Category Archives: Throw Da Bums Out

Smoke(stacks) and Mirrors

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“At a time of high gas prices and massive oil industry profits,” Mr. Obama has renewed “his call to end the $4 billion-per-year subsidies for oil and gas companies and invest in clean energy.”

Let us remember that the heavy “subsidies” are actually the tax breaks they get at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process rather than cash the taxpayer hands them at the pump. It’s also worth remembering that the oil business just happens to invest more in “clean” energy than any other industry.

Americans consume about 322 billion gallons of crude oil each year. Some of that goes to plastics. Some goes up the smokestacks heating our homes and making electricity. And about half, 146 billion gallons, is gasoline.

Oil producers pay on the order of $90 billion in income taxes each year and, in fact, pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than most other American corporations. Obama wants to take $4 billion more in taxes from them. That translates to around 1.4 cents per gallon of crude or, if you want to assess it all on gasoline, about 2.7 cents per gallon at the pump.

2.7 cents per gallon.

Speaking of the pump, We the Overtaxed People pay 18.4 cents per gallon in Federal tax on gasoline so that not-quite-3 cents is really coming from our driving.

Do you think Mr. Obama will drive the price at the pump down or up?

And do you really think Mr. Obama has an energy policy here or a political platform?

In the interests of full disclosure (regular readers know this), I do own ExxonMobil stock. I remain disappointed in their performance. I dislike subsidies but I despise political poseurs.

Sloganeering

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“Women’s health issues” is not a specific organism; it is a marketing slogan.

“Women’s health issues” is Beltway new-speak for abortion rights because liberals are afraid they might offend their three anti-choice voters.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting that every liberal Congress Critter is anti-choice and every conservative Congress Critter is pro-choice. The trouble is, the only choice We the OverTaxed people get is the choice the Congress Critters say we can have.)

Last week “Clean Energy” (new-speak for “we-have-to-burn-coal-in-our-Prius-even-if-we-don’t-mean-it”) was the buzzword. Clean energy is not a specific means to generate power; it is the marketing slogan for those who would harness the political might of the “acceptable” kind of taxation.

Week before, “Climate Chaos” (new-new-speak for “global warming”) was the buzzword. Climate chaos is not a specific science; it is the marketing slogan for those who would harness the political might of the carbocalypse.

Rather than having real discussions about the cost of government, energy and energy policy, or actual science, politicians give us slogan after slogan after slogan.

“With the right slogans I could even sell the ShamWOW™,” pitchman Billy Mays might have said. And politicians.

Nero’s cohort in Congress blinked on Friday. Every last one of them. Their behavior this year had already shown us they have no brains. Now we know they also have no balls.

Down around South Puffin, everybody’s chewing on Key Colony Beach Mayor Ron Sutton. He didn’t blink, see.

Key Colony Beach is a tiny city (population 744) and the heart of the Florida Keys. It is not smallest city in the Florida Keys or the nation; the first honor belongs to Layton with its total population of 186. Lost Springs, a town found in Converse County, Wyoming, had a population of one as of 2000 but the City of Greenhorn, Oregon, population 0, has real trouble financing a bucket truck. According to factfinder.census.gov, the population count for Greenhorn City, Oregon, is currently unavailable.

About 50 miles from Key West and twice that from the United States, Key Colony Beach is one of the few spots where the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean shake hands right outside your door.

Back on April Fool’s Day (my anniversary, in case anyone forgot) the KCB commissioners decided to replace the city bucket truck. They budgeted, as municipalities often do, “up to $24,400.” (The city has equipment reserves of $24,482 for trucks plus $9,685 for road equipment).

Mayor Sutton went to an auction in Riviera Beach, found a great truck, and bought it for $30,800 including the 10% buyer’s fee.

I priced a new Ford Ranger as a Key limes to lemons comparison. The base price was $18,050 but as shown, a wee bit more at $26,780. Most of the “as shown” items were fairly necessary. At least I usually consider seats and an engine necessary. And it didn’t have a bucket. Bucket seats don’t count.

Mayor Sutton decided this truck was a better buy for the city than a new Ranger. If the commission did not approve, he said, he would make up the extra expense out of his own pocket.

That’s putting your money where your mouth is. No slogans required.

That truck seems to have cost each resident $41.39. Sounds like a deal to me.

Say, Ron? Can I borrow the truck tomorrow? I need to get up on my roof to hoist this sculpture in the direction of Washington…

ObamaMathematics NGC 3372
sculpture prototypes

Speaking of expenditures, my son bought a “new TV and a six-pack of Sam” over the weekend.

He bought Sam Adams beer? That seems pretty extravagant.

I Told You So.

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But did anybody listen? Nooooooooooooooooo.

And so it begins: Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin has proposed a budget for the new year. Gov. Shumlin is a “Big-D” Demorat but one who won’t raise taxes. Gov. Shumlin’s budget increases the provider tax on Vermont’s hospitals by $17.4 million.

A “provider tax” ain’t a real tax, right?

The gov says this increase will simply “maximize the draw down” of matching Federal Medicaid dollars to help fill the State’s budget shortfall. It will tax hospitals, physicians, Home Health Agencies, and pretty much any other healthcare providers. Probably even WalMart because they (used to be able to) sell prescriptions for $4 which makes them a provider.

“Hey, Dick! I get my scrips from Wally now,” Raul Garcia told me. “Did you know that some of the stores charge me sales tax on them some of the time. Some don’t.” Mr. Garcia is North Puffin’s best known hypochondriac and was our most respected grant writer until that little trouble with the Feds. He ended up serving 18 months of a four year sentence for fraud after he used the $4 million he “borrowed” from a major pharmaceutical company as the matching funds for an $8 million corporate gene splicing study at North Puffin College of Veterinary Medicine. The Pharma got their “investment” back when the grant came in. It wasn’t the first time. Even so, he says he has not yet determined which phase of the Moon determines the sales tax boondoggle.

Back on point. Northwestern Medical Center is a small, friendly, not-for-profit, hospital in St. Albans, Vermont. In the interest of full disclosure, I served on the Board of Incorporators for NMC for more than a decade. This regional, primary care facility offers a broad range of high-tech medical equipment and services to the area.

For that one local hospital’s privately insured patients, the added tax means sharing an increase of $350,000 in tax expense alone in the coming year. Yeppers, ObamaCare is gonna reduce the cost of medicine.

And Gov. Shumlin is right at the forefront of that reduction. Newspeak. Word.

No small town hospital is more vital to the community and none is better liked. NMC has earned national Avatar awards for the last three years for patient satisfaction but that’s just part of the story. They sponsor local events like the ArTrain and the Summer Sounds concert series. They field teams for the United Way. And 600 of our friends and neighbors work there.

The original St. Albans Hospital was built in 1883. It has grown and morphed from two hospitals into one that now cares for 1,900 inpatients each year. The E.R. sees over 28,000 emergency patients and 7,000 people already walk in to the new Walk-In Clinic in Georgia each year. 400 babies arrive via storks at the Family Birth Center. That all adds up to more than $129 million of patient care each year.

Gov. Shumlin “proposes to increase the tax assessed on hospitals by $17.4 million from 2011. This increase will be used to draw down Federal funds to help address the State budget shortfall,” NMC Chief Executive Officer Jill Bowen told the St. Albans Messenger. “However, the State no longer returns the provider tax to the hospitals in full after it has secured the matching funds.”

In case you missed it, the State of Vermont told the Feds they took in beaucoup bucks as matching funds to increase the “grant” money funneled back to the state. Then the State of Vermont gave most of those beaucoup bucks back to the hospitals.

“Hey, Dick?” Raoul Garcia said. “Isn’t that what I went to jail for?”

Exchange?

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Jody Beauregard is a sweet, gentle man who has worked on Tom Ripley’s garbage truck for a decade or so. Before that, he schlepped shingles up ladders for Dean Russell when Dino still had his business in North Puffin.

Providence smiled on Jody three years ago. He scored an indoor job with dental insurance and regular hours. First time he had ever worked 40 hours per week and with a building contractor, so he got to see the “comfortable” end of the construction business.

Until the comfortable got dissed in the meltdown. The contractor laid him off a year later, on his 65th birthday.

Jody didn’t mind too awful bad. He was collecting Unemployment and had enough quarters in to retire. He likes to take off every fall to hunt anyway and expects to put up enough meat to last him through the year then but retirement, ah retirement, would let him feel more relaxed at deer camp.

Or not.

Jody collected about $280/week in UI but he also qualified for $1,286/month net in Social Security. And, of course, he qualified for Medicare. He signed up for Part B. He was in double dipper’s clover. Until Unemployment ran out. And the Unemployment extension ran out. And the extended Unemployment extension ran out.

Early last year, the Great State of Vermont decided to “give” him some medical coverage and to pay his Part B Medicare insurance premium. He was in pig heaven. I’m a pretty fair reporter but I still don’t know how he got on Vermont’s Health Access Plan (VHAP) list or what the requirements are.

It’s an elegant, enchanting, thought-provoking system. In August, September, and October of last year, for example, Social Security charged Jody nothing for his Part B coverage. He was still receiving Unemployment compensation during those months. In November, Social Security deducted the Part B premium from his check. He has received no Unemployment payments that month or since. In December, Vermont paid the Part B premium. In January and February Social Security deducted the Part B premium again but some time last year, he got an unexplained $142 extra deposit from Social Security. Confused yet? I am. The premium Jody pays Vermont has also bounced around, month-by-month, between $15 and $50 per month with no explanation.

A Vermont minion told Jody that the reason the state is not paying his premium anymore is that he “makes too much money.” And yet, his unemployment ended in October and his Social Security check — his only income — is unchanged for the third year in a row. No COLA, doncha know.

They have yet to send statements or bills to him. He has asked for but never received an Explanation of Coverage so he has no idea what the $15 (or $50) he pays each month buys him. Vermont has an sensational online presence but no account Jody can log in to, so he has never known how much the premium for the medical coverage they give him is. “I’m pretty sure it is the Plan B I signed up for plus prescription coverage,” he told me. Sheesh.

The Vermont rep told him he makes too much money but still won’t tell him what poke he gets for his pig.

These are the very people who want to run our car manufacturers (and other businesses) and our statewide health care system.

Gov. Peter Shumlin wants to set up a Health Insurance Exchange. In exchange for what?

“Exchange” as a verb usually means to trade someone one something for a different something else that person has or to replace (perhaps defective) merchandise with its working equivalent. As a noun, we say it is that same something that was given or received as a substitute for something else. Sometimes an exchange is a place, like the Stock Exchange, for buying and selling commodities or securities. That kind of exchange is typically open only to members.

Vermont lawmakers got their first thorough look at the guv’s plans for his beloved single-payer health care system last week. Mr. Shumlin plans to start this year by setting up the same state health insurance exchange the constitutionally-challenged Obamacare calls for.

Mr. Shumlin wants more. His state health insurance exchange will help drive the last commercial insurers out of Vermont and serve as his springboard to moving the state to a single-payer system in micro-steps. This year, he will create a new Vermont Health Reform Board not to control health system costs but rather to dictate how much the state will pay providers for services.

The administration will not unveil its financing plan for the new system until 2013, two years after the system is in place.

Perhaps one year after Mr. Shumlin is no longer in place.

“It’ll be good, Mr. Dick,” Jody Beauregard told me. “I can exchange my plan for something even better.”

Uh huh.

Remember Jody’s experience. Guess who made his life so easy? Happy Valentine’s Day, Jody.

Plus Ca Change?

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Only 14 of the 60 Vermont school districts and supervisory unions have met the spending cuts required by the Legislature and the Department of Education.

Vermont Act 68, the “Challenges for Change” law: “It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont:
“In fiscal year 2011, the secretary shall reduce the general fund appropriation and transfer to the education fund by $3,966,375.00. It is expected that … total local education spending … will be reduced by $13,332,500.” As amended, the Vermont program to increase efficiency and cut budgets across most of Vermont government, requires all schools across the state to reduce the amount they raised by taxes by $23.3 million.

They didn’t.

46 school districts and supervisory unions appear to be breaking the law.

Australian site whyshouldi.com tell us “When someone doesn’t obey the law, we say that they have broken the law. Sometimes, people get hurt or suffer when laws are broken. Injured people are called victims. When some laws are broken, everyone feels afraid. Not just the victim.

“We call these things crimes and the people who commit these crimes are criminals. We also believe that criminals must be punished. There are many types of crime, such as assault, stealing, or murder.”

Australia apparently expects people, businesses, and governmental units to obey the law.

Not Vermont.

Back to whyshouldi.com: “One of your property rights is for you to lend your belongings to somebody, or share them with your friends and family. Do they have to ask you first, or pay you for the use of something? That is up to you – it’s your property.

“Some cultures have a different view. In many Indigenous communities, families and friends may use or borrow each other’s property without getting permission every time. Many people around the world think that land belongs to a group or tribe, rather than one person.”

Ahh. That would apparently be Vermont.

Under Challenges for Change, schools reported last week that they had achieved cuts of $7.5 million, $15.8 million short.

Vermont Governor-elect Peter Shumlin has a plan.
Mr. Shumlin will urge lawmakers to transfer $19 million in federal funds to the schools to cover the $15.8 million shortfall. (Congress had approved that “stimulus” money to prevent teacher layoffs.)

Ya gotta love Mr. Shumlin’s arithmetic.

Law < ——————————————– > Short

In a typical (liberal) political move, the guv-to-be lets 46 lawbreakers off by throwing more money we don’t have at them. It’s OK, though. He got the money from the Feds.

And here I thought Vermont was supposed to stand for self-reliance.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.