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.

Our national jobs problem is nearly solved.

True to his promise, the House of Representatives, led by John Boehner, is poised to pass legislation that is guaranteed to solve the jobs deficit plaguing the American economy.

From The Hill:House Republicans on Tuesday will try to pass a resolution  reaffirming that “In God We Trust” is the national motto of the United  States.

The concurrent resolution,  sponsored by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), would not have the force of  law, but instead is aimed at “supporting and encouraging the public  display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools  and other government institutions.”

Expectations are high that in addition to creating millions of jobs, this new measure will resolve the real estate and foreclosure crisis, which will, in turn, generate trillions of dollars to balance the federal budget and eliminate the national debt.

 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.  

UPDATE: The Washington County Democratic Committee reportedly passed an identical resolution this week.

(Correct. We had some abstentions, given  that there is a good representation of VSEA in our committee, but no no votes. -Jack)

In the ongoing Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) conflict with the Governor’s office over post-Irene double-time for approximately 90 displaced state workers, the Lamoille County Democratic Committee last week made it known unanimously that they stand with their traditional allies in labor, calling on Democratic Governor Shumlin to stand down and “desist from castigation of the efforts of working Vermonters to seek an adjudication of contractual grievances through proper and recognized means”. Note that resolution does not make a stand on the merits of the grievance itself, it just calls on the administration to cease the public conflict and allow the grievance to play out through normal channels.

The public nature of this conflict and the surprising personal engagement on the issue by Governor Shumlin has been unprecedented, catching many in the labor community off guard. As I reported for the Bridge last week, despite the administration’s protestations that they (in the words of Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding in his “My Turn” piece for the Freeps) “have no interest in having a public fight with the VSEA,” Spaulding acknowledged to me that it was indeed the administration that leaked the story to the press in the first place. The leak was followed immediately with the full court press by the Governor. For good or ill, Shumlin clearly decided to take on the union publicly over this issue in a big way (Communications chief Sue Allen was going to get back to me when I called the Governor’s office to ask about that decision, but she never did, unfortunately).

The complete Lamoille County resolution after the flip (note: I’m not going to opine on any of this, since I’ve started tracking it as a reporter – just the facts, here)…

RESOLUTION OF LABOR SUPPORT

LAMOILLE DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE

WHEREAS;  The Lamoille County Democratic Committee believes that John L. Lewis was correct when he said the “It ill-behooves those who have supped at labor’s table to curse with equal vigor and fine impartiality the forces of labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace”; and,

WHEREAS;  The Lamoille County Democratic County Committee believes that the Vermont Democratic Party has benefitted substantially from the support of organized labor over many years; and,

WHEREAS;  The Lamoille County Democratic County Committee believes that working people in Vermont have a right to seek redress of contractual grievances free of any public condemnation by public officials;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Lamoille County Democratic Committee that:

(1) The Committee supports recent and ongoing efforts by members of the Vermont State Employee Association to obtain a ruling from duly constituted authority and a clarification of the terms of its contract with the State of Vermont;

(2) The Committee urges elected and appointed public officials to desist from castigation of the efforts of working Vermonters to seek an adjudication of contractual grievances through proper and recognized means;

(3)  The Committee instructs its Chair and delegates to the Vermont State Democratic Committee to submit this resolution to said State Committee and urge the adoption of a similar resolution by said committee.

(I LOVE this idea, and just had to kick it upstairs!  It’s time for Vermont Yankee to start thinking about re-deploying those valued employees its always talking about into a monitoring and maintenance team for a reactor on its way to dismantling.  It’s time to brace the decommissioning fund, level with the stockholders and generally get their house in order for closure.  Enough of the stalling and bluff brinksmanship. – promoted by Sue Prent)

More info:

http://safeandgreenenergyallia…  

An Op-Ed By Brigid Sullivan, Executive Committee Member of the Vermont Sierra Club

October 27th, 2011, Vermont – Our forests and the outdoor traditions that depend on them are under threat. Pollution, climate change, and irresponsible vacation home development are creating new challenges that, left unchecked, will result in the degradation of our game populations, trees, and more. What the latest science tells us is that in order to combat these challenges, we must take action immediately by creating viable wildlife migration corridors linking our core habitat areas in the Green Mountains to the Northeast Kingdom. The science also says that we must expand these corridors to our borders in order to link Vermont’s forests with those in surrounding states and provinces. In short, our woods are part of the larger eco-system known as the Great Northeastern Forest, and must be treated as a treasure for future generations.  

    The Vermont Sierra Club, in close partnership with the Northeast Kingdom’s Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, is responding to this challenge through the building of the Our Forests Our Future campaign. This campaign has the goal of creating these wildlife corridors through a mosaic of newly established community forests.  By community forests we are referring to town owned forests and Abenaki owned forests that serve as public assets. In other words, we maintain that Vermont lands should stay in Vermont hands. By our way of thinking, this is the Vermont way!

   We also favor the creation of these new conservation oriented community forests because, in addition to helping with climate friendly carbon sequestration, such public lands will also bring economic and social benefits to the communities in which they are situated. They can:

*Provide educational opportunities for local school children

*Generate public or tribal revenue through sustainable logging

*Help support sustainable logging jobs  

*Be a source of free or affordable firewood for local elderly and low income people

*Be a place for public hunting and fishing

*Be a place for public recreation

     The fact is, Vermonters support the local approach to conservation, and so do we. This is not conjecture. Thus far the Our Forests Our Future campaign is endorsed by the Nulhegan and Elnu Abenaki Tribes, the Vermont AFL-CIO, the Green Mountain Central Labor Council, the Workers Center, the Capital City Grange, the Global Justice Ecology Project, the Conservation Law Foundation, and 350 Vermont.  Together these partners represent 8% of Vermont’s total workforce. The goals of this campaign were also supported by the recent Moving Planet rally in Montpelier. There, over 1500 Vermonters reaffirmed their support for conservation and community forests while Nulhegan Abenaki leader, Luke Willard, spoke to these ideas and values from the podium.

    The historic struggle to preserve Vermont’s forests and outdoor traditions through the establishment of new community forests will not be achieved overnight, but it has to start now. In order to achieve our common aims we must call on our Congressional Delegation to better fund and then capture resources from the federal Community Forest and Forest Legacy Programs. We must call on our Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to better focus their existing resources upon such projects. And we must call upon our state legislators and our Governor, Peter Shumlin, to support the establishment of a modest yet progressive fund for the sole purpose of building new community forests that meet the above goals. This is an environmental necessity, and should be an economic priority. We invite you, as a fellow Vermonter, to agree.

Guess it’s time to get on the bandwagon. Here’s the GMD smartphone app. Myself, I still have a dumb phone (I’m cheap), so don’t ask for no help from me. Click here or on the image to go to the download site… and let us know if it works.

( – promoted by odum)

UPDATE: The presser got cancelled. A quick call to the office indicated that the national office had pulled the rug out from under it to retool the issue before public release. I was informed that the press conference would be rescheduled for next week, that Executive Director Wally Roberts had “misread the law” and would come back witha complaint based on campaign spending, rather than contributions.

But that’s not likely. Word is that the Common Cause complaint is based on a reading that does not take into account Anthony Pollina’s complaint during 2008 that this (then) new campaign finance law was (allegedly) unfairly interpreted to his detriment as an independent, by restricting his fundraising based on the primary calendar. Roberts is allegedly basing his complaint on his literal interpretation of the language of the statute, and not the precedent set by Oxfeld v Sorrell.

To cut to the chase: there’s no there there. Common Cause VT did not have it’s ducks in a row, as there are no ducks. Expect this issue to die the straw death.

Hm. This doesn’t sound good. From the press release sent out by Vermont Common Cause:

Common Cause of Vermont (CCVT) will hold a Press Conference on Thursday, October 27 at 1 P.M. in the Cedar Creek room of the Statehouse to announce that we are requesting that the Attorney General investigate possible illegal contributions to the Shumlin for Governor campaign. CCVT will release the contents of their letter to the Attorney General and make available printouts of the spreadsheets it used to document its request.

And around we go. Tayt Brooks is (back) out as Executive Director of the Vermont Republican Party and Mike Bertrand is in. Bertrand was one of Jim Douglas’s frequent appointees to positions of power in his administration, regardless of his experience. Commissioner of this, Secretary of that… I dunno. It’s all sort of a blur.

Is it me, or does the list of go-to guys on the GOP bench seem awfully limited? Now we get Bertrand – part of that same crowd, but a name we heard more often earlier in the century – especially when he ran for Secretary of State against Markowitz. He was like the 21st Century first wave Jason Gibbs.

With Jim Barnett in greener pastures, are we destined just to see Tayt Brooks, Jason Gibbs, and Mike Bertrand over and over again (with Rob Roper the only alternative/anomaly?)? Has Neale Lunderville graduated, or we see him back in one of these election-steering roles again (after he runs for Treasurer or Secretary of State following his high-profile gig with the Shumlin administration – thanks, Pete.)?

If the Dems have a problem with not retaining state/institutional memory and going for brand new outside talent cycle after cycle, the Repubs seem to have the opposite problem. Musical chairs with the same dwindling bench (ack, I mixed metaphors again).

You’d think after the recent epic electoral collapse (Dem supermajorities in both leg branches, all three federal officeholders Dem… if not all in name… losing the Governorship), the Vermont GOP would be at least as interested in cleaning house as the Red Sox.

With any luck, maybe they’ll bring back Corey Bliss too.

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.