Author Archives: Dick

Tax Fraud?

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Vermont’s public service commissioner David O’Brien said the City of Burlington broke the law when it used $17 million of city money to set up a city-owned telecommunications service. Commissioner O’Brien also said statements by the city officials trouble him because the mayor and city administrator have admitted they knowingly disobeyed the law. “Taxpayers are not risk investors,” he said.

Burlington Telecom is a city-built, city-owned, city-operated, and now city-financed telecommunications company that is a division of the city government. It offers television, telephone, and broadband internet services to residents throughout the City of Burlington, Vermont.

It’s a nice system other than that little issue that “Taxpayers are not [supposed to be] risk investors.”

Bernard Sanders, (I-VT) and now the junior senator from Vermont, was Burlington’s mayor in the 1980s. The self-described democratic socialist formed the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party. Mr. Sanders was first to put forth the concept of a network that could connect every home and business of Burlington.

It’s a nice idea other than that little issue that the U.S. Congress has ruled that public entities like the National Guard may not compete with private businesses.

Burlington Telecom has an attractive and competitive cable TV plan that offers with 152 channels, 45 digital music channels, Local-On-Demand, Video-On-Demand plus 57 High Definition channels available on an optional package and a la carte access to premium channels. The free channel cable TV offerings include local channels plus Al Jazeera English on channel 132 and Fox Business News next door on channel 133. They even have the Speed Channel, a crucial offering for my friend Rufus, and Food Network, equally important to my friend Kay Ace now that she has all that time on her hands. The system operates on a city-wide fiber-optic network. Their “Triple Play Bundles” include free access to BT’s city-wide Wi-Fi hot spots and a telephone Call Block option that allows subscribers to create a blacklist of numbers that can’t connect to your phone. That would eliminate at least some spam calls that sneak around the Do Not Call list.

It’s a nice program other than that little issue that Comcast has the license to provide those services in Vermont.

Burlington’s Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold didn’t bother to inform anyone that BT was financing its activities with city funds. He is presently urging the city to relax its rules so BT can grab more city money to expand the system outside city limits which means the system could arrive in North Puffin sometime soon. Mr. Leopold said the money shouldn’t be regarded as “taxpayer” money because it comes mostly from other city “business activities.”

Right.

Commissioner O’Brien says the city violated the promise that taxpayer money would not be used to start a telecommunications company. With a wink and a nod, Mr. Leopold called the promise “overly optimistic.”

It’s a nice system other than that little issue that “Taxpayers are not [supposed to be] risk investors.”

Current mayor Bob Kiss (Progressive-Burlington) defended his actions and the business. “Commissioner O’Brien’s statements … are inaccurate, inflammatory, and totally inappropriate,” he said. I suspect that Commissioner O’Brien is on Mayor Kiss’ Call Block list now.

Mayor Kiss is right to be outraged. After all, Commissioner O’Brien chose to publicly excoriate the Chosen Ones of Burlington for using tax money to take over businesses and we now know that is perfectly legitimate behavior. After all, Mayor Kiss has the President of the United States and the United States Congress as bright and shining examples.

Or not.

Cock of the Walk Getting Layed (Off) In Vermont

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BARRE TOWN, VERMONT — Kathy Rubacalba lives with about 100 chickens and, now, almost no roosters. Her home and her backyard egg operation sits on a quarter-acre homestead in East Barre. Town officials there say her roosters crow. That must violate something, don’t you think?

Last Wednesday afternoon, three police officers, the town’s animal control officer, and a “representative of the town” — a self-proclaimed town “chicken expert” — raided Rubacalba’s roost without a warrant; they confiscated four roosters (three too small to crow) because they, well, crow.

“Dogs bark, roosters crow, mufflers are loud, you live in a village there’s noise,” Ms. Rubacalba said.

Vermont prides itself on being a little behind the times — we were the last state to get a WalMart for heaven’s sake — but Vermont is right at the top of the list on property rights.

Except at Ms. Rubacalba’s house.

One neighbor noticed that the Town “brought a SWAT team” to take a roosters and a couple of chicks.

Max Sennett couldn’t make this property rights and due process stuff up.

The Vermont Right to Farm Act exempts backyard farms from nuisance claims which means flatlanders can’t complain when the farm next door spreads manure in the fields. It also means the East Barre selectboard should have quashed the complaint before the cops got caught up in a clustercluck.

There’s more. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Michigan that a local zoning officer violated a landowner’s rights by conducting a warrantless search of the landowner’s property. The zoning enforcement officer made several unannounced visits to the property. The Court noted that the unannounced warrantless searches were not routine inspections. Not only that, the Court said it makes no difference that the zoning enforcement officer was not a law-enforcement officer since “it is clearly established that a government official does not have to carry a badge and a gun to be subject to the restrictions on the Fourth Amendment.”

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court in New Mexico similarly rejected a building inspector’s nonconsensual warrantless search of private property.

East Barre didn’t even send a zoning officer. They sent a “chicken expert” and three police officers who prevented Ms. Rubalcaba from accompanying the expert into at least one of the closed-door chicken coops on her property.

Media attempts to reach Town Manager Carl Rogers or Town Attorney Michael Monte for comment have been unsuccessful.

Ms. [Image] Rubalcaba says she is “a full-time chicken farmer” since her job at Norwich University was “eliminated” in April. Her backyard farm is called Layed In Vermont.

By the way, the chicken expert apparently did get one rooster but took two or three hen chicks. Cartoonist Jeff Danzigger promised to design a logo for Ms. Rubalcaba. Maybe it could look like this.

Out of Work

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When you’re out of work
the unemployment rate is 100%

Kay Ace (not her real name) lost her job on her birthday Friday. She filed an unemployment claim and began a new job search this morning.

The MegaInsuranceCo had cut her hours to part time last year but the falling real estate market and her rising salary (and age) made her too expensive to keep around. Her now former boss was told to hire a cheaper worker in her place.

U.S. job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, a new record and the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.

With more people at home, only two indices have risen: the number of television hours watched and the birthrate. It seems we are making more unemployed workers naturally and taking in more “bright and shiny buy me now” advertising.

Vermont’s Unemployment Trust Fund will run out of money soon, most likely in January. The state expects to borrow about $160 million from the Federal government to keep the Trust Fund afloat through 2010.

“That won’t affect your Ms. Ace,” Representative Liana Leger (D-North Puffin) told me. “We have added employees at the offices to handle the increased unemployment claims and benefits will be paid on schedule.” Rep. Leger has held office since 1996.

In 1998, the legislature increased benefits without any new revenue, Vermont Labor Commissioner Patricia Moulton Powden said last week on You Can Quote Me. “Anyone who runs a business knows that when you spend more you have to have more income coming in.”

That 1997-98 legislative session was a very productive one for this state. Howard Dean (D-VT) was governor, Peter Shumlin (D-Windham) was Senate President pro-tempore (and now is a gubernatorial candidate), Michael Obuchowski (D-Windham) was Speaker of the House, and the assembly was in a spending mood. In addition to Act 101 (the act that changed unemployment compensation), the legislature passed a health insurance mandate that required plans to provide mental health coverage without establishing “any rate, term or condition that places a greater financial burden on an insured.” They adopted public campaign financing for the offices of governor and lieutenant governor to restrict “excessive campaign expenditures.” And they passed the Equal Educational Opportunity “to make educational opportunity available to each pupil in each town on substantially equal terms.” In a stroke of the pen, that “substantially equal access” to per pupil spending moved the revenue stream from the Towns to the State general fund.

Not surprisingly the Vermont economy has sunk.

The Vermont Legislature and the Vermont State Employee Association (the union for state workers) have each been pretty boneheaded about revenues this year. The lawmakers keep spending and the employees expect raises even as the governor tries to cut $7.4 million in labor costs.

Talks between Gov. Jim Douglas and the VSEA have broken down.

The State of Vermont had about 8,262 employees in 2008 which made the State the largest employer in the state for something like the 10th year in a row. The average salary of a state employee was $50,014 last year. That’s considerably more than Ms. Ace earned.

“These are the only employees in the state I can think of who have been accepting a couple of pay raises over the past few years and won’t come to the table to help us save their colleagues’ jobs and meet the needs of the state in this challenging fiscal and economic time,” Gov. Douglas said.

Lawmakers have said they are disappointed the two sides could not agree but it appears likely the state will raise taxes to make up for the revenue shortfall.

“It’s alright. We have elves in the cellar of the Statehouse,” Rep. Leger said. “They spin good Vermont straw into gold.”

“Leger” is not a French word for “gooberhead” no matter what the conservative pundits say.

I know. Maybe Ms. Ace can get a job with the VSEA.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

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Ahhhh. The sounds of silence. Not the song that propelled Simon and Garfunkel to worldwide fame but rather the reason so many people prefer living on rural roads: to be away from the revving engines and gunshots that punctuate city streets.

There ought to be a law.

Vermont held its youth waterfowl hunting weekend Saturday and Sunday. Hunters under the age of 16 got to hunt ducks and geese statewide during this “introductory” season as long as an adult accompanied them. The adult may not hunt or carry a firearm. Both must have Vermont hunting licenses but neither the youth nor the adult is required to hold a state or federal duck stamp for the weekend.

I like to sleep in until 8 or 8:30 on weekends but the North Puffin farmhouse sits on the shore of a bay popular with ducks. Our neighbor Madeleine fed the ducks for many years and we on this bay had an informal moratorium on hunting shanties. It is a tranquil body of water.

Shotguns — even those pointed at the sky — pounding the dawn a few hundred feet from my bed do bust tranquility. Pretty hard on the ducks, too.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

A South Puffin ordinance prohibits either Leatherface Hewitt or Lynyrd Skynyrd from starting a chainsaw within city limits before 9 a.m. It is an irritant to construction workers but pleasant for residents.

The regular duck season opens Saturday-week, October 10, in the Lake Champlain and Interior Vermont Zones but next Tuesday October 6 in the Connecticut River Zone. The split season Lake Champlain Zone runs just three days then restarts on October 24 and runs through December 18. Legal shooting hours for waterfowl begin one-half hour before sunrise every day of the season and end at sunset.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Duck hunting doesn’t come cheap.

25 rounds of Winchester® XPert® 12 Gauge 3-1/2 inch steel shotshells for waterfowl costs between $10 and $40 bucks, depending on size and where you buy them. A buck a shot.

Gas for the boat and the truck to tow it costs between $6 and $126 bucks, depending on how far you tow and how fast you (don’t) row.

A good night’s sleep: priceless.

F.D.A. Fell to a Push by Lawmakers

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Here’s a surprise. The FDA said that Democratic Senators Menendez and Lautenberg and Representatives Pallone and Rothman and its own former commissioner pushed the FDA to “politically” override the scientists. All four legislators sold out for peanuts–they received a total of $26,000 in “campaign contributions” from the manufacturer–shortly before leaning on the FDA.

These are the guys making Health Care Reform law, right? Jeezum, they’re not even good at being crooks.

Mark Twain wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.“

Campaign finance “reform,” like health care “reform” will have quotes around it until we not only throw da current bums out but we also throw out all da little rules and perks they have passed for themselves over the last few decades.