Businesses and the jobs they create are the foundation of our platform for the fine people in the great state of Connecticut. We have some ideas of our own, of course, but we always encourage yours. Keeping Connecticut employed is one of our main goals. Will you help?
We want to do our part to help solve this most important issue facing so many across our state and our country. Let’s help businesses be successful.
This single factor will benefit all of us. For your consideration, the following is a brief overview of our thoughts on how to do this:
- Immediate tax incentives for successful business leaders to volunteer and teach viable business skills in economically depressed areas would be highly promoted. This not only brings true talent (not government rhetoric) to bear on the problem, but also promotes unity of people throughout our state.
- We are in support of tax incentives for large corporations to outsource locally instead of overseas, thus promoting our support of Connecticut first, America always. • Let’s provide the incentives for the creation of business co-ops that will give them the edge to be able to compete locally against large conglomerates and franchise chains. Again, small and medium businesses are the very fabric of our community, our state and our nation.
- Let’s bring back that often-lost sense of “small town America” that we all love. I believe that by kindling our love of community and our desire to experience success and service our neighbors on a local level will do just that. I know that I miss this feeling myself and believe it’s time for a comeback.
- We are losing our ability to manufacture and build things here in our state and in our country. I believe this is a great opportunity to provide greater incentives for apprenticeship/intern programs. We must make it a key part of the educational curriculum, so students get a more rounded “hands-on” experience and businesses help offset labor costs. I, for one, want to turn a product over and read: “MADE IN THE USA.”
- We need to think “outside the box” by providing greater incentives and resources for “think tank” incubator labs so great ideas are not lost and forgotten due to lack of resources.
- Our great state still has a great farming tradition. Why not provide greater incentives for farmers to utilize the newest methodologies such as vertical farming (farm scrapers). This hydroponic methodology can produce a greater yield all year long. It will not tax the minerals of the soil, and it decreases water waste. Food that is grown in these environments has fewer chemicals and are easily “organic” certified.
- We must also work diligently to stimulate and revitalize Muni-Bond Insurance Market. Municipal bond insurance serves a crucial function in the municipal securities market, which is used by state and local governments, hospital boards and other tax-exempt entities to fund shovel-ready projects ranging from bridges (including our “Bridge to Somewhere” across the Long Island Sound), schools, hospital wings, and community parks. Insurance provides comfort to investors that a third party will make timely principal and interest payments on their bonds should the need arise, and it also reduces an issuer's borrowing costs.
- Connecticut has a large number of residents who are keenly involved in the financial markets. We need to consider making complex instruments subject to regular market valuation tests and clear those through a central clearing house. We need a system that encourages valuations to be based on real markets and not on “mark-to-model.” These last 18 months have demonstrated to us all that models work until they don’t. For underwritten offerings, a financial institution must be able to find a real public market value or the transaction should not be done. Derivatives with standardized features should be subject to daily valuation marks, and owners of these instruments should be required to maintain a reasonable amount of equity to support the position (i.e., akin to the traditional margin requirement on other securities).
- In conjunction with this, we must reform and revitalize the securitization market. Though the securitization process has been given a black eye over the past couple of years, it is important to recall that this market adds value by allowing issuers and investors to efficiently match risk, return and duration preferences. While portions of the market were abused, it is important that the baby not be thrown out with the bathwater. In the future, issuers should be required to retain on their balance sheets a substantial portion of the securitization and should be required to periodically test for current market values by selling into the market a portion of their holdings. In this fashion, both the issuing institution and the investors who bought the securitized asset would value the same asset equally.
This is a short list that includes areas of concern and suggestions to solve problems that face the people of Connecticut. “We, the People” can and will face and meet these challenges. Why? Because we are Americans, and this is what we do best.
Turning to the government for a handout seems to be “the flavor of the month.” However, we are the government. We must rise to these challenges and solve them at the local level, because the federal government has shown that it is incapable of doing what “We, the People” can accomplish when we work together.
----
I really want to hear your feedback on this issue. As an individual running as a Senator, my job would be to listen to you as your representative and then act accordingly upon the expressed will of you, the people. This is why at the end of every issue I have a comment feedback section, because without your direct involvement in this campaign, I would just be another politician promoting my agenda over that of those whom I work for and was elected to represent.
