|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
To the Editor – It likely comes as no surprise to you that Vermont is the third most taxed state in America. By comparison, Wyoming has nearly the same population yet pays roughly half in taxes as Vermont. This year we just slogged through one of the most painful increases in property taxes, which could have been avoided were it not for Alison Clarkson leading the charge in the senate to override Governor Phil Scott’s veto. Clarkson voted to increase taxes on Vermonter’s, not once, but twice – despite the Governor’s call for mercy on we the taxpayers.
Gov. Scott, the most popular governor in America, spoke on behalf of Vermonter’s saying:
“Vermonters cannot afford a double-digit property tax increase. Especially while facing a historic eight-percent property tax increase last year, a 20% increase in DMV fees, a new payroll tax taking effect July 1, increased fuel costs to heat homes and businesses from the Clean Heat Standard, and increased electric costs if my veto of the Renewable Energy Standard is not sustained. All on top of several years of inflation – the most regressive tax of all – driving up the cost of household essentials like food, clothing and services faster than paychecks are growing.”
Despite her lead role in passing the unpopular tax, Clarkson has sought to downplay her involvement with a recent article in the Vermont Standard where she essentially passes the blame on to both school boards and voters. In her own words she writes, “For Woodstock it will be a 30% increase, an increase none of us have budget for and one which will be a challenge for many.” Which begs the question, then why did Senator Clarkson vote for it not once, but twice?
Vermont is one of the few states in America with a supermajority of Democrats in the legislature, enabling them the power to override their governor’s veto, which is exactly what Clarkson has done as senate majority leader. Despite having an overwhelming legislative majority for over twenty years the Democrats and Senator Clarkson have led Vermont down a primrose path to unsustainable higher taxes for the working Vermonter. She recently boasted about passing an $8.6 billion dollar budget which includes a focus on climate change in a state where our current carbon footprint is less than 1% of the rest of the country. Even if Vermont could get to carbon neutral in 2035 the difference it will make is miniscule, yet the cost to Vermonters is massive.
Clarkson also favors increased spending for education while Vermont has gone from above the national average in academic scoring to at or below the national average. As seen in cities like Chicago and Baltimore increasing per student spending doesn’t improve academic performance. If we love our children, we won’t continue to throw away money on education initiatives (and over 30 studies) that don’t work.
Regarding the $8.6 billion dollar budget she helped pass, Clarkson states in another article for the Vermont Journal in May of this year, “I am proud of how the legislature works together to help improve and support Vermonters and the beautiful state we are lucky enough to live in. It’s easy to forget that the vast majority of our decisions are unanimous. When we do disagree on an issue, we tend to come together and continue to work productively on the next issue facing us. I still feel we are a model for how democracy, at its best, works.”
If so, then why did she vote to override Governor Scott’s veto of yet another spending bill (S.286) in 2022 and again (S. 5) in 2023?
Governor Scott and Vermont moderates and fiscal conservatives are outnumbered in Montpelier which is allowing for this massive increase in taxes and spending favored by the Democrat and Progressive supermajority that vote in lockstep, particularly when it comes to spending.
We need to re-establish balance in our state’s capitol by electing local taxpayers with an eye on reducing costs and burdens to everyday Vermonters. I pledge to represent you the taxpayer by being a voice and a vote alongside Governor Scott and the other financially sensible members of congress who will protect your hard-earned income and work to reduce the out-of-control taxes and spending before Vermont become the most taxed state in America.
-Andrea Murray, Candidate for Senate, Windsor District
To the Editor: – I didn’t realize that 53 percent of France’s GDP is government spending. In Germany it’s 49 percent and in the US it’s 34 percent. In France and Germany social programs contribute greatly to that spending. Current US fiscal policy is approaching our European allies spending priorities at the expense of our national security.
-Frank Mazur, South Burlington
To the Editor – According to FBI statistics, the rate of violent crime in Vermont has more than doubled since 2014, while the national rate has been relatively flat. Everyday the news is filled with stories of violent crimes and of repeat offenders being released on the street. During this time Vermont has launched an aggressive assault on police officers in the state, from defund and dismantle the police in Burlington, disciplining officers for legally protected activities in their off-duty time, and even criminal charges for doing their jobs.
The estrangement this persecution has caused is not conducive for a safe and secure community and benefits no one. The purpose of the Vermont Attorney General is to protect the public interest and enforce the law. Instead of looking globally to make a name for myself, I will spend my time working in Vermont, for the benefit of Vermonters. I will support our law enforcement and not act to handcuff them. I will work with the States Attorneys to provide them the support they need, but I will also expect the police and SA’s to do their job.
If you do not want to prosecute cases, you are in the wrong job. I will support our police and work endlessly to improve the safety and lives of every Vermonter. This is why I am running on the Republican ticket for Attorney General. This is the party looking after every Vermonter, not just their pet projects. Over the next several weeks, I look forward to meeting with you across the state to discuss your needs and my ideas to help you.
-Ture Nelson, GOP Candidate for Attorney General
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Letters to the Editor
The biggest problem with the property tax increase isn’t the politicians failure to forestall any one year’s increase. It’s the fact that the entire system is doomed to failure by design and no politician has the courage to admit it. If you analogize each school district to a couple going out to dinner with 3 other couples. If you look at the menu and you realize that when the check comes the bill is going to be split 4 ways, you quickly determine that it doesn’t much matter to you whether you order the lobster of the hamburger. You’re not going to pay much more either way. The states school budgeting system works exactly the same way and the teachers unions and administrators know this. So the keep ratcheting up the requests for more and more and more.
Re: “If you look at the menu and you realize that when the check comes the bill is going to be split 4 ways, you quickly determine that it doesn’t much matter to you whether you order the lobster or the hamburger.”
Excellent point.
The Tragedy of the Common: “…the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.” – – William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Plantation
Aristotle, pointed out the problem with common resources: ‘What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.’
It’s not that those who choose to divest themselves of all worldly property are wrong or misguided in doing so. The ‘Monk’ or ‘Sister’, for example, who chooses to serve a greater master and give themselves entirely to God, is not the victim or the perpetrator of a Tragedy of the Commons. Giving of oneself, by choice, is honorable beyond reproach. But when an entire society has no choice in the matter, and is forced into a commonwealth, not only does regard for the efficient use of resources decline, the concept of being personally charitable disappears. In effect, the more one is forced to give, the less it is appreciated.
The antidote to the Tragedy of the Common is, as history shows us over and again, Free Enterprise.
Again: “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot
i was told this morning a persons mortgage payment increased from 700.00 dollars to 1,000.00 dollars per month, due to the tax increase//// if this is true that person will have to increase their wages 5,000.00 dollars more this year
to break even////
Clarkson comes from Buffalo, perhaps in answer to the question “Who is She”? She’s a liberal politician hell bent to ruin Vermont and the good life. Periodically she writes to the Editor in the free Ludlow paper The Vermont Shopper Journal.. The articles are like a manuscript, very lengthy. It must have taken many minutes (hours? To write such nonsense. Bet she did it while serving in the Legislative hours, on taxpayer money. And she voted to double her salary without input from the residents, it’s confiscation. I consider the manuscripts as being keeping her name public. There is really no substance to the manuscripts. In Buffalo she must have attended a liberal college specializing in literature and how to fool people. Bottom line is, “If You Can’t impress People with Brilliance, the Baffle them with BS”. She must carry a roll of TP all the time. She’s totally useless, destructive, controlling, power crazed and getting more money that she’s worth. Another drone in Montpelier. Wonder so if she pads her travel expenses (no receipts required) as corrupt Zuckerman stated he does in a Seven Days, and another article Column | A Case for Cash: Zuckerman’s Public Financing Quandary | Seven Days Vermont (sevendaysvt.com) article.
If Legislators falsify theie travel expenses to pocket not billed receipts, then that’s fraud and embezzlement Is Clarcson doing that in her 60 miles to Windsor? They weren’t making enough falsifying travel expenses, now they are to get double salary. Liberals, “what is yours is mine, what is mine is mine”.
Clarkson is. Harvard grad. Dad was big money. Her wedding was announced in the NYTimes. Go have a look. Degree in arts. Was in the theater as a producer for Pentangle and Northern Stage prior to her role headlining in congress.
Some say she’s squeaky clean – I’m not so sure.
Buffalo huh ? There’s another Senator that comes from the Buffalo area. (Lockport) His Name rhymes with “Baby Ruth”. I believe that I see a pattern in the bigger picture that is undeniable . Almost 2/3rds of the folks under the “Golden Dome” were born and raised out of state. But of course their “formative” years would not have anything to do with their loony lefty ideas…… Would they ?
Still not getting it. Very few are, except Donald J. Trump – himself a “native” New Yorker whom virtually every supposed “conservative” on VDC supports.
The people infiltrating Vermont’s government are COMMUNISTS. The people infiltrating every other state’s governments are COMMUNISTS. The US Congress is now brimming over with COMMUNISTS. The Democrat party is led by COMMUNISTS.
Until the entire insular/isolationist/us vs. them archaic mentality finally ceases to be passed down through families in ALL rural towns & states and the educated & informed acknowledge that this state & every other state comprising the fifty are part of a UNION, & that the US Constitution protects movement within this union – the entire nation will be lost.
Fighting against fellow patriotic Americans isn’t merely idiotic & frankly backward, it’s for naught as the COMMUNISTS taking over the entire USA are knocking at your back door and most, even on VDC, refuse to recognize them. They want to believe grandpa was right & COMMUNISM was long ago defeated when he fought in the war!
It wasn’t. It isn’t. It’s here. Ask Trump – the guy from New York City you plan to be voting for. Americans from the other states aren’t destroying VT.
COMMUNISM is.
Kathleen is correct. It doesn’t matter from where one comes to Vermont. What matters is the content of their character. If someone, from anywhere on planet earth, wants by choice to divest themselves of all worldly property, so be it. The problem, the tyranny, arises from those who force a commonwealth (i.e., communism) on others, for whatever reason.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” – – C.S. Lewis,
To Kathleen, the 50’s had Joe McCarthy and his anti-COMMUNISM hearings. The COMMUNISTS got to him, mainly the Hollywood crowd. Some excerpts:
(born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.—died May 2, 1957, Bethesda, Maryland) was an American politician who served in the U.S. Senate (1947–57), representing Wisconsin, and who lent his name to the term McCarthyism. He dominated the U.S. political climate in the early 1950s through his sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles. In 1954, in a rare move, McCarthy’s Senate colleagues officially censured him for unbecoming conduct. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-McCarthy
A Wisconsin attorney, McCarthy served for three years as a circuit judge (1940–42) before enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. In 1946 he won the Republican nomination for the Senate in a stunning upset primary victory over Sen. Robert M. La Follette, Jr.; he was elected that autumn and again in 1952.
McCarthy was at first a quiet and undistinguished senator. He rose to prominence in February 1950 when his public charge—in a speech given in Wheeling, West Virginia—that 205 communists had infiltrated the State Department created a furor and catapulted him into headlines across the country. Upon subsequently testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
In my opinion we need more like him, but have concrete evidence, which came to haunt his hearings. At a hearing: Joseph Nye Welch, special counsel for the army, to ask McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”—discredited him and helped to turn the tide of public opinion against him.
I believe COMMUNISM was entrenched long before notoriety was in the spot light. Look at what’s happening today with China buying up American lands around military bases. They erected poles with spying apparatus. They weren’t wind mills.
The way people throw around the charge of being a Communist toward some VT office holders signals that they have no idea what communism actually is. I suggest they read up on the Commumist form of government which is that of Russia or North Korea, for example. Maybe then they wouldn’t sound so ignorant.
Karen,
You may be ‘technically’ correct that we’re not yet in Communism but Kathleen is correct in that many in Vermont’s legislature are Communists. They may not identify themselves as such but their intents, goals and objectives will lead to Communism/Socialism, nonetheless. How you cannot see this is baffling… unless of course you’re one of “them” and your statement here is provided to seed doubt into Kathleen’s keen awareness of Vermont’s political landscape?
Indeed. As the pot of communism continues to increase in temperature, and those frogs with the sense to jump out of the pot do so, by the time the temperature reaches that of North Korea, the rest of us frogs will have already been sufficiently cooked to be served to our totalitarian masters.
Ahhh…..another popular DNC “talking point” – demean those who very vocally affirm with accurately what they are seeing with their own eyes! Should Republicans be fuller of “joy” as well about now, or how about calling GOP loyalists who are fighting tooth & nail to protect the tenets of the US Constitution like Freedom of Speech & Freedom of the Press – “fascists”?
Sorry, Karen – all those over the age of 45 or so are more than well-versed in the treachery & murderous policies of Karl Marx and the Communist regimes of the former Soviet Union and China under Mao Zedong. And how did we glean this information? Why, from non-other than the former US school system wherein US & foreign history was once taught & emphasized as an integral part of the foundational building blocks of a solid & well-rounded education. That is where.
“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally WAKE UP & realize you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” Nikita Khrushchev
Looks like there’s indeed some very ignorant statements from a completely different source on this thread than those you pegged, Karen – at least I’m betting Comrade Khrushchev would think so……
Wake up Karen.
fascism///centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition/// webster dictionary/// this sounds more of where we are now///
Ture Nelson! Well written and spot on, thank you for Running for Attorney General! In my Heart I believe you are the person that can do the work for all Vermonters and will abide by THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES WE THE PEOPLE as written!
You have my vote 100 %
The Vermonter
Bert Saldi
your central bankers are communist/// communism is only a front for the ruling elite////
Thank you btw, Tom Licata. I’ve also raised the point that these Communists cannot (presently at least) self-identify as members of that party as doing such remains illegal under the Communist Control Act of 1954. They instead refer to themselves as “Progressives” or “Democrat Socialists” so as to not incite alarm and widespread castigation. The legislators in Vermont & certain members of our Congress are outright traitors to the nation & its Constitution and need to be indicted, tried, and potentially punished under the Constitution’s Treason clause.
Now, let’s both try to be more “joyful”……what do ya say?
My original post didn’t work – Basically said – All talk. No action. The Judicial system is a scam until it enforces the most important and highest laws of the land FIRST.
18 U.S.C. § 242 – U.S. Code – Unannotated Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.