Political Chowder's NUMBER OF THE WEEK - Sponsored by www.no-deal.org

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
41%

As Marriage and Parenthood Drift Apart, Public Is Concerned about Social Impact
Generation Gap in Values, Behaviors
July 1, 2007

The kids are, eh, all right. A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows that more people now consider adequate income and an equitable division of household labor more essential to a happy marriage than having children. Researchers asked more than 2,000 adults what they considered important for a successful union; having children ranked eighth out of nine choices, ahead of only "agreement on politics." Just 41 percent said that kids were "very important" - a plunge of 24 percentage points since the last such study, in 1990. ("Sharing household chores" shot up 15 percentage points over the same period, landing in third place.) The report attributes the shift in part to a change in moral thinking that has also led to greater social acceptance of cohabitation, premarital sex, and unwed childbearing. As a result, the authors say, "In the United States today, marriage exerts less influence over how adults organize their lives and how children are born and raised than at any time in the nation's history."

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www.no-deal.org
THIS WEEK'S NUMBER: $700 million

Don't kid yourself...it isn't about NH telephone customers, it is about the cash.

The federal tax code has created something called the Reverse Morris Trust. The RMT has the perverse effect of incenting Verizon (a large telecommunications behemoth) to seek out an otherwise unqualified purchaser (a small rural communications outfit called FairPoint) to dump its telephone landline business in NH, Maine and Vermont.

Just to give you an idea of the size differential. The telephone lines that Verizon wants to unload onto FairPoint are 6 times bigger in terms of access lines than everything FairPoint operates today. Why would Verizon even consider such a deal? Because the RMT works only if Verizon shareholders own a majority of the new spun-off/merged firm. FairPoint is the ideal candidate because it is very easy for the much larger Verizon operation to take control of the majority of the stock of the puny FairPoint Communications Company.

So what are we missing? If Verizon convinces the Public Utilities Commissions in NH, VT and Maine to approve the deal, Verizon pays no taxes on the deal and walks away with a tax break of over $700 million dollars. Now do you get it. Is this "sale" about serving the public or massaging Verizon's bottom line at the expense of customers across the three targeted states.

There are many, many more issues that need to be examined. This is just a snippet of what's wrong with this deal. For more in depth details, please go on-line to www.no-deal.org. This is a bad deal for consumers, tax payers, rate payers, our communities and for the economic growth of New Hampshire.