{"id":1158,"date":"2016-07-21T16:13:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T23:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/outoffog.net\/RESH\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2016-07-21T16:15:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T23:15:19","slug":"not-just-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/outoffog.net\/RESH\/?p=1158","title":{"rendered":"Not Just Here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This my cousin Bill who lives, farms, cooks, does business and writes in the area around Burlington, Vermont. As with many of us, he is opinionated and not slow to make a comment when he feels it appropriate. Here’s his latest:<\/p>\n

\"bill-schubart\"<\/p>\n

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What Are We Thinking?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m struggling to reconcile the unfolding Jay Peak scandal and the \u201cwe did a great job\u201d remarks of our elected administration officials.\u00a0According to the SEC<\/a>, the developers misused $200M.<\/p>\n

Politicians are concerned about injuring Vermont \u201cbusiness reputation,\u201d but reputation is founded on integrity \u2013 which is not about controlling information, but about acting on it to ensure integrity.
\nIf proven, this would be the single largest fraud in Vermont\u2019s 225-year history, involving 700 immigrants from 74 countries. The State\u2019s potential liability approximates 5% of our annual $5.5B budget and could, when all the criminal and civil actions are tallied levy a $200+M liability on Vermont\u2019s 325,000 taxpayers. A lot is at stake.<\/p>\n

Two vital tenets of democracy are transparency and accountability of elected officials. Press efforts to rightfully obtain public records through FOIA requests are being met with delays and price tags designed to stonewall disclosure. This isn\u2019t transparency. The open talk about destroying executive branch emails should send shivers down the spines of Vermonters. Precisely because politicians are elected to conduct the\u00a0people\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0business, the people have a right to know why, how, and when. Civic shrugs, administrative backpedaling, and legislative ignorance combine to form a Petri dish for corruption, and corruption is much harder to root out than it is to prevent.<\/p>\n

Some of this alleged fraud occurred under Secretary Pat Moulton\u2019s watch. For her to now blame the U.S. Immigration Service for not responding to her request that investors\u2019 requests \u201c…be met favorably when these investors apply for their green cards,\u201d seems both arrogant and na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

The EB-5 program, with all its ethical ambiguities, is a matter of law. Efforts by Vermont politicians to lower the blowback on themselves by demanding the Feds circumvent the program\u2019s legal process in order to relieve defrauded and angry investors is reprehensible.<\/p>\n

The investors are not the only victims. Unpaid contractors await payment of $4.5 million and the citizens of Newport have a collection of cellar holes as the\u00a0centerpiece<\/a>\u00a0of their new downtown.<\/p>\n

I applaud the press corps for doing its job despite the administration\u2019s urging to back off. Every Vermonter should want the press corps to succeed so we understand what happened and why. This is not punitive. It\u2019s responsible democracy. And that democracy \u2013 beleaguered as it might be at the moment – is ours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is part of what he is on about in the comment:<\/p>\n

\"Newport\"<\/p>\n

We can deduce that a passel of immigrants were admitted on an investor status and the money that they plowed in to a certain development hasn’t worked out as advertised. This has the same kind of stink all over it, including stalled FOI requests and deleted e-mails, that characterizes so much of our province’s dealings. Oh, the horror! Ours is not the only jurisdiction where such shenanigans are the centrepiece of an administration that frequently touts its ongoing efforts at openness and transparency, as well as insisting that it is the group best apt to bring sound fiscal policy to its constituents. Is it any wonder that our society is falling apart, not only at the seams, but in the unravelling of the whole cloth.
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