by Paul Bean
If you have not already watched our interview with with Rep. Jay Hooper, you really ought to. Last week on Creemee Cast Friday at Four, the young representative gave us some pretty interesting and downright shocking revelations about how the super majority in Montpelier actually operates.
I was shocked to learn from this inside source, things are actually must worse than you think they are… Phillip Jay Hooper is a Democratic representative in the Vermont House for the towns of Brookfield, Braintree, Randolph, Granville and Roxbury.
We talked extensively about the Democratic Super Majority and how they operate. What we learned from Hooper (amongst many things) is just how few people in Montpelier are making decisions.
Starting around the 15min mark we addressed the notion that what we have in Montpelier is a political machine. However, Hooper explained it is not exactly a machine, because the word machine means guaranteed output for a certain amount of input.
Hooper: “Very few of us are putting in any input. Very very few. “
Bean: “It’s just a handful?”
Hooper: “Not even really. It’s like… like… fewer than 10.”
This should be a shocking and disturbing revelation to all Vermonters, Democratic, Progressive, independent, and Republican. While I did try to get him to name names, he hesitated to do so. Further along in the conversation we talked about the veto session, and how heavy veto overrides were the plan before the session even began:
Hooper: “The question going into the session is whether we’re going to override 7 bills or if we’re going to override 11.”
Paul Bean: “Do you think they take it as like a game ? Like ‘Oh, we won, we we overrode the Republican Governor.'”
Jay Hooper: “Of course they do.”
Paul Bean: “That’s all it is?”
Hooper: “It’s worse than that. It’s People today see it as a competition for who can prove best and most convincingly that they aren’t something that they think other people will think is a bad thing. It’s a fear of judgment. Like, you know,0 there’ll be Democrats who think that it’s a bad thing that I came on to Paul Bean’s radio.”
Bean: “Oh I’m sure there’s plenty of them that would.”
Hooper: “There’d be ones who say like ‘why would you do that, that was like, that’s stupid.’ Why? Why we’re gonna have a conversation… I’m gonna go talk to Paul Bean.”
Thank you Jay, for coming to talk to Paul Bean, and invite any other Democratic Reps with similar insights to do the same.