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In light of Rob Roper’s recent and excellent article (Property tax question blows up in radio host’s face, Sept. 3, 2024, Vt. Daily Chronicle), and this radio host’s past article (An open letter from Kevin Ellis-‘Dear Republicans…’, May 9, 2021, Vt. Digger), I submit the following open letter to current WDEV ‘Vermont Viewpoint’ host, and former newspaper reporter, lobbyist, VTDigger/VT Journalism Trust board member Kevin Ellis. I look forward to his response.
By Tom Licata
Radio-Host Ellis, I know you are nervous. You see it slipping away. That Great Society revolution you rode for nearly 60 years is almost gone. Your kids and mine don’t even know it happened: Some $25 trillion spent in Great Society anti-poverty programs with no meaningful change in poverty rates; some $30 trillion in government debt; and some $100 trillion in government unfunded liabilities. My kids just look at your government spending and efforts to strangle the economy as strange.
With the exception of the College Democrat and Socialist Clubs, most voters feel the same way.
For 60 years you championed “nontraditional’’ families and proposed child care from the government as its replacement, derided two-parent families, opposed school choice, opposed self-reliance and loved your drugs.
But the country has moved on, with lots of help from Covid and technology. The next generation cannot believe that in 15 years every penny of tax revenue will be needed just to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on the debt. They can’t believe government is a lead balloon.
Since 1965, you won the debate. You were better at it. Federal spending should grow because government programs work. And grow it did! Great Society government spending (which doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all our military wars since the American Revolution of 1776. And as for those “single black women — the welfare queen” that Mr. Ellis wrote of, some 75% of their babies are now born outside of marriage. In 1965, some 7 percent of all American children were born outside of marriage. Today, the number is over 40 percent. As the welfare state expanded, marriage stagnated and single parenthood soared. People actually said that. And in quiet places where no one is listening, a lot of people still say it.
But movements die, replaced by the next one, driven by a new generation. This generation wants a better world and they are prepared to vote for it. And that is your problem.
You have been trained to like lots of spending and the coercions necessary for government dependency. From Lyndon Baines Johnson to Barack Obama, that was the deal. At the bottom of it all is a system built on tens 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 parties. You wanted to keep all the power for yourselves.
What you didn’t bargain for is that your coercion and big government spending led to all these ills. To tax billions and expect no duties, to shoot up drugs in the open, to pay a lot for bad government-controlled schools, roads and health care: That all came with a huge cost for humans. And that bill is now due.
You hate this stuff, I know. You think women shouldn’t be expected to care for their children and instead have them shipped off to some stranger at government-controlled child care. And in reality you don’t really want people to work much at all, as some one in three Americans already are “hooked” on one or more of these ineffective anti-poverty programs.
No, your aim is degrowth and deindustrialization. Your aim is to deflate and neuter the citizen into an obedient sheep, with you as totalitarian eco-shepherd: Simultaneously saving the environment while dematerializing the middle class: Hardly the essence of a Christian America.
But as the sheriff said to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when they tried to go straight: “It’s over. Don’t you get that?’’
You are struggling now. You don’t know how to deal with the Trump people. You don’t know how to deal with all this government spending by Biden and the Democrats that is hastening our day of hyperinflation and bankruptcy, as you print money out of thin air. Socialism has its costs: The equality of rubble.
The regulatory sabotage of our economic system — which Democrats fought so hard for — requires that both parents work. If you had regulated the system a bit less and not allowed the government to take all the power, our traditional family might have survived.
There is a way out of this mess for your party. Embrace the future. Get rid of the deconstructionist, Marxist-laden postmodern critical race theorists now running your state parties.
And Embrace: “E Pluribus Unum”; “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; “that all men are created equal”; “that [we] are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable rights”; “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”; “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.”
The author is a Burlington resident and former candidate for the Legislature. The essay above paraphrases parts of Ellis’s 2021 commentary.
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Well said Tom. I really liked this article.
Thank you Christine!
For those of you with the time, below is a link to my recent interview with Linda Kirker, on her weekly cable show, Sound Off. Though it starts off somewhat slow, at roughly minute 15 it takes off on some good issues:
http://50.212.101.74/CablecastPublicSite/show/20153?site=1
People like Kevin aren’t asking questions to actually understand how things work, or to uncover cause and effect. The “journalists” that are hired in the media are there to ask questions that push a narrative that reinforces their state violence religion.
This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. When have you ever seen a republican cut anything? It’s never happened, and it never will happen. The best you can hope for is a cut of the proposed future increases, of which were set artificially high to begin with. But this will do nothing to fix anything. It’s a pretty good scam.
They might be able to keep it going to infinity, as long as we can outsource our destruction globally to all the other countries that do what we do, but much worse.
We have the benefit of living off of our previous wealth, and although terrible, we still live in the best country in the world. It’s going to suck, but it’s going to suck less than everywhere else. The damage has already been done.
There is no “fix”, other then letting the crash happen and starting over with a sound system. The problem is that the giveme givemes and weneed weneeds will beg power to start the destruction process all over again. Humanity is not yet evolved enough for self-responsibility and keeping government power in check. Until the people get smarter, they will continue to adopt their infinitely destructive state violence religion.
“The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice.”–Linda Bowles “The Weaning Process, ” Washington Times, December 20, 1994
Good article Tom.. We expose these people for who they are over and over but they nonetheless blindly believe their delusional liberal policies are the solution. Now we are all paying for it. For Gods sake Our grandkids will be paying for it!
The end of the Vermont government should have happened when you were told to wear a stupid face diaper and take the Covid kill shot.
The answer lies within the blood contracts with CBS and the Red Sox. It’s about the revenue baby! In order to get the grease, one must march to the orders of their Master. Let’s break it down:
Who owns CBS? Paramont Global. Who owns Paramont Global? National Amusements. Who owns National Amusements? Sumner Redstone (Sumner M. Redstone and his family, National Amusements operates as the parent company of Viacom Inc., which includes Paramount Communications, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, VH1, Blockbuster Video, Simon & Schuster, Showtime Networks, Inc., and other major entertainment properties)
Who owns the Red Sox? John Henry and LeBron James. “Fenway Sports Group Holdings, LLC (FSG), is an American multinational sports holding conglomerate which owns Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox, Premier League’s Liverpool, National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penguins, NASCAR’s RFK Racing, and TGL’s Boston Common Golf. FSG was founded in 2001 as New England Sports Ventures (NESV) when John W. Henry joined forces with Tom Werner, Les Otten, The New York Times Company and other investors to successfully bid for the Red Sox. NESV formally announced its name change to Fenway Sports Group in March 2011.”
Grifters gotta grift and big shots have to play the big dog games or else. Selling one’s soul for a buck is what it’s all about. Pay no mind to the collateral damage mounting up around you. Stop trying to reason or sway the “owners” given over to reprobate minds. They yoked themselves to an evil regime….they are trapped by their own devices and sins of the flesh.
One if the first items to be weaned from is the machine ballot tabulators. For years Dems and GOP have sounded off on their fraud. Kill Chain was the response of the Dems to the 2016 election clamor. Dr. Frank the response to the 2020 election clamor. Smartmatics used in Dominion machines all over Vermont has a 20 year history of involvement in fraud and bribes in international elections. Who can change our course? Sarah Copeland Hanzas and town clerks are legally responsible for election integrity in Vermont. Without returning to hand counted ballots we will never know how many dead, moved, never voted in my life voters are somehow voting and stealing our election results.
I SO agree with you on this, and I have been/am in the process of attempting to address this on a local level. I won’t go into details here but let me just say that it has led me to ask even more questions. The most troubling aspect has been/is that I don’t feel comfortable pursuing the issue(s) with the “Top Dog” you mentioned. THAT is a very serious issue.
People such as myself are more common than realized. My “invisible disability” is real. I have survived through SSI and food stamps.
HOWEVER, the overzealousness to push into any program that was trendy has actually hampered habilitation and cost more tax $’s than necessary.