Take a look at what the Democratic Majority Leader is doing to get the word out there concerning Douglas’s shotgun approach to budget-cutting.

What with hearing Doug Racine on VPR today finally saying what’s real: Douglas is conducting a perpetual campaign, and for him to criticize Democrats for beginning their campaigns early is hypocritical (not that he used exactly that word, but still, the thought was there), I guess maybe he did learn to do something different from his silent stoicism in 2002.

Wow, this is looking better for the Dems than usual at this time of the election cycle.

NanuqFC

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

I have two 529 plans to save for my childrens’ college education.  They are adminstered via VSAC and the Program Manager is Rep. Richard Westman (R-Cambridge).  However, the real money management is done via TIAA-CREF in North Carolina.  

Vermont Higher Education Investment Plan(VHEIP), c/o TIAACREF

Tuition Financing Inc.

8500 Andrew Carnegie Blvd., D2-03,

Charlotte, NC 28262.

Why do we have to send our money to Charlotte, NC to be invested?  I thought one thing the quality of life in Vermont was supposed to attract was highly educated professionals (like money managers) who could do their job from any location in this digital age.

Isn’t this exactly the type of white collar, low carbon footprint, “industry” and profession that we want to attract?  Why aren’t we having an in-state firm handle this?

I would think that Vermont must have the institutions and talent to handle this without sending our dollars to NC.

With all the talk of bloated Douglas appointee salaries and impending state employee job cuts, I wondered, how does Vermont’s government employee payroll compare with that of other states?

The U.S. Census bureau collects state and local government employment and payroll data annually (http://www.census.gov/govs/www/apesstl.html).  The most recent data available are for the March 2007 payroll.

According to my analysis, Vermont ranked 27th among the 50 states for total public employee payroll (adjusted for state population; includes all salaries, wages, fees, commissions, bonuses, and awards paid to non-education related public employees).  Vermont ranked fourth among New England States, behind Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Thus, the overall burden Vermont’s public employee payroll places on its citizens is about average.  

Of course, I don’t in any way mean to imply that certain top officials in Vermont’s state government aren’t paid excessively – especially when you consider that the number of Douglas-appointed “exempt” employees has grown almost twice as fast as the number of “classified” union employees (http://www.vsea.org/sites/vsea.org/files/funfacts_0.pdf).  The hypocrisy of hand-wringing about the cost of state government while at the same time creating numerous new highly-compensated appointed positions, speaks for itself.

However, the overall public employee payroll is not the source of Vermont’s budget problems; nor should shrinking it be the solution.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Suze makes the case why gay marriage is so important. Maybe Jim Douglas could learn something by watching this. Suze did a great job at explaning why marriage is so important and why it is indispensible in obtaning the benefits that every couple should be able to enjoy.  

Apologies for not putting this up sooner, but it just popped into my inbox a few minutes ago, from Johnson State College:

Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg, German pediatrician and recognized authority on the hazards of nuclear energy on public health, will discuss recent reports on the increased incidence of cancer in children living near nuclear installations and the health consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Organized by JSC SANE (Students Against Nuclear Energy) and VYDA (Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance), this talk is free and open to the public.

It’s at the Stearns Cinema on the Johnson Campus today ta 4pm.

UPDATE: Mark Johnson has a podcast with an interview wih Dr. Eisenberg here.

Yeah, good people, they’re out there … not looking for the limelight or public adulation or noteriety … just out there, quietly doing their good things.

Here’s a motorcycle story …

Many years ago I strapped a duffle bag on the back of and hopped on my Honda 650 4 cylinder bike heading off to the northwest of the US. No place in particular; Washington or Oregon or maybe even northern California.

I left North Carolina with just under $300 to my name.

While driving northwards in Iowa, I started having problems with my front wheel … and on a two wheeled machine having one wheel go bad … well that’s bad. I pulled into this little mechanics garage/gas station and asked the two gentlemen there if anything could be done.

These two spent the next couple of hours straightening, tightening and otherwise fixing the front end of my motorcycle, and then billed me fifty cents (no typo) for one bolt.

They didn’t know me. They could have charged me whatever was their desire. They could have found out I had about $250 to my name and told me to bug off.

But instead these two took care of a total stranger in grand fashion. (Side note: the bike made it to Missoula, Montana where a kaput clutch spelled the end of my trip and motorcycle.)

This is just one of quite a few experiences in my life that inform me 98% of the people on this planet, in this nation and in every state and local community across our country are good folks who want to do the right thing.

Which brings me to this story:

After selling a majority stake in Miami-based City National Bancshares last November, all he did was take $60 million of the proceeds — $60 million out of his own pocket — and hand it to his tellers, bookkeepers, clerks, everyone on the payroll. All 399 workers on the staff received bonuses, and he even tracked down 72 former employees so they could share in the windfall.

For longtime employees, the bonus — based on years of service — amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, and in some cases, more than $100,000.

(Miami banker gives $60 million of his own to employees, Miami Herald, 02/14/09)

One of my basic “business” tenets has always been to reward those who help me earn money. Walmart is an egregious example of what I don’t want to be like: a few top of the company owners and managers making mega bucks while chintzing on the compensation paid to the very folks who made the upper crust so rich.

Obviously I have like minded life traveler in Mr. Abess …

Asked later what motivated him, Abess said he had long dreamed of a way to reward employees. He had been thinking of creating an employee stock option plan before he decided to sell the bank.

”Those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity — I always thought some day I’m going to surprise them,” he said. “I sure as heck don’t need [the money].”

(ibid)

The unfortunate thing is we’ve spent decades rewarding grotesque greed that is designed to enrich a very few folks at the expense of a very many. The fortunate thing is we’ve got stories like those above to show us the right thing to do.

(Re-promoting a diary from February that’s timely… – promoted by odum)

Primaries can and should be healthy for the Democratic party. They certainly benefit voters by offering more and better choices and we should embrace the opportunities primaries offer to vet policies, candidates and ideas. 

The timing of post-Labor Day primary elections, however, will more likely hurt a winner.  Fall primaries risk being counter-productive to the democratic process because they occur too close to the General Election in November. 

Vermont's election year primary needs to happen earlier.  Town Meeting day (March) is too early, but June is late enough to do the job.  Once the calendar hits July & the summer months, it is too late to have a truly effective primary.

Scot nails it with his spot-on comment at the Open Thread, —

We Need A Primary

[W]e need a full fledged primary to rally the troops and get us engaged in taking out the Governor.

Deb, Susan, Doug and others would all be fantastic candidates. Everyone should dive in and may the best candidate win. I mean, when was the last time we had a three-way primary for Governor?

It will make the nominee stronger.

Could not agree more.

We need good candidates running in our primaries, and we need primaries that serve voters by showcasing our best candidates. We will continue to have neither as as long as the primary occurs in the fall rather than before the summer months.

More on better nominees and a better process, after the flip. . .

  — IT IS TIME TO DITCH THE SEPTEMBER PRIMARY —

Primaries are good for rallying troops, preparing candidates and sharpening campaign skills. They are great for all-around voter education and general awareness.  Vermont Democrats have been deprived of well fought primaries lately, and it's a shame.

The Democrats have an excellent bench, but a generally untested one too. The Democrats' bench is also populated by people who generally do not answer to voters, particularly liberal voters, in state-wide primary elections. The democratic process can do better, much better.

The current September primary is not challenger-friendly, and it is definitely not voter-friendly.  Unless the goal is to protect incumbents or to drag out intra-party campaigning until the last few weeks before the November election, there is no rationale for a September primary.

In this – the 21st Century media age of continual campaigning by incumbent office holders – there is no good rationale to run the primary all the way into September.

Voters do not need months and months of in-house/intra-party debates. The benefit of a normal (spring) primary date, is that we can see candidates differentiate themselves relative to how they will run the state for the better part of the campaign. The current calendar suffocates the process by dedicating most of election year to the contest within candidates' respective parties.  

Consider:

1. The September primary hurts primary winners because they spend the vast majority of their resources (particularly time, one of the biggest, most critical, resources) keeping the fight in-house.

2. The September primary hurts voters because it discourages potential candidates from entering into primaries in the first place, or a candidate may wait until it is realistically too late to enter. 

3.  The September primary REALLY hurts primary loser(s) who spend an entire summer campaigning for a job they will not have.  This dynamic discourages people from entering the primaries or running for office in the first place. (See #2).

4. The September primary hurts the eventual winner, particularly challengers to incumbents, because there is little time to shift gears and refocus on the incumbent. (See ## 1, 2 & 5))  The person most likely never to see a primary is your generic incumbent.  And incumbents love watching their future opponents drawing friendly fire up until a few short weeks before the November election. 

5.  The September primary REALLY hurts the primary winner. When candidates treat the voters to a particularly healthy and hard fought primary, the eventual mid-September winner has, effectively, LESS THAN TEN (10) BUSINESS DAY REMAINING to finish raising the bulk of money needed for General Election media buys.  Sure you want to have that fundraising done months earlier, but try it sometime.

The General Assembly is already considering changes to Title 17 (Vermont's election statutes) this session (For instance, see S. 35, it's a shitty bill but it's a start). The General Assembly badly needs to refocus on the primary date instead of focusing exclusively on fixing the decade old and unconstitutional finance provisions.  Setting a reasonable primary date needs to be the top priority.

The legislature needs to act now. It needs to fix its campaign finance problem and set a reasonable primary date. If the Legislature does not fix this problem THIS SESSION, it is not going to happen in time for 2010.  There is no time to waste. 

September primaries are anachronistic.

September primaries are incumbent protection rackets.

There are bills in the hopper to fix Vermont's invalid, unconstitutional and court-rejected campaign finance law. The first order of business should be to put into any new election laws a workable primary date.

Fix the primary and we take one big step toward fixing the problem of too little voter choice.

I think that quote best sums up my idea of Nordic ski jumping. I’ll go on forever about the times I jumped in high school and my first year in college… but I’ll save it.

I can’t tell you how great it was to see ski jumping back in Brattleboro. It’s been four years since the last meeting and the town wasn’t sure it would make a comeback… it did!

I’ve got a lot of photos but I’ll highlight my favorites. In addition, I’ve also added a YouTube of today’s events starring me and my “three and eleven-twelveths year old” son, Forrester.

Hope you enjoy below the jump!

Today’s winner, Christian Reiter of Austria.

Thanks y’all!