By Guy Page
With several Democrats who voted No on S.5 on April 20 voting Yes today, the Vermont House this morning voted 107-42 to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of S.5. The bill now becomes law.
Minutes after this morning’s session began, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, told the assembled House they would shortly be voting on “Act 5.” It was an apparent mis-speak – bills don’t become Acts until they are formally passed into law. However, her misspeech may have belied her confidence that the override would succeed easily.
If so, she was right. The final tally of Yes votes had seven more than the 100 necessary to override a veto. The Senate overrode the veto on Tuesday.
Several Republicans spoke against this session’s carbon taxation bill and several Democrats spoke in favor.
“The bill favors those in Chittendent County who are on natural gas lines” and penalizes rural Vermonters, Rep. Gina Galfetti (R-Barre Town) said. “We will push the state of Vermont to burn wood to heat their homes and buildings – increasing carbon emissions, not reducing it.”
“A conservative is someone who stands in front of history yelling, ‘stop!’,” Rep. Scott Campbell (D-St. Johnsbury) said. But there’s no stopping history or science, he said, and it’s time for Vermont to embrace S.5’s carbon emissions reduction measures, the one-time weatherization consultant said. “The longer we delay, the higher the cost and the greater the destruction,” he said.
Democrats who voted No on the second reading of S.5 in April 20 but voted yes to override Gov. Scott’s veto includes Rep. Kristi Morris (Springfield) and Taylor Small (Winooski). One of the few Democrats who voted no was John O’Brien (Tunbridge).
S.5 will levy fees on wholesale fuel dealers and redirect revenue to provide weatherization and electric-powered heating technology, including heat pumps.
A roll call will be published in tomorrow’s Vermont Daily Chronicle.
Categories: Legislation
And now we go to court and spend even more money. Didn’t the legislators know about the 1975 federal Act, Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which Jacqueline Brook of Putney wrote about in an earlier VDC piece today?
It’s a sad day when people from out of state hold sway over the natives . Now, we are going to get to experience it on a national level as the flood gates open wider on our southern boarder, and the same kind of people that are imposing freedom shattering edicts here get to experiment at a national scale. My prediction ? The fan, and the air it moves, will never be as clean again.
“A conservative is someone who stands in front of history yelling, ‘stop!’”…So not only did the guy plagiarize the mission statement of the National Review, he fundamentally misunderstood it. Try it in context;
“Let’s face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
He probably should have kept reading a bit further;
“One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things.”
Les joux sont faits.
To borrow from Hannah Arendt’s book On Violence, with a bit of editing: “In a one party legislature there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances…. It is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”
I agree that state legislatures generally function better without super-majorities. (Just look at the flagrant abuses of power happening in red states with super-majorities.) That’s why the state Republican Party needs to stop pandering to a handful of MAGA extremists and conspiracy theorists and recruit moderate candidates who actually have a chance of being elected to serve in state government in Vermont. Republican Phil Scott was re-elected by a huge margin in the same election that handed the Democrats super-majorities in both the House and the Senate as well as most statewide offices. So much of what I see on this site is bitter, angry ranting and name calling – not the best way to persuade others to consider your views or even to listen to you.
“You will pay more, own nothing, and you will like it.” – now replacing Freedom and Unity
Buy your firewood early this year.
Make sure your voices are heard at the polls in 2024, because you are not being heard at all by these communists.
I hope that all the politicians who just did this WITHOUT we-the-people’s desire nor approval: I HOPE YOU ALL DIE ON THE STREET. In the cold. In the night. Where we-the-people will all applaud that you will die the way you want US to die.
The final nail in the coffin of what used to be Vermont
Don’t be so negative; I am sure there are many more nails yet to come.
The majority of us in VT do NOT have the money to convert our homes to what you want us to have, unlike you. You will just add many of us to those who will leave this state; or is that your plan?
Everyone who is not on natural gas in Vermont will pay to achieve NOTHING. Isn’t it interesting that the largest business supporters of S.5 were the businesses that were exempt and gained advantage over their competitors – at the expense of the rural Vermont citizens.
A sad day for the representative government of Vermont.
I honestly think this whole thing will logistically fall apart. It is impossible for many of the beautiful souls of VT to pay for the asinine and ineffective heat pumps (which will be no cost savings even if if they are ‘subsidized’) or to pay increased fuel prices. Watch…the virtue signaling woke in two years will be whining about “heat for all”…a problem they caused.
All of the state representatives who supported this bill, may be visited by three ghosts at Christmas time, as you must be familiar with the story. of “A Christmas Carol.” A more recent version of the character named Frank, known as “Lumpy,” (by his beloved Claire) is played by Bill Murray, in “Scrooged,” The well known winters’ holiday tale certainly suggests the out come for those who profit off of the “cold backs of those who are poor.” Of course, when dealing with our own immediate reality, the sole supplier or suppliers of this type renewable energy,” will most certainly profit, but what do our legislatures who voted for this bill, possibly gain? And what about the small business owners, who faithfully deliver our fuel to us, in the coldest of winters? What do they stand to loose from this “deal?” Will they have to close shop, because of unscrupulous business deals? Do we want Vermont to be a ghost town of vacant business and houses? And again, what is their hurry? Why not think things through, as Phil Scott has said, and put the bill through due process, and make changes for those who simply cannot afford to replace their current heating system with another? There are ways to implement something like this using reason, not through back door deals.
Let the bankruptcies, closed businesses, mass resident exodus and the black market begin. It is already begun in Chittenden County. What will they do with those large empty buildings already dotting the landscape, with more to follow with recent announcement of large box stores closing. They think they are going to chase the rural folks into their 15-minute cities. Not going to happen. We were here before you, and we will be here long after you destroy Vermont.