US rating
Center stage to a large degree was his for the taking as some of the bigger lites of the Republican party were no shows Arnold Schwarzenegger ,Sarah Palin ,Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal failed to attend .Governor Mark Sanford may still be resting after hiking to South America . This past weekend Douglas debuted as chairman of the National Governors Association. Recently greenwashed online as the 8th greenest governor in the nation Douglas moved his performance on to Broadway or eh Biloxi. Haley Barbour RGA head and the former head of the RNC back in the Contract for America glory days has a soft spot for the new chairman Gov.Douglas .After the last election he described Douglas as “being stronger than a field of garlic up there in Vermont”. (It is wonderful to think when they are alone together Barbour calls him Jimbo.)
Last week some here in Vermont were most atwitter in anticipation about this milestone in Douglas’s career. “This month Douglas adds to his resume the chairmanship of the National Governors Association. The timing is fortuitous. He assumes a leadership position that will give him incredible national exposure in what will primarily be a bipartisan setting.” Chris Graff corporate spokesman for National Life gushed
Sadly it looks like Governor Douglas may see his new role in simpler terms, mainly balking, balking at unfunded federal mandates.
Several governors joined Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in calling on Congress to revise requirements by this fall for secure driver’s licenses that are intended to help boost national security. The governors said federal mandates for the licenses are too expensive, and 13 states have voted not to participate in the Real ID Act passed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In response NGA Chairman Douglas sagely noted that “Security standards are only useful if people are willing and able to use them,” said Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican.
Such comforting simplicity in a world so complex , many things in life are only useful when people are willing and able to use them.
Who could have predicted that he would shine so brightly in Biloxi, a star in the Republican field of garlic indeed?
http://www.vermontbiz.com/arti…
http://www.timesargus.com/arti…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07…