By Vermont Sierra Club

Montpelier, Vermont, February 23rd, 2011- An effort by conservation and affordable housing advocates to demonstrate an outpouring of public support for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund met with great success.  On Thursday morning more than 150 Vermonters packed room 11 of the Statehouse to voice their support for this program, and to hear from the Governor and other elected officials on this issue.  The event was organized by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition and was supported by the Vermont Sierra Club and its partners in the Our Forests Our Future campaign.

    The Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund, which was established in the late 1980s, provides resources for the construction of low income housing and for forest and farm conservation.  In response to Hurricane Irene Governor Peter Shumlin has suggested that a portion of these resources to be used to buy damaged homes located within floodplains, and to convert these parcels back into a more natural state. Presently, the Governor is calling for a 1.2 million dollar increase to this fund.  If the Governor’s recommendation is accepted by the General Assembly, the fund would see a total of $14,000,000 for the coming year.

    The Vermont Sierra Club, which is supporting the Governor’s efforts, mobilized for this event with solidarity from 350 Vermont and the Vermont Workers Center as part of the Our Forests Our Future campaign.  All three organizations had members at this event.  The Our Forest Our Future campaign is seeking to create a mosaic of new town and Abenaki forests in Vermont as a means to help build wildlife migration corridors and to make our forests more resilient in the face of climate change.  Our Forests Our Future, which is also endorsed by the Vermont AFL-CIO and the two state recognized Abenaki tribes, contends that community forests not only help in the fight against climate change through carbon sequestration, but can also serve the social and economic needs of local people.

    “We envision new town and Abenaki forests not only providing wildlife with a more robust habitat, but also providing low income and elderly Vermonters with free or affordable firewood to heat their homes, public/tribal revenue for social programs through sustainable logging, and a public place for Vermonters to take deer, moose, and other game to feed their families. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund is one of the major places where funding for such projects can be found, and that is why we are supporting this. For us, it is about the environment, about economic development, and Irene recovery,” said David Van Deusen, Conservation Organizer with the Vermont Sierra Club.

     At the event, in addition to Governor Shumlin, a number of law makers spoke out in favor of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund.  These included LT Governor Phil Scott-R, House Speaker Shap Smith-D, Senate Pro Tem John Campbell-D, and Northeast Kingdom Senator Vince Illuzzi-R.  

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(This is amazing!

Campaign for Vermont webpage is loaded with out of state stock images. Now that is transparent.Thanks for digging.

  – promoted by BP)

Curious to know who some of those happy people are on the Campaign for Vermont Prosperity’s website, I started doing some image sleuthing.

(yes, I know stock images are used all the time for this sort of thing… but I was curious…)

Starting on the ‘Mission’ page.

http://www.campaignforvermont….

The kids using a laptop in a verdant Vermont setting?

No, they seem to come from ‘Michigan Portfolios’, a writing project:

http://www.michiganportfolios….

(and it looks like they edited out some of the other kids… maybe that original image was just a little too diverse?)

Surely the constrcution guy working on framing what looks like a house, he must be a hearty Vermonter?

No, he comes from a German website discussing the pros and cons of materials used for ‘carports’:

http://www.gartenwelt.de/artik…

How about those friendly folks looking at plans?

Maybe some Pizzagalli construction employees?

No, they show up on several EU sites about safety:

http://www.osima.eu/kompetenz….

After the jump: stock winter walk, stock woodworker, stock tractor, etc.

Moving on to the ‘Who we are Page’:

http://www.campaignforvermont….

The folks out for a winter walk? Maybe at Shelburne Farms?

They show up on Target (maybe some subliminal work going on here to bring a Target to Willison?)

http://www.target.com/p/Elite-…

And Weightwatchers:

http://www.weightwatchers.ca/u…

But wait, the woodworker, surely a Vermonter in support of this ‘Campaign’?

He shows up on a few sites originating out of China, and then pops up on the town of Rocklin California’s permit page:

http://www.rocklin.ca.us/gover…

What about that iconic tractor in the sunset on the ‘Electricity and Energy’ page?

http://www.campaignforvermont….

Whoa, thats from the BBC’s ‘Farming Today’ podcast (and a few other hits for a tractor repair place)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme…

And it goes on.

You see where I’m going.

Yes, I know its a pretty common thing to see ‘stock’ images in websites like this…

But come on… Campaign for Vermont Prosperity?

Couldn’t we hire a few Vermont photographers to snap some pictures of people who believe in the mission? Maybe some ‘real people’? Of the dozen or so images I reverse Googled, I didn’t find one ‘Vermonter’.

Wonder if a local web developer got the work to do the site…

 In the most recent entry in their blizzard of “issue” ads Bruce Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont may have crossed a legal line past issue advocacy. The Vermont Press Bureau reports that the Vermont Democratic Party thinks so and filed a complaint with the Attorney General claiming the following about the newest ad’s content:  

“such critical and inaccurate hyperbole about the Governor can only be viewed as furthering the purpose of opposing his candidacy and/or influencing the outcome of the governor’s election.”

The ad reportedly targets Governor Shumlin by name over the state budget that Lisman claims may increase property taxes.

If the VDP complaint is supported it would mean millionaire Lisman’s Campaign for Vermont has violated their 501(C) (4) status. A registered 501(C) (4) can accept unlimited donations and does not have to disclose donor’s names but is constrained to issue advocacy.

If organizations want to advocate expressly for the victory or defeat of a specific candidate, they have to register as political action committees, abide by $2,000 donation limits and disclose the names of their donors.

 

Transparency is one key to a functioning democracy was title of the Campaign for Vermont’s initial public offering distributed throughout the state. Says Lisman:

Maybe donor transparency is one key to a functioning advocacy. So, come on Bruce, be a transparent Campaign for Vermont.This change might put you in bind but it would get your preaching and practicing into functional alignment.

From 7days:

The Vermont Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office accusing the right-leaning adovcacy group Campaign For Vermont of violating campaign finance laws by running radio ads attacking Gov. Peter Shumlin.

Something most of us have seen as clear as day, that this isn’t a ‘non partisan’ group of work a day, everyday, ‘normal’ Vermonters working to better their state … this is a political vehicle to promote a specific agenda.

It is a curious leap that the Dems are using this:

Ironically, the Democrats are using a relatively recent court ruling that went against them to make the case that Lisman’s group has run afoul of the law. Bragg writes that Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford’s decision in Vermont v. Green Mountain Future “essentially held that an advertisement, costing more than $500 and ran within a year of the election, that reasonably refers to a candidate triggers political committee status. Clearly, the hypercritical and inaccurate declarations contained in the Campaign for Vermont radio advertisement are directed at candidate Shumlin as opposed to merely Governor Shumlin’s legislative agenda.”

to argue that the Campaign for Vermont Prosperity is afoul of election law…

I do shudder to think that not so long from now, we’ll be hearing ‘I’m Bruce Lisman, and I approve this message…’

http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012…

*edited for spelling

Per WCAX:

…She bought almost $400 worth of meat from a door-to-door salesman in 2010… “It was tough, didn’t have a good flavor, didn’t smell good when you cooked it,” she said.

The salesman came in a white refrigerated pickup truck with a logo on the side that said Steak House Steaks.

Okay.

So.  

I’m not entirely certain as to what to say about this, because I have trouble imagining that buying foodstuff from a door-to-door salesperson is a good idea and I have trouble comprehending this scam as being effective.  So I’m at a loss here.  Part of me wants to ridicule this, but I’m thinking there are probably some vulnerable people out there who get intimidated by high pressure sales tactics and I don’t feel so right about making jokes about it.

So I’m just trying to kind of verbally think this out.  Is this common?  I’ve never heard of anyone selling meat door to door before, and I don’t comprehend the idea of buying food that’s completely unknown in terms of its origin.  

I also understand that people do this all the time, whether they realize it or not and I’m a bit unusual in the respect that I pay attention to the food I eat, what its sources are and how it got here.  But even though I get that people buy all sorts of things that are bad for them without paying attention to ingredients, food origins, etc., I somehow find this to be deeply disturbing on a more personal level.  Even though I’m vegetarian, I don’t think that this is because of the meat in itself.  It’s more the idea of meat you don’t know that just totally creeps me out.

I’m at a loss here.  

(Feb. 23, 1945–Men of the 5th Marine Division raise the American flag on the top of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.  The wonderful photo by Joe Rosenthal in the New York Times and papers around the world.  Nimitz was right when he said of those marines:  “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”  And now we have different kinds of images coming out of Afghanistan.  Junior, you were right.  Images do matter.)

for Junior

Scene:  Three marines pissing on dead Afghani children while also burning Qurans.  Suddenly (‘THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!’), they are struck by three Steel Hankies.

1st marine:  “Shit!  That hurt!”

PolitenessMan:  “Now, now.  Language please.”

2nd marine: “Hey, who the Hell are you, mister?”  (raises his rifle)

PolitenessMan:  “Haven’t you been taught it’s impolite to swear and point?  And at the same time!”  (flings another Steel Hankie, hitting 2nd marine in the nose)

2nd marine:  “Oh God!  I’m hit!  I’m hit!  Corpsman!  Corpsman!  Oh God!…”

PolitenessMan:  “Tut, tut, my friend.  A bloody nose is no excuse for making a scene.  You see, gentlemen, I am PolitenessMan, and the President of the United States has sent me here to restore some good manners, decorum, and good taste here on the battlefield, so that folks back home are not needlessly repulsed by, let us say, behavior one would confront on a Saturday night outside of the sleaziest roadhouse in all the 50 states.”  

3rd marine:  “What the Hell…(PolitenessMan raises up another Steel Hankie)…excuse me…what the heck does good manners have to do with war, PolitenessMan?”

PolitenessMan:  “Think of it this way–if foreign invaders were rampaging through the United States while you were over here, would you want them pissing on your dead baby?  Would you want them burning the old baseball card collections passed down to you by your dear old grandfathers?”

2nd marine:  “My dead baby?!  I have a baby somewhere?”

1st marine:  “My BASEBALL CARD COLLECTION??!!!”

PolitenessMan:  “Exactly.  Remember, your wives, loved ones, and your dear old grandmothers are watching…”

3rd marine:  “My grandmother?!  I have a grandmother, PolitenessMan?”  (sobs)

PolitenessMan:  “Yes.  And also Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Jessica Parker.  What would would you have them think, gentlemen?”

1st marine:  “Hey, PolitenessMan, those two are old enough to be my dear old grandmother.”

PolitenessMan:  “Just an example.  Think of younger versions of them.  And all the young American ladies you will want to be with someday.  Except, that when you approach them at the Church Social, or, if you like, your neighborhood bar, and ask for a polite dance, they will scream and say: ‘It’s YOU!  You were the one on the news being RUDE and exposing himself over in Afghanistan!  I’d rather turn GAY than dance with you!  In fact, just seeing you now up close has made me Gay!  Come on, Betty, let’s get out of here.  Too many CREEPS!’  You see the ramifications, gentlemen, of your unpolished and untoward behavior?”

(the three marines bow their heads)

1st marine:  “Godda…I mean, gosh, PolitenessMan, you’re right.  I guess we never thought of all that.  Thanks for straightening us out.”

PolitenessMan:  “Not a problem.  I have much work to do here before I report back to the President.  So, off with you, gentlemen.  And remember, when you get in a firefight or ambush, it is in good form to shoot to kill or maim the enemy and, also, to inflict a certain–but not excessive–amount of, let us say, peripheral damage on innocent civilians, depending on the special particulars of the occasion.  It is a war, as you have said.  But remember, keep it in your pants at all times.  Unless you have to put out a fire that some other thoughtless and less refined warrior has inadvertently started.”

1st, 2nd, and 3rd marines:  “Thanks, PolitenessMan.  We’ll never be rude again!  We’ll even say ‘pardon me’ when we shoot the wounded in the head.  You’re one cool righteous dude!  Semper Fi, PolitenessMan!”

(and the marines ‘saddle-up’ and walk off toward the beautiful red glow from the burning hills)

PolitenessMan:  “Yes, I feel absolutely politically and socially correct in what I told the President.  That, in war as in peace, but especially in war, there is no substitute for etiquette.”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

(The below are excerpts from an article on Governor Shumlin, Hurricane Irene, climate change, and the Our Forests Our Future campaign. The article appeared in the latest Sierra Club Magazine-Circulation 600,000 nationwide.  To read the full article go to this link: http://www.sierraclub.org/sier… )

When The Rivers Rise

From the governor to Native leaders to maple syrup producers, Vermonters aren’t sitting still for climate change

By Tristram Korten

WHEN THE HARD RAINS SLOWED and the winds calmed, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin climbed into a National Guard helicopter at Knapp State Airport. As the chopper lifted off, Shumlin looked down at a landscape reshaped by the violence of water. It was the aftermath of Irene, a tropical storm that unleashed a torrent over the state last August. The rains rushed down mountainsides and engorged rivers and streams that charged over their banks and rampaged through towns. Homes were torn from their foundations, cars were flung into walls, and farmers’ fields were turned into lakes. More than 500 miles of roads were ripped up or made impassable, and at least 20 bridges were washed out, among them several historic covered bridges.

    A lot of things raced through the governor’s mind as he gazed down-among them, the logistics of getting food and water to stranded communities and the need to get Federal Emergency Management Administration officials in on this as soon as possible. But not too far off in his thinking was the belief that there was more to come. In the eight months since he’d taken office, Shumlin had dealt with a major blizzard in March, unprecedented flooding in April and May, and now Irene. He put the blame for the frequency of these events squarely on climate change…

Shumlin’s election came at a fortuitous time for the Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club, which has launched its own ambitious response to climate change: the statewide Our Forests, Our Future campaign. Its goal is to create migratory corridors, with land that can be acquired by local towns and native tribes, that will allow cold-weather animals to move north as their habitat transforms. Crucial to the plan is the acquisition of lands along the state’s borders with New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Canada, which will keep the corridor biologically viable…

.

For the past year David Van Deusen, the Club’s Vermont conservation organizer, has been building consensus among a delicate coalition-native tribes, local populations, and labor unions-about what these “town forests” should offer the communities that will control them. Van Deusen, a former archaeologist who’s fond of broad-brimmed hats, has toured the state getting input and ideas-sustainable logging and firewood operations are two suggestions that would help bring in some local revenue and provide heating assistance for the poor…

“Now we’re working on getting policymakers on board,” Van Deusen said. Chief among them is Shumlin. It helps that many of the groups in the coalition, including the Vermont AFL-CIO, are Shumlin allies. [Mike] Morelli [of the VT Iron Workers Local 7], for example, recalled how Shumlin had arranged for his union to sit down with a contractor to work out the details of a large public-works project. And only in Shumlin’s term did the Nulhegan Abenaki (and the Elnu Abenaki, another Club partner) gain official state recognition. “Peter Shumlin is the first governor who looked at us as equals, and not as a thorn in his side,” Willard said. “It meant a lot to all of us…”

    To read the full article go to this link: http://www.sierraclub.org/sier…  

I stumbled onto an article through a vtdigger.com link about the captive insurance industry. Before your eyes glaze over, it’s ok – the report goes only a little into the deep weeds of captive insurance. It seems the state of Connecticut, erstwhile insurance capital of the world, is growling and about to take a bite out of Vermont’s profitable captive insurance industry.

Captive insurance is a form of self-insurance subsidiary set up by a large company (such as IBM) to insure the company's own risk. By keeping insurance costs “in house” the savings to corporations are substantial. Vermont is the world’s third-largest domicile of captives with over 900 licensed through the state. Connecticut’s plan, in part:

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is looking for something new in one of the state's oldest industries. His budget proposes to establish a division in the Insurance Department to regulate companies that specialize in captive insurance, a form of self-insurance.  Among proposed incentives for luring captives to Connecticut is establishing a $7,500 tax credit for a captive insurer's first year in business and modify[ing] certain requirements.  

Okay, competition for the captive insurance dollar. So here’s David Provost, Vermont’s deputy commissioner of captive insurance, on how Vermont keeps its captives captive.

The state has not offered tax breaks or other inducements, but provides a "stable, predictable" business environment,

Surely the Deputy Commissioner must have misspoken or been misquoted in his comments in the article about the secret behind Vermont’s captive insurance success.

Checking out the Vermont BISHCA website, we find there are dozens of “improvements” to regulations and “housekeeping” changes made by the legislature (some at the captives’ request) to accommodate and streamline regulation for the captive insurance industry. The BISHCA website notes one result of “housekeeping” changes in captive insurance laws

Recodified changes […] for the second time since captive law was adopted, allowed for a significant reduction in captive premium taxes

One of the recent legislative changes celebrated last year was making a three-year-old (temporary) tax break permanent. An industry official wrote when the Vermont bill was signed:

The bill also makes permanent the elimination of the first year minimum tax of $7,500 for newly licensed captives. “It was a way for the Legislature and Governor to say thank you to an industry that has been so beneficial to Vermont,” said Richard Smith, President of the Vermont Captive Insurance Association (VCIA).

Coincidently the same $7,500 tax inducement is something the Connecticut Governor is proposing. A seven-thousand-dollar sweetener is a drop in the bucket for this industry. The rule changes may just be the sign of good and flexible captive regulators, but for a deputy commissioner to say that this industry doesn’t get inducements or breaks from Vermont makes the facts rather more “flexible” and elastic than their substance can stand. It isn’t as if Connecticut hasn’t noticed.  

Our intrepid State Auditor of Accounts, Tom Salmon, has made another big splashy announcement. He’s released a list of embezzlements from Vermont public schools totaling $415,000 since the year 2000. And he is shocked. Shocked!

“For a small state, the frequency of incidents involving fraud, embezzlement or theft in our schools is alarming,” Salmon said in a news release.

…Salmon expressed concern that the state Department of Education “has no policy for schools to report such incidents.”

(From the Burlington Free Press website)

Wow. Sounds like we have an epidemic of light-fingered school employees (probably unionized, n’est-ce pas?) stealing money out of the taxpayers’ pockets. Good going, Tom! Whatever would we do without our Auditor?

Unfortunately for Mr. Salmon, he made the mistake of issuing a full report with all the data and posting it online. And the full report makes him look like an alarmist out to score cheap political points at the expense of our public schools and citizens’ trust in them.

After the jump: Eight kinds of nonsense.  

First of all, let’s look at the relative scope of the problem. Even if you assume that it’s $415,000 in school system cash — which it is NOT, see below — that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount of money in public education. Salmon’s own press release says “Each year, approximately $1.5 billion flows through the state education system.” Okay, $1.5 billion times twelve years equals $18 billion.

Now, my math skills are pretty rusty, but that looks like a theft rate of about four-one-thousandths of a percent. That’s 0.004%. That’s pretty damn impressive in my book. Our schools must have very good financial controls in place. We don’t have an epidemic of fraud; we have a dearth.

Second, these aren’t newly-discovered incidents. The vast majority were made public at the time. The only thing Salmon did was send a questionnaire to all the districts and Supervisory Unions in the state, and tot up the responses.

Third, in virtually every case, authorities were contacted, the guilty party was found, was fired, and either pled guilty or was convicted.

Fourth, in most cases, restitution was made or is in progress. So the actual losses are substantially less than the reported $415,000. So my 0.004% rate is actually too high. In terms of funds actually lost, it’s probably less than 0.002%.  

Fifth, Salmon’s list is greatly padded in a number of ways: cases where the theft was discovered before any funds were paid*; cases involving petty amounts of money**; cases where student or parent money was taken, not school funds***; and a couple of cases of electronic fraud committed by hackers outside the school system. Several equipment thefts were on the list, and one case where a principal’s keys were stolen, resulting in a $1,000 charge to change the locks. If a district lost a camera or a laptop, it made the list.

Sixth, the total is dramatically inflated by a handful of major cases. Three incidents account for almost three-quarters of the $415,000 total.

Seventh, in every case where it made sense to do so, policies and procedures were tightened up to prevent further thefts.

Eighth, Salmon makes a big stink over the lack of reporting to the Education Department or the Auditor. He implies some sort of negligence or looseness in the system. However, the districts are not required to report such cases, so there is no negligence involved. Virtually all incidents were reported to relevant authorities, and the others were too small to bother with.

My conclusion, after carefully reviewing Salmon’s report, is that our school districts have an excellent handle on their money, that there’s no real need for changes in policy or law, and that Tom Salmon is engaging in shameless political grandstanding.

*Example: An employee changed the salary figure in her contract, inflating her pay by $3,000. It was detected before she ever drew a check, and she lost her job.

***Example: A PTO officer wrote checks totaling $13,000 from the PTO account. There was an arrest, a guilty plea, and full restitution was made.

(This is an important effort that deserves our full support.   – promoted by Sue Prent)

Green Mountain Daily Community,

This Thursday, February 23rd, we need YOU to come to the Statehouse to tell Governor Peter Shumlin that forest conservation is important to Vermonters, important in the fight against climate change, and is important in helping to maintain our rural way of life!

What: Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition Meeting With Governor and Lawmakers

When: Thursday, February 23rd, 2012, 9:00am-10:00am

Where: Room 11 of the Statehouse, Montpelier, Vermont

Why: Because you care about our forests, our environment, and our wildlife!

    For more than a year the Vermont Sierra Club, along with our partners in 350 Vermont, the Vermont Workers Center, organized labor, the Abenaki community, and other environmental groups have been engaged in the grassroots Our Forest Our Future campaign. This campaign is seeking to build a comprehensive system of conserved wildlife corridors throughout Vermont, linking our forests to those in surrounding states.   We intend to achieve this historic task by creating a mosaic of new locally owned town and Abenaki forests.

    We assert that such community forests can help protect our environment, reduce the climate change related stressors placed upon wildlife, and aid in carbon sequestration.  In addition, community forests can help local communities provide free or affordable firewood for elderly and low income residents, provide public revenue and jobs through sustainable forestry, and can provide a public place for Vermonters to hunt and fish. This is The Vermont Way!

    But in order to achieve these historic goals, we need to have the tools to do so.  The Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund is one such important tool in this fight.  This fund, in part, helps provide public money to establish community forests, and must be expanded in order to meet the needs of Vermonters and our environment.  

    Governor Peter Shumlin has made support for VHCB funding a central part of his fiscal policy.  His budget recommends $14 MILLION FOR VHCB – a $1.2 million increase for the year. However, there are those within the Republican Party who are not only against this increase, but who are calling for the fund to be entirely eliminated.

    Don’t let this happen!  Let’s not roll back the clock in our efforts to save Vermont’s forests!  Come to the Statehouse on Feb 23rd and let’s send Montpelier an unmistakable message: Vermonters support conservation, Vermonters support community forests, and Vermonters support an increase to the Housing and Conservation Fund!  

    Together, with your direct support and participation we will win! Let’s Put People and the Planet First!

David Van Deusen,

Conservation Organizer,

Vermont Sierra Club

(802)522-5812