From: The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer
Organizations
Contact: Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
March 23, 2009
Economy rescue: Adding up the dollars
The government is engaged in an unprecedented
- and expensive - effort to rescue the economy.
Click the following to learn all the elements of the bailouts.
http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bailout_scorecard/index.html
****************
Contained in this edition of Tax Talk
***************************
Don’t Miss
The Important April 7 Debate
The Federalist
Society's
Connecticut Lawyers Chapter
INVITES YOU TO ATTEND
A
Discussion and Debate on
Same-Sex
Marriage and Religious Liberty:
Merging
Conflicts, What Resolutions?
Tuesday, April 7, 2007
12:00 to 1:30 PM
State Capitol,
Hartford, CT
Directions to State
Capitol:
http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/drivingdirections.asp
Room 310, 3rd
Floor, West Wing
Lunch will be available, if
desired, at $5 to offset costs
RSVP: Brian
Freeman, 275-8310, bfreeman@rc.com
Moderator: Ray Dunaway, WTIC-AM 1080
Speakers:
- Prof. Robin Wilson of Washington and Lee
Univ. School of Law
- Prof. Susan Schmeiser
of UConn
School of Law
About the speakers: Since 2002, Professor Schmeiser has taught law at American University's Washington College
of Law and the University of Connecticut School of Law. She previously worked as a litigator at Shea & Gardner in Washington
D.C. and as a law clerk for the Federal District Court
for the District of Columbia.
She teaches courses in Health
Law; Gender, Sexuality and the Law; Family Law; and other fields.
A specialist in Family Law and Health Law, Professor Wilson’s research and
teaching interests also include Insurance and Biomedical Ethics. Before
entering practice, she clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit. She is the co-editor
of Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
Open to the public. Please feel
free to pass along this invitation to any others who might be interested. This
will be in a small venue with ample opportunity for audience questions and
discussion.
***************************
THERE’S
STILL TIME TO PROTEST!
ATTEND THE
NEXT TEA PARTY
STAMFORD: March 28, 2009 at 10 AM
Assemble at 96 Broad Street, Stamford
http://taxdayteaparty.com/
THE FOLLOWING
IS THE NEWS REPORT ON RIDGEFIELD TEA PARTY OF MARCH 21 - Hundreds protest federal government spending in Ridgefield Stimulus
concerns heard in Ridgefield - By
Eugene Driscoll, Staff Writer, Newstimes
Updated: 03/21/2009 09:32:36 PM EDT, RIDGEFIELD -- They carried signs,
chanted slogans, urged motorists to honk horns -- there was even a folk singer
urging the audience to "take back" the country. Sounds like your average protest, right? The difference here -- many of the protesters
were political conservatives who had never felt it necessary to take to the
streets before. And yet there they were,
about 300 strong, lining both sides of Main Street in front of Ballard Park
on Saturday for a "Tea Party" protest against President Barack Obama's $3.5 trillion
budget and the government's effort to "stimulate" the sagging U.S. economy
through spending. http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_11968298
****************
Top lenders pull plug on small biz loans
How to spend $700 billion in
6 months - Funds allocated to the TARP bailout are almost spoken for. Experts
say Geithner will need to ask for more, but that
could prove to be a difficult task.
By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer,March 23, 2009: 3:16 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) --
Remember that $700 billion financial sector rescue plan from October? It's all
but spoken for. After Treasury Secretary
Tim Geithner promised to spend up to $100 billion on
a toxic
asset purchase plan Monday, only $10.2 billion remain unallocated in the
Troubled Asset Relief Program. After
former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson determined how Treasury would spend up
to $460 billion of the funds in his tenure, the new administration has
committed another $230 billion in just two months. But with the government's
rescue programs still incomplete, Geithner may need
to ask for more.
(For a look at how Treasury and other government agencies
have used taxpayer dollars to rescue the economy, click here.)
***************************
For
those who fondly remember and miss one of the Courant’s best investigative
reporters who has since retired, you will be pleased
to read the following. Congratulations
to Denny Williams on an excellent investigative piece on…..
Gulf
War Illnesses Debate Rages On for 18 Years: No End in Sight for the Sick, Thursday 19 March 2009,
by: Thomas D. Williams, t r u t h o u t | Report
Barack Obama is now the fourth president
facing the scientific and bureaucratic conundrum around the US-created ongoing
wartime hazards producing disastrous health complications for soldiers and
civilians.
Eighteen years after the six-week first Gulf
War, maladies still haunt thousands of US and allied service members as well as
estimated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Afghan civilians. A
myriad of scientists and government officials insist it is bewildering to
pinpoint whether countless chemical and radiological hazards either killed or
sickened hundreds of thousands of US service members, allied soldiers
and Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Afghan civilians. Federal health officials have not only
denied monetary and health assistance to thousands of veterans, whose illnesses
they say cannot be linked to US created wartime hazards, but they have mostly
failed to assist the Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Afghan civilian health system.
Continued…. http://www.truthout.org/031909A
****************
The following appeared on March 16. Three days later, President Obama reversed his plan…
The American Legion Strongly
Opposed to President's Plan to Charge Wounded Heroes for Treatment WASHINGTON, March 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/
-- …."It became apparent during our discussion today that the President
intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan," said Commander David
K. Rehbein of The American
Legion. "He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method,
but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations
that would be compromised by it." …The American
Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for
treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created
to treat the unique need of America's veterans!
Continued … http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20090316/pl_usnw/the_american_legion_strongly_opposed_to_president_s_plan_to_charge_wounded_heroes_for_treatment
****************
Direct to ChangeTracker
Journalism
non-profit ProPublica last week launched ChangeTracker, which will track all changes on
WhiteHouse.gov, Recovery.gov and financialstability.gov. By following the site’s feed and clicking the links, you
can instantly compare the before and after of every executive order, speech or blog post that is uploaded to the site. Perhaps more
interesting will be what’s deleted. http://www.propublica.org/feature/changetracker
***************************
Towns Balk At Greater Sheff Role, By JODIE MOZDZER | The Hartford Courant , March 23, 2009
The state Department of Education is asking suburban school
districts to add 660 classroom seats for Hartford
students next year in an effort to reach higher integration benchmarks under
the Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation ruling.
But some districts are saying they just can't afford to do so, and that could
jeopardize the state's ability to comply with the Sheff
ruling.
"We have simply reached the breaking point," Bristol Superintendent
Philip Streifer said last week. "We are not
opposed to the Sheff issue; we simply can no longer
afford to fund additional state mandates without adequate financial
support."
Districts that accept Hartford
students through Open Choice receive $2,500 per pupil. State Commissioner of
Education Mark McQuillan has asked Gov. M. Jodi
Rell to increase that funding. Rell's budget
proposal kept the Open Choice per-pupil funding level with last year. Under McQuillan's proposal, districts that participate in Open
Choice would receive a base grant of $35,000 to $75,000. And they could get
more per-pupil funding -- up to $6,000 -- depending on the percentage of Hartford students in the
school district. Under the Sheff agreement, 27
percent of Hartford's
minority students must attend an integrated school by the start of the 2009-10
school year; by 2012-13, that goal rises to 41
percent.
Expanding Open Choice is one part of a larger plan to reach those goals. The
state also wants to diversify all magnet schools, and increase their general
enrollment. Also, attendance at technical high schools will now be counted
toward meeting the Sheff goals.
In addition to keeping Open Choice funding level, Rell
also kept funding for magnet school tuition the same. And, because of a change
in state law, school districts are no longer allowed to limit the number of
students for whom they pay magnet school tuition. Some districts are worried
that they will no longer be able to afford to pay for all the students who want
to attend magnet schools.
"It's not really just the Hartford
choice component," said Ellington Superintendent Stephen Cullinan. "It's the corollary of that and the magnet
school program. ... My concern is if I'm able to afford the outgoing
tuition." Continued … http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-sheff-ruling-schools-0323,0,6941326.story
The Federation recently obtained the following from the State’s Dept of
Education. Where does your town stand?
|
|
2008-09
|
2008-2009
|
2009-10
|
|
Sheff Region Towns
|
Enrollment
|
OPEN CHOICE SEATS OCCUPIED
|
STATE ASKS TOWNS TO TAKE MORE STUDENTS. HERE ARE THE NUMBERS.
|
|
Avon
|
3,559
|
49
|
19
|
|
Bloomfield
|
2,155
|
0
|
0
|
|
Canton
|
1,750
|
37
|
11
|
|
East
Granby
|
898
|
26
|
7
|
|
East
Hartford
|
7,222
|
0
|
0
|
|
East
Windsor
|
1,427
|
38
|
10
|
|
Ellington
|
2,634
|
18
|
20
|
|
Farmington
|
4,189
|
93
|
7
|
|
Glastonbury
|
6,847
|
46
|
56
|
|
Granby
|
2,263
|
76
|
12
|
|
Hartford
|
21,649
|
1
|
0
|
|
Manchester
|
6,870
|
0
|
0
|
|
New Britain
|
|
|
0
|
|
Newington
|
4,509
|
52
|
30
|
|
Rocky Hill
|
2,613
|
25
|
18
|
|
Simsbury
|
4,933
|
94
|
24
|
|
South
Windsor
|
4,791
|
72
|
26
|
|
Suffield
|
2,535
|
25
|
19
|
|
Vernon
|
3,549
|
32
|
26
|
|
West
Hartford
|
10,080
|
89
|
70
|
|
Wethersfield
|
3,811
|
31
|
28
|
|
Windsor
|
3,970
|
10
|
0
|
|
Windsor Locks
|
1,846
|
35
|
13
|
|
|
|
849
|
396
|
|
Non-Sheff
Region Towns
|
|
|
|
|
Berlin
|
3,217
|
28
|
23
|
|
Bolton
|
861
|
22
|
4
|
|
Bristol
|
8,783
|
20
|
85
|
|
Cromwell
|
2,020
|
45
|
11
|
|
Enfield
|
6,288
|
75
|
40
|
|
Plainville
|
2,515
|
50
|
8
|
|
Portland
|
|
|
0
|
|
Reg. School District 10
|
2,836
|
6
|
16
|
|
Somers
|
1,717
|
24
|
11
|
|
Southington
|
6,826
|
10
|
66
|
|
|
|
280
|
264
|
|
|
Total
|
1,129
|
|
***************************
Taxpayers: Get ready to dig down deep into your
pockets. Government construction
projects, under the stimulus bill, will cost you more…..
Davis-Bacon
Pork, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/10/2009 Labor: The stimulus bill wastes billions by
requiring that labor on funded construction projects be paid a
"prevailing," meaning union, wage. Why should our infrastructure be
rebuilt under a Jim Crow era law intended to block minorities? The Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act is applied
throughout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1). The original
law, passed in 1931, required federal construction contractors to pay what is
determined to be the "prevailing wage" in a given area. The law was
introduced and passed to block wage competition from black construction workers
following an Alabama contractor's successful bid on a federal construction
project on Long Island in 1927. At the
Department of Labor, two agencies gather information related to wages and
labor: the Wage and Labor Division (WHD) as well as the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS). It is the WHD that has the job of calculating the prevailing
wage under the Davis-Bacon Act. A 2008
study by Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Institute found that WHD
prevailing wage estimates were 22% higher than the BLS average reported wages
paid in various cities. The reason is madness in the WHD's
method.According to the Suffolk study, the structure
of the WHD methodology results in lower participation from small and midsize
firms, provides an opportunity for unions to dominate the process of reporting
wages, and lets as few as 12.5% of survey respondents set wages for the entire
universe of workers. In contrast, the BLS uses the Occupational Employment
Survey, which collects wage data from more than 1.2 million establishments.
Thus BLS wage estimates rely on a much larger sample that better represents
wages that prevail in the labor market.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=321576677899135
****************
As credit
markets froze, banks loaned millions to insiders
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — March 22, 2009, McClatchy, Banks
nationwide hold $41 billion in loans to directors, top executives and other
insiders, a portfolio that experts say should be stripped of secrecy.
Insider lending to directors is particularly troublesome
because it could cloud the judgment of people charged with protecting
shareholders and overseeing bank management, the experts say.
At Charlotte-based Bank of America, those loans more than
doubled last year, to $624.2 million — the biggest dollar jump in the country.
The largest of them likely went to three directors or their companies. The
surge came during the third quarter as credit markets froze, the government
prepared to infuse banks with billions in tax dollars and the board approved
the purchase of troubled Merrill Lynch.
Bank of America
ranked fourth on the list of biggest insider lenders. At the top was JPMorgan of New
York, which held $1.48 billion in insider loans,
mostly by directors or their companies. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/64551.html
Story | BofA's insider loans zoomed in 2008, but no one
will say why
Story | Treasury throws
$5 billion lifeline to auto suppliers
***************************
Risk vs
Profit? Is this a risk we can afford to
take?
Obama's $1 Trillion Plan to End Bank Crisis
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
Hopes to Attract Private Investors to Buy Toxic Assets By MATTHEW JAFFE, SCOTT MAYEROWITZ and
JAKE TAPPER
March 23, 2009 President Obama said today that his
economic team is "very confident" that the administration's newest
effort to stabilize banks -- a mix of public and private funds that could total
$1 trillion -- will help to free up credit. … The plan aims to remove so-called toxic
assets -- many of them bad mortgage investments -- from the banks'
balance sheets through a private-public
partnership. The program will rely heavily on private investors, such
as hedge funds and private-equity firms, to buy up $500 billion to $1 trillion
of assets with the government
providing incentives such as low interest loans and sharing in both the
risk and possible profits. Obama described the
Public-Private Investment Program as "one more critical element" in a
multi-pronged effort to help the economy recover.
Continued … http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=7147961&page=1
***************************