The Grinches of Wall Street

‘Twas the night before Christmas

And through the Senate and House

The money was flowing

To each Wall Street louse

The hedge fund managers and CEOs

Had told their tales of financial woes

Their stories were naughty – not very nice

They told of private jets and gluttonous vice

Meanwhile on Main Street the people were sad

No one could explain why things had gotten so bad

Some said the cause was market speculation

Others said Capitalism was the right explanation

Santa’s elves should create a People’s State

End all war, poverty, and hate

A Single Payer System would keep us healthy

Enough food for all – no need to be wealthy

At the shelter, the children were snuggled in their beds

As nightmares of foreclosure danced through their heads

A holiday miracle is what we need –

On second thought – we just might have to secede

ROSEMARIE JACKOWSKI    dissent@sover.net

Rosemarie Jackowski is an advocacy journalist and peace activist living in the USA.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town

Bob Dylan, Desolation Row

That is to say, the legislature will soon reconvene.

As we head for the debate about the need for new revenues to help meet the budget crisis, keep these facts in mind.

The Tax Dept. reports that in 2007 there were 3,734 Vermonters who reported more than $300,000 in adjusted gross income. That’s 1.2% of all filers.

These folks earned over $3 billion. That’s 19% of all instate income for 1.2% of filers.

After adjustments ($8 million) and state credits ($18 million), they paid $166 million in state income taxes.

That’s 31% of the taxes on 19% of the income. Sounds nasty right.

But for those – like Jim Douglas – who proclaim that my goodness, they’re already paying so much of the total taxes collected, it wouldn’t be right to ask for more; note that it represents only 5.4% of their adjusted gross income. So much for the 9.5% top marginal tax rate routinely criticized by Gov. Douglas and his friends at the Tax Foundation.

So tell us again why we shouldn’t ask the wealthy to help solve this problem?

Note: Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this would not be much of a burden for this group. At present, if someone earns $1 million (forget capital gains for now), they will pay just over $88,000 in VT state income tax. If we increase the top rate for this group by 1% (actually 10% – from 9.5% to 10.45%), the same person earning $1 million would pay $94,000 instead of $88,000; only $6,000 more on an income of $1 million.

Wouldn’t it be nice if important public policy debates were based on facts?

( – promoted by odum)

The State of Vermont has issued five reports on the total amount of money,gifts and etc.drug companies give to Vermont physicians .When the report was last issued there was some discussion about making the results open to the public and now that may well be under way.The laws changes according the paper would allow the public to know and access online doctors identities and how much they may have received .Some information according to Peter Shumlin should still be allowed to remain secret .  

Shumlin said he envisions changes to the state law that would only allow the pharmaceutical industry to keep secret very limited information, such as donations to support academic research.

Otherwise, all that information should be available and easy to obtain, he said. It would be as simple as setting up an on-line database on a Vermont state Web site that could be used by the public.

These changes he believes would help limit over prescribing ,yet maintain proper availability of  psychotropic drugs for treatment.Given some of what has been reported lately regarding big pharma’s influence with doctors and institutionally funded research perhaps this new rule change in Vermont could be more complete and include academic funding research disclosure.

From an opinion piece in the Boston Globe regarding changes proposed in Massachusetts to address the same issue ……

Massachusetts’s Department of Public Health has recently proposed regulations to address the influence of drug companies by limiting their payments and gifts to doctors. As critics note, however, the proposal would exempt disclosure of payments to doctors for research and related activities – a stipulation the drug industry lobbied for – which could leave open windows for more foul play.

An investigation launched last year by Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa found government-funded physicians at universities like Harvard and Emory have frequently failed to disclose consulting receipts, stock holdings, and other conflicts-of-interest with drug makers as they research and discuss products. Grassley’s investigators found that the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Frederick Goodwin, had failed to disclose at least $1.3 million in income from marketing lectures for drug companies while advocating for their products on his NPR program “The Infinite Mind.”Medical journals have been similarly affected. A British Medical Journal article from 2003 reviewed 30 studies published in journals and found that a “[s]ystematic bias favors products which are made by the company funding the research,” and the pharmaceutical company Wyeth was just exposed for paying ghostwriters to publish journal articles.

http://www.timesargus.com/arti…

http://www.boston.com/bostongl…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12…