n May 10, closer to home in Pittsford, a memorial ceremony was held at the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Academy. The annual event remembered and rendered respect to the 40 Vermont law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in the past 213 years.
Right now the unvaccinated are taking a risk with their own lives. Unfairly the final vaccine holdouts will be parasites on the partial herd immunity achieved by the rest of us getting vaccinated and will be danger to those who can’t get vaccinated or have weak immune systems and provide a breeding ground for new variants which could be vaccine resistant. We may still need to make vaccination compulsory.
The incendiary conflict between Arab and Jew inside the resurrected walls of The Eternal City cannot be understood without acknowledging East Jerusalem’s modern historic origin
On May 9, Kevin Ellis wrote an open letter to Republicans in VTDigger. His commentary echoes Leftists’ blinkered view of Republicans, and more disturbingly, their dystopian view of our Republic.
And as for some of the findings in this Joint Resolution, the fact that 241 of the 251 deaths due to COVID19, for which race and ethnicity are known, 96% are white, non-Hispanic people. According to the US Government Census, Vermont is 94.2% White. So it does not appear that any population disportionately has seen deaths because of systematic Racism.
You have been trained to like lots of spending and the coercions necessary for government dependency. From Lyndon Baines Johnson to Barrack Obama, that was the deal. At the bottom of it all is a system built on 10s of trillions of dollars of government debt and unfunded liabilities; and the deconstructionist, Marxist-laden Postmodern Critical Race Theories that permeate today’s Democrat and Progressive Party’s. You wanted to keep all the power for yourselves.
The 1998 book “Happiness is A Serious Problem” by Dennis Prager says we have a moral obligation to friends, coworkers, and family to maintain a happy attitude out of respect for them, even when you don’t “feel like it.”
The new liberals are also gunning to cancel our First & Second Amendments. Achtung! No more gender-based toilets or nouns. Nein! True social progress demands you support transgenderism, even if California Republican Governor Hopeful, Caitlyn Jenner, knows exactly what she’s talking about.
The fact that 241 of the 251 deaths for which race and ethnicity are known (1 death has no association) are in white, non-Hispanic people does not appear to matter to many elected (and sadly public health) officials who seem to be focused only on “systemic racism” and what they declare as health care disparities in POC.
In three lawsuits currently in process, plaintiff parents ask that public funds follow their children to the school of their choice.
You’d think Progressives would be all in for a plan to use a fraction of federal Rescue funds to assure that every Vermont family regardless of income or location had a chance to get connected immediately to the broadband service they need to participate in the post-pandemic world. You’d be wrong!
Do you want to give up your voting rights? No? Well then, we have ONE option left to kill this bill. We have to convince Gov. Scott to veto it, and we have to convince Republican legislators to oppose any effort by Democratic legislators to override the Governor’s veto.
Acquiring capital has always been a challenge for Vermont. We don’t have many deep-pocketed families willing to invest millions of dollars in startup ventures like the former merchant cities of Boston and New York or the gold-rich investors of northern California. Fortunately, what we do have is proximity to financial markets.
Has there been progress in correcting the injustice of what took place on the shores of Virginia in 1619? Yes, but it was not accomplished by having classes on indoctrination defining Critical Race Theory. Much was accomplished through education and example.
I think Rep. Till would be startled to learn that quite a few of his average constituents use tax preparation services and investment advice, and almost all of them use plumbers, electricians, lawn mowers, auto mechanics, driveway plowers, computer techies, tailors, accountants, taxi drivers, lawyers, tutors, music teachers, delivery drivers, loggers, excavators, barbers, cosmetologists, manicurists, day care operators, babysitters, gravediggers, and as many as 140 more service occupations.
Sen. Bernie Sanders – born-again budget hawk – has announced the Senate Budget Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on “Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon.”
Vermont will receive $1 billion through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This funding presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immediately accelerate “no regrets” climate action work. Governor Scott’s proposed ARPA budget calls for $200 millionover three years to facilitate direct, strategic, and measurable emissions reductions.
Some of our present Vermont lawmakers have proposed and voted on two bills that will change the Vermont State Constitution. Rather than following the lawful process laid out to amend the State Constitution, they are flagrantly usurping The people of Vermont, those they are elected to represent.
The forced remote learning fiasco imposed on Vermont public school students this past year highlighted the lack of common benefits available from the state’s education system.
Liberals and Progressives herald Black Lives Matter (BLM) with signature flags and lawn signs. How many really know their ideology and how it’s deluding a whole generation?
I think it is time to check in with a few of those RINOs. We need to ask folks like Mitt Romney, Governors and former Governors Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Phil Scott, John Kasich, Rick Snyder and others, like John Bolton, Jeb and George W. Bush, Carly Fiorina, Jeff Flake, Colin Powell and Cindy McCain if President Biden has been their kind of Republican.
None of this cliquey high school drama stuff mattered to Lefebvre, who saw Vermont electoral integrity at stake and realized that she was elected for such as time as this. Worn out by her insistence, and desperately seeking a unanimous vote, Hanzas blinked first.
President Biden is under pressure to find a way to control a Supreme Court whose present majority may find constitutional limits to what the Democratic party’s left wing is urging him to do. He has created a 36-member Commission to cope with the explosive question of packing the Supreme Court with additional Justices in order to create a compliant 7-6 liberal majority to support his proposals.
If you look at the list of bills the legislature has passed so far, you might be tempted to think they are focused on the pandemic. However, if you look a little closer, you can see that these bills are actually reactionary. They would direct federal funding to emergency housing, food banks, and childcare assistance; all worthy programs, but they serve the immediate need, not the future need six months to a year from now.
Too many Americans have allowed themselves to be defined as the enemy. This attack on our values starts with the majority party in Congress and includes our President. Their attacks are relentless as well as mindless. They lie shamelessly, they ignore the Constitution, they are re-writing American history to fit their false narrative, and they pursue an agenda that will end the society that has made our country the envy of the world.
Catholic Democrat politicians are certainly devout, but I am not talking about their religion. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Xavier Becerra, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrew Cuomo and others talk often about their Catholic faith. The supportive media regularly refers to them as Devout Catholics. But are they?
More than 150 Vermont downtowns and village centers are without a public wastewater system, which limits economic growth. Failed septic systems prevent the redevelopment of buildings; wastewater system limitations stop a general store from adding a market café; and a lack of public water and sewer is often a key limiting factor to a community’s ability to add new housing or businesses.
The climate craze has targeted Vermont dairy farms, as if getting rid of their methane emitting cows will make any detectable difference in the planet’s climate, while wrecking Vermont’s dairy industry.
Research data linking marijuana use to people with suicidal ideation, attempts, and completed suicides are steadily increasing.
We often hear that the ethical principle of informed consent is the bedrock of modern medicine, but it is not commonly understood why. The Jacobson decision provided a precedent for other decisions, particularly the 1927 decision of Buck vs Bell, which upheld the primary tool of the worldwide eugenics movement: involuntary sterilization.
Vermont does not have the building trade labor force to meet today’s demand for new construction, home repairs, and residential and commercial remodeling. If the ARPA comes to fruition, many of the projects Vermont needs to accomplish will, at best, be wishful thinking. The labor force is not here.
Imagine if you were baking a birthday cake and you had the benefit of having the Vermont Senate Finance Committee helping you. That’s what it’s like as we debate how to extend broadband throughout Vermont.
Everybody in Montpelier is already well aware of the decades long and now abandoned Capital Plaza hotel and parking garage project, but for the benefit of others let me quote Charles Martin, of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce.
Now doctors, dentists and other businesses are invading our personal lives by demanding we be vaccinated before visits or going into shops or offices – all in violation of Federal HIPPA law.
The Democratic majority in the Legislature is trying to sweeten a big ‘tax the Cloud’ bill with a tiny tax exemption for military retirement. Instead the Legislature should tax neither.
I agree with Professor Sonnenfeld that the social justice movement in our world today can be characterized as a Great Awakening. Matthew Yglesias called it The Great Awokening (Vox, 4/1/2019). In my town there is a prominent sign saying “Believe” (see photo above). That is consistent with a religious movement.
On March 2, I cast my ballot and the machine rejected it. I was outside campaigning for 12 hours. Over 30 people who voted for me told me they had their ballots rejected one to three times. Polls closed and candidates were allowed inside the auditorium where voting took place.
The Bottle Bill (H.175), the modernization and recalibration of Vermont’s Tax System (S.53), the bill requiring registration of construction contractors (H.157) and the COVID Recovery Bill (H.315) all increase revenues to the government while adding greater burdens on business and individuals. In addition, the roughly six billion dollars in unfunded liabilities was, once again, deferred and not resolved.
Vermont is one of just seven states that taxes military pensions. Veterans and their families have dedicated their lives to service, and it’s imperative that we ensure Vermont is a place where they can live, work and raise a family in retirement.
A bill to register building contactors is just the first step toward eventual licensing even for local handymen, and enforced compliance with energy conservation building standards to defeat climate change, no matter what the cost.
One of the remarkable things about Cady’s school board win, was that not only did she get a seat on the board of a public school when her own kids go to private school – but she actually campaigned on a school choice platform – and she won! On the “School Choice” tab of her website she argues that the competition that school choice creates can actually have the effect of improving our public schools as well.
China, Russia and radical Muslims are national security threats yet President Biden and Senator Sanders says global warming is our greatest existential threat. Biden’s priorities are refocused now on mitigating climate change.
If All Lives do not Matter equally then our species will never forsake the barbarism that has been an all too common component of its evolution.
Paul Jarris MD, one of the best Commissioners of Public Health (2003-2006) that Vermont has ever had, often said forthrightly that “about forty percent of what Vermont spends on health care is simply wasted.”
Sure, a creemee – especially the maple creemee, that sexy marriage of our two hometown sweethearts, milk and maple syrup – is yummy. But is it “sure, I’ll let them inject an emergency-approved anti-viral into my body if they’ll give me a creemee” yummy?
While recent news of the cancellation of Montpelier’s hotel project is troubling, those familiar with Act 250 are not surprised. The decision to terminate the project is yet another example of how truly broken our state’s principal land use law is.
The last thing you do in the middle of a crisis is kick the can down the road. Yet, that’s exactly what the Legislature just did on Vermont’s mounting pension liabilities.
Using today’s “standards,” the original builder would be described as a “flatlander” or a non-native Vermonter: he was not born here, nor did his family have roots that went back six or eight generations. The flatlander migrated from Avon, Connecticut, in the year 1763, and his name was Remember Baker. He was better known as a first cousin to Ethan and Ira Allen.
YouTube is erasing reader dislikes or “downvotes” from the White House YouTube page. Even pro-Big Tech ‘fact-checker’ Politifact admits it – but with a big ‘so what’ shrug. They say it’s to cut out “spam” and provide better ‘context.’ Nevertheless, thousands of downvotes miraculously disappear.
I don’t usually see the need to defend Vermont Daily, but seeing a thread loose in Seven Days’ “Fair Game” column April 7 prompts a tugging that unravels writer Dave Gram’s whole garment.
Since 2007-2008, ear-tickling arguments that the old rules can be cast away, and money printed freely, have proliferated.
I have broken my wife’s heart before, so I know the depths of that cry that encapsulates the sound of unbearable pain. When we got the news of Heather Sheppard’s passing, my wife’s cries started with the lip curling, but within minutes, that all too familiar bellow that a hug can only hold down, but not quiet.
Meanwhile, here in Vermont, discrimination is being encouraged. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has announced that vaccinated persons shall be free to travel in/out of Vermont, without government quarantine restrictions. He has also elaborated on how un-vaccinated persons should be treated differently, and how vaccinated persons do not need to be tested, or quarantine.
The reality is that reform has to happen this year. Our retirement liability has grown $1,000,000,000 in the last twelve months and it’s only going to grow more. This will require more draconian cuts from beneficiaries and a more burdensome tax increase on Vermonters.
This urge for a kind of classless, stateless society goes back not only to Marx, but much further back in time. It is Utopian – meaning ‘no place’ – and extremely dangerous. But this urge lives on… with the exception that today’s Utopians have the immense power of science, technology, organization and knowledge that past Utopians lacked.
Say goodbye to the swag. The next time you see me outside, I won’t be wearing a hat or sweatshirt sporting the logo of a current Major League Baseball team – including my beloved Boston Red Sox.
Today the militant Left is keen to revive a Sedition Act to imprison anyone who gets too far out in front spreading “misinformation” criticizing the Biden Administration, or employing extralegal tactics to suppress free speech as the Sedition Acts did. We’ve done that twice, and both were dark chapters in this land of liberty.
The celebration of Christmas culminates from the miraculous advent of His being born of a virgin under hostile circumstances. The second a crescendo of God’s ability to take even death itself and turn it into the most victorious moment in human history.
In recent years, government officials and others have used state and local laws to threaten the freedom of millions of Americans. The laws are known as SOGI laws because they elevate “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to protected class status.
The recurring proposals which endorse eliminating or subverting the Electoral College by some kind of “interstate compact’ is a bad proposal for many reasons. The Electoral College is necessary to help preserve our democracy.
The current pension proposals seek to shore up the pension plans and reduce annual plan contributions by reneging on the promises made. There is an alternative.
Of the estimated 500,000 and three million times a year guns are used in self-defense, the popular AR-15 plays a part. Here are 10 examples that did make the news.
by Tom Licata Where’s Vermont’s attorney general when you need him? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly makes racism illegal. It states: “No person in the United States shall, on the grounds […]
This country is facing a “fiscal crisis” exacerbated by Congress. In the past 18 months our fiscal debt INCREASED 30 percent to $28T. This is 25 percent more than all goods and services produced in a year.
If you own or work at a Vermont consulting practice that focuses on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness (DEI), Climate Change, or Ethnic Affairs, you are in the right place for exponential growth.
The State of Vermont created the $5.7 billion pension shortfall, and it shouldn’t expect employees and retirees to clean up the mess.
It’s like suing Ford Motor Company for providing the car that Bonnie and Clyde used to get out of town after robbing the bank. Or, to bring it home to Vermont, to sue a ski manufacturer when a skier veers off the slope and crashes into a tree. Or as Bernie Sanders put it when supporting the protection law in 2005, “If somebody has a gun and it falls into the hands of a murderer … do you hold the gun manufacturer responsible? Not any more than you would hold a hammer company responsible if somebody beats somebody over the head with a hammer.”
The mainstream media has finally woken up and realized that conservatives no longer care what they think. Now they’re trying to woo us back – in the case of the Burlington Free Press, with $25 gift cards.
S.15 is a monumental step forward for voter access to the ballot box. Here in Vermont, and nationally, vote by mail has been shown to dramatically increase voter participation in the elections process. I am a firm believer that our democracy is stronger when we all participate.
The report recites some obvious challenges, such as “development pressure on farmland, generational transfer of farm assets, [and] changing consumer preferences and markets”. But in its Vision Statement for 2030 the report wanders off into what might be called “Ceres in Wonderland.” That’s a collection of correct and happy outcomes, an exercise noticeably infused with political correctness.
by Tom McLinden If you are a fellow conservative, I invite you to join me in forming a new conservative action network in Vermont. Our mission would be to promote conservative ideals, […]
No-one in power in Congress is talking about pandemic spending repayment. Like credit card companies at Christmastime, Congress has pressured us to spend now and worry about payments letter. This morning, the first notice of Payment Due came in the mail, hidden in a predictably worded press release from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders.
Heather was a force of biblical proportions. She knew she was “fearfully and wonderfully made” in her mother’s womb by the Hand of God. He endowed her with the gift of speaking His word, His truth. She gave us a glimpse of what it will be like to sit in the presence of our Lord and Savior.
by Tom Evslin Back when this picture was taken, VP Biden was running the stimulus program for the Obama Administration and I was stimulus czar in Vermont. The other two people in the picture are Vermont […]
Currently, the Fish and Wildlife board is made up of ordinary Vermonters who are considered practitioners of wildlife management by their peers. They represent a grassroots level of control of a Vermont tradition. They are not necessarily schooled in the sciences, but represent local, public opinion and their practical views and experience add to the decision making process-not emotion or politics. The current system of the Fish and Wildlife board is working, so why do we need to fix it?
In 2035 in Vermont, it came to pass that only one gas station remained in operation, and it was located in Randolph. The State’s fossil fuel czar had established that the gas station would be in Randolph because it is almost at the State’s geographic center.
Americans once regarded themselves as sharing agreement on most goals, just differing in desired means. But “social justice ideology” does not broach dissent: it negates traditional liberalism and free speech protections. Thus, “liberal” professors will be silenced as readily as conservative speakers such as those at Middlebury College. “Social justice” ideology behaves much like an institutionalized cult.
Six Dr. Seuss books are now blacklisted, probably never to be published again in the Uptight States of America. It seems that Dr. Seuss, tennis great Martina Navratilova and Vermont female athletes may soon have something uncommon in common.
Under school merger law Act 46, “like so many pairs of misplaced reading glasses that can never be found when you want to read something,” Clarendon has lost its authority to replace its own resigning school board member.
Everyone should winterize their electrical power grids. But each grid will encounter winter conditions that are extreme compared to the usual winters. For that, what you need is a robust grid with (for example) some nuclear plants with fuel stored on site, so the problems of winter do not become grid-wide catastrophes. Just-in-time renewables plus Just-in-Time natural gas is a recipe for the kind of disaster Texas had, and the kind that is embedded in many of ISO-NE’s future scenarios.
Chinese Communists Party (CCP) has developed massive detention centers for Uyghur and Turkish Muslim population where forced labor, rape, sterilization, starvation, torture and mutualization occurs. Human organs are harvested and eugenics is practiced to decrease the minority and physically impaired population.
Miro & the Burlington City Council – This is the kind of sickness and perversion you have wrought. Just an hour ago, while walking my dog, I found this pamphlet taped on a telephone pole at the corner of South Prospect & Cliff. Let me quote its entirety [profanity, racial and sexist epithets edited]:
The Commission contends that broadening the tax base could reduce the sales tax rate from its present amount of 6% to 3.6%. As a long-time student of taxes, I don’t believe the rate of 3.6% will be around long before it is raised to 4% and higher in the not-too-distant future.
We are seeing an unprecedented, all-out assault on voting rights in states around the country. According to the Brennan Center, there are 165 bills in 33 states aimed at making it harder for eligible Americans to vote, grounded in baseless and disproven claims of widespread voter fraud. It’s my understanding this number has grown since their data collection, now surpassing 250 bills. This opportunistic gambit is cause for alarm.
After the push for the carbon tax fizzled out in 2018, the “climate change” game turned to enacting a carbon tax by disguising it as something else. The latest version is called “the Thermal Energy Efficiency Charge”, and Sen. Bray has become its most ardent promoter.
What would the outcome be if those ten newspapers, or all Vermont newspapers, suddenly decided for financial reasons to cancel the publication of letters and commentaries and reallocate the funds? Yet in all honesty, isn’t that what VPR did when it cancelled its Commentary Series?
Donald Trump has passed from view, but the virus of New Leftism is thriving and easy to see. And what is visible is that it is a bitter, seething contempt, far wider than any one man.
America has been the anchor of western civilization for the last century. Today we no longer articulate our values and principles. We listen constantly to leftist crap. This is the reason we have drifted so far off our moorings. It is time to stand for something.
Many employers see the COVID crisis as a catalyst for change in the future of work, encompassing how people work, where, and with whom. Most employers are committing to a hybrid work model, where employees work from home regularly and frequent the office less.
On Feb. 11th the Vermont House of Representatives introduced H248, a bill declaring that an unborn baby, beginning at 24 weeks gestation, is a legal person. Due to the miracles of modern medicine, babies have survived at even earlier than 24 weeks. At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 triplets at 22 weeks gestation were born at UVMMC to the McShane family. Cian, born 12/28/19, weighed 1.08 lb.. Declan, born 1/2/20 weighed 1.47 lb. and Rowan, born 1/2/20 weighed 1.08 lb.. These three babies were discharged from UVMMC on July 15th, 2020 after reaching normal milestones in growth and development.
FAQ about a possible internet gamechanger for rural Vermont, from tech entrepreneur Tom Evslin of Stowe – who has no financial interest in Starlink.
Our ship of state is captained from the stern. We scan our wake for bad signs. A corpse floats by — we need a law. A raw sewage dump or fish-kill fouls our wake — we need a law. A powerboat swamps a canoe — we need a law. The water doesn’t freeze in February — we need a law.
Life has changed so much in the last year – how I work, travel, and dress. Today I discovered the pandemic – or rather, our leaders’ misguided handling of it – has changed how I vote.
Meanwhile, the entire process surrounding this bill has been charted without an ounce of transparency. There has been no formal fiscal note to provide legislators with the cost of this legislative change. The legislative committees that deal with education, or with finance have not even reviewed this education-financing bill!
David Ismay, an attorney and former senior official of the Massachusetts governor’s administration, is not, I assume, a well-known name in Vermont. However, he should be.
Ten Vermont legislators have sponsored a bill (H.268) to create a “Sex Work Study Committee” concerning the legalization of prostitution in Vermont. This bill strives to rewrite Vermont history via an absurdly vacuous lie that Vermont prohibited prostitution because of “white supremacist” motives.
For years Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has given hate speeches and tweeted anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel statements, but only Georgia Republican, Marjorie Green, has been displaced from Congress for one similar comment.
The Vermont Tax Structure Commission has delivered its report, and its recommendations should trigger an intense debate. Switching public education support to the income tax and expanding the sales tax to include services will be very controversial. It’s regrettable that the legislature didn’t begin with a performance review, to decide what state government should be doing with $4.5 billion a year, and then address the tax structure needed to pay for it.
Concerned about the looming loss of adequate early morning police patrol coverage due to “defund the police” measures, Tom Licata of Burlington recently wrote two letters to Burlington City Council and city officials. Receiving no response, he shared them with Vermont Daily.
The Valentine’s Day gift given to Parkland, Florida was the direct result of, a predictable consequence of misunderstood human behavior. Frightening to me is that experts in psychology and human behavior understand well, but this knowledge is being ignored and in its place come Progressive political policies which seek to deny what do many others know.
