Crumbling roads. Crumbling schools. Crumbling Bennington Monument. Crumbling tax base. It’s all connected.
Keelan: All the crumbling is connected
Degree: Out of touch and out of time
Does anyone seriously believe a 7% property tax increase—in a state that already carries one of the highest property tax burdens in the country—amounts to “relief” for Vermonters? Vermont’s House Majority Leader Lori Houghton (D-Essex) says it does.
Beck: 49% spending increase goes beyond ‘essential’
Comparing Vermont’s spending before the pandemic with today shows just how dramatic the growth has been. In FY21, Vermont budgeted $6.1 billion. Seven years later, we’re at $9.1 billion—an increase of 49%. Inflation during the same period was 28%.
VPIRG, VT Chamber tussle over data privacy bill
Everyone agrees on the need for consumer data privacy. How far should it go? Also, details on the Legislature’s loosening grip on the local option tax (LOT).
Kinsley: A busy week at the State House
The tax-and-health care nexus, housing production, and education reform.
Ellis: Tucker Carlson agrees with Bernie!
They both support a tax hike on the rich, defunding Israel and more. What happened?
Roper: You are going to pay more for a failing public school system
The problem is a too-powerful teachers union and their political allies.
Fireovid: Link between teachers’ unions and May Day protests
Not coincidentally, May Day is the High Holy Day of Communists everywhere. How did public school teachers get involved with communism? It starts with the teachers’ unions.
Tiemann: Are Vermont schools training economic revolutionaries?
Instead of disparaging our nation’s free enterprise (e.g., capitalist) system, the schools should be giving children the skills so they can earn the prosperity which only that system can provide.
Roper: “Let them eat cake!” literally, say lawmakers
Leading VT Democrats advocate for letting SNAP beneficiaries waste over $25 million a year on junk food.
Steidler: How Sen. Sanders can serve Vermonters on AI
This Wednesday evening, April 29, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will hold a controversial forum, “The Existential Threat of AI.” As an added draw to the doom and gloom, he has recruited two AI experts affiliated with China’s government, incurred the wrath of U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent, and received much other attention for the event.
Despathy: Could renewable degradation be Vermont’s worst hypocrisy?
While property taxes go up every year, the pittance paid by renewable power projects is fixed for the life of the project. Feel free to scream or maybe cry.
Dame: GOP needs candidates appealing to disaffected Democrats
If Republicans continue to focus on delivering on the affordability agenda while Democrats look for new taxes and to take away land rights voters may continue to move because Democrats seem to be particularly unresponsive to the voice of the people.
Klar: Why we must listen to the vaccine injured
Covid-19 has waned, but the shot-pushers double down.
Roper: “Come down to Montpelier” song – sing along!
Inspired by Brian Dubie, I thought I’d try my hand at songwriting. Thanks to my AI bandmates for for writing the music.
North: Act 181 mountain being moved
It did seem that the Act 181 Road Rule and Tier 3 that threatened so many rural Vermonters was an unshakable mountain that could not be moved. But, by the small faith of many, working together, hearts and minds were changed, and that mountain is being moved.
Smith: Throwing people into the telecom siting volcano
Be aware, rural Vermonters. With the push to build more towers, Vermonters in rural areas can expect they, too, will be thrown into the volcano, without compensation and with the potential for your property to lose value and your health to be harmed. That is our state’s and our country’s policy.
Soulia: Becca, Bernie, Musk, & math
The policy argument is straightforward. The picture of what that wealth actually is bears closer examination.
Roper: Act 181 isn’t the only attack on rural Vermonters
It’s a multi-front war on multiple issues.
Dame: Fire the Ethics Commission Executive Director
Suspend the financial disclosure provision of state law for just this election? what gives? Ii seems like there is a more severe dysfunction at work, Paul Dame says.
Despathy: Admitting our worst environmental hypocrisy could solve Act 181 conundrum
Key questions are now in play – how will Act 181 shift and what might accompany the repeal?
Prairie: Speaker Krowinski has an epiphany
If you were having trouble putting your finger on that one thing that bugs you about the Whiz Kids on the Winooski (aka the Vermont legislature) you only have to read the recent apologia of House Speaker Jill Krowinski concerning the ill-considered Act 181.
Klar: The Iran War threatens to pull the plug on American farming’s life support
America’s energy-dependent food supply is highly vulnerable to a global spike in oil prices and to many other potential disruptions.
McLaren: Fixing Act 181’s fundamental flaw
Act 181 revealed a fundamental inequity in policy from Montpelier—wealthy, urban communities get a choice. Rural or poor communities don’t. Montpelier must fix it.
Johnson: “We already have a Homo Deus”
An Oxford professor’s take on the transhumanist agenda
Tiemann: Proposed law H.817 raises concerns over parental rights and school focus
Supporters frame it as strengthening “protective factors” for youth and increasing mental health awareness. However, we see it as shifting decision-making away from families toward schools and government entities, undermining parental authority in sensitive health and identity matters.
Keelan: Missing in action
The federal and state income taxes that exist today are progressive by statute. The more one earns, the greater the tax. It has been such since 1913, when an income tax was allowed under the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It has been reported that about 80% off all income taxes are paid by the top 10% of filers. They are also the major contributors to the non-profit community. So why is it that they are allowed to be ostracized by the Bernie crowd without any support at all from the non-profit world?
Gutmann: The choice for Vermont: mausoleum or real world
Vermont is at a tipping point. Vibrant little towns like my beloved Wallingford—where one still sees mothers pushing strollers, school kids trooping home with their backpacks, and deer hunters hanging out in driveways to show off their trophies—could become frigid, exquisitely-maintained mausoleums inhabited only by one or two affluent summer people whose children have long since left.
Roper: Watch Democrat leaderships’ words carefully regarding Act 181
They have not really changed their minds, only their tactics.
Boutin: Fighting to deliver real reform
Fixing our education system is hard, but we must do the hard thing, because it is the right thing to do.
Leary: Vermont’s little-known Liberty Bell replica
In 1950, President Harry Truman launched a campaign to sell US bonds to fund the rebuilding of our military after WWII. As part of the Treasury Department initiative tied to the bond drives, more than fifty Liberty Bell replicas were cast in France and distributed across the country – one for each state and territory.
Hanson: Trump just crushed Iran in 5 weeks
I know a lot of you have been exasperated by the reaction to the Iran war, from the Democratic grandees in the House and Senate, the liberal media.
Roper: Aly Richards, poster child for failed government
While I’ll buy Richards is likely to put up a better show than Esther Charlestin or Brenda Siegel based purely on fundraising capabilities and a political network, Democrats might think twice about hitching their wagon to what, when examined under the brighter scrutiny of a campaign, is a dumpster fire of a record that any sane politician would run away from.
Harbin: We want Vermonters to feel safe in their homes
While Vermont’s visible challenges with drug trafficking maybe happening on streets and in parks, what’s happening inside residential apartment buildings is also putting citizens and their neighbors at risk, largely out of sight. These illegal enterprises are surprisingly often operating under tacit protections from State law and the resulting risks are exacerbated by a lengthy court process that takes months to resolve. And this is putting vulnerable Vermonters in harm’s way.
Kinsley: House voting on education reform package
Guy, the House is set to vote on the next phase of Vermont’s education reform effort today. The bill they are putting forward is a grab bag of policies that House members managed to agree on.
Klar: How “progressives” rob working-class Vermonters
The Green Mountain State is a textbook case of how progressives employ social justice causes to drain the wallets and dreams of citizens.
Soulia: From emergency to entitlement — and another bill VT taxpayers will pay
The emergency was over. The remote work was not.
Ellis: Rogue nation?
We have crossed the line.
Roper: 2024 Payroll Tax cited as one reason VT is losing manufacturing jobs
$100 million childcare tax the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Steele: As Tax Day approaches, some good news for VT taxpayers
A typical family with two children in Vermont can expect to see higher take-home pay of about $7,400 to $10,600 with the Working Family Tax Cuts, the Small Business Administration claims.
North: Act 181 group is true grassroots
When the people rise up in unity over an issue and are not driven by deep-pocketed activist organizations, but by their own recognition that their rights are being trampled, the legislature had best take notice. We’re in such a time.
Williams: Will Vermont permit hunters to bait bears with garbage?
On February 18, the Vermont Bowhunters Association petitioned the state Fish and Wildlife Board to lift the ban on hunting bears over garbage. A decision is expected April 22. Bear baiting is a dying, discredited practice. Only 12 states still permit it.
Roper: How much evidence does it take to learn taxing “The Rich” doesn’t work?
VT Democrats will apparently never learn.
Klar: Fake meat withers on the propaganda vine
But Illinois technocrats and Democrats keep throwing more money at it.
Soulia: Pull back the curtain on pre-legislative dealmaking
That pattern raises a simple question: when does the real policymaking actually happen—and who is involved before anyone else sees it?
Scott: House punting hard work of education reform
Achieving scale through larger districts isn’t controversial because it won’t work — it’s controversial because it’s hard work. The proposal that passed the House Education Committee last week takes the easy way out.
Stearns: Rich people with big lawyers still pollute, working people stuck with Act 181
The people who work the land and those who care for animals are not the type of people the Legislature wants here anymore.
Page: Repeal Road Rule, Tier 3 now – don’t delay
The Senate version of act 181 reform, now under House Environment Committee review, kicks the can down the road: four years for the Road Rule, two years for Tier 3.
Roper: Sometimes the sausage NOT being made is uglier than the sausage
How a non-vote exposed the Democrats’ true attitudes regarding the housing crisis.
Stone: Act 181 is serfdom
When mapped to its statutory language and agency behavior, Vermont’s Act 181 emerges as far more than a conservation law. It is a comprehensive land allocation system that integrates biodiversity protection, housing distribution, agricultural land preservation, and redistributionist and reparation (aka equity) considerations into a unified framework.
Keelan: What is reasonable compensation for State officials?
Vermont’s taxes, whether real estate, income, or taxes masked as fees, are at the breaking point. So why be concerned about government employees’ salaries when the real culprit is spending? Because, except for a few nonprofits, we are not keeping up with what it takes to attract skilled folks to move here.
Herron: Act 181 and our natural rights
Here’s the thing, if the thought and spirit of an organization doesn’t align with the body and letter, there is a fundamental and incompatible legal conflict between the purpose of the corporation and their governing actions.
Roper: House votes to spend another $83,000,000 on homeless
Time for new thinking — and maybe some new lawmakers — not just new money.
Thompson: No one is coming to save rural Vermont — because the plan is to empty it
Three forces — Vermont’s Act 181, the UN’s 2030 Agenda, and Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership — are converging on the same outcome: the managed hollowing-out of rural life.
North: The choice couldn’t be clearer
These examples continue to emphasize the need for the Vermont legislature to wake up and squarely address the affordability crisis in Vermont. The House majority party continues to block our efforts to do exactly this. Stay tuned as we fight the affordability battle for you. The choice couldn’t be clearer.
Carroll: S.193 and the need for a forensic treatment facility
Our current system is also failing those in need of those mental health services, as well as the victims impacted by these cases. Individuals are often effectively warehoused in correctional settings while refusing or unable to participate in evaluations, resulting in prolonged court delays without meaningful treatment or progress toward restoration. At the same time, victims and families are forced to relive their trauma again and again through repeated postponements — often stretching on for years with no resolution in sight. This ongoing cycle is not only ineffective, it is deeply harmful — to the individual, to the courts, to public safety, and to the victims who are left waiting for accountability and closure.
Higley: These bills and laws infringe on property rights
Concerns for aspects of Act 181 and its recent Rally at the State House has awaken rural Vermonters and landowners to the real possibilities of additional severe restrictions on their property rights.
Roper: VT Democrats are NOT for affordability. Are VT Republicans?
Childcare licensing bill is a real head scratcher.
Peyton: Right to farm and clean food
At the Statehouse, a coalition is forming to bring forward a constitutional amendment which will take another biennium before it can be introduced, but the time is now to promote it. The primary purpose for it is to fulfill this goal: to put Vermont at the helm of progress, to initiate a growth of small- and medium-scale organic farming, to encourage and expand local gardens, and to totally dedicate ourselves to the cause of sustainability in harmony with Nature.
Gervais: Covid protocols took my Mom, my brother-in-law, and the truth
Today marks five years to the day since I lost my mother and my brother-in-law to the same hospital machine.
Soulia: How Bernie used an AI to agree with himself
A recent video shows Vermont’s senior senator in conversation with Claude about AI and privacy. When the same questions were tested against unprimed instances of the same AI, the answers came out differently — sometimes dramatically so.
Johnson: The most basic truth that no one talks about
Sometimes I wish we Christians had more courage
Kinsley: House moving away from forced mergers
The draft includes a notable protection for communities with small schools: articles of agreement must prohibit school closures for three years without approval of the electorate in the town where the school sits. After three years, closure requires a union district-wide vote.
MacDonald: Another COVID lie no one will apologize for
A practice that looks as if it has produced wide-scale and unnecessary chronic disease among kids they will have to live with their entire lives. A problem that the vaccine or bust crowd isn’t even willing to talk about, people who shout conspiracy theory if you suggest we consider safety trials that have never been done.
Woolf: Counting Vermont’s county populations
Given that the state has only added 1,698 people since 2020, a decline of 6,000—or more if we include vacation homes in non-ski towns—it is very likely that Vermont will have fewer residents in 2030 than in 2020. And since most of the ski towns are in southern Vermont counties, their population picture will look even grimmer than it does today.
Lincoln: Vermont can’t conserve working lands by undermining them
Vermont’s forest economy businesses must compete and innovate and grow just to stay viable. But too often, our regulatory system makes that harder instead of easier.
Soulia: VT farms, migrant workers, and the visa problem
Behind the headlines, protests, and growing anxiety is a more basic question: how does Vermont’s dairy industry rely on migrant labor in the first place — and why doesn’t federal visa law actually fit the job?
Newton: Act 250 planners should save Castleton University instead
Hold press conferences and take a stand. If you don’t, it could be all over for a great institution founded over 200 years ago.
Roper: House Democrats vote for “Clean Heat Standard 2.0”
“Foundational” first step toward Cap & Invest Carbon Tax passes on a near party line vote after Republican fight.
Dobrovich: Find out how Act 181 will impact your land
Some worry that an overemphasis on environmental protection will violate existing property owners’ rights and force everyone into dense, restricted living situations—sometimes described as “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFO), a term usually reserved for large agricultural facilities.
Klar: Colorado struggles with prostitution law
The push to legalize the world’s oldest profession fizzles (for now).
Keelan: To close our school is not only about money
The cost of operating public schools in Vermont has been “a runaway train,” and no one seems to be able to get on board to control it. However, cost also comes in other forms that are not necessarily quantifiable in dollars and cents.
Ryan: VNRC put out a silly piece of propaganda today.
VNRC isn’t listening to Vermont. They’re doubling down.
Ryan: Senator, we’re waiting for YOU to lead
Senator Hinsdale: the invitation to join us is genuine. But joining us means asserting your leadership to get results—not publishing a commentary explaining why delay is the response we needed.
Ram Hinsdale: Where 100% of Vermonters agree
This isn’t about urban versus rural. Every part of Vermont depends on working lands, housing, open space, and economic opportunity.
Roper: VT Democrats have a rural voter problem. Clinging to Act 181 won’t help
The ‘Cave Dwellers’ are catching on.
Tagliavia: Property tax freeze bill needs attention
Vermont is one of only three states with no safety-valve restrictions on how much a property tax bill can increase in a given year. In the months ahead, the Legislature should examine how the other 47 states manage this issue, identify policies that could work here, and adapt them to Vermont’s unique circumstances. Property taxpayers deserve both immediate relief and long-term predictability.
Klar: ICE turns its attention to Sanctuary State Vermont
The Green Mountain State favors criminals above public safety.
Stevenson: Who really benefits from VT’s Fish and Wildlife laws?
The fundamental mission of state wildlife agencies is not animal welfare—it is resource management for human use and profit.
Sciortino: We need more classroom instruction time!
If you had Exxon, Shell, Occidental, BP sitting on one side of the negotiating table, people would be up in arms! Why not the same for the heavy handed teachers’ unions. We also need to identify all legislators who have received political donations from these same unions and call them out on their voting records.
Herron: Decoding the Declaration’s rights before modern dictionaries watered them down
When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” the definition of those words mattered. All 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had to understand exactly what the document claimed, and agree with it, before they would sign their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor to defend its cause.
Roper: The VT Left would rather make a statement than a difference
Latest evidence: Their overdose prevention center fiasco….
Vermont, who is thy neighbor?
For years, the state has made itself unusually welcoming to people who are in the country illegally – and less welcome to rural families who have lived here for generations.
Ellis: Bernie Sanders, an origin story
He is the second most recognized political figure in the world and yet we know little about him. But a new book changes all that.
Dame: Property tax revolt didn’t fade. It got focused.
Vermont Republicans are committed to moving toward the allowable growth formula in Act 73 that more closely aligns a community’s spending with the with taxes. If that change doesn’t happen, future legislatures may run out of tricks to keep taxes down, and voters may need to send another message to the Democratic Majority in Montpelier.
Roper: Nothing’s funnier than politicians discussing ethics legislation
When “shining a light” is a blinding distraction.
Swenson: Vermont’s fiscal reckoning is already here
Vermont keeps buying time. The structural problems keep compounding.
Page: Burlington’s new Sanctuary District?
Echoes of dystopia: Sanctuary Districts in DS9 and Burlington’s permanent homeless pods
Keelan: Why I would not build residential rental housing
The Vermont political leadership, at the federal, state, and local levels (except for Governor Phil Scott’s administration), has made numerous announcements about how they wish to control residential rental housing in Vermont. They have made it their mission to stigmatize those who are residential rental landlords with comments such as, “they are gouging their tenants, making huge profits while providing minimum services.”
Chamber: Vermont’s economic moment is now
From planning to policy
Roper: What’s the cost of VT joining NY’s (still non-existent) Cap & Invest carbon tax scheme?
A newly leaked memo says over $4000 per household, $2.23/gal “tax” on gasoline.
Cohen: Bernie socialists accused of spreading lies about maple syrup to win a political contest
Politics in Vermont’s largest city not so sweet
Warner: Mid-Vermont Girls Basketball falls to #1 Richford but still wins big
The Barre Auditorium was heating up despite punishingly cold winter conditions outside. The number four seed Mid-Vermont Christian School (MVCS) Eagles took on the number one Richford Falcons in a battle of high soaring offenses and tight clawing defenses.
Douglass: Seven Days? How about Seven Hours?
I am seeking corrections or the removal of the story and I have filed an ethics complaint with the management of Seven Days. Errors are common and mistakes happen, but not in these amounts. But I’ll leave you with one last thought, would Alison have reported about me if I had gotten a job at McDonalds or a gas station or really anywhere else than at her competition?
Roper: The Vermont Public School system is destroying our state
Stop giving it more money!
Stone: When faith meets global power
SDGs, dogma, and the shrinking space for debate
Herron: Declaration of Independence ‘greatest breakup letter of all time”
Considering Thomas Jefferson was an experienced lawyer, the Declaration of Independence reads more like poetry than a legal document. In what many believe is the greatest breakup letter of all time, Jefferson clearly explained, to the entire world, that the problem was not the colonists in America, the problem was the king.
Klar: Biden sabotaged efforts to stanch flood of illegal immigration
Now Democrats copy his misleading accusations that Republicans were the root of the problem.
Dunlap: Husband has Alzheimer’s, Act 181 is stealing the value of our land
The following testimony from Retta Dunlap, Woodbury, VT was submitted to Senate Natural Resources Committee.
Soulia: ICE arrests dangerous criminals in VT
Documented arrests in Vermont show that ICE operations here have involved individuals with serious criminal histories.
