In January 2014, when a federal program extending unemployment benefits failed to be renewed in Congress, there was speculation about what might happen to those on unemployment. It is a popular idea with some that an unemployed individual isn’t motivated to seek out a job as long as a government check is coming in regularly. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCory (R) who ended extended benefits in his state, claimed the attitude among those collecting was to “hold that job until my unemployment benefits end.” Experts weren’t sure, and no reliable data was available.    

Now there is a report about some data. And the cut the benefits, up-by-yer bootstraps school have it mostly wrong.  

States that cut unemployment benefits following the Great Recession didn’t help the jobless or taxpayers, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. [emphasis added]

What we looked at was the employment-to-population ratio, specifically for prime-age workers. We wanted to see if these policies had a measurable effect on employment, the theory being that when people are cut off from benefits they become so desperate as to re-enter the job market and get a job right away. That did not occur. The employment-to-population ratio from before the policy change continued after the policy change.

Well, the EPI think tank who lean to the left now have some who lean to the right agreeing with them. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has second thoughts about “bootstrapping”as a cure for unemployment. This from an AEI policy blog titled: Did cutting jobless benefits promote work? Not so much

[…] evidence suggest this “bootstraps” theory might be wrong. First, a new paper from the Boston Fed looking at the Not-So-Great Recovery finds that, yes, the unemployed tended to remain so until their UI benefits were exhausted. But their next move wasn’t into a job. Rather, they became “more likely to drop out of the labor force […]

Ending unemployed benefits, kicking people “off the dole,” can’t make jobs for them appear where none exist. The EPI concludes:

Whether or not unemployment benefits are available to you sort of has nothing to do with the labor market problems writ large.

So pull as hard as you want on your bootstraps, no harm, but that will never be a paid job.

“We have an inclination that, based on what the company has been telling us, there has been a spill…” a senior administration official  

No not oil, this time it’s a security “spill” the administration official is speaking about. For the second time since March computer security at USIS has been breached in what is thought to be a “state-sponsored” attack. It isn’t known what was accessed or how much information was taken.

But what is USIS? What’s USIS? Think for-profit security services company contracted by Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Members of its staff conduct individual background security clearance checks – thousands of them – for the federal government.  

The breach, discovered recently, prompted DHS to suspend all work with USIS as the FBI launches an investigation. It is unclear how many employees were affected, but officials said they believe the breach did not affect employees outside the department. Still, the Office of Personnel Management has also suspended work with the company “out of an abundance of caution,” a senior administration official said.    

Officials said that, although the DHS encrypts the employee data it sends USIS, it’s unclear whether the data remain encrypted.

Maybe the company hasen't tightened up its operations after checking and clearing both Edward Snowden and the employee shooter at the Washington Navy Yard. But whether it has or not, USIS has recently been awarded a contract for $190 million to provide security-related services for the DHS immigration system.  

Not unexpectedly, some members of Congress are making appropriate noises about launching an investigation. But while waiting (… and waiting …) for Congress to act, let’s see what background Google has on this for-profit business partner in our "homeland’s" security (call it quaint, but the term “homeland” still makes me cringe).

Along with two other security-screening-based companies, Koll and Hireright, USIS (formerly known as US Investigations Services, Inc.) is owned by Altegrity. That company is owned by a private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners. This self-described “family” of companies works to…

enable our customers to reduce risk, maximize opportunities, and make better decisions by gathering, processing, and analyzing information; sharing our subject matter expertise; and providing our proven training techniques.

And even though its “parent” company is a private equity firm, Altegrity is up to its assailable security clearance in debt – $2 billion worth, according to reports. The company does have a diabolically clever plan to get out of debt.

Paying off old debt with new, to give the company more time to turn things around, it appears. The company repaid $1.45 billion, taking out a new $1.16 billion bank credit, $60 million of which is due April 2019 and $1.1 billion due three months later. [emphasis added]

It also has another $22 million in debt due in 2015, $29 million due in 2016, $480 million due in 2020, and $61 million in 2021.

This debt profile is considered unsustainable by two business rating services – and Altegrity, they point out, is at the mercy of US government contracting decisions. On top of all that, USIS has been investigated for its security failures in the Snowden case. And in April the Justice Department sued them for fraud.  

With a record like this, should anyone be shocked that security “spills” from USIS follow one after another? The real question is, why do lucrative DHS contracts with such an ineptly run company follow, one after another ?

Today and tomorrow, August 8 and 9, mark the glorious fortieth anniversary of the end of the Nixon regime, so it's appropriate to look back, post some memories, and maybe think about the significance of the time.

Having watched it in real time I know that my memories and thoughts have changed over the last forty years. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday my reaction the day I woke up and the news of the break-in broke. “Now they'll never vote to re-elect him” was literally my first thought. Just goes to show how wrong you can be.

Even looking back it's striking how completely this one story dominated the national attention throughout the summer of 1973, when I would get home from my summer job as a letter carrier to watch the hearings, and into the run-up to impeachment in the summer of 1974. I'll share a few of my observations and maybe you, our readers, will have some thoughts of your own to share.

==> One thing that the revelations of subsequent years have shown us is that Nixon may not have been worse than we thought at the time, but he was definitely worse than we knew. I'm talking, of course, about the fact that had been suspected but has since been confirmed that Nixon betrayed his country by trying to prevent an “October surprise” that would throw the election to Humphrey in 1968. To avoid this Nixon carried on secret communications with the government of South Vietnam urging them not to make any deals, but to hold out until he got into office when he would get them a better deal than they would get from the outgoing Johnson administration.  Think of the tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese whose deaths are directly attributable to this one action on Nixon's part.

==>Nixon and so many of the men–yes, they were all men– around him were lawyers. Not knowing any lawyers at the time I didn't really understand why it seemed so shocking that it was lawyers saying the things we hear on the tapes and making these decisions, but having spent thirty-five of those intervening years practicing law I now see just how shocking it was. Even if you don't attribute any particular virtue to lawyers, how could they not have considered the legal consequences and criminal liability as they sat in the Oval Office planning payoffs of a million dollars to convince potential witnesses to clam up or lie in order to protect the presidency? If nothing else, this level of criminality, in which the President, the Attorney General, and all of his top aides were in it up to their elbows proves that Nixon was uniquely corrupt in the ranks of American presidents.

==>Finally, the “where were you?” moment. We knew the resignation was coming, but I didn't get to see either of his last two speeches on television. The announcement of his resignation was on the evening of August 8, and while he was making his resignation speech I was at Pine Knob outside of Detroit at a Joni Mitchell concert. We knew the time was coming, and someone a few rows in front of us had a portable television, but we didn't see anything. Still, the crowd roared with one voice when Joni came onstage after a warmup set of dental music from her backup band, Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, and announced “The president has resigned!” 

What about you? Where were you and what do you remember? 

Hoo boy. Talk about your circular firing squads.

The already-measly ranks of Vermont conservatism are in danger of being decimated from within, as various worthies battle for pieces of a very tiny pie.  

I’ve reported on this in more detail at The Vermont Political Observer, but I’ll summarize for those who just want a nice warm dose of schadenfreude on this uncharacteristically chilly August night.

The first shot was fired by VTGOP Chair “Super Dave” Sunderland who, faced with something of a revolt in his ranks, sent out a letter warning fellow Republicans not to associate with the Libertarian Party. The Libs’ candidate for Governor, Dan Feliciano, is openly courting write-in votes in the Republican primary. Sunderland’s note included the following:

Let’s be clear about this:  Vermont Libertarians would release all the heroin traffickers and professional dealers who have peddled their poison on our streets.  And all those felons who were arrested, charged and brought to justice by dedicated members of law enforcement for importing and profiting from the hardest and most addictive drugs would be set free and have their criminal records expunged if the Vermont Libertarians had their way.  Then what?  You know the answer:  They’d be back at it.

That’s a rank exaggeration of the Libs’ stand on drugs. They favor decriminalization and the release of all prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. Most of the high-level bad guys are in stir for violent crimes as well as drug charges, and the Libs have no intention of releasing them.

It makes me wonder what Sunderland is so worried about. Usually, the Libs wouldn’t be worth his time. Can it be that he actually fears a Feliciano victory over Milne? If so, it speaks volumes to the state of our Grand Old Party.  

Sunderland’s rant triggered a very unfortunate reaction on Twitter by Darcie “Hack” Johnston, failed Republican operative turned Feliciano supporter.  

She brought up Republican Scott Milne’s youthful violations — which happened more than thirty years ago — and painted Milne as “more likely to be in favor of illicit hardcore drugs” than Feliciano.

An extremely low blow, that, even by the Hack’s standards. And Feliciano, rather than disavowing those gutter tactics, basically echoed Johnston’s words.

And the cherry on this shit sundae? The Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck reports an emerging split in Libertarian ranks over Feliciano’s solicitation of Republican support, and his failure to support key parts of the Lib platform. (Including their stand on drugs.)

To sum up, we have Republicans battling each other in very harsh terms, we have the party’s choice for Governor in a very serious fight with an unknown Libertarian for the Republican nomination, and we have the tiny Libertarian Party itself splitting over Feliciano’s candidacy.

Should be an entertaining last couple of weeks before the primary. Get your popcorn ready.  

Gannett, the Burlington Free Press’ parent company is spinning off all of its 81 daily newspapers. They will be spun into a freestanding publishing entity separate from a new digital and broadcasting television branch. From Gannett’s press release: 

“The bold actions we are announcing today are significant next steps in our ongoing initiatives to increase shareholder value by building scale, increasing cash flow, sharpening management focus, and strengthening all of our businesses to compete effectively in today's increasingly digital landscape,” said Gracia Martore, Gannett's CEO, in a statement.

No surprise that shareholder value and increasing cash flow are front and center in the corporate word salad. The “bold actions” will create two entities, and leave shareholders cheering. And although the Gannett publishing business will be “virtually debt free” it is likely newspapers will still be floundering.

Newspapers' online pay-wall revenue is reportedly not making up for years long declines in print ad revenue.

“This is another death knell for newspapers,” Ken Wisnefski, founder of the Internet marketing firm WebiMax.

 Although Gannett’s publishing wing will start debt-free, some see darkness not light as the next significant step for newspapers.

While legacy newspapers like the Free Press continue their decline or eh… I mean “sharpen their management focus” Vermont may be doing better than other states. In terms of statehouse coverage, non-traditional reporting methods are picking up the slack. The Pew Research Journalism Project reported that non-traditional (mostly digital) reporters are now the majority covering the statehouse in Vermont and six other states: Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas.

So, the shareholders may ultimately be pleased but the spin-off was probably greeted with a great gnashing of teeth by print journalists, adding to the world of worry at the Free Press and at least 80 other legacy newspapers around the country.

Crossposted at my blog, The Vermont Political Observer.

The latest turn in the saga of Vermont Health Connect came today, with the cancellation of CGI’s contract to develop VHC’s endlessly troublesome website. The move comes seven months after the Obama Administration fired CGI as contractor on the federal website, and four months after Massachusetts did the same.

You can say the Shumlin Administration waited too long; or you can say they tried to stick with CGI as long as they could because the company knew more about the system than a new contractor possibly could. And, as the Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen reports, this disaster had many fathers:

The marketplace… has struggled since its launch Oct. 1. CGI missed many deadlines to complete processes and make fixes, although state officials and independent analysts have noted the unreasonableness of the compressed federal timeline that all states had to meet.

That “compressed federal timeline” was the result of numerous conservative lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. No serious progress could be made until the Supreme Court had its say, which basically cut half of the preparation time for Obamacare’s launch.

But either way you slice it, the time had come for “a fresh perspective,” as health care reform czar Lawrence Miller put it. Whether CGI was truly at fault or not, a ritual sacrifice was called for. Its replacement, Optum, had already been hired to address a backlog of stalled “change of circumstance” requests.

After the jump: Where was the Governor?

It must also be noted, disapprovingly, that Miller and Mark Larson of the Department of Health Care Access were left to announce CGI’s departure in what looks, in media photos, to be a dreary and hastily-arranged encounter with the media. No sign of Governor Shumlin who, according to his official schedule, is in Montpelier today but couldn’t manage to join his long-suffering functionaries. He’ll be in public all over the place the rest of this week, wherever there’s good news to be announced; but not today. Sorry.

Those of us who support health care reform with single-payer as the ultimate goal have been frustrated by the continued delays and setbacks at VHC. And by the repeated (and routinely unfulfilled) assurances from the Shumlin team.

Well, now is the time to get it right. Good thing the Governor doesn’t face a signficant electoral challenge this year – although the longer this goes on, the more likely the Democrats are to lose seats in the Legislature. And with moderate Dems already doubtful about single-payer, Shumlin really can’t afford to lose any votes.

But beyond that, if VHC’s troubles continue into next winter, it’s hard to see the Legislature seriously considering a single-payer plan. Miller has accurately noted that single-payer will actually be a lot less complicated than the health care exchange – a bigger machine, but with far fewer moving parts. Still, why should the legislature go ahead with single-payer while VHC is still unproven?

This is a critical time for health care reform. There’s better damn well be measurable, actual progress before Election Day.

Vermont’s brand is clean, natural and progressive.  

When it comes to food products, Ben & Jerry’s was the iconic ignition, establishing that brand nationwide.

Founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, made social responsibility a guiding principle of the company, so long as it remained in private ownership.  

Once the company grew to a certain size and became publicly owned, that mission was maintained.  This was largely due to the weight of respect carried by the founders’ own individual personalities; but shareholders held ultimate sway, so it was probably inevitable that the shining star of the Vermont brand would be sold to a much bigger player.  

That player was Unilever, and continuance of some of B&J’s social responsibility mission was a contractual obligation attached to the sale.

We don’t know at what point that breadcrumb trail back to the brand’s progressive origins will disappear, but apparently it still has the power to undermine Unilever’s corporate agenda.

Business Week reports that Ben & Jerry brand’s advocacy for GMO labelling is in direct opposition to the parent company’s own position on the issue.

Fully aware that, when they acquired the Ben & Jerry’s label, its value for Unilever lay in part in the Vermont brand associated with that name and all it implies, the multinational is now faced with a quandry.

Violating the principles of that brand by pulling the choke-chain on Ben &Jerry’s support for GMO labelling, would come at a cost to Unilever, both in bad PR and in dollars and cents.

So, for now at least, Unilever has chosen to look away while B&J’s does its own thing; but, as food industry critic Marion Nestle points out, that too may come at a cost:

If Unilever tries to play both sides of the issue, it may wind up hurting itself and Ben & Jerry’s. “In the short run, they might get away with ignoring what B&J is doing, but sooner or later it will catch up with them,” Unilever’s stance makes it “look stupid,” Nestle says, and it could open up the company to boycotts from consumer activists angry about its hypocrisy.

Could this ultimately provide the opportunity that some (including Ben Cohen himself) have reportedly wished for, to take Ben & Jerry’s back into private ownership?  

‘Just something to ponder, spoon in hand, in the last lazy days of summer.

Could a really bad idea get even worse?  The answer is “yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

Apparently seeking a way to ensure their energy independence from the West, China is throwing in with Putin’s Russia in a venture to develop floating nuclear power plants.

One of the conundrums of nuclear energy is that in order to safely regulate and therefore harness the overwhelmingly  destructive power of nuclear reactions, it is necessary that an unlimited supply of water be constantly available to quell those reactions, as necessary.  That’s why nuclear power plants have generally been situated so close to lakes,  rivers and oceans.

In Japan, where nuclear energy had become the principle driver of the economy, power plants with multiple reactors liberally dot the coastlines; but, as we have learned since March 2011, therein lies much of their potential for disaster.

In our post-Fukushima world, even die-hard nuke lovers have to admit to the necessity of finding better ways to isolate nuclear products from natural waterways.  

The Japanese have tried every strategy they could think of, including chemical “freezing,” to prevent contaminated groundwater from co-mingling with waters of the ocean habitat.  Nothing has worked, and it is estimated that hundreds-of-thousands of gallons of highly contaminated water are being added to the ocean every day.

Russia has been notoriously oblivious to environmental impacts; and even though China has adopted some green technology to address its choking atmosphere, that nation’s focus is strictly short-term, and largely motivated by GDP rather than environmental concerns.

The “choice” of nuclear as the alternative to coal is rather like the decision in the 1950’s to use DDT in order to eradicate crop predators.  In the short-term, it worked remarkably well to increase yields and everyone was thrilled; but in the longterm, the collateral damage both to biodiversity and humans themselves was found to be so profound that its use was abandoned in the developed world.

The idea of floating nuclear plants, particularly in nations like Russia and China where quality control and corruption have been huge issues, is completely insane.  

This and several other recent developments illustrate that world organizations like the UN have waited too long to establish clean water as a basic human right that must be protected both from exploitation and the hubris of

human industry.

If we can’t even get that done, it’s just a matter of time before we snuff ourselves out.

Note: I am proud to be working for Fairewinds Energy Education, but the views expressed here are my own alone.

   Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros, partners in the EB-5 financed developments Jay Peak, AnCBio and Q-Burke, have been on a roller coaster (or water slide?) the past few months. This spring, real estate developer Tony Pomerleau said he could wait no longer and canceled a pending four-year-old agreement to sell Stenger a prime site on LakeMemphremagog. This move meant the loss of a key piece of Newport’s EB-5 waterfront development. Prior to this setback, a European window manufacturer had pulled out of a project.  

Then Stenger and Quiros’ wide ranging development projects got a bit of good news. Their AnC Bio project received approval from both the Vermont Regional Center (Vermont’s EB-5 oversight and promotional entity) and the USCIS (the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the Immigrant Investor Program).

Last week, VtDigger.com unearthed a controversy that began over the status of dozens of investor agreements. Investors seeking green cards through the EB-5 arrangement had major terms of their investment unilaterally changed by Jay Peak’s owners. The timeliness of notification for the changes Stenger and Quiros made to the contracts was … well, to be polite, sluggish. 

Investors had no knowledge of Stenger’s actions until five months after they were executed.

Stenger and his partner at Jay Peak, Miami-based Ariel Quiros, dissolved the company [Jay Peak Hotel Suites, LP, whose investors owned Tram Haus Lodge, built in 2008] on Aug. 31, 2013, turned the investments into unsecured loans and “waived” investors’ legal rights, according to documents obtained by VTDigger. Stenger says he sent an email to investors with the promissory note on Jan. 24 of this year, but he did not mail official, paper copies until May.

After the investors sent letters of complaint to Stenger and the state, Jay Peak agreed to change certain terms of the IOU in a take-it-or-leave-it offer earlier this month.

Bill Stenger has been doing damage control defending his actions on the Mark Johnson radio program. He said there was

“no gain to be had by Jay Peak” by converting Tram Haus equity investments into loans.

Stenger admits it was a “mistake” and he is “working his ass off” to repair the damage.

Okay … but he and Quiros are both smart enough (or seem to be) to know beforehand that changing the agreements might raise more than an investor eyebrow or two. So what motivated them?  

Well, right out of the gate, Ariel Quiros said the transaction was “200 percent” ethical. The more plain-spoken of the two partners, he also offered up one reason the investments were converted to loans:  

Quiros said the decision to execute the investors’ exit strategy in August 2013 was prompted partly by some investors who had asked for it, and also by an approaching promotional trip to recruit investors for pending EB-5 projects – namely, the AnC Bio biotech research and manufacturing facility in Newport, and buildout of Q Burke Mountain ski resort in Burke.

He wanted Stenger and Jay Peak representatives, as well as Gov. Peter Shumlin and other state officials, to be able to say on a trip to Asia that his first batch of investors were being paid back. [added emphasis]

“It shows the world of EB-5 that I’m giving money back to investors,” Quiros said. “OK, over time, but at least now you know you’re going to get your money back.”

 Competition for EB-5 investors has become very tight in the past years. And an overseas promotional trip (paid for by Jay Peak) trolling for EB-5 investors, accompanied by top Vermont state officials, was a high-stakes event. So, driven partly by the need to continually gain confidence and impress future EB-5 investors, Stenger and Quiros risked current-investor dissatisfaction.  

There are eight projects divvied-up between Jay Peak, AnC Bio and Q-Burke in the Northeast Kingdom Economic Development Initiative. Stenger and Quiros are at approximately 500 million in EB-5 money for these projects.

So, go ahead, all you well-heeled potential immigrants – invest in AnC Bio, Q-Burke and Jay Peak and get your visa.

After all, as Mr. Quiros says, they are 200 percent ethical. Is this meta ethics or what?

One of the great institutions of Vermont’s political counterculture is speaking out today in protest against the scale of collateral death and injury in the wake of current Israeli attempts to truncate Hamas in  Gaza.

Bread & Puppet Theater is staging a protest performance today at noon on the State House Lawn, and again this evening at the Bread & Puppet Theater Farm at 7:30 PM, on Route 22 in Glover, where they will replace their scheduled performance piece with Fire: Emergency Performance for Gaza.

Referring to their noon protest, Bread and Puppet has released the following in a public statement:

The protest will bring attention to the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the U.S. government’s support of the Gaza attacks. Tableauxs will depict Palestinian women with their arms raised over the death of their children. A bell of mourning will chime slowly next to large, black and white woodcut banners featuring such questions as “Why?”, “How Much Longer?” and “How Much More?”

The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate today, after the humanitarian cease fire was broken with an exchange of horrifying violence that has characterized the current crisis.

No resolution will ever be possible so long as both sides see themselves entirely as the victims and never accept any responsibility for being victimizers.

The righteous stalemate over Gaza is an odd sort of metaphor for the Right-eous stalemate in DC, where Republicans have worked themselves into a fever over the evils of progress of any kind, and especially of the progressive kind.  

They cannot see themselves as anything but victims facing an alien surge, even though holding the pursestrings of the 1% gives them power the other side cannot even imagine.

‘Stupid, pointless and cruel: no matter what the conflict, the true “victims” are always overwhelmingly comprised of the weak, the poor, the elderly and the children.