The race appears to be promising in terms of symbolism. Per today’s Rutland Herald:
A picturesque campaign tour by Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie through Vermont on Saturday on a set of antique train cars ran into an antique problem…
Brattleboro Police Officer Chad Emery said he was called in after a New England Central Railroad conductor in charge of pulling the pair of private rail cars on the campaign train’s journey down from St. Albans found a man inside the train carrying a blanket.
I’d say that given Brian Dubie’s 10 point economic “plan” pretty much throws kicks the indigent to the curb, this actually fits perfectly, especially given this comment:
Dubie’s campaign manager, Corry Bliss, said Democrats are trying to obscure their own history of imposing “higher taxes, new government programs and other gimmicks that hit like a lead balloon.”
“Peter Shumlin never lets the truth get in the way of his political agenda,” Bliss wrote in a campaign e-mail. “I guess the National Federation of Independent Business/Vermont hadn’t heard about his plan when they gave him a 0-percent rating on their newest legislative scorecard.”
The National Federation of Independent Business? That’s the organization that joined a lawsuit to get health care reform declared unconstitutional.
Card-Check Agreements
NFIB opposes efforts to make it easier for unions to organize within small businesses by mandating card-check agreements instead of private-ballot elections.
In other words, they support more opportunity to bust unions.
Expansion of Family Medical Leave Act
NFIB believes government mandates take away small employers’ and employees’ freedoms to negotiate the benefits package that best meets their mutual needs.
FLSA/Overtime Reform
NFIB supports updating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to give workers flexibility and to permit employers to reward workers financially for improving productivity and profitability.
When groups like this advocate for “freedoms” or “flexibility” they generally mean freedom to choose between doing what the company wants and getting fired or downsized and the “flexibility” to be classified as salaried employees in order to get extra work out of them without pay.
Federal Minimum Wage
NFIB opposes efforts to increase the federal minimum wage.
Well, of course they do.
the homeless fellow wanted to chat with the Dubie dream team about holding state spending at affordable levels.
Or perhaps the man is overburdened by regulations and worried about permit reform?
Nothing ticks me off more than reading this – I’d like to mail this in postcard form to every registered voter in the state!
I watched Dubie on WCAX read from some crib notes; I mean give me a break; ten lame points and he can’t commit them to memory?
The homeless guy who had found a home will not be the last one to be thrown out of his home by a contination of the Douglas and Dubie doctrine of helping the unfortunate. That doctorine basically says, get a job then we can count you as newly employed; find a home so we can take you off the homeless roles; eat healthy so we won’t have to provide you with health care; and most of all, do this all without any government assistance as we need to keep our money for tax credits for the rich.
This is probably the final chance to take back our country, and perhaps we can only take back our little corner of it. Fascism creeps. If you’re ignorant to the severity of what I am saying, then I’d say lucky you. The platform intents that I bring forth is the only one that copes with the economic war from a winning place.
Whether you like or detest me personally, it behooves you to do what you can to make these candidates answer to the proposals. Bring the proposal of State Bank, and VUE ( Vermont Unit of exchange), and Securities Transfer Tax ( tobin tax), VT Credit card, and a Common Good Bank for each community to the table. These are the propositions that will fund the businesses that make the jobs, the equity in pay, returning the power of money to Vermont and pay down the deficit. If you allow personal ego and feelings to get in the way of getting this plan out there thne you won’t have the benefit of the power of money in this State, and we will continue to be made homeless and have no chance to win the economic war that is waged on us from within our elected body.
Doesn’t this evoke powerful memories of the last Great Depression? Barons of industry living high off the hog, having saved their own skins with no thought for the displaced working man, turned out onto the streets to scrounge for food and shelter.
“That National Federation of Business” sounds like it’s agenda is identical to that of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which has evolved into a truly anti-small- business entity. Lots of blinds here to look behind…
VT Dems have largely allowed the Rs to get away with this stupid (and false) one-note campaign for 8 years. If their communications people can’t run with this, and draw the obvious connection to what’s going to happen to the rest of us once the Rs take over in Congress and various Governorships, they are indeed lame.
Where does Dubie get his data about families being driven out of the state?
The latest 3-year census estimates show an increase in the number of families in VT (http://tinyurl.com/29uly6h). I’d love to see his source, unless it involves a camera and his colon.
The only way to fund new jobs is reclaim the banking industry, so that the interest that new businesses pay returns to the State treasury via a bank of Vermont, or to local vie Common Good Banks. The fact that we are sending thousands upon thousands daily out of State with each bank that does business here but is owned elsewhere, and the fact we don’t have a State Bank is key to understanding how we must act.
Minimum wage is insufficient to make an honorable living, in fact 2 full time jobs at minimum wage are not. This is not going to turn around of its own accord. It got this way by the purposeful efforts and designs of financiers, and they have cornered a legal industry to back it up, as well as a media industry that dominates thoughts of society as a whole.
Indignation that Dubie kicks off a homeless man needs to be accompanied with knowledgable, active, benefitial proposals that he should answer to.