What Vermont cannot do is continue pretending it can sustain prohibitive regulation, minimal growth, lavish spending, high-cost labor structures, small schools everywhere, expansive public programs, and low taxes at the same time.
Part 2 picks up where that conversation left off, continuing through the remaining structural challenges affecting Vermont’s economy, cost of living, and long-term fiscal stability.
Shouldn’t the qualifications for a referee be based on merit and his or her ability to do the job with skill, excellence, and integrity, instead of an artificially imposed quota of arbitrary external characteristics?
We are already paying more than our fair share.
Charitable giving should be more public
I’m very grateful for Jarrod Vaillaincourt’s excellent commentary in the Dec 10th issue of the Vermont Daily Chronicle. He exposes efforts by elementary school staff to market a new school-sanctioned “sexuality” club – to elementary school students! Although such conduct by public school educators is beyond revolting, it’s unfortunately not surprising.
What Vermonters are experiencing now is the predictable result of multiple systems breaking down at the same time: education finance, demographic decline, housing scarcity, regulatory overreach, healthcare inflation, workforce deterioration, and a tax base that continues to shrink while public obligations grow.
The medical journal The Lancet has just released three companion studies that vindicate this MAHA message.
Some intellectuals claim that they are
Short answer: Nope.
The pressures shaping Vermont’s future are very real.
Today, artificial intelligence (AI), a technology that is more profound in its capacity to change and improve lives than electricity, holds the promise of transforming America. Indeed, it can take us to the golden age President Trump envisions.
A wary eye on the food supply
VT Senate leader vows to fight Trump rather than solve Vermont issues.
Parents have the right to know what is going on with their child at school. That right is not surrendered at the schoolhouse door.
Vermont likes to call itself a leader in combating climate change, but leadership implies setting an example others want to follow. Instead, Vermont is becoming a cautionary tale of what happens when ideology trumps practicality. The result? A state struggling under the weight of policies that deliver the opposite of what they promise.
Whether or not you respect President Trump’s approach, the fact remains America has never had a president who has had so many documented incidents of using racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic language.
Public aid vs. private generosity
And EVERYBODY is paying the price.
Vermont’s consent laws for minors allow adolescents to seek medical care for STIs, mental health, and gender-affirming services without parental consent or notification. Supporters highlight the seeming public health benefits, but others highlight the dangers posed.
The Green Mountain Care Board seems to continue to prioritize standardized billing data in order to support their policy goals even after receiving the more reliable clinical reality.
Parents of independent school students: rattle a few cages and get your school’s leaders to step up.
Governor Phil Scott has been, for some time, the clarion: the State is losing its young people. Flood recovery, increasing school taxes, healthcare costs, illegal drug use, and climate change took center stage. Meanwhile, the workforce kept descending. And institutions of learning have kept closing.
If constitutional silence is grounds for exceptions, how does this logic apply to Vermont’s other rights not involving voting—specifically, Article 16, which guarantees the right to bear arms?
No one breaks laws or violates rights like Democrats. Keep that in mind as they work to build their latest anti-Trump “unlawful orders” narrative.
There are many angles from which to view the “Scandalous Saga of the Seditious Six,” the recent Video-Gate story of six Democrat congresspeople who went public to admonish serving military personnel that they don’t need to follow orders they deem illegal.
Six wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In an NPR interview on Oct. 30, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, regarded as one of the “architects” of the ACA, conceded that Obamacare has not delivered. He described the “incredibly complicated” labyrinth of the US healthcare system, admitting, “[F]rankly, the affordable care added to that complication by putting in the exchanges.”
There is a shadowy international group behind Dan DeWalt’s proposed ballot items.
“We can refill the Great Salt Lake,” writes Augustus in a post on X last week.“This month, Rainmaker began the largest cloud seeding project in modern American history. With Utah and Idaho, we are enhancing snowpack across 7,500 square miles of the Bear River Basin.”
In all, a stunning failure and lack of respect for the will of Vermonters who have said that the status quo of our schools – educationally and financially is no longer working and needs dramatic change, very soon.
The U.S. power supply shortage is largely the fault of Bernie and other Green New Dealers who have intentionally pushed increased electricity consumption – heat pumps and electric cars, anyone? – while shutting down power producers that actually keep the grid afloat.
After hearing from more than 5,000 Vermonters who overwhelmingly said, “keep our local schools and local boards,” the Task Force chose to protect the community connections that make Vermont schools more than just buildings. Just as importantly, they recognized that the research shows no cost savings from consolidation and instead put forward a plan that actually achieves those goals.
What Sam Clemens said about his demise may be true about the plan contained in Act 73.
It’s time to hold the Unions accountable.
According to the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, public school students cannot be forced to use “preferred pronouns” when referring to others who claim to be “transgender.” The Court ruled that doing so is compelled speech and a violation of students’ First Amendment rights.
The situation Vermonters are being warned about is not just a story of one spending bill or one vote. It is the product of a deeper policy design choice: treating a major subsidy as a temporary “emergency” measure, extending it in short increments, and allowing that structure to create a recurring policy cliff that repeatedly hangs over consumers and taxpayers.
Gen Z wants straight A’s.
From a physical landscape perspective, Vermont offers interesting views: mountains, lakes, rivers, and miles of working farmland. In contrast, semi-congested urban areas begin on VT RT 7, entering Shelburne and extending northward to Burlington and its surrounds.
“The novel includes passages suggesting to children that hating one’s body to the point of wanting to mutilate it might be normal for some of them.”
And Republicans have a second chance to avoid disaster.
The funding flows from the federal government to Vermont’s Department of Public Safety, which then distributes it to local agencies, who then conducts patrols coordinated with the U.S. Border Patrol.
Searching for truth behind the buzzword.
What was once a proud and local endeavor to cultivate the minds of our youth has become a labyrinth of policy, regulation, and bureaucratic entanglement—so dense and disjointed that even the most earnest reformers find themselves ensnared.
Healing hearts in Vermont
America deserves better
What does this portend for Vermont?
Vermont’s forests are not dying; they are being managed into bureaucracy. The danger is not fragmentation of trees but fragmentation of responsibility—where the authority to decide is collective, but the obligation to pay is individual. The landscape that once symbolized independence is now the backdrop for rulemaking by committee.
Thank you
That is the question.
Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating with the Common Core State Standards in the 2010s, American education policymakers sought to “modernize” math instruction. The stated goal was reasonable: help students understand why math works, not just how. But the result has been a system so abstract and bureaucratic that many parents — and even teachers — struggle to follow it. Vermont remains part of that experiment, still aligning its math curriculum with Common Core as of 2024 despite years of flat test scores and growing classroom frustration.
Vermont’s EQS is failing miserably at its goal of enabling each student to achieve or exceed the performance standards approved by the State Board of Education. Vermont students are struggling with basic educational concepts, and there is no evidence that EQS is improving academic outcomes. It is unconscionable to continue to promote and spend taxpayers’ money on these programs.
Here’s the good news: this year, we proved that when Montpelier is balanced — when no one party can simply bulldoze the other — we can actually roll up our sleeves and get things done. For the first time in a while, there was real collaboration.
You can mock the No Kings rallies, but the Left’s base is fired up to strike a blow against Trump. Vermont Republicans need an agenda that fires up their base every bit as much if not more if they want to hold their gains from 2024 and add to them in 2026.
“The problem when you talk about housing affordability is an immediate assumption is that the state’s got to spend more money to create affordable housing and low-income housing,” the now-retired economist said. “That’s not the answer because the middle-income people you want to attract to the state aren’t going to be eligible for it.”
They saw older folks making bank and owning homes. They felt shut out. They’re rent serfs, paying thousands of dollars a month, huge cuts out of their paychecks, money they’ll never see back. They’re hungry for a piece of the pie.
Phil Scott’s 14-point Burlington plan repeats the same mistake Vermont has made for years: mistaking compassion for policy.
Education agency admits a years-long failure as student performance nosedives
Such center can be saved if the money given to Planned Parenthood and abortions is rededicated to promote life.
Vermont needs to stay off the front page of the WSJ unless, of course, it is a positive story.
The LGBTQ-inclusive program pays students to learn about gender identity and expression, sexual orientation spectrum, contraception, and safe sex practices for the prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI’s) and HIV/AIDS:
The high cost of living in Vermont isn’t driven by any one law or policy. Instead, it’s the cumulative weight of countless costs—fees, surcharges, and mandates—that drive up prices for goods and services while shrinking Vermonters’ paychecks.
Road rage is for fools.
Will Vermont legislators continue with the lies, or heed the call to pivot?
In the United States today, political office too often resembles a throne more than a term of service. But it was not always this way.
Governor Scott has taken action. We stand ready to implement solutions. The question now is whether environmental interest groups who claim to care about Vermont’s future will contribute to solving this crisis or perpetuate the status quo.
A single sentence added to Vermont’s planning code in 2016 has redrawn how the state thinks about its forests — and about the rights of Vermonters to use their property.
And, hey check out this cellphone teleprompter!
Is there a chronically-online identitarian cult lurking in the Green Mountains? Let’s investigate.
The unsung crowdsourced enforcement mechanism for equal justice.
Yes, things are better, but the “better” comes with an asterisk the size of a mortgage payment.
Predatory industrial-scale renewable energy development in Vermont has just reached an all-time low with continued ecological devastation and accompanying rate hikes in queue.
Why aren’t Vermont state politicians calling on our federal delegation to end the crisis?
Vermont has a habit of passing grand, high-minded laws before anyone’s sure how they’ll actually work. It’s like breaking ground on a massive construction project before you’ve even drawn up the blueprints. The result isn’t progress — it’s chaos.
This was not justice.
In Vermont, the line between environmental policymaking and courtroom strategy has nearly disappeared. The same advocacy network that helped write the state’s climate and water rules now sues the agencies and farms that follow them—an endless loop of petitions, corrective orders, and consent decrees that leaves little room for either legislators or citizens.
The people who participated in the “No Kings” rally demonstrated that they wish to Make America Great Again.
There are three people who are orchestrating the Trump presidency and implementing the Heritage Foundation’s agenda. It is evil, and needs to be stopped.
Parents can’t exercise their rights if schools never inform them about what is being taught or how their child is being treated.
Maybe it is past time for the Governor to take a good, long look in the mirror before casting stones.
250 years ago in Philadelphia, those who met had to process issues that were of far greater substance than what our present Congress so helplessly contends with today. What was present then and is missing today is the willingness and courage to adopt compromising positions. By failing to carry out its role, the three-legged table has lost its integrity and been damaged. And so has the country.
I do not think there is a state in America that hates young men more than Vermont.
Chuck Schumer, leader of the US Senate Minority, recently said “Rise Up, faithful Democrats!” on a nationally televised broadcast. Rise up against what, and do what, I wonder?
To protect Vermonters from the federal crisis, the state may be forced to sacrifice its own strategic plans for housing and property tax relief.
It’s the time of year when we begin to get ready for the next season. Golf clubs and kayaks get cleaned and put away for next year. The list includes an appointment at Charlie Dorr’s to change over to snow tires, taking down the garden hoses at the house and much more. And while the State House is mostly quiet these days, some are preparing for the new legislative session, which begins January 6.
A pair of environmental nonprofits are threatening to sue one of Vermont’s largest dairies for allegedly polluting Dead Creek, a tributary of Lake Champlain — but the dispute could reach far beyond a single Addison County farm. If the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) prevail, their interpretation of the Clean Water Act could redefine how nearly every Vermont farm manages its land and water.
Politics is about power, and Douglass has it right now. My advice to the 27-year-old state senator from Orleans County: Don’t give it up.
Partisan agenda could leave low-income Vermonters cold and hungry.
Simply put, there is no real-world evidence to back up the Senator’s claims. It also appears he is using fear about AI to jump-start his socialist economic agenda.
Be aware: the youth will not look kindly on any of the “alleged” leaders who threw Sam under the bus in the blink of an eye.
That’s not a crisis of resources—it’s a crisis of judgment.
Contrary to the fear-mongering by state and federal officials, Covid is not killing millions of Americans, as vaccine worshippers seem to imagine: current CDC surveillance data review a Covid death rate of zero people per 100,000 Americans as of the week that ended September 6, 2025. Such deaths have not risen above .3 per 100,000 people since the week of February 17, 2024.
Governor Scott is the only thing standing between Vermont and a continued moral and fiscal bankruptcy that would end any remaining semblance of independence. He is also the only proven unifier known for decades. What every citizen should do, anyone who sees the picture painted above for what it is – in reality, and not ideology – is write the Governor and ask him to run again.
The Vermont Republican Party has the policies Vermonters want to rally around, and we need to make sure our messaging matches the moment.
They want to know if Vermonters will buy a bunch of negative attacks on Phil Scott linking our governor to President Trump.
When the seas grow contested, commerce falters, and ordinary citizens feel it first — at the store, the gas pump, and the paycheck.
Where’s the bleeping property tax relief?
“To borrow a term from you, Parents are tired of being marginalized,” Vaillancourt told the school board.
This extractive economy is invasive and abusive and government and many companies either via force –or under the Silicon Valley spell– fall prey to the shiny new profitable tech that commodifies life in ways never witnessed.
Why is the nation becoming more uncivil?
Vermonters know the difference between free speech and legalized bribery. These reforms aren’t radical — they’re common sense. They represent the baseline of what a healthy democracy needs to survive.
