Category Archives: Economy

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas — UPDATED with more fleas

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Hey, you know about the Mylan controversy? Yeah, the company that bought the rights to the EpiPen and then jacked up the price by several gazillion percent? It now charges nearly $500 for a gizmo that probably cost them about three bucks to make.

Well, I’d managed to forget, or suppress, its Vermont connection until I was reminded by recent accounts in VTDigger and the Burlington Free Press. To wit, the Shumlin administration arranged a peculiar land swap in St. Albans to facilitate an expansion of Mylan’s operations here.

A land swap that costs the General Fund about a half million dollars a year.

(That’s about the price tag we “couldn’t afford” to spend on an Ethics Commission. Just sayin’.)

UPDATE: As Auditor Doug Hoffer points out, Mylan is also a beneficiary of the Vermont Employment Growth Initiative (VEGI) program to the tune of $5.7 million. More on this below.

I won’t rehash all the details here; you can check out VTDigger’s 2013 story, which lays it all out in excruciating detail.  I will note one thing before moving on: this turd blossom featured the guy I’m beginning to think of as the Joe Btfsplk of the Shumlin administration.

The idea… was largely the brainchild of Lawrence Miller, the Commerce Secretary.

Mmmyeah, EB-5, the endless Vermont Health Connect reboot, and now Mylan. Quite the resume you’re building, Mr. Miller.

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Phil Scott’s magical population boom

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Throughout his campaign for governor, Phil Scott has tossed out the notion that Vermont’s population must grow. He offers an ambitious target: a total population of 700,000 within 15 years. That’s roughly 75,000 more people.

Which is ridiculous, impossible, absurd. But that won’t stop him from saying it.

(Matt Dunne said the same thing in the primary race; it was just as ridiculous coming from him.)

Let’s start with the fact that he’s swimming against very powerful national tides. America’s population has been growing in southern and western sectors, and staying the same or shrinking in the midwest and northeast. There are a number of reasons for this, among them being climate, natural resources, and far greater immigration in the south and west.

Now, a couple of points made by VTDigger’s Jon Margolis in an essay posted earlier this year. For starters, there’s the fact that such growth is unprecedented without a tangible underlying cause:

States experience that kind of growth only after a discovery of natural resources (such as the California Gold Rush of 1849 or North Dakota’s Bakken Shield oil and gas in 2006) or when the federal government decides to invest billions in military, aerospace or energy projects.

In all its history, Vermont has had but one period of rapid population growth. It was in the 1960s and 1970s. The federal investment that made it possible was completion of interstates 89 and 91. Vermont’s version of “gold” was lots of cheap land…

That ain’t happening again, especially if Scott’s Republican buddies take control in Washington. Indeed, if the federal budget were to endure anything like the cuts the GOP would like to impose, small rural states like Vermont and its hypothetical Governor Scott would be royally screwed.

Moving on.

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Geoffrey Norman is a bitter, fact-challenged man

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See if you recognize this place.

 

It’s drug-infested and scandal-plagued; its only growth sector is “methadone clinics.” Government is bloated and ineffective; politicians offer tired bromides or worse. Its politics march to an “angry populist beat” but the electorate is “too old, too tired, and too disillusioned” to turn their anger into action. “Soaring” taxes bludgeon inhabitants into sullen beggary, stripped of the will to resist. Many believe that the place’s “moment has passed.” For-sale signs litter the neighborhoods, as multitudes seek desperately to escape.

In case you don’t recognize this hopeless wasteland or the aimlessly trudging zombie-eyed inhabitants wandering the land, yes, it’s Vermont, and those zombies are you and me.

At least it’s the Vermont that haunts the fever dreams of Geoffrey Norman, best known in Internet circles as the former operator of the late, great free-market blog, Vermont Tiger.

Well, Norman is still around, and is respected enough in conservative circles that he managed to sell an essay to the Wall Street Journal. It’s gloriously entitled “In Declining Vermont, the Mood Is More Resigned Than Angry.”

And if you want to know why some see Vermont as a bad place to relocate or do business, maybe it’s because the readers of the Wall Street Journal are being fed this kind of crapola.

I mean, thanks, Geoffrey, for doing your utmost to defame your home state.

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The VPR Poll: Pants On Fire, and other observations

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Rich Clark was worried about inaccurate results. That’s why he didn’t want to survey Vermonters about their preferences in the August primary.

Okay, but when you look at the results of his VPR Poll, you realize that some of those people are lying their asses off. Which kinda makes the whole accuracy concern seem a bit irrelevant.

The biggest whoppers came when respondents were asked how likely they are to vote. 87 percent said they were very or somewhat likely to vote in November. In actual fact, we’ll be lucky to hit 60.

As for the primary, 68 percent claim to be very or somewhat likely to vote. More than half of those people are lying. The biggest primary turnouts in recent years were 23 percent in 2010 and 30 percent in 2000, the year of the Great “Take Back Vermont” freakout.

Which makes me wonder. If that many people are lying about that, why should we believe the rest of their answers?

After the jump: analysis of their possibly truthful answers. 

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Hey look: another failing business-incentive program!

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Remember a couple years ago when New York launched “Startup NY,” an ambitious, expensive business incentive program? Vermont officials looked on with envy and concern as a program they couldn’t possibly match went into effect — with a barrage of slick TV ads saturating the Vermont airwaves, no less.

Republicans used Startup NY as a cudgel when attacking Governor Shumlin for not being business-friendly. Shumlin used it as something of a bargaining chip to get the Legislature to approve his desired incentive programs.

Well, the Cuomo administration just issued its required annual status report on Startup NY — months after the due date, and released at 4:30 pm on Friday afternoon heading into the Fourth of July weekend.

Yep, a newsdump. And yep, the report was bad news.

The companies that moved into the StartUp NY network of tax-free zones have created just 408 of the more than 4,100 jobs they promised to add to the state’s employment rolls within five years, according to a long-delayed report released late Friday by Empire State Development.

Well, now we know why the report was “long-delayed” and released at the last possible moment before a three-day weekend. Nobody in the Cuomo administration wanted to face questions about it.

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And now, a moment of appreciation for Peter Galbraith

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Anyone who’s read this blog for more than ten seconds already knows how I feel about Peter Galbraith. The Most Hated Man in the Senate.  Happy to obstruct legislation for obscure points of principle detectable only to himself. Narcissistic. Oil baron of questionable provenance. Leaves a trail of enemies wherever he goes. Questionable temperament for the state’s highest office.

I’m not voting for the guy, but he did a couple of things this week I truly appreciate.

First, he unveiled the most progressive higher-education plan of any of the three Democratic contenders. And second, he made a practical, hard-headed, economic argument for a social safety net initiative — which is something Democrats almost never do.

It’s a shame, because there are solid, evidence-based arguments to be made. I mean, appeals to fairness and helping the unfortunate are fine, but they’re not enough.

But first, back to the college issue, which is one of the most crucial in terms of helping people achieve success AND boosting the economy. After all, employer after employer complains about the lack of trained workers. Getting more high-school grads into college is a sound investment in our own future.

Galbraith’s plan, unveiled Tuesday, would cover the cost of a college education for Vermont students at state colleges and universities, and offer reduced tuition for some UVM students.

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Burlington needs to grow.

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One of the things that always perplexes me about anti-development activists in Vermont is how fragile they believe our state’s character is. To hear them tell it, a single development here or there will forever alter Vermont for the worse, and trash our pristine image.

Myself, I believe our state’s character is built of stronger stuff, and can withstand a reasonable amount of development.

Ditto Burlington, a small town by most standards but our largest metropolis. There’s a kneejerk reaction to any growth or development proposal in the city, as if it will be forever shattered if it has a few tall buildings or more people, or if we were to mix some housing into the artists’ colony in the South End, or just about anything else that might add to the population. .

Well, as a person who lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan longer than I’ve lived anywhere else, I can tell you that a city can accommodate a frightening amount of growth without losing its character. Ann Arbor remains a funky town full of interesting, creative people, even though it has a lot of tall buildings downtown and a lot of in-fill development.

Yeah, the traffic sucks, but it’s always more or less sucked.

Beyond that, I believe in a simple propostion: Burlington needs to get bigger. For the sake of its people and its economy — but more importantly, for the sake of Vermont’s future.

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The sun sets on the Vermont Enterprise Fund

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Hey, remember in January, when the state Emergency Board approved two grants from the Vermont Enterprise Fund? GlobalFoundries was given $1 million, and $200,000 went to BHS Composites. Well, turns out those will be the last VEF grants ever awarded. During its recently concluded session, the Legislature rejected Governor Shumlin’s bid to add new money to the Fund — and decided not to extend the program.

The Fund is empty, and in the absence of legislative action, the program will sunset at the end of the fiscal year.

“It’s disappointing,” says Shumlin spox Scott Coriell*. “The Enterprise Fund has been a useful tool, but we do have other tools at our disposal.”

*Say that five times fast.

There was some funny business around those January grants that may have sealed the fate of the two-year-old program.

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How NOT to attract young people to Vermont

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Here’s a campaign issue that’s seemingly tailor-made for Phil Scott. But somehow I doubt that he’ll capitalize on it because, well, he doesn’t have any solutions to offer.

In a new, comprehensive study of college affordability across the country, Vermont finished a dismal 46th. It’s one of the least affordable places to go to college.

What’s even sadder is that just about every state is doing badly, and we’re doing worse than badly. This, according to the 2016 College Affordability Diagnosis just out from the University of Pennsylvania. Its nationwide findings:

— Every state has lost ground on college affordability since 2008.

— Financial aid doesn’t go as far as it used to, and most full-time students cannot make enough to work their way through college debt-free — even community college.

— Low- and middle-income families face significant barriers that limit their ability to invest in education.

This, despite the bounteous lip service paid by politicians to the importance of accessible higher education.

That’s the national picture. Vermont’s is even worse.

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Interview with the Mormon

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Hey, remember David Hall? The Mormon millionaire who’s been buying property in the Tunbridge/Royalton area, with an eye toward building a planned community based on ideas from Mormon church founder Joseph Smith?

Yeah, that guy.

All it takes is one massive fraud scandal to wipe everything else off the news agenda, doesn’t it?

Well, I have some unfinished business with said Mormon, David Hall by name. On Thursday, April 7, I was guest host on “Open Mike,” WDEV Radio’s local talk show. In the first hour, I interviewed Mr. Hall about his plans. We had a lively and thoughtful discussion that shed substantial light on his plan. (The interview is archived here.)

You may recall that I wrote about his plan shortly after it became public knowledge — a nice little ready-fire-aim masterpiece entitled “The Mormons are Coming! The Mormons are Coming!”

In light of our interview, I feel compelled to give a fuller account of his plan and my views. So here we go.

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