With S.5 vote and FTX-Balint coverage, they get it right
By Guy Page
At the risk of losing some Republican friends and knowing I will make no new Democrat friends, I publicly applaud Democrats in the Vermont Legislature and the Vermont mainstream media.
Yes, really. Because they deserve it.
Today, anyway.
Some of them, anyway.
The Democrat-controlled Vermont Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday could have told the world, “we’re the supermajority and you aren’t,” and approved the clearly Unaffordable Heating Act.
Our senators were being pressed hard by renewable power industries. Already enriched by crony laws created by their lobbyists and legislative pals, these companies wanted more. Well, it worked once……
But not this time. This time, Vermonters spoke up. And despite the desperate distortions Big Renewable mouthpieces got some senators to repeat, the Vermonters who made the difference were not the fuel dealers. They were the hundreds of poor, rural fuel users who begged them to oppose S5. Because it would hurt them.
And enough senators listened. By a 4-3 vote, they politely rebuffed Big Renewable and its ‘public interest’ lobbyists and changed the bill to require a two-year study and then an affirmative vote by the Legislature to proceed.
On the Senate floor last year, Sen. Jane Kitchel (D-Caledonia) expressed the same concerns about hurting the poor – and then voted for the Clean Heat Standard, last year’s version of this year’s AHA. But this year – more informed, more influenced by real constituents, and as chair of Appropriations more in a position to act – she heeded those concerns.
S.5 will likely pass. The checkback could be removed by the House and then killed in conference committee in exchange for 30 pieces of Big Renewable silver obtained through rate increases their pals mandated more than a decade ago.
But for now – good job, Democrats! And now, a word of praise for our friends in the liberal media….
In their March 1 story on Becca Balint, the LGBTQ electoral lobby, and FTX (“Court Filing Reveals How Crypto Moguls Tarnished a Historic Vermont Election”), Seven Days reporters Derek Brouwer and Sasha Goldstein just kill it. They describe in detail how LGBTQ Victory Fund leaders took shady $$ from FTX and gave it to Balint – after Lt. Gov. Molly Gray had rebuffed them. After Balint promised to not court super PAC money.
In the end, Balint got $1 million in two-minute warning Super PAC money and used it to defeat Gray.
Would Gray have won had she violated the campaign agreement and taken the $1 million ahead of Balint?
We’ll never know. What we do know is that the feds are all over FTX. A series of indictments show a cozy relationship of mutual interest between the Balint campaign and FTX.
And we know it because Seven Days put investigative, appropriately adversarial journalism before interest group pandering. 👏
Categories: Commentary
Amen, Guy. Give credit where and when credit is due.
So…this is like the Highland Clearances with two years’ notice. Instead of knocking your cottage down with no warning and dumping you on a beach, they give you fair warning to move out voluntarily. In the 1700s, the lairds of Scotland (“Weave yourself another shawl if you’re cold”) removed their tenant farmers in favor of more profitable sheep-farming. In this case it’s the “Kennebunkportization” of rural Vermont, and I’m glad that Equity Director Davis has her eye on this dumb law, because once that happens you will never see a black person coming around here even to work. I have had more black neighbors in rural Vermont (at two out of three properties I’ve owned) than I ever had in the upscale communities where my family lived (in other words, none; see above). In my experience, everyone likes them and they just blend, meaning they work in the woods or in the factories and may not have the money to double their fuel bills.
Yes, 7days may deserve some credit but they waited to long to publish this “new” perspective. Months ago I posted the link to the LBGTQ Victory fund website that showed that by far the largest contribution they made was to Balint. The walls are closing in.
As I posted several times before, Ms Balint, give the damn money back. It you do not, you will never be able to remove the stain it has put on your resume. The money was not Mr. Singh’s to give to anyone. It belonged to investors many of whom may be your political opponents.
It was dirty money. Time to make it up to those investors whose funds were STOLEN from them to directly fund your campaign.
She should immediately resign or be fired. What would they demand if a conservative took this money?
https://thevpo.org/2023/03/02/theyre-just-going-to-beat-this-crypto-bro-thing-into-the-ground-arent-they/#more-14213
Hear the far lefts take on it. Hold your hat it’s a doozy…
I still think what’s missing here are the dates surrounding her visit to the Whitehouse for that LGBQMNRP meeting and then when she was given the money in the form of advertising.
They are very “coincidental”.
I would say more like “circumstantial”. There’s still a lot more evidence out there on collusion between the globalist left’s non-profits and other dark money launderers, but none of it will be heard until we have honest elections again, if ever, since it is clear from the AZ testimony that at least 25% of judges (and all of MSM) are in the pay of the pharmaceutical and illegal drug cartel.
I’m not sure we need to cheer because a few in the legislature did what was required of them by Vermont’s Constitution….this one time…They actually did something right- once.
This isn’t over yet. The house gets it’s whack at S.5 and can undo any good accomplished by the Senate amendment. Not that the amendment was all that good anyway.
Follow the money.
Keep in mind some illegalities were made despite the claim that no one knew anything of what it was or where it came from.
Really?
Becca was tainted early on. Her denials were hollow. How could you, as an elected leader, deny knowledge where over 80 percent of where your warchest was sourced ? She denied it from day one claiming discrimination and continues to deny it to this day. With lack of term limits she will be there till the end of time and will not face any punitive actions.
How could this be?
Oh, I forgot …it’s Vermont politics playing out till it’s logical lack of conclusion.
She was trained by some of the best, like Ilhan Omar, that you can just deny everything and claim discrimination, and be protected by their party and media.
The couch cushion committee voted to form yet another committee. The Vermont Legislature cannot seem to do anything without creating task forces, committees, and boards to study what should be a simple “yes or no” decision. The Legislature is as weak as it is dangerous these days. All they do is play the end-around game in perpetuity and raise taxes. Useless.
As far as FTX and the DNC, there is a common factor missing in most media stories these days. Where all that money was laundered? Apparently, the Ukraine and that is why the USA must support and defend with taxpayer money so they can steal it all.
It wouldn’t have been good politics.