Woodstock CT Café

Comment about this article from an economic advisor:”This writer’s take on the TARP mirrors that of the press but is inaccurate; the money put into the banks usually involved sale of debt (bonds, preferred), not a ‘bailout’ and as such repayment was required and in fact most of the dollars have been repaid.

The four biggest institutions that haven’t paid back their TARP money include only one bank, Citigroup; the other three are Chrysler, General Motors, and AIG. Six of the ‘Big 7′ banks have paid back their TARP funds, and the government has made about 15% on those investments.

Also I would blame the Great Recession, at least in the immediate moment, on two factors – the big push for housing and specifically FNMA and FHMLC, which have been around since the 1970′s, and the lack of regulation in the derivatives markets, specifically credit default swaps and their various offspring. There are many other underlying causes, many of which the writer mentions.

The comments on Keynes and the misapplication of his writings was excellent and right on the money. The paragraph that begins ‘While the system is so labyrinthine as to be impenetrable…’ may be the best summary of those things that economists agree on that I’ve seen.”

by Anonymous 

Farm underwriting is no news. It originated in the Great Depression — along with Social Security, the w.p.a., the c.c.c., etc. — when family farms were folding right and left and vast numbers were unemployed.  

The idea originated as social programs to help the most desperately unemployed and poor, though it would mean deficit spending. Previously deficit spending had happened only in wartime. The idea of peace-time deficits originated in the theory of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who advocated that — if a nation operated with a balanced budget or a modest surplus in flush times — a depression could be abbreviated if a government spent into debt to generate jobs, stimulate industry, and get money flowing again … provided they afterwards paid back their debt when stability returned. Taking a chance, the US adopted this policy and launched small programs, of rather modest impact given the depth of the depression (though those who found work through government programs were grateful, and a lot of lasting public works were accomplished). But it was massive deficit spending required by World War II that turned out to be the boost that jump-started the economy, proving Keynes to be correct that government spending could bring a country out of economic depression. But anyone who says today’s cumulative debt is the result of Keynsian economic theory is either ignorant of — or willfully ignoring — his full argument that presumes paying off debt in prosperous times.   

Most Depression-era programs were discontinued in time, with the exception of Social Security, a variety of farm aid programs, and (indirectly) veterans’ benefits. In time, with broad changes in American public conscience toward poverty and racism, Johnson’s Great Society Programs were added in — aid to dependent children, head start, medicare, etc., some of them (welfare) replacing old state-run poor-relief programs. In time it got out of whack and expensive. Starting around the end of the Vietnam War the national debt grew and was not repaid. More and more programs were added, mostly with good intent, but the number of people qualifying for support (“entitlement”) kept growing too. 

As recently as the 1950s Republicans were socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Recall that for a brief moment both the Democrats and Republicans considered Eisenhower as their candidate. But from Reagan onward these stances were reversed, as the party sold its soul to evangelicals to buy their votes (though in fact harshly indifferent to evangelical social causes), and became the party socially rabid and fiscally irresponsible. Most of the current national debt has been accumulated since then, the vast majority of it (but not all) under Republican administrations and congresses, through a combination of increasing debt (through entitlement programs and wars) and simultaneous cuts in taxes. That’s a little bit like quitting your job and going on a spending spree. Recall that almost the only balanced budget we’ve seen since Eisenhower was under Clinton’s second term. (By the way, the annual deficit and cumulative debt are not the same as international balance of trade).

Reagan does get legitimate credit for taking some really unpleasant steps to stabilize the economic mess that had been taking shape since Nixon’s era; he allowed the Federal Reserve Bank to adopt controls on quantities of cash awash in the market place. It was painful but it worked. Reagan also set in motion the consecutive tax cuts and deregulation that would come back to bite us all later. His party continued with deregulation and tax cuts for the next thirty years. Clinton gets a share of blame for signing some legislation passed by the Gingrich Congress (pressing Ginnie Mae to extend mortgage credit to people who really weren’t qualified). Bush II’s tax cuts combined with his puzzling war in Iraq added immensely to cumulative national debt. With these expenses and still more tax cuts, annual revenue fell ever shorter of annual expenditures. The end-of-year debt just keeps getting rolled over into cumulative debt that requires interest payments. If the day comes that interest payment (“servicing the debt”) equals or exceeds revenue, we’ll see a collapse that will make the Great Depression will look like a Sunday school picnic. If Reagan wanted to “starve the beast” of Big Government… we may be seeing the beginning of it now.

Meanwhile, in the Reagan spirit, his party set about de-regulating banking, investment, and other financial industries because they (correctly) saw that there was great growth possible with removal of these barriers. These regulations had been put in place after the Great Depression. For a reason. You will recall that the first signal that deregulation wasn’t such a great idea was the collapse of numerous Savings and Loan banks just as Reagan wound up his career and passed the torch to Bush I. Their party may have led the stampede for deregulation, but they probably weren’t alone in voting for it; it would be instructive to see a vote-by-vote tally of every deregulation vote in congress since 1980. Read the rest of this entry »

from Con to WVG

Because of the Title to this main Comment, I’d like to stick to that subject: What exactly about the comment is “…just plain a lot of baloney, double-talk and whining…” as your comment had stated about “most” of Frank’s primary comment? A lot of us readers do actually think for ourselves, but you must back up your assertions like everyone else.

This is NOT a pattern of everyone ganging up on you because we disagree – it’s about making completely unsubstantiated, empty assertions about the merits of a Comment. We think for ourselves and require strong back up if a comment is to be taken seriously.

Whenever I make critical comments on certain other websites, I’m often set upon first by a Haughty Admin, then followed by most readers – however, those comments are almost always immature insults, personal attacks which have nothing to do with the merits of my comment or any of my assertions in a ‘point-counterpoint’ type back and forth. All to say, you may feel similarly ’set upon’, but you won’t be insulted by me nor will I make any personal attacks. ‘Ad Hominem’ may be over-used, but does describe much of it: “…an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.”

I’m asking for an argument from you ‘which links the validity of a premise’ to the actual subject matter and proves it out – I’m not linking anything to your apparent dislike/vindictiveness toward Frank C. Read the rest of this entry »

 from Dean

WVG, you are just guessing on election results. I know plenty of republicans who would have voted for him (Corden), myself included. Heck, I’ll draw some better conclusions than that from the past races.

1) If Mr. Rosendahl ran that election, he would have lost badly, perhaps worse than Mr. Richardson. A lot of people were tired of his attacks. That was evidenced in the extraordinarily low vote totals that his allies got.

2) If Mr. Powers ran against anyone else, he would have also gotten the same number of votes as Mr Richardson. He got less than 50% of the vote running against himself.

3) If Mr. Corden ran in the general election, he would have won. Pretty clear from the June results.

Given the recent election results, it is clear that the majority supported his actions and the board’s.

Anyways, I’d much rather be talking about the future than debating whether someone could have gotten through a primary when they chose not to run. That is pretty old news.

Click to enlarge. There’s more to this story, I’m sure.

This is an image from GoodEarth. The Image two articles down is from GoogleMaps.

from Mariah Leavitt (her blog)

Mariah with (another Academy girl) Stephanie Corey’s son Nathan last summer.

I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home to Virginia, but I hate leaving California. A very large part of me wants to stay out here, move out here, to live near my family. But leaving Virginia would be hard as well.  I feel really torn. I think the solution will be to come live out here for a few months at some point, find a job, just to see if this is where I need to be.

I think the hardest part of not being in California is not being able to watch Chris and Hannah grow up (younger cousins).  While I was here I got to go to Hannah’s gymnastic practice and Chris’ baseball games, I wish I could go every day! Hannah is so talented. I know that when it comes to your own family its hard to see them not being the best, but I truly think that with Hannah’s raw talent and dedication to what she is doing already (she is only 9 years old) she could go very far with it. And if you know me at all, you know my addiction to baseball. Chris seems to really like it. I think it would be fun to work with his teams.

Boy do I miss baseball. I moved to Virginia to try to get further in baseball, to do something to accomplish my dreams. Unfortunately, living expenses got in the way of my dreams. You have to have a job to pay for food; unfortunately that job takes up so much of my time. And now I have been away from baseball for two years. I almost feel like I’m setting myself up for failure, how can I succeed in baseball if I’m not working in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Click to enlarge. The house at 234 Pole Bridge Road was owned by Rick Lafleche (R. Lafleche Logging and Construction Co). The home was at the end of a private dirt road nearly a mile from the paved town-owned section of Pole Bridge Road. Rick returned home at about 4PM Wednesday to find it in flames.

from Con

As illustration of your point I recall one particular FOI Demand Action which I believe went all the way in the administrative process and, because it was so broad, burdened a lot of employees to search carefully in order to comply with a demand to basically produce ‘any & all communication to, from or among [Name, X, Y & Z], including emails, notes, blogs, etc. for X Months’ – and compliance demands production of every scrap, so imagine each employees tedious and time-consuming efforts on just the email ‘trees’ alone – Employees who had to stop working at their actual job and labor on this matter, all paid for on the Taxpayer’s dime.

As far as I could tell, the only purported purpose of the FOI Demand was the implementation of Meeting Agendas that would be comprehensive, transparent and allow no unfair surprises. Seems Fair; the FOI Demand did not, nor did it seem suited to achieve that end.

I don’t know if the parties ever just sat down and talked; I don’t believe that direct request regarding Agenda changes was ever made; nor did I ever hear of ANY kind of offer of informal meeting; nor of any compromise; or Alternative Dispute Resolution; or efforts to narrow matters to keep costs down and ensure that the FOI Demand language limited itself to truly germane material. There was an atmosphere of a stubborn stand-off on both sides, but only one side initiated the matter and seemed to a lot of us to have had a stern and stubborn lesson to teach (at our expense). Read the rest of this entry »

LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE FORUM
Saturday, February 27, 9:00 a.m. @ Willington Library
 
State Representative Bryan Hurlburt; who represents Ashford, Tolland and Willington in the Connecticut General Assembly, is inviting local businesses to join him for a small business assistance forum Saturday February 27 from 9:00 am to 11:00 am at the Willington Public Library.
 
Hurlburt, who is hosting the event, said it is a great opportunity for businesses in northeast Connecticut to hear about the various assistance programs offered by the state. 
 
“The state offers a number of programs to assist small businesses, but not all of our local businesses know about these resources,” Hurlburt said. “This is a great opportunity to gain awareness of these programs and to network with other businesses and state agencies.”
 
Scheduled participants include:
·         Hank Reed and Dennis Twiss of the Small Business Development Center
·         Peter Lent, Dept. of Economic and Community Development
·         Donna Wertenback, Community Economic Development Fund
·         Lori Granato, Connecticut  Development Authority
·         Peter Gioia, Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA)
-         Robert Miller, Northeast CT Economic Alliance, Inc
 
WHAT:     Small Business Assistance Forum
WHEN:     Saturday, February 27, 9:00-11:00 a.m.
WHERE: Willington Public Library Community Room (lower level)
7 Ruby Road, Willington, CT 

Contact: Larry Perosino
860/240-0144

from Frank Corden

Kevin: Thanks for taking the time to present an example of the kind of rational decision making that characterizes the administration and the Board of Education in general and Dr. Baran in particular. Though you can disagree on the numbers that one applies in any of these sorts of decisions, the structured process assures that when you do settle on representative/realistic numbers you are likely to arrive on a sound course of action.

Unfortunately, as with any pre-emptive action, you can’t tell how things would have turned out if you had acted differently. The likes of Shultz, Wholean and Powers will be just as quick to criticize Dr. Baran for not seeking an opinion if a situation escalates to a grievance, regardless of the outcome.

Another point you alluded to but didn’t expand on was the “opportunity cost”. There are at least two categories of opportunity cost here. First, the money that is spent on the legal advice helps provide (but not guarantee) a deterent to future costs. The costs of that grievance or litigation is the difference between having and not having a spring sport, or between having and not having public speaking or other comparable after school program. Spending $62 for a bit of insurance against losing one of those after school programs makes great sense. Read the rest of this entry »

A response to the uninformed musings of Wholean, Powers, and Shultz.

by Kevin 

I think it is important to know what is behind these numbers before coming to any conclusions. I understand that it is normal that when people don’t know the context of something they tend to make one up. I do happen to have some visibility into these items so I thought I’d put a little context around them.

As I understand it the $62.50 was for the administration changing a student’s grade that they thought was incorrect against the wishes of a teacher. In such a case they really have two choices; 1) they can leave it alone but that’s problematic when they feel it is to the student’s detriment (our raison d’etre) 2) attempt to change it against the teacher’s wishes. As I understand it discussion had already happened and the administration wanted to move forward with the second option because that’s what they believed was in the student’s best interest (I have no visibility into the facts behind the grade so I have no way to know who was “right” or “wrong” so please don’t read that in).

If you look through the legal bills they pulled you will see what even a relatively inexpensive union grievance can cost in legal bills, not to mention time and focus of the administrative staff. Spending $62.50 up front so both sides understand the legal authority granted to each group is comparatively minor insurance to preempt a possible grievance.

This gets back to what I’ve been talking about quite a lot lately. The difference between understanding long term vs. short term costs. I’m going to explain a little of the math behind this using some admittedly arbitrary numbers. I’m not suggesting that the administration is making decision trees for all of their decisions but this does illustrate to importance of considering the full costs of the decisions we make in many different contexts.

For the sake of argument let’s say that the cost of an average union grievance is $5000 in legal bills, time and energy (the opportunity cost of what we could be doing other than a union grievance, this is much more costly than the obvious legal bills). Let’s also say for the sake of argument that the average legal consultation is $100. Read the rest of this entry »

from Con

In a small Town, very often any given lawsuit or proceeding initiated by citizens simply does more harm than good. A group of Woodstock Citizens most closely associated with woodstocktruth.com fails utterly to realize this nearly self-evident dynamic (And BTW, WHY do they call cafe.com ‘Aljazeera’? – that says much about their bigotry and prejudice…)

Is there any specific data regarding the Total amount of Legal Fees spent on matters involving or initiated by Town citizens? Our Teachers always said “It takes 2 to fight” and when there was a costly fight, the first question was always “Who started it?”

Absolutely it is a citizen’s perogative to initiate lawsuits when the situation calls for it and all other alternatives have been fully explored and exhausted, etc. and no one should be treated unfairly or live with a bad situation. Taxpaying citizens deserve to trust that tax dollars are not to be wasted on lawsuits which are unnecessary or in which the Town wrong or has done wrong; Citizens also deserve to know that fellow citizens would only initiate expensive proceedings only as an absolute last resort and, ideally, are as narrow as possible, only to correct an existing, materially bad and costly problem and NOT merely to prove that they are in the right, to correct some minor problem/situation or to retaliate.

Ideally, citizens in a small town understand that the Town is simply not equipped to deal with costly lawsuits and, though possibly unfair, such citizens would go the extra mile to avoid costly proceedings by taking all factors into account. Ideally, citizens would put the interests of the Town’s taxpayers above such citizen’s interest in merely proving the town wrong, setting some precedent, ‘punishing’ the Town for inappropriate behavior, etc. It simply does more harm than good. Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t normally pay attention to the Woodstock Untruth website but this conversation is very interesting, especially Preston Shultz’s comment. Since few will ever see this commentary, we thought we would give it some wider coverage. Preston, Could you ask Craig to explain the recent Summary Judgement in Craig’s case with Citibank? Maybe it should be on his resume for the next election to the Board of Finance. He might also address the outcome of his other cases as well. Who among you are “people persons” Preston???

 2/5/2010 1:12 PM Margaret Wholean wrote:
Why do we pay our administrators so much money if they have to constantly ask for legal advice on how to perform their job and how to deal with daily issues? Why do they need to receive strategy advice from the attorneys on so many of the issues? Don’t they know the right thing to do?
2/5/2010 1:27 PM Admin (e.g. Craig Powers) wrote:
A very good point Margie, and a question more citizens and parents should be asking, in my opinion.
2/5/2010 4:52 PM A Taxpayer wrote:
I think Margaret’s question is a good one as well. In many ways I don’t blame our BOE and Superintendent for seeking legal consult. We not only live in a litigious society, but the rules that govern it have become increasingly complex. I don’t think anyone can keep current with all of its laws. However, that being said, if local boards and administrators lose their efficacy and strength as a result, then perhaps there is no reason to continue with the same structure. Perhaps regionalization of local offices and administrators should be considered-not only as a matter of practicality, but also as a matter of cost savings. If an administrator’s role has become merely one of a legal go-between, then we need to ask ourselves if they are they really worth their salary. For instance, perhaps there should be one Superintendent of schools for all the Academy sending towns.
2/5/2010 7:47 PM Admin (e.g. Craig Powers) wrote:
Tax, I don’t disagree with all you have said; however, I have to ask myself what would be the reason that the adminstration would ask what their authority is to override a teacher’s grade? Is there a problem with the teacher? Were they trying to appease parents? There doesn’t seem to be a good answer. Moreover, why would Frank be asking about PAC contributions? It would appear that he was asking on behalf of the ‘Attack PAC’- this is public money we are talking about and I don’t care if it’s a nickel- IT IS WRONG! Just a couple of small examples, but goes to the core of the issue which is there is something systemically very wrong with our school system and it starts at the top.
2/8/2010 2:48 PM Preston Shultz wrote:
People do not sue at the drop of a hat. People sue when they are frustrated to the maximum. Every time anything comes up, he calls the lawyers- every day.
 
An example of such is calling the lawyer rather than a parent that was not going to allow their child to be detained after school. Shouldn’t the first call be made to the parent to engage in a dialog? Other times when it comes to SPED and  IEP’s and PPT’s where the parents are supposed to be equal in the process on educational decisions be made for their child, you see in the legal bills that each “strategy” is being scripted by Shipman. If the parents are equal partners then no one needs an attorney much less using one that the parents do not know about.
 
Why do you think he is taking legal strategy on the bus drivers , the teachers, the custodians…He is not a people person and he has a real problem when it comes to speaking the truth.

Last night Becki’s family and friends held a surprise party for Becki at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Becki was aware of this surprise but not the real surprise. Casa Isabelle’s is rather dark but you can still figure out what happened.

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bzcDDtLQiY  

from John

I did my taxes this week … always ahead of the game. Usually I owe a little bit to the Feds and receive quite a bit back from the state which off-sets Federal taxes owed and the cost of heating oil in February and March. I did notice that very little federal taxes had been withheld from Becki’s lower pay.

As usual I received a goodly sum back from the state but was wacked by the Feds. Then I recalled that the Feds had reduced withholding requirements to encourage spending and employers automatically implimented this stimulus. For those out of work in the last year, reduced withholding was irrelevant. For those of us that received a slightly larger take-home pay as a result of this stimulus, this seemed inconsequential. But for the overall economy, lower withholding resulted in several billion dollars being put back into circulation.

Frankly I never considered the ramifications of lower withholding until I found out that I owed the Feds a little more than $2700 with a small fine added in.  It would not surprise me if most of the employed did nothing about their withholding a year ago and are now in shock because of what they owe the Feds.

While reduction of withholding may have stimulated the economy last year, what impact will this measure have on our national economy this year?

The Miller’s Fairvue Farm would like to generate clean energy from fermentation of manure in 2011. The Cafe wishes the Millers great success in this endeavor.

Here is the beginning of an article (below) on this system that is already in place in Vermont. See the original article . Also here is another article on “Cow Power“. Dave Brown alerted us to these two articles.

A third article in the Norwich Bull today provides some details about the Miller proposal. The Millers have 1000 cows and feel that they can generate electrical energy in excess of their own usage from this methane digester system. Imagine all dairy farms in Woodstock doing this to help their profitability.

From the first article: “Like many top dairy producers in Vermont, Brian and Bill Rowell attribute their success in large part to their ability to think outside the box to maximize available resources to maximize profits. Cow comfort ranks high on their agenda, as does communicating effectively with their 15 fulltime employees and using sustainable practices to protect the environment and preserve the land for future generations.

The owners of Green Mountain Dairy LLC, a 1,050-cow operation in Sheldon, Vt., also embrace changing technologies to improve their herd average and increase revenue from their cows beyond what they get for their milk. Installation of an anaerobic methane digester system two years ago enables them to convert manure produced on the farm into renewable energy. The Rowells milk 900 cows on a twice daily milking schedule in a double-15 milking parlor, shipping their milk to the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery…”