To my knowledge, Seven Days’ Shay Totten was the only mainstream Vermont journalist to report on former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont CEO William Milnes’ $6.3 million “golden parachute.”
Mr. Milnes’ total compensation was $7.25 million in salary, bonuses and retirement cash. He retired at the end of 2008.
How is this justifiable in the midst of the current healthcare crisis? Shay’s column is linked below:
and it sure as hell ain’t ACORN!
8. It was part of the conspiracy that the Defendants discussed and agreed to buy votes also during the early voting of absentee voters in favor of “the slate.” This plan involved having Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris pay absentee voters for their vote and then sending them to Defendant Charles Wayne Jones who was acting as operator of the voting machine at the Clay County Clerk’s Office. Voters who sold their votes were given a mark or otherwise told to signal to the Defendant Charles Wayne Jones by Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, or Debra L. Morris and, based upon the mark andior signal, Defendant Charles Wayne Jones would cast their vote for “the slate.”
9. It was part of the conspiracy that the Defendants discussed and agreed that in order to implement the method of corrupting the voting process described above, it would be necessary to cause to be appointed as precinct workers for both major parties persons who were in the conspiracy. It was further necessary that their assignment to respective precincts be coordinated so that no one outside the conspiracy would be in place to observe their actions.
…
11. Over numerous days during on or about a date in January 2006 to on or about November 7,2006, a list of voters who agreed to sell their votes was compiled by Defendants Russell Cletus Maricle and William E. Stivers and other co-conspirators made
arrangements with these persons for voting and payment. On numerous occasions, voters were brought to the courthouse during normal voting and the early voting period for absentee voters and paid to vote for candidates on “the slate” by Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris.12. On or about May 16,2006, and November 7,2006, Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris paid voters to vote for members of “the slate,” as described above. They informed these voters to ask for assistance from selected precinct workers who then took them into the voting booth and selected the votes for them.
For the full story and links to background news coverage as well as the full indictment(quoted from above) visit The BradBlog, KY Election Officials Arrested, Charged With ‘Changing Votes at E-Voting Machines’.
Vermont’s Freedom to Marry Bill just passed out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously 5-0!
Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said the Senate will take up the Bill beginning Monday.
I was at the Statehouse on Wednesday for the hearings. The testimony by all the couples and by many children was so powerful.
As a Burlington Justice of the Peace, who has performed numerous civil unions and weddings, I am very happy with this result and strongly believe this bill should pass into law.
This is a civil rights issue. I am proud to be a Vermonter.
What are your comments?
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UPDATE From Freedom to Marry – see below the fold:
Marriage Bill Clears First Hurdle. Calls needed NOW
Senate Judiciary Committee Approves S.115 5-0! Calls Needed!
Stay apprised via Freedom to Marry site: http://www.vtfreetomarry.org/
A unanimous Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to support S.115. The Committee approved minor edits to the bill, and rejected a proposed amendment for a statewide non-binding referendum by a 4-1 margin. When Senator Sears called the question, each Senator in turn voted to support the bill. The full Senate is expected to debate and vote on the bill Monday at 3:00 p.m. We urge you to attend.
We’ve successfully cleared the first hurdle – and it’s time to double-down! This weekend is our last chance to reach out to our Senators – each and every one of them. It’s vitally important. Our future, and history, depend on it. Those who oppose our full equality will be extra motivated; we must be, too. Even if you’ve contacted your Senator before, please do it again. Click here for a list of Senators and their contact information. And if you haven’t contacted your Representative for awhile, please do so. This is it!
“monotonicity”
Here’s a definition one of the monotonists have put out there: “Monotonicity: If choice X is a winner of an election and, in a reelection, the only changes in the ballots are changes that only favor X, then X should remain a winner of the election.”
Some of our local monotonists, Wes and his apparent favorite anti-IRV website specifically, have even advanced the notion that if we fiddle with people’s voting patterns and apply a very specific number of one candidate’s votes to another candidate … why we can change the results of the election!
Okay, I already knew changing the vote count could change the election. BUT WES AND COMPANY ARE BUSY TRYING TO LURE YOU INTO A FALSE SENSE OF MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY ABOUT A FALSE ISSUE!
What the monotonists fail to tell you is that the primary purpose of instant runoff voting is a runoff. That means unless there is a first round winner, the number of votes a candidate receives is relevant only so far as to whether or not that candidate advances to the next round.
Once in the second round the vote count makes no distinction between “first” or “second” choices … everybody’s top choice in the existing field of candidates is counted equally.
But the monotonists would have us believe we should still count the “first” choice votes as being something more special than the “second” choice votes in a runoff. And they will repeat the monotonicity mantra with fervor … drumming on our heads that their claim has some real application.
Here’s the trick … we already know that the candidate who finished in the lead but didn’t win a mandated majority contest is not necessarily the one who will win the final election. That’s for a simple reason … people who can’t have their preferred candidate might want to vote for someone other than the first round top vote getter.
So monotonists will happily inform us they have a scenario THEY COOKED UP IN THEIR OWN IMAGINATIONS where Kiss could have received more first round votes then he did in reality and yet have lost the election!
But we know that everybody’s top choice of existing candidates in the second round of voting is counted equally. Nobody’s vote is counted as more meaningful than another’s. In the second round of vote counting you’re vote for Montrol is a vote no matter if you ranked Montrol first or second. THE RANKING ITSELF IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE VOTE COUNT!
A second scam being perpetrated by the monotonists is their claimed special ability to measure levels of preference without ever asking folks.
For example: monotonists will add up first and second and third place votes in an attempt to tell us which candidate was preferred above another. The idea being that rating one candidate above another indicates the preference.
What they can’t do is tell you if person A really didn’t have a preference and just arbitrarily put one ahead of the other or if person A really had a large preference for one candidate over another. And they can’t come close to any of the shades of preference folks express by different rankings … is it large, small, insignificant? To the monotonists those gradations are all equal numbers they can present with mathematical certainty. The monotonists will inform you that an unmeasured quantity can be presented as measured.
Certainly, if we entertain the monotonists imagination and take 700 some odd first place votes from Wright’s column and arbitrarily transfer those first round votes to Kiss, there is a scenario where Kiss would not have been elected.
But that is because Montrol would have garnered a majority of support that Kiss wasn’t able to. Not because of some failure due to “monotonicity”, but because in the second or third round of voting, people who picked someone other than Montrol or Kiss as their top one or two choices picked Montrol over Kiss.
And that is what instant runoff voting is all about after all, the electorate getting to tell the vote counters who the electorate wants.
Guess its time to get off the dime and start a Geithner thread. Or a Geithner/Summers thread. Or is it an Obama thread?
Whatever. The point is: imagine for a moment that overwhelming sense of relief and burst of national economic confidence that would result if we woke up to find that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers had resigned, and that Presidential Economic Advisory Chair Paul Volcker was taking over at Treasury?
Interestingly, Obama is finding a way to unite Ds and Rs after all – in frustration with his economic team. Of course, what’s really happening is hardly unity; Dems and Repubs are now in a race of populist-esque rhetoric to get to the political-moral high ground on the matter. The result, in the immediate term, has yielded policy dividends, such as the creative, almost-100% tax on the dreaded AIG benefits that’s passing quickly through Congress (and that Obama has suggested he’ll sign, putting him in direct opposition to the previous efforts of Geithner and Summers to insure Wall Street bonuses were left untouched in the economic stimulus bill).
But of course, the R-D conflict and the surprising emergence of Congress as a warp-speed lawmaking entity has come in no small part as a result of the vacuum in economic leadership that has come to a head in the White House.
Geithner was supposed to be a Larry Summers that people could work with (while Summers himself has a position of equal significance, but one where he doesn’t have to deal with people as much), but the mixed signals sent from him, Obama, and various “inside sources” has led to a damning chorus of “who’s in charge” directed at the new administration – and not simply from the folks thought of as “the left” or “the right.” The result is a sense that nothing was really gained by getting Tim instead of Larry – the two of which are becoming an intellectually marginalized tweedledee and tweedledum. The two, rather than representing “change,” seem to be mired in a desire not to play economic managers, but to try and play financial sector good-ole-boys while still expecting the economic recovery to be a relatively casual affair.
Here’s a rapid fire list of some of the high-profile particulars against Geithner (and Summers): either he’s bullshitting about when he knew about the AIG bonuses, or he has a serious memory problem (ha), their uncoordinated, inadequate plan to deal with the banks, a pronounced resistance to transparency, and of course, the naked sleaziness of blaming embattled Chris Dodd for pulling bonus restrictions out of the stimulus legislation before finally acknowledge it was at his own urging, etc.
It was hard to understand Obama’s committment to institutional throwbacks Geithner and Summers – especially in light of the plethora of good advisers he has otherwise been surrounded by (many with significantly superior reputations, such as Volcker). Obama is not an economist, so one wonders if his committment to this twosome is as much about personal connections as it is about policy.
Whatever the case, we’ve entered untrodden political ground as the AIG news seems to have caused the electorate to pop. Obama does himself no favors by dismissing the affair as a “distraction.” Its hard to imagine things improving quickly with Tim and Larry at the helm, and Obama’s emotionally validating speeches delivered without a clear reflection in actual policy have begun sounding hollow in absolutely record speed for a new President.
If he doesn’t make some tangible moves to take control of the conversation (and the situation) soon, the price to pay will be high – and the cost in his reduced clout on the Hill and in the polls will likely be progress on upcoming priorities such as health care.