I've been assuming that the state's General Fund will have a baseline budget deficit of $88 million for FY11. That's based on data from August posted on the Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office website. A month ago, Senator Shumlin said that the [...]
I've been assuming that the state's General Fund will have a baseline budget deficit of $88 million for FY11. That's based on data from August posted on the Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office website. A month ago, Senator Shumlin said that the [...]
by Art Woolf
The state of Vermont helps to insure our safety by protecting us from, among other evils,
buying beer with too much alcohol
and
wine that we might like to have shipped to our home.
(look at the very bottom of the page where it lists states to which delivery is [...]
by Art Woolf
The prospect of a 25 percent increase in property taxes over the next three years is a wake-up call to any public official who still harbors doubts that Vermont is in a fiscal crisis.
Burlington Free Press editorial
That's incorrect. Suppose you own a house worth $100,000 and' [...]
On December 5, 1933 the 21st amendment was ratified, the first and only time any amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the 18th) has ever been repealed. That, of course, was the amendment that implemented Prohibition, a law that told the American people that [...]
by Art Woolf
I plead guilty to authoring the part of the recent Ethan Allen Institute Report on education cost and quality that dealt with school outcomes. To analyze and compare Vermont's education outcomes, the relevant comparison to make is not the U.S. as a whole, but the non-minority U.S.' [...]
The early years in Plymouth were hard, with 45 of the 102 settlers dying during their first winter of 1620-21. Governor Bradford realized that the settlement's organization needed to be changed from one based on what today we might call communitarianism to one' [...]
Granted, Vermont dairy farmers are in a terrible pickle. Prices for their products are way down (in part due to the tremendous reduction in international demand for milk caused by the financial crisis and economic recession) and their costs keep going up. But it's' [...]
California's dire fiscal problems have led the state to take many actions to try to put its fiscal house in order, including cutting the state's contribution to the University of California system--one of the best, if not the best, public higher education system in [...]
It seems that the Free Press needs some help with their headlines. One article's headline is
Committee offers grim Winooski budget outlook
with a topic that is pretty clear from the headline. The city's deficit is $630,000 and could be double that by summer.
The [...]
I've written about Vermonter Ralph Cioffi on VT before. Back in the summer of 2007, the two hedge funds that he ran for Bear Stearns went belly up, losing 1.6 billion dollars for its investors, and contributing to its bankruptcy. That was' [...]
The phone rings and there is a slight delay until a voice comes on. I instantly know it's a computer-generated phone call asking for something. This time it's a message asking me to stay on the line to participate in Rep. Peter Welch's town' [...]
Marro said the Internet...could offer a new business structure to
support the kind of substantive reporting that the First Amendment was
conceived to provide.
Congress shall make no law ...abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press...
The [...]
Sam Hemingway at the Free Press tells us about Senator Patrick Leahy's $3 million war chest and who his donors are:
Dwyer said Leahy’s current campaign has attracted more than 6,500 individual contributors, about 1,300 of whom were Vermonters. She said the average contribution from a majority of those was' [...]
From Vermont's senior senator:
These projects will help strengthen our economy while also growing green jobs...
From Vermont's junior senator:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Green Jobs
and the New Economy...
From Vermont's lone House member:
Congressman Peter Welch hailed a plan [...]
Here at Vermont Tiger, we believe that economic growth, as Martha Stewart would say, is "a good thing." Growth has led to wondrous things: electricity, aspirin, automobiles, iPods, cell phones, antibiotics, airplanes, computers, television and radio, wrinkle free clothing, fresh fruits and vegetables available [...]
by Art Woolf
The Rutland Herald tells us
Tomorrow will be a day to raise awareness about the most important challenge confronting the world.
That would be climate change. Not
That North Korea has nuclear weapons. That Iran is probably going to have nuclear weapons in the near future. That India and Pakistan, which have [...]by Art Woolf
Senator Sanders says (or at least writes, on his website)
According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th in terms of health system performance.
The Wall Street Journal's Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik, deconstructs that commonly used metric, and finds it "dated and flawed". One minor problem: Some' [...]
The media are full of stories about how amazing it is that the state received a lot more proposals for alternative energy than it had anticipated. The Rutland Herald titles its story Renewable Energy Firms Dash for Vt. Incentives, noting that
The program capped [...]
The U.S. Department of Education has just released the math results of the 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), or, as the DOE dubs it, the "Nation's Report Card." The good news is that Vermont was one of only four states that' [...]
Dwight David Eisenhower, on October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas. He never won the Nobel Peace Prize, but in his lifetime he probably did more for the cause of peace, as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWII, and for the cause [...]
Vermont Tiger has been writing about Vermont's looming financial crisis for a while. No small part of that problem is the state's unfunded pension liabilities, which David Coates has examined and explained in detail.
It's small consolation that Vermont is not alone in' [...]
Policymakers often forget that entrepreneurs take risks. When risks pan out, they are rewarded, sometimes handsomely, and when the risks of a new venture are underestimated, the endeavor goes belly up and someone has to pay--the entrepreneur, investors, or lenders. If you see [...]
by Art Woolf
The Blue Ribbon Tax Commission authorized by last year's legislature has been meeting but has received almost no media attention, with the exception of one article and one editorial in the Rutland Herald.
The editorial, in today's paper, makes several assertions. One in particular caught my eye:
Progressive taxation is [...]
EconomistMom tells us that
the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to prevent Medicare premiums from rising.
Vermont Rep. Peter Welch strongly supported the bill, according to VPR's story on the subject:
Congressman Peter Welch is backing legislation that he says will help' [...]
by Art Woolf
No, not Karl.
This one:
On the left, Julius Henry Marx--Groucho. You know, the one who made the world a better place.
[...]by Art Woolf
The U.S. Census Bureau has a new report out on state tax revenues, summarized in the Wall Street Journal blog. Vermont was the only state in the nation to show an increase in state tax revenues (of 2%) in the second quarter of 2009 compared to [...]
by Art Woolf
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to give US dairy farmers $350 million. It's somewhat refreshing to see the word million after some federal bailout amount instead of billion or trillion. Still, we see our Congress continuing to spend money they don't have, in this case to [...]
by Art Woolf
The Freeps today reports on some Census Bureau numbers that were released last week that allegedly showed that
Vermont’s median household income shrank more than $5,700, or 10 percent, from 2005 to 2008 — the worst decline in the nation...Some economists [that would be yours truly] dispute [...]
by Art Woolf
I've done some analysis of the the Census Bureau's recently released 2008 American Community Survey data. What percent of Vermont's families that have both a husband and wife present (although both do not necessarily have to be working) earned over $100,000 in 2008? Answer below the fold.
29%.
Kudos to the Freeps and to Sally Pollack for focusing on Alzheimer's disease through the experiences of a well-known Vermont couple: Diane and David Wolk.
The accompanying story, about the clinical trial of the monoclonal antibody that Diane Wolk is taking didn't [...]
Evidently, there is some talk about creating jobs in Vermont by banning the sale of self-service gas, although no one is actually quoted in the Freeps article as supporting the idea. Unfortunately, that sort of analysis follows all too easily from politicians who [...]
by Art Woolf
I will be a panelist on Vermont This Week next Friday October 2nd at 7:30 pm (repeats Sunday at 11:30 am).
(ed. note: this item has been corrected. It originally had Art appearing this week, September 25th.)
[...]We know that the state's cumulative projected deficits over the next three years will be about $360 million (see pages 14-15 here) with continued deficits projected after that.
We know that the state is underfunding its contributions to the state employee' [...]
by Art Woolf
Who would you want to run the nation's monetary policy: Senator Bernard Sanders or Chairman Ben Bernanke?
' [...]by Art Woolf
Welch said Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are determined by an index based on the spending patterns of younger Americans.
But the Social Security Administration says the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) is based on the
It's not easy to measure economic statistics or to tell a story using them.
When the Freeps reports on business and economic news, they often don't do enough digging behind the numbers. A case in point is Business Monday editor Tom Brown's' [...]
by Art Woolf
The Vermont Department of Public Service isn't real happy with FairPoint's service. But that's just the tip of the iceberg of Fairpoint's problems. Verizon sold its northern New England business to concentrate on its urban customers. But the telecom market is changing so [...]
Some of these reforms can have unintended consequences
That's Representative Peter Welch talking about the efforts to reform the student loan program. But I hope Rep. Welch, and other policymakers, consider unintended consequences when they cast other votes. The law of unintended' [...]
The Freeps editorializes that
The nation's dairy policy requires a delicate balance between the goal of keeping staple food prices affordable and ensuring regional production of milk, in the interest of food security and local economies.
Other staple foods--bread,' [...]
Vermontnewsguy takes on UVM for a proposed policy to limit solicitations (no, not the male-female variety) on campus. The policy
covers “Noncommercial solicitation,” which “includes, without limitation, petition drives, public opinion polling, membership drives for recognized groups and organizations, preaching, proselytizing, political organizing, political canvassing, and political campaigning.”
Vermontnewsguy [...]
Children's Health Magazine has just rated Burlington the top city in the nation to raise a family. How did Burlington come out on top? It's hard to tell from the article, since there are no quantitative measures shown, only a verbal narrative. [...]
The man who is responsible for saving 245 million lives worldwide has just died, and hardly anyone knows his name.
Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution (back when green meant something different than it does today), winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize [...]
The Rutland Herald hits a double when it editorializes on U.S. science policy and rightly argues that spending money on basic scientific research is a valid and legitimate use of the public's money. But that double is followed by several swings and misses. ' [...]
In a comment to a post of mine early this week Jon T writes
If you have the time, I would love to see your reaction / response to Krugman's NYT piece from today.
In Paul Krugman's long Sunday NY Times Magazine [...]
I think I am finally getting a handle on how big a trillion is (it's really, really big). Now I'm trying to figure out how big a kilowatt is. In a story about a new windmill at Bolton Ski Area I read that
The turbine...will generate [...]
