I will not have my laptop with me, but I will be sure to fill you in later.

I will send updates to Twitter via cell phone.  I’m @shesright, if you want to follow.  There is also a widget showing my last three Twitter updates in the right-most side bar of this site.

I will not be available to approve comments today, but people who have had a previously approved comment will have their comments posted right away, provided they use the same e-mail address as before.

I have no idea why it took me so long to post this.  I have been looking forward to it for two weeks now.

Why should you care? I have two words for you – Megan McArdle.

Ms. McArdle is the most awesome libertarian economics blogger from the blog Asymmetrical Information, currently housed at The Atlantic.  And she is giving the closing address, entitled, (Blogo)spheres of Influence.

Okay, there is another reason you should go.

This timely and essential event will feature three speakers with the experience and credentials to address the economic challenges that Vermont faces and must overcome in the next months and years. These speakers – and panels of prominent Vermonters – will explore strategies for surviving the recession and for promoting economic development, growth, and prosperity in the Green Mountain State.

Vermont Tiger has all the info prominently located at the top of the sidebar on the right of the site.

Register now (before Jan. 26) and save $20.

You can bet She’s Right will be there.

Can we all agree that we want US companies to get the heck out of China and stop poisoning us? Can we? CAN WE???

The latest in China’s baby-killing poisonous formula scare is, now, chocolates that are sold in the US have been found to also contain the industrial chemical melamine. And not just some obscure chocolate that you can only buy at the dollar store, but Cadbury.

Cadbury. I am quite sure that not being able to eat a Cadbury bar with out fear of dying from poisonous Chinese chemicals is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

This mess is just unreal.

We have endured poisonous pet food, cough syrup, toothpaste, TOYS, more toys, even more toys, and now chocolate. What will it take to stop America’s reliance on Chinese goods?

Speaking of poisonous pet food, melamine, the chemical found in the tainted dairy and chocolate products, is the SAME chemical that was in the pet food.

Why does this problem exist? How come everything that comes from China is poisonous?

Authorities say suppliers might have added melamine, which is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to deceive quality tests for protein.

This stuff is done intentionally to produce a cheaper product.

Last year when the toy AquaDots was putting children in comas, it was because the Chinese plant where they were made used a cheaper chemical in place of the safe(r) chemical that was supposed to be used. (I do not think any chemical that makes dots sticky when sprayed with water is safe for a children’s toy, but that is just my opinion.)

The thing that really bothers me about the situation is that many times we do not know that our products contain components that are made in China.

Did you know that 80% of ascorbic acid comes from China? Ascorbic acid (vitamin c) is used in so much of the food we buy, including fruit beverages and meats.

Did you know that China produces 75% of the world’s garlic? That means, for any product you purchase that contains garlic as an ingredient, that garlic probably came from China.

The [Americans for Wholesome Food]’s report, based on independent lab tests, found “high levels of lead, arsenic and added sulfites in two supermarket-brand imported garlic powders from store shelves.”

(You can buy California garlic powder, granules, or minced at the Atlantic Spice Company for great bulk rates. Their spices will rock your taste buds.)

I’m not looking for a government mandate here. What I am looking for is good old fashioned American common sense.

Call, e-mail, or write to your favorite companies and demand that they stop poisoning our food supply with Chinese products.

Although, I would argue that this is not outside of the scope of government intervention. This is a matter of public health and safety and, as long as China is able to flood markets with under-priced products, thereby putting US competitors out of business, consumer action alone might not be able to make much of a difference.

But then, the payments went up and now I can’t afford them. Now the company wants to repossess my stereo and ruin my credit rating. Can you imagine! I need that stereo. It’s like my right as an American to have a stereo system I cannot afford!

I think the government should do something about this. I am not the only one this is happening to. There is a stereo crisis in America!

Pretty ridiculous, huh?

But, replace the word stereo with the word house, and you have our current state of affairs.

It is just as ridiculous. And I am not the only one who thinks so.

I have avoided saying anything about this because, well, these people are losing their homes and it is really sad and a tough situation and I do care. I mean, I have compassion for them and it would be totally lame to rub salt in the wounds.

But… Now this is a political issue. All bets are off.

Hillary Clinton released an ad attacking John McCain’s stance on the housing crisis.

In the advertisement, the Clinton campaign again portrays a family asleep in the middle of the night when the phone rings, meant to evoke a national crisis. The narrator then intones, “John McCain just said the government shouldn’t take any real action in the housing crisis; he’d let the phone keep ringing.”

(How funny would it be if someone in the stock footage used in that ad was a McCain supporter, just as the girl in her other ad was a Barack Obama supporter?)

Within hours, the McCain campaign released an advertisement on the Internet. It starts with images of the Clinton advertisement, with the narrator then commenting, “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama just said they’d solve the problem by raising your taxes — more money out of your pockets.

I think McCain wins that fight, hands down. Not just because I agree with him, but because of the millions of Americans that did not take out adjustable rate mortgages or buy houses they could not afford, who will not want to foot the bill for the bail out.

It is not the government’s responsibility to help people out of their bad financial decisions. (That goes for businesses, too, so don’t even bother going there.)

Look, we, as a nation, have been living in a period of excess and over-extended credit, on borrowed time, if you will, and it is time to pay the piper.

Don’t you remember what happened when the people of Hamelin didn’t pay the piper?

He took their children.

And if we are not careful in how we handle things, our children will be left to pay for our mistakes, too.

We need to let the market correct itself, even if it is painful, not incur more national debt trying to insulate ourselves from reality.

That is usually the extent of my Town Hall reading.

Except on days like today, when I find not one, not two, but three of my favorites all in one edition: Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell and Pat Buchanan.

The one I want to recommend, though is the one by Cal Thomas. Mr. Thomas – my all time favorite columnist, bar none – has a great, short column that sums up the looming economic crisis in our country.

Have a look.

The afternoon speaker was Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man. (You can read here bio here. You can also read an interview with her about The Forgotten Man here.)

Her talk was about the election of 1936, which she dubs the most significant election in US history. Ms. Shlaes entered the stage claiming that in order to understand what is going on with elections today, we need to understand 1936.

The title of Ms. Shlaes’ book comes from one of Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches in which he voiced concern for “the forgotten man,” the man at the bottom of the pyramid.

But there was another forgotten man. William Graham Sumner spoke of his own forgotten man.

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

But President Roosevelt’s forgotten man was D. More specifically, it was all of the different constituent groups that could stand for D.

Ms. Shlaes went on to describe how the New Deal programs were used to reach out to all of the Ds in America and to get them used to Washington helping them with things they used to do for themselves.

There were blatant examples of federal money being used for political purposes, which was not illegal at the time.

Money was poured into projects in the battleground states, including Vermont, which was one of only two states to go against Mr. Roosevelt in the election.

Ms. Shlaes took the majority of her time detailing just how underhandedly federal money was used to secure votes from the various Ds. Then, concluded by saying that this history is important to a state like Vermont where the idea of helping the forgotten man has really taken root. Ms. Shlaes wanted to make the point that the things they did to serve those constituency groups and secure those votes were wrong and not worth emulating.

I could not even begin to do justice to Amity Shlaes’ talk here. I recommend taking a look at her book The Forgotten Man, if you have any interest in the history of the Great Depression.

Following Ms. Shlaes’ address, there was another panel discussion. This one was moderated by Mark Johnson and included Art Woolf, Dawn Terrill, Amity Shlaes, Bill Schubart, Christopher Ellis, and April Cornell. (A brief bio of each panelist can be found here.)

The opening question was about what the panelists viewed as the impediments to business here in Vermont.

Art Woolf cited regulations and taxes.

April Cornell said that the business climate is not so bad in Vermont.

Bill Schubart said that the state has not provided any impediments to the growth of his company.

Dawn Terrill said that she acquired her business after it was started, so she had no problems, but she referred back to the problems faced by businesses when Vermont imposed community rating on health insurance and many insurance companies left the state making it more difficult for businesses to provide health insurance.

Ms. Terrill also brought up the lengthy permitting process that adds time and cost to development.

Amity Shlaes said that people in this state tend to look at a business that wants to expand and think that the business is big enough and the business owner is just being piggish, but we need them to think that expansion is a good thing because it will add more jobs.

Christopher Ellis gave a great analogy (and you have to read this with the charming British accent of the speaker): If you have a golden goose, you are better off developing a taste for eggs rather than a taste for goose meat.

Art Woolf brought up the fact that people in VT tend to see growth as negative.

Dawn Terrill suggested that someone needs to paint a picture of why growth is good, specific to the growth being proposed at the time.

At some point, the topic turned to health care, which is usually the largest expenditure for a business.

Bill Schubart gave us a sobering look at the future of universal health care, which according to him is inevitable because it is costing too much. Mr. Schubart explained that we will need to change the way we view health care. Universal health care is not going to provide the type of extreme measures that are now employed to, for example extend someone’s life by a couple of months or try to save a severely premature baby. He said that national health care will require us to redefine what we think about health care and be reintroduced to death.

(And, yes, I will be covering this in another post, to be sure.)

Dawn Terrill noted that under current law, we can’t choose a health insurance plan that costs less, but does not cover extreme measures. She would like to have that option. Policy changes can help insurance companies offer less expensive plans, but people do not want to admit that the businesses (in this case, insurance companies) can be part of the solution.

Mr. Ellis talked about the British system. Emergency and preventative care is totally free, and most people are happy with how it works, but it has become an inefficient, bloated bureaucracy and there can be dreadfully long waits.

All of the business owners agreed that health care is a large expense, and growing too fast.

Bill Schubart said that the state needs an economic vision.

Art Woolf responded that the 2-year term makes it hard to develop a plan. Also, once government has a plan, it does not like to change, so there is a drawback to a state economic vision.

Amity Shlaes suggested that the state form a regulatory- and tax-free enterprise zone to see what would happen.

The panelists were asked what the one thing they would change would be, if they could.

Art Woolf: Level of taxes.

Amity Shlaes: Income tax.

Dawn Terrill: Reform education system, students need a financial education.

Bill Schubart: Make the rules consistent – don’t change them in the middle of a project, apply them fairly, and get a quick (within 30 days) response from the government when there is a problem.

April Cornell: Exchange with Montreal.

And Christopher Ellis said that we need more venture capitalists (like Cairn Cross).

That’s all I have for notes on the second panel.

The day closed with an address by P.J. O’Rourke, which I could not even attempt to duplicate here, but if you ever get a chance to hear him, do it. You will be glad you did. The man is very funny.

I do have a few ideas that came out of the symposium that I will discuss in separate posts in the coming days, but this concludes my summary of the day.

So, I thought I would take a little time to post about what really happened at the Vermont Tiger Symposium.

The day was basically split into to halves.

The first half started, after Geoff Norman and Jack Harding spoke briefly about Vermont Tiger, with an address from David Audretsch, author of The Entrepreneurial Society. (You can read his bio here.)

He talked about the history of the American economy.

In the post-war era, it was manufacturing that drove our economy and we had no competition because the capital (ie. the factories and infrastructure) of the other countries was destroyed in the war.

Over time, though, countries like Germany and Japan were able to beat us at our own game and emerge as manufacturing leaders.

We have tried to re-capture our past success, but that is not where our future lies. It lies in technology and knowledge-based entrepreneurship.

Following Mr. Audretsch’s speech and a brief Q&A, there was a 90-minute panel discussion moderated by Emerson Lynn, featuring David Audretsch, Cairn Cross, Jack Harding, Allan Rodgers, and Ben Weiss. (You can find a brief description of everyone on the panel here.)

The focus of this first panel was mainly how to encourage, and lower the barriers to, entrepreneurship in Vermont.

Jack Harding emphasized the point that was made by David Audretsch in his speech that that successful areas are ones in which there is a common vision between government, academia, and the business community.

The interesting thing about that was, as Mr. Audretsch pointed out, the areas that have successful knowledge-based entrepreneurship are of varied political systems and ideologies. The thing they all have in common is that all of the players – government, academia, and business – all have the same goal, which is to create a successful economy for the area.

Ben Weiss, founder and past president of Ai Squared in Manchester, made the suggestion that Vermont needs to market itself as business friendly and drive home the message that maintaining a quality of life does not have to be antithetical to business.

Mr. Weiss was concerned that it is difficult to entice people to So. Vermont because they do not think there will be any alternatives, if the job they are coming for does not pan out. He believes that Vermont can change that image with marketing.

One sentiment that permeated the room, especially during the audience Q&A portion of the panel, was that there is a certain faction of people in Vermont that equate business with all things bad, namely environmental destruction. What these people fail to realize is that we are not talking about the manufacturing industry here. That old caricature of the big factory that dumps waste into the rivers and pollutes the air with its towering smoke stacks is not the future of the American, nor the Vermont, economy.

Venture capitalist Cairn Cross of FreshTracks Capital was the much needed ray of sunshine in the room. Mr. Cross is in the unique position to have a first hand look at the entrepreneurial talent in the state. He described the state as a “wellspring of economic activity.”

As an example, he mentioned one of the firm’s portfolio companies is Brighter Planet, a company that provides carbon off-sets. They recently teamed up with Bank of America to offer a Visa card that offers points that are used to fund clean energy projects and off-set your carbon footprint, instead of the traditional credit card bonuses.

It was mentioned not only as an example of a success, but also as an example of the lack of media coverage of Vermont’s business success stories. Despite the press releases to local media outlets, there was no Vermont press coverage of this Vermont company’s deal with one of the largest banks in the nation.

Getting back to the theme of government-academic-business partnerships, Mr. Cross cited as an example of academia’s contribution to the future of entrepreneurship in Vermont a program at Champlain College called Bring Your Own Business. The BYOBiz program allows students to start and grow their proposed business while completing a degree program at Champlain. The program offers support and even puts the student entrepreneurs in touch with investors.

While Cairn Cross offered the brighter look at the potential here in the Green Mountain State, still others offered insight to some of the remaining problems.

Allan Rogers, Director of the Workforce & Business Development for the Vermont State Colleges, cited problems in the state with regulation and policies related to development. He also noted that Vermont needs a workforce with a higher set of technical skills, even for jobs that are considered “low tech.”

Mr. Rogers brought up the need for the state to have a strategic economic plan, and that in order for that to happen, we need to abandon our 2-year terms for a more productive 4-year term.

This theme appeared in the second panel as well, but I’ll get to that later.

When asked to elaborate on that point, Mr. Rogers explained that here in Vermont there is a very small window to get work done that is not politically motivated. There is only a six month to a year period of time before one must start thinking about the next election, yet that is not enough time to get anything done.

(Isn’t that why we like the 2-year term?)

The general consensus from the first panel was that in order to change Vermont’s business image and encourage entrepreneurship, there needs to be a government – academic – business community partnership.

There are some examples of this happening already, as were cited by Cairn Cross, but there was no disagreement that more needs to be done.

According to Mr. Cross, that starts with all of us, and he encourages everyone in the room to get involved.

I will post about the second half of the event tomorrow.

Panelist, and editor-at-large of vermonttiger.com, Art Woolf clarified what is meant by “entrepreneurs” in that title as “market solutions to public policy problems.”

The symposium featured addresses by national personalities David Audretsch, Amity Shlaes, and P.J. O’Rourke. There were also two panel discussions, each moderated by a member of the Vermont media, made up of members of the Vermont business and economics communities.

I took copious notes of all but P.J. O’Rourke’s fast-paced, hysterically funny closing speech, only because I was too busy laughing.

A lot of issues came up during the panel discussions that I will be devoting full posts to in the coming days.

I would love to get into more now, but I have a killer sinus headache.

This morning when I was getting ready to go, I had such a stuffy head and such a bad headache that I almost didn’t go. My husband suggested I go take some Sudafed, something I almost never do.

As I was looking at the Pfizer logo on the box, I imagined myself writing this post with a “Brought to you by Pfizer, the makers of Sudafed” on the top because I knew there was no way I would make it through this all-day event without it.

Imagine my surprise when I looked in the program at the symposium and saw that one of their sponsors was none other than Pfizer.

I thought that was pretty funny.

I commend Vermont Tiger for putting on this event. I am sure it was no small task to find sponsors and assemble such an impressive group of speakers and panelists, not to mention all of the other details.

One thing I learned today, among many, is that there is hope for the economic future of Vermont as long as there are people who care enough to try to do something about it.

And there are.

Part one of my in-depth coverage of the symposium is here.  And part two is here.

Okay, I am no economist, but here is a simplified explanation of why a for-profit entity is better than a government subsidized entity.

Where do profits come from? Profits are made when consumers purchase your product or service. Profit alone is motive to provide a good product or service, when there is choice in the market place.

If your service or product stinks, no one will buy it, ergo, no profit.

When a service provider is funded by the government, there is no motive to provide better service. If your service or product stinks, people still need to use it. Ergo, no motive to make it better.

As to this claim that private insurers care about profit and the government cares about your health, government funded health care programs do not put health over financial sustainability. A government system of health care still has financial constraints that impact quality of care. The only difference is that they lack the motive to improve that quality.

Now, to change the direction back to my original post about different philosophies, I just don’t understand why anyone thinks that it is someone else’s responsibility to pay for health care and not the individual’s.

We don’t have universal food distribution. We don’t have universal housing. Surely those are more necessary to live than health care, at least on a daily basis.

Where do we draw the line at requiring someone else to pay for our needs?