From VPR, presented without comment for the moment:
Governor-elect Peter Shumlin has decided to retain a senior member of Governor Jim Douglas’ budget team.
Shumlin says he’ll reappoint Jim Reardon as the commissioner of Finance and Management.
That’s the official who’s responsible for preparing the governor’s budget and presenting it to the Legislature.
More troubling news on the home-heating front. Always a challenge in Vermont’s bitter climate, economic hardship may force many more elderly and low-income families to choose this winter between food and heat.
Thanks to legislation sponsored by Senators Sanders, Leahy and Congressman Welch, federal funding for heating assistance more than doubled in the last two years; however, according to a release from Bernie Sanders’ office
“Because Congress has not yet approved spending bills for the coming year…initial allocations by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the energy assistance program were about 40 percent less than last year’s levels….Vermont was allocated $15 million instead of the more than $25 million the state would receive if the program was fully funded.”
So despite the fact that poor Vermonters’ need is growing, there will likely be less help to go around this year; and we already know how hard it is proving to be to get any assistance at all.
Senators Sanders and Leahy have sent a letter to leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee pleading the case for fully funding the program for seniors and low-income families. If Congress does not recognize the urgency of approving the additional funds for the coming year, the average benefit to needy households will be reduced from $1,100. to $660.
“During these very difficult times, we have got to make sure that not one Vermonter goes cold this winter or has to make the unacceptable choice between heating their homes and feeding their families,” Sanders said. “LIHEAP is a lifeline to dignity for thousands of Vermont senior citizens on fixed incomes, the disabled, and families with children. Fully funding this program is essential this winter.”
It seems like a cruel joke that even after they successfully run the gantlet of endless waits and bureaucracy to finally get approved for assistance, poor Vermonters are likely to get substantially less than is needed.
Republican Leadership Faces a Crisis as It Prepares to Take Control of House in January: Congress Must Vote on Raising the Nation’s ‘Credit-Card Limit’ by Spring, But Newly-Elected Tea Party Hard-Liners Vow They Won’t Support Raising Debt Limit — Raising the Threat of a Government Default That Could Set Off Another Financial-Market Meltdown, Plunging the U.S. Economy Into a Free Fall
AFTER ROUTING DEMOCRATS, REPUBLICAN RIFT BLOWS WIDE OPEN — Less than three weeks after routing the Democrats in the midterm elections, Republicans already are in the throes of a major rift that threatens to destroy party unity. Newly-elected Tea Party-backed Republicans are causing a huge headache for the GOP leadership by vowing not to vote to raise the national debt ceiling — which Congress must vote on by next spring. Essentially the nation’s de facto credit-card limit, the debt ceiling is due to max out by that time. If Congress fails to act, the government would legally default on paying its debts — forcing the government to shut down and setting off chaos in the financial markets that could plunge the U.S. economy into a free fall. (Photo: Steve Bloom/Barcroft Media)
(Posted 5:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, November 23, 2010)
By SKEETER SANDERS
WASHINGTON — As the nation prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving, the euphoria and boldness expressed by Republicans in the three weeks since they routed the Democrats to take control of the House of Representatives in January already has given way to bitter internal feuding as the GOP leadership confronts having to make a decision by next spring on raising the nation’s de facto credit-card limit.
House Republican Leader John Boehner, who will take over as speaker from Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said Thursday that the GOP-controlled House will have to act on the national debt ceiling, now set at $14.3 trillion. The actual national debt now stands at $13.87 trillion and is expected to hit the ceiling by next spring.
But the speaker-to-be already is facing an open revolt by newly-elected Tea Party-backed hard-liners, many of whom have vowed to vote against raising the national debt ceiling, insisting that voters gave them a clear mandate to reduce government spending and that raising the debt limit would only encourage more spending.
TEA PARTY-BACKED REPUBLICANS WANT SPENDING CUTS FIRST
Representative-elect Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that “The [debt ceiling] vote will garner a lot of attention and provoke a lot of pain and anxiety, but there are consequences to all votes. The question is, when are we going to stop the way we are going? I think we have to stop it now.”
And Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” November 7 that he would vote against raising the debt ceiling, “unless it’s combined with some path to balancing our budget, returning to 2008 spending levels,” and repealing the health-care reform law passed by Congress last spring without a single Republican vote.
“We have got to demonstrate that we have the resolve to cut spending,” DeMint said. “We cannot allow that to go through the Congress without showing the American people that we are going to balance the budget, and we’re not going to continue to raise the debt in America.”
FAILURE TO RAISE DEBT CEILING WOULD TRIGGER ECONOMIC CHAOS
But Boehner, in a series of closed-door meetings with Republican freshmen, bluntly warned the Tea Party-backed firebrands that Congress has little choice but to raise the debt limit. “I’ve made it pretty clear to them . . . that Congress is going to have to deal with this,” Boehner said in a Thursday news conference. “We’re going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.”
Failure to raise the debt ceiling would force the government to default on paying its bills and shut down. A default would, in turn, trigger severe economic shock waves, damaging, if not destroying, the nation’s credit rating.
Interest rates would soar dramatically, making it all but impossible for individuals or businesses to obtain or maintain credit. Foreign investors — who, according to the Treasury Department, now hold more than $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities — would be prompted not to buy any more, causing the dollar to plummet in value against other currencies and triggering chaos in world financial markets.
That, in turn, would cripple the already-struggling U.S. economy, throwing millions more Americans out of work.
COBURN AIDE: ‘ECONOMY IS GOING TO COLLAPSE’
Those dire predictions don’t appear to faze Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma). According to Coburn spokesman John Hart, “We know the American economy is going to collapse, so why don’t we start the hard work of cutting spending now? We’re already in a crisis, and the time to reduce spending is immediately.”
Hart told The Washington Times last Sunday that Coburn was prepared to tie up the debt-ceiling measure unless it’s accompanied by major spending cuts. “He’s willing to block it, to put a hold on it, to use all procedural tools available, to ensure Congress reduces spending,” Hart said.
Other newly-elected Republican firebrands weren’t swayed by Boehner’s warning, either. Representatives-elect Kristi Noem of South Dakota, >Tim Scott of South Carolina, Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, Steven Stivers of Ohio and Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania all insisted to Boehner that they will vote against raising the debt limit.
Ribble called raising the debt limit “unconscionable” and “insane.” Stivers denounced it as “a reckless desire to spend money we don’t have, and borrow money we can’t afford to pay back.” Barletta compared the national debt to slavery, denouncing both congress and President Obama of “spending our country into servitude.”
FOR TEA PARTY FRESHMEN, A DIFFICULT TRANSITION FROM CAMPAIGNING TO GOVERNING
Boehner faced a difficult task in convening the freshmen on the need to raise the debt ceiling from the start, as many of the freshmen made the national debt and government spending the top-priority issues in their campaigns to unseat Democratic incumbents — and they’re in no mood to do anything to increase the debt further.
At the same time, however, the debt-ceiling vote poses a stark challenge for many of the newly-elected lawmakers to make the transition from campaigning to actually governing.
“A lot of these Tea Party Republicans made a lot of sweeping pronouncements on the campaign trail about cutting government spending and reducing the debt,” said a Democratic strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But once they’re sworn into office, they’re going to get a hard dose of fiscal reality and they’ll be forced to do things they swore on the campaign trail they would never do.”
WILL OBAMA, DEMOCRATS HANG TOUGH ON BUSH TAX CUTS?
With the Tea Party Republican freshmen likely to insist on deep spending cuts as the price for their support to raise the national debt ceiling, will the Democrats be equally insistent that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans expire as scheduled at the end of the year as the price for their support for spending cuts?
While Republicans have sounded the mantra of tax cuts for more than 30 years, an 18-member bipartisan commission appointed by President Obama to find ways to reduce the more than $1 trillion federal budget deficit made it clear that spending cuts alone cannot close the deficit — it has grown far too large for that.
In their 50-page preliminary report, released November 10, commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Allan Simpson conclude that a combination of spending cuts, tax increases and revisions to existing government programs and departments — as well as a revision of the tax code — are necessary to create more sustainable budgets.
Whether Democrats like it or not, spending must be decreased to reduce the deficit. But whether Republicans like it or not, taxes must be increased to close the deficit as well — and since neither the poor nor the middle class can afford to bear the burden of higher taxes, they must be increased on those who can most afford to bear the burden: The wealthiest one percent of Americans.
# # #
Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.
I came across a story just a few moments ago. A woman in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania was jailed for getting pregnant, then died in prison due a lack of medical attention. There’s no need to wax poetic on the injustice, she was denied not only a woman’s right to be pregnant, but herhuman rights altogether.
You see, getting pregnant violated her probation and as a result she was jailed. While she was in jail she developed advanced pneumonia and even though she pleaded with the guards for weeks, she went ignored and died from the sickness, both her and her baby died from medical neglect.
Honestly, this is something I expect to hear in a country whose code of laws are stuck in the 13th century, not the United States.
What is equally disturbing as her medical neglect, is how she violated her probation: by getting pregnant. Pregnant, for Christ’s sake. A woman has her reproductive rights, and I don’t know how there is a place in this country that halts reproductive rights and makes getting pregnant a crime. In the most unfortunate of circumstances this woman was denied her basic human rights of reproduction and medical treatment.
I’m going to stop here only because I’m getting more infuriated and less coherent with my thoughts. Jesus.
Dottie Deans, chair of the Windsor County Democratic Committee, reports on the results of the House recount between Sarah Buxton (D) vs David Ainsworth (R). You might remember, this is the one that had a margin of two votes, and then another ballot was found, bringing the margin to one vote.:
Recount for Royalton/Tunbridge tie 880-880 as of 1:00pm! Now up to Judge Hayes!
There are states where the results of a tied election are resolved by a game of chance, like cutting a deck of cards. What about Vermont?
I don't recall ever seeing one of these do-over elections, but the law appears to be pretty clear. I assume there will be a challenge to the results to avoid having to rerun the election, but that's what it's looking like to me.
Per Boston.com:
In a stern letter sent Monday, Legal Aid says the state Department for Children and Families must comply with a previous federal court ruling and process applications within 30 days with an error rate of no more than 3 percent.
Department figures show that as of the week of Nov. 8, 35 percent of applications in the 3SquaresVT program — formerly known as food stamps — were taking longer than 30 days to process.
Now, let’s be clear about this: DCF head honcho Steve Dale claims that these problems result from an increase in caseload with more benefits being requested. But I thought our new technologies and improved, streamlined systems were going to fix all this? What happened to the “change” we were “challenged” to enact? There’s a whole online application form and everything. Wasn’t technology supposed to solve all our problems?
Where is Tom Evslin when we need him?
“Of all the blogsites in all the world, she has to come here. Well, they got Leftfield. One in, one out. What’s that you’re posting, Sam?”
“Just a little something I wrote up, Mr. Pete. About the Wars, the Injustice, the Hate, the Fear, and, of course, Gaza.”
“Well, knock it off. You know what I want you to post.”
“What’s that, Mr. Pete?”
“About a lady. And about a guy at the Republican National Convention with this comical look on his face cause his insides had just been kicked out.”
“You’re talking about Ms. Sarah, Mr. Pete. She’s no good for you. She only wants back those letters she gave you.”
“As if she isn’t in the news every day. As if I don’t think of her every time I see a working family getting the shaft, and that big oil spill in the Gulf. Huh. And Wall St., and WalMart, and wall to wall Capitalism. And now she wants those letters. Seems like if I have those letters, I’ll always be popular.”
“Mr. Pete, you could use those letters to save the world. She’s got the whole Corporate Plan in those letters.”
“Why should I? Why should I stick my neck out for anybody? I’m the only cause I’m interested in. Even if I gave those letters to Ralph Nader, he’d probably fuck it up. Better the goddamn world be put out of its misery.”
“Awh, you don’t mean that, Mr. Pete.”
“Maybe. But I’m going to hold on to those letters. If she thinks she can put one over on Fred C…wait a minute, wrong movie. If she thinks she can get me to help her, after all she’s already done, then I say to her: Go back to Alaska. It’s a good place to die.”
“Can I finish my post now, Mr. Pete. Are you all done?”
“I’ll all done. We’re all all done. Unless we can get Louie…I mean Obama to take a stand, it’s all pretty much over. Might as well catch the last plane out to Lisbon. If I could only get those letters out with me.”
“That TSA will find them and arrest you, Mr. Pete. Put you in that concentration camp.”
“Do me a favor, Sam”
“What’s that?”
“Those letters. I want you to keep them for me for a while. Hide them under your computer.”
“Well, if Ms. Sarah comes back with that Major guy, I guess she won’t look there. I don’t think she knows what a computer is.”
“Good. Huh. Mister, I met a man once…”
“What’s that, Mr. Pete.”
“Nothing. Just something in one of those letters. President? We’re in for it now, Sam.”
“I know, Mr. Pete. But I just want to say one thing: Here’s looking at you, Mr. Pete.”
“Who’s looking at me? What? Where?! Goddamn government!!!”
Peter Buknatski
Montpelier, Vt.
UPDATE: A range of people I trust are telling me not to slap a scarlet “V” on Miller from his time at VEPC. I may have had him unfairly pegged as a “West Wing” liberal. He’s well-liked and sounds like he may be open to different ideas. I’ll see if we can get him to address the GMD community soon. – JO
Today’s appointments from the Governor-Elect:
Annie Noonan, formerly of the Vermont State Employees Association, will help cool off tempers among organized labor after the appointment of Jeb Spaulding at Administration. Noonan is among the strongest advocates for labor interests Shumlin could have chosen. The Commerce appointments, however, continue the pronounced rightward bent of the economic team. While Shumlin may have indicated that all economic perspectives will be granted an audience, its looking like a far narrower range will actually be seated at the decision making table. Otter Creek Brewery Founder Miller was a Chair of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, and of course Powden was Jim Douglas’s Commissioner of Labor. VEPC is famously controversial among progressives due to questions around the appropriateness of giving large tax incentives to corporations, and the lack of transparency around these decisions. Miller does have more appealingly-lefty credentials as well, however, including a stint as Chair of the Vermont Clean Energy Development Fund.
Chuck Ross is notable, here. The long-time State Director for Senator Leahy has been a political presence for some time, both in his professional capacity as well as in the Democratic Party. Ross is a go-to contributor in party circles, as well as a bit of a kingmaker in Democratic politics. He’s also been the Democratic National Committeeman for some time – a position he holds rather dearly, as I discovered when I made noises on this site about possibly running for the position myself (he was none too pleased).
Ross’s move to Ag sends a signal that he intends to stay in the thick of political things after Senator Leahy retires (presumably after his coming term). This also puts him in a good position to be appointed to the Senate seat himself if Leahy unexpectedly retires before the end of his term.
Great! “Shades of things to come,” thought I, as I read the news of poor Vermonters being left on endless hold when they sought assistance with food and fuel following the implementation of new technology by the Department of Children and Families. Yes, that same Department of Children and Families where an employee famously embezzled nearly half-a-million dollars over a period of five years.
In theory, the “streamlining” of various state processes through advanced technology interfaces sounds like just the ticket to cut the fat from state budgets; but like everything in the man-made universe, technical systems are only as good as the planners, programmers and operators who are entrusted with making them work. We are told that modernizing efforts in the Department of Children and Families that have culminated in a bottleneck of epic proportions actually began several years ago; and that the system, initiated “on a shoestring,” was intended to be fully operational by last June.
“When you change a system, there are growing pains,” (Governor) Douglas spokesman David Coriell said.
Tell that to an elderly fuel assistance applicant, sitting in the November cold, as she is informed by an automated voice that she has a wait-time of over 1,000 minutes before someone will get to her call!
What gets me is that this is all so very predictable and speaks volumes of what we might expect in the wake of the Challenges for Change initiatives. So much future thought has been invested in the confidence that massive amounts of data can be easily collected from service-seekers through the internet, stored securely, and efficiently dispersed as needed to every office and agency in the state. Sounds great on paper; and if the human element could just be eliminated everything would run like clockwork.
But we all know what it’s like dealing with badly planned voice-mail systems that never offer an option that “fits;” where one finally hammers desperately at “0” in the faint hope of getting a human being…ANY human being. This isn’t a fault of the technology; it is a fault of the programmer; and it happens time and again when systems are rolled-out without sufficient attention to the practical workability of the interface when confronted with random and unpredictable demands. The assumption is always that every task and demand will neatly fit some planned digital template.
The need to find opportunities for savings in every corner of government is understandable, but to rush those efficiencies on the assumption that technology will make them happen seamlessly, may be counterproductive in the long-run, and downright harmful in the short. If the efficiencies are designed only with cost-savings in mind and not primarily to improve service to the public they are probably going to result in even greater pain for the taxpayers. I would urge the new administration to observe the old carpenter’s adage to “measure twice before cutting once” as you pursue your own “Challenges for Change.” It’s always the least among us who suffer the most when government paints efficiencies with too broad a brush.
I know how much you all just love taser stories…
The latest? The Times Argus is reporting (link behind paywall) that Montpelier police chief Tony Facos has requested money in the new police budget proposal for 14 tasers:
Facos included money for Tasers in the police department budget request that has been submitted to Montpelier City Manager Bill Fraser. Despite the request, it’s far from clear whether Facos will get his wish. Fraser will have to decide whether to include the chief’s request in the budget recommendation he is expected to make in early December to the city council. At that point, the council and the public would have a chance to weigh in.
The MPD requested tasers three years ago, and after public input, the request was denied. It’s not a done deal now at this point, as in addition to the council’s decision, there is still the matter of public input.
The police have a council ally in tough-guy councilman Alan H. Weiss:
When asked about some people’s opinions that Tasers have led to fatalities or are too easily abused, Weiss was dismissive.
“I just don’t give a damn about these attitudes,” he said. “What I’ve read and what I’ve heard about their use, they’re quite efficient and you don’t have to shoot anybody with a bullet or rap them over the head. One shot with the Taser and it quiets them right down.”
Only thing missing from Weiss’ comments was a “they probably had it coming” remark, but nevertheless, he’s sure to get an earful, for better or worse, when the public input starts rolling in.