Sigue ousted from VT/ Weird-Al class/ Distracted driving campaign
by Timothy Page
Just Getting By is an intimate look at the lives of Vermonters who are struggling with food and housing insecurity.
The film is directed by Bess O’Brien.
Coming to St. Johnsbury
March 28 and 29 7pm
Athenaeum, 1171 Main St.
Free admission at door
Vermont has the second highest rate of homeless people in the United States, right after California. One third of Vermonters struggle to put food on the table. Just Getting By focuses on these issues in the lives of everyday people.
The film tells the stories of working families, folks who are homeless and accessing food shelves and soup kitchens and people who are living in temporary hotel/motel programs. In addition, the film focuses on New Americans grappling with the cost of living in America, Native people creating innovative farming practices and folks on the ground providing services to their fellow Vermonters in need.
The Vermont Department of Regulation has ordered Sigue Corp. to cease engaging in money transmission activities in Vermont as the company can no longer responsibly serve customers due to its declining financial position. Thirty-nine states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia coordinated to issue this consent order.
Sigue is a state-regulated money transmission company licensed in Vermont and 48 other states. Over the past several months, Sigue experienced significant financial deterioration. The company failed to complete multiple money orders and transmissions and to maintain adequate net worth and permissible investments to cover outstanding liabilities, both violations of state money transmission law. Many customers are still waiting for their funds.
“This coordinated effort means consumers are protected across state lines and will experience a similar remedy regardless of their location,” Commissioner Kevin Gaffney said. “Along with the coordinated effort among state agencies was the invaluable assistance provided by MTRA and CSBS in working with us and acting quickly to protect consumer funds.”
VTSU will offer a course for Yankies – No, not the cursed Yankees. The “Weird” ones.
Vermont State University music industry professor Brian Warwick will teach a class this fall called “Weird Al and His Polkas.” Warwick served as an engineer on Weird Al Yankovic’s last two albums.
“Harvard offers the Taylor Swift course in its English department,” noted Warwick. “So, while we were inspired by their offering, which concentrates on her songwriting and its influences, our course will have a different focus—more on analyzing Weird Al’s music production and analytics surrounding his success.”
While Yankovic rose to fame for his parodies, such as “Eat It,” Warwick notes that Yankovic’s body of work includes tribute songs and polkas.
Distracted Driving Vermont law enforcement campaign will run from April 4 to April 10 with a goal of making Vermont’s roadways safer by increasing the awareness of the dangers of operating a motor vehicle while distracted.
This April Vermont will see an increased amount of motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic due to the solar eclipse that will occur on April 8. With the amplified amount of activity, police encourage everyone to stay focused while they are driving so that we can all enjoy this incredible event in a safe and fun manner.
Distracted Driving is a serious matter. According to NHTSA, between 2012 and 2021, 32,657 people died nationwide in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver, and in 2021, 3,522 deaths and 362,415 injuries were linked to driver inattention.
In Vermont from 2018 to 2022; 37 deaths and 272 injuries were caused by distracted drivers.
The AAA foundation reported that while 96% of drivers say that texting/e-mailing while driving is a serious or very serious threat to their safety, 39% admit to having read a text or e-mail while driving in the past month, and 29% admit to typing one.
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Categories: SHORTS
So it’s a movie about equity and some of the many ways joe biden has succeeded in destroying America starring exclusively people that voted for him and will continue to do so.
Is “New Americans” another euphemism for illegal aliens? Regardless of citizenship status, I would like to know how many of the homeless are native Vermonters fallen on hard times and how many are from out of state that are benefit shopping. I know for a fact of one welfare recipient having a phone conversation with a friend in New Hampshire, encouraging that person to move to Vermont because the benefits were so much greater.
I myself came here for affordable housing. I was active as a leftist and felt that I might do some good. I’m genuinely grateful for what I’ve been provided. I also run a community project. Valid, recognized. There is little scope for it here, as the welfare system seems to have everything covered.
I became estranged from the Left during the summer of 2020. My story is a strange one. That being said, I believe that working toward change “within the system” actually can work. It won’t be easy.
Meanwhile, I’m struggling to secure affordable housing back in Phila., where I was living out of my van.
Had my particular “invisible disability” been dealt with I might have habilitated decades ago.
Re: “… encouraging that person to move to Vermont because the benefits were so much greater.”
This phenomenon is a fact of the matter. In my Vermont neighborhood, economic development was unwisely linked to low-income housing (Section 8) as early as the late 1970s. As a member of our downtown development association, I was instrumental in developing one of the major properties in town that had fallen into disrepair. I was able to organize a private sector plan to fund the development. And when I presented it, I was surprised to find that State affiliated NGOs, those specializing in procuring Federal and State funding, lobbied our group to take over the project. The group agreed because the amount of funding available from the private sector plan tripled when the NGO, State and Federal organizations became involved. And, of course, the NGO administrators were paid handsomely with taxpayer dollars.
Long story short, as various private properties were converted into Section 8 housing, developers began to run out of the low-income demographic required to qualify for assistance. And, as mentioned by Paul, social service organizations began recommending Vermont, not only for low-income housing, but for Vermont’s relatively generous welfare benefits.
Those of us on these various committees and associations warned that the results would be unsustainable. And not only was our local demographic becoming over-weighted with low-income citizens, the only people who benefited were the landlords who developed these properties. In fact, tenants were prohibited from living in their apartments if they got better jobs and earned more money. Consider that as a lesson in dysfunctional incentives. Inevitably, as grants and subsidies increased, rental charges followed proportionately. And we noticed a commensurate increase in our public school educational expenses resulting from the influx of dysfunctional families requiring, yes, you guessed it, Special Education.
Build it, and they will come.
“Vermont has the second highest rate of homeless people in the United States, right after California.”
It should be no surprise that Vermont is #2 per-capita in “homelessness”, since the word got out nationwide that Vermont’s taxpayers are providing free motel rooms based simply on a person’s honor-system claim that they have nowhere else to go. Putting a roof over one’s head is typically a big expense, and when that need is to be met or highly subsidized by the welfare cornucopia, it frees up a person’s financial resources for things not so beneficial to one’s existence or to society in general. That is a powerful incentive to come to Vermont, hence the #2 homelessness status. HUD estimates there are approximately 3/4 million “unsheltered” Americans. The flow of migrants across our non-existent borders has resulted in over 8 million more people in need of affordable shelter in the US during the Biden administration. Until that very large barn door is shut, there is scarce logic in rounding up a few loose horses.