Lt.Gov.Brian Dubie has been out touring Vermont. As his campaign takes shape he is more often seen standing alongside the Governor at photo ops and his press releases seem to be a regular feature on the Vermont.gov webpage. All this perhaps is trying to alleviate the image from past campaigns where he has campaigned lightly, and ducked debates.
He is just wrapping up a lengthy statewide“jobs” tour in Chittenden County but from the Free Press reports it might more accurately be named the look-‘em-in-the-eye tour.
[emphasis added]
Dubie listened respectfully, accepted the position and added: "I vowed to look you in the eye." It was like this between the lieutenant governor and the chorus of outspoken doubters.Dubie did look everyone in the eye.
It is unclear exactly what magic this vow to look-‘em-in-the-eye may accomplish but it appears the Lt. Gov. is convinced it may work some magic on the self described “grumpy” titans of Vermont business he encountered. The “grumpy” yet “sage” manager of political relations for IBM gave Brian an earful.
“The business community has been talking about the same issues for two decades." To come to business at this time to ask about our perspective, O'Kane said "seems ingenuous … it is too costly to do business in Vermont … it is too hard to do business,"
Sounds like more whine than grump but you’d have to look ‘em in eye to know.
Perhaps taken aback by what were described as the business people’s “edgy” comments and questions, the Lt. Governor did raise the specter of revolt in classic Tea Party rhetoric
In response to increasing taxes and controlling expenses, Dubie offered this prediction, "We're looking at a taxpayer revolt."
Here’s the Messenger link. It sounds like his choice to only address businessmen may have back-fired a bit because they were full of complaints. One local retailer observed that the tax holiday was a total bust as far as he was concerned because it didn’t bump-up his sales at all. People just planned all of their normal purchases to make them on that day, but didn’t make any additional purchases. He observed that the State just lost their 6% tax for nothing.
after listening to Mr. Okane, you would think IBM is a struggling small business (check their reported profits)
and BTW, for all this talk about taxes, how come he doesn’t tell us what IBM paid the state in each of the last five years? more importantly, what was it as a percentage of their revenues?
but that’s “proprietary” so he gets away with his endless whining without having to produce ANY evidence whatsoever
facts: the Leg. reduced the corp. income tax a few years ago; reduced the personal tax last year; IBM gets a very sweet special rate for electricity; IBM is a regular recipient of training subsidies through the VT Training Program; IBM got a huge break from Essex years ago on property taxes; IBM is exempt from a portion of the efficiency lines charge; and so on
otherwise, the Leg. never listens to the business community
bottom line: it will never be enough for these guys
The article makes it sound like he thinks he can get us to vote for him by using the magic trick of staring into our horrible eyes without blinking, once…
Which begs the question: If he puts on a governor suit, will he get into mischief of one kind, and another?
the legal principle by which judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by
priorpoor decisions.(With apologies to Wikipedia.)