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VT Dems go full communist.
by Rob Roper
Vermont Democrats nominated Amanda Janoo as their horse to take on Phil Scott in November’s gubernatorial election, rejecting by a slim margin the putatively more moderate alternative, Aly Richards, and in doing so decided to go – as many in their party have – full-on communist.
Though Janoo doesn’t formally claim the Democratic Socialist party label – you know, the folks who want to “save our democracy” by abolishing the U.S. Senate, popular elections for president, and make the Supreme Court subordinate to the one remaining branch of government, the Politburo, er, House of Representatives, among many other even crazier proposals — she said in an interview with Seven Days, “I’m always quite pleased when people will relate me to [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani. He’s given me a lot of hope in this moment. I feel like I’m part of that movement….”
So, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is part of the movement to fly south with the flock, then, yeah, it’s a Democrat Socialist duck – with only a left wing. Add to the case Janoo’s campaign communications director is Jeffery Peterson, who is also running for a Burlington house seat with the endorsement of Green Mountain Democratic Socialist of America (Burlington Daily News).
According to that Seven Days interview, Janoo “has portrayed herself as a disruptor who believes in a more self-sufficient Vermont, in which the wealthy pay their fair share and decisions are made at the community level….” Which begs a few questions, the first being how does she define “wealthy,” the second being how does she define “fair share,” and another being what does she mean by “self-sufficient?” Replacing the three billion or so in federal funds Vermont gets with local tax dollars? That’ll be fun!
As for the first question, Janoo is specific. She would increase marginal income tax rates on households earning $250,000 to $499,999 by 2% to 10.75% and by a whopping 8% on household income over $500,000 to a national record-shattering 16.75%. The current top marginal income tax rate in the U.S. today is California at 13.3% on income over $1 million. Suffice to say, nobody with an income above the Janoo thresholds is going to stick around to be thus fiscally raped. Which gets us to the second question….
What exactly – and I mean exactly — is anyone’s “fair share?” Already – today (well, actually 2024, the latest year I could find numbers for) — before Janoo’s tax scheme has taken effect, there are only 4,451 returns showing $500,000 or more according to the Joint Fiscal Office (1.3 percent of resident filers, and most of these are one-time windfalls from things like selling a business or property). Combined they hold 18.8 percent of the state’s adjusted gross income (AGI) but pay 33 percent of total state income taxes, over $380 million in total. Isn’t that a fair share? Or, if we’re being fair, like TWICE their fair share? Especially since these people ponying up the big bucks to pay for the bulk of state programs probably aren’t the same folks benefiting by lining up for Section 8 housing or cashing in on an EBT card.
Add in the $250,000 to $499,999 filers and we’re looking at 6 percent of filers accounting for 46 percent of all income taxes collected. Six percent of the taxpayers paying nearly half the total tab. If that’s not paying “their fair share,” how much would it take to get Janoo and company to take their jackboots off the neck and call it enough? (I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 percent, Stalin-style).
Now how many of those high earners like, for example, doctors (a little literary foreshadowing here) do you figure give Janoo the one fingered salute and leave because moving, say, the twenty miles from Woodstock to Hanover, New Hampshire, would save a $500,000 filer over $40,000 and a $1 million filer over $125,000 every year on income taxes alone, not to mention no sales tax and, and an (albeit slight) discount on property taxes. Ask yourself, if I were to offer you $75,000 a year tax free on top of your current take-home pay to move out of Vermont (and, no, I am not offering you this, we’re in the hypothetical here), would you take it? Yeah. Or if you ad the choice of giving your money to a bloated, inefficient, incompetent government bureaucracy or using it to pay your kid’s college tuition – in full. Again, yeah.
And here’s the kicker. What does Janoo want to spend this windfall of other people’s money on? The (or rather “a”) big one is Single Payer healthcare. A failed proposal that we know will fail again because it’s already failed once in Vermont because it’s too damned expensive and too damned complicated. And what’s the kicker to this kicker, the (over)estimated revenue from this ludicrously insane tax hike proposal ($220 million) doesn’t even cover her own estimated cost of just Phase One of Janoo’s healthcare plans, Universal Primary Care ($300-$320 million).
So, who do you think will end up footing the bill for that hundred-million-dollar gap, plus whatever all her other cockamaimy proposals will cost, along with all the revenue lost when the richies decide they might as well ditch slope-side at Stratton for the income-tax-free Nevada side of Lake Tahoe? Answer: YOU, middle- and lower-income working Vermonters! That’s who! Seriously, you’re better off responding to that email informing you that you somehow won the Ugandan lottery than you are voting for this woman.
Don’t believe me? You’ve been living under one of the most “progressive,” tax-the-rich state governments in the country with supermajorities of little Janoos in Montpelier promising you all the free stuff that the wealthy will pay for the last thirty years. How’s it working out?
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
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Categories: Commentary
I support Janoo’s position that Bernie Sanders should pay more taxes.
Fair share indeed!
When one family makes 10-20X the average income using the same infrastructure, said infrastructure is supporting that family far more than 10-20X. Because of their excess income, they can invest in the future, they can get better rates of finance, etc. The leverage potential is 100X or far more. So their tax rate needs to reflect this. (I belong to this class, I’m well aware of its advantages).
A family making 50k is scraping by. Everything becomes more expensive. Small expenses become huge. And they are in the meantime the providers of labor and consumers of products that the folks making 500k rely on. So of course those who are benefiting the most from this system should pay far higher tax rates. And no it’s not communism!! It’s smart capitalism that does a bit of redistribution because greed is rampant. It’s a community taking care of itself.
While the idea of a ‘fair share’ sounds logical on paper, this argument relies on a blanket statement that ignores individual risk, inflation, and the actual mechanics of modern global economics.
First, it conflates two completely different financial forces. If we want to address root causes of severe inequality, our focus should be on reigning in untaxed, predatory transnational capital that operates above national borders. Using a blunt domestic tax code to punish local success does nothing to stop global corporate extraction; instead, it severely harms the domestic innovators who build our actual communities.
Second, America created history’s greatest marketplace precisely because it is geared for individual upward mobility. Those who achieve great financial success should be viewed as proof-of-concept examples of what is possible within our system, inspiring others to strive for the same. When we penalize those who succeed, we create a massive disincentive for everyone else, effectively telling aspiring entrepreneurs that their hard work will only be met with a penalty.
Third, this viewpoint ignores how inflation continuously erodes personal savings. In an unstable economic world, passing wealth to the next generation is not an act of greed! It is a defensive necessity to ensure family survival and achieve the American dream.
Fourth, we must acknowledge that true wealth inequality is fundamentally driven by unequal preparation, not market failure. If you look closely at those who have succeeded in accumulating great wealth, their achievement can almost always be pointed back to a foundational success in education. Real wealth inequality is directly tied to systemic educational failures, evidenced by the reality that recent state report card assessments show only about 48% of Vermont high schoolers are hitting core proficiency targets needed to realistically compete in the modern marketplace.
Fix education, and you fix wealth inequality. This is not a matter of throwing more money at the problem either, considering Vermont already ranks as one of the top spenders per student in the nation.
Finally, we must separate economic achievement from political corruption. If money becomes excessive political speech, the fix belongs in campaign finance and lobbying reform, not in crippling the economic incentives that drive national prosperity.
True capitalism succeeds when we equip every individual with the skills to win, rather than punishing the ones who do.
Please, enough with the doublespeak. We are dealing simply with the sins of envy and theft.
Philip,
With all due respect, who is the arbiter of the “excess” income to which you refer?
Who is the one who determines the arbitrary baseline metric beyond which one’s income is considered “excess?”
Do you believe there is an objective meaning of the word “excess” in regard to people’s income? Or is “excess” only a subjective value when other factors of one’s financial profile are taken into account?
Does your usage of the word “excess” betray an inherent and presupposed Marxist-tinged bias which applies the values of good or bad to particular amounts of income?
Headline from a Reuters/Ipsos poll released today: ” Most Americans believe Trump has inappropriately profited since returning to power. The Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 69% of Americans see Trump’s business interests influencing presidential decisions.
Half of Republicans, two-thirds of independents and nine in 10 Democrats hold that view. Republicans split on whether graft under Trump is better, unchanged or worse”
https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-believe-trump-has-inappropriately-profited-since-returning-power-2026-08-19/
Fix capitalism and people will not be as attracted to Democratic Socialism
Polls have been shown to be manipulated. Reuters is usually Marxist propaganda. Show everyone the proof. Only 3 types of people vote for Democrats. Marxist, indoctrinated people and useful idiots. They continue to show this every new day.
Merriam-Webster on communism: “a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production.”
I didn’t know that was actually Janoo’s platform. But according to the headline, it is. Wow.
Perhaps you have not payed attention to her healthcare plan, which ends private providers and makes doctors direct employees of the state — thus seizing the means of production. And she’s on board with Mamdani’s state-seized grocery store scam, etc and so on.
I don’t pay much attention to local politics, but definitely pay attention to overblown statements. People throw the term “communism” around too loosely, in my opinion. Just like Democrats throw around “right-wing extremist” to describe just about any conservative. Since nuance has disappeared, the country is predictably more divided than ever.
Well, when the Co-Chair of the DSA, David Jenkins, says that their “goal is communism,” I’m going to believe him.
Mark- What Bernie et al won’t say in public is their plan is for government sponsored poverty for the masses.
I see several commentators on these pages seemingly trying to push voters to sit out this next election, due to TDS handing the win for the offices to the commicrats by default. So anything is better logic?
These candidates of the Democrat Party, DSA, Communists, Socialist or whatever they call themselves or others call them DO NOT want to get elected to Represent or work for you/us, they want to RULE over we peons and even said they wish to Govern over us ! Look at Boston going full Facist, not only are guns rights eliminated, now property rights going away!
Exactly!! I know too many of them.
Ron, they want to rule. They endorse “power over”. Republicans exhibit “power with”.
Nothing seems to animate Rob Roper’s creative writing skills quite like an intelligent, confident woman.
Words have meanings. Communism means replacing private ownership with collective ownership. Higher taxes on wealthy people and publicly funded health care are not communism, whether you support those policies or not.
“Stalin-style,” “Politburo,” and “jackboots” don’t make Rob’s argument more accurate. They just make it louder.
If Mr. Roper doesn’t know the difference between different economic philosophies, perhaps he should be less loud about the economic philosophies of candidates.
Semantics. Intelligence is very subjective. Taxes = slavery! Freedom is never taxed. Take the public schools. We’re supposed to be forced into either paying taxes for kids who are clearly not getting educated but instead being indoctrinated or the government will take my property!Same with healthcare. I prefer to live free to decide for myself!
Hi Laura, Janoo’s gender has nothing to do with it, as I’m sure you know. I hold the same opinions regarding Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, and several of your male colleagues in the VT legislature. Phil Baruth has brought out my creative writing skills often and well! And former legislators Mark MacDonald and Dick McCormack were the hilarious subjects of some of my most popular posts. So, your baseless attempt at a cheap shot aside….
As you say, words have meanings, and when Janoo says — in her own words — that she feels that she is “part of the movement” wherein the co-chair of that movement states — in words that mean things — “our goal is communism,” I’m going to take her at her meaningful word. Especially when the evidence of many of her policy proposals are quite collectivist in nature.
Questions for you: Are you down with this movement too? Sounds like it! Do you support Janoo’s plan to make all the doctors in the state (who don’t leave) government employees, thus seizing the means of production of healthcare services in VT? Do you really think an “intelligent” person could possibly come to a rational conclusion that this would be a successful policy? Are you a supporter of her proposed tax increases — government taking “collective ownership” of record high levels of private wealth? What is your definition of “fair share” and at what point in your thinking is anyone in a free society paying MORE than their fair share?
Looking forward to your answers as I am sure will your constituents, coming as they will from an intelligent, confident woman.
This is probable simplistic but it sounds like we are arguing over the issue of who should spend our money. The citizens who earn it or the government after they conficating it. That about it?
Curt, it goes farther than just the money.
https://nypost.com/2026/08/19/opinion/if-were-not-careful-islamic-extremists-threaten-to-turn-us-into-americastan/
No, you’re arguing over whether the middle and lower classes can redeem a small portion of what the government took from them to subsidize the affluent and owners of capital. Upward mobility is dead. The economy no longer rewards hard work and ingenuity. It rewards wealth itself.
Mr. Roper, you seem to view the economy in terms of people who create value and therefore have a strong moral claim to keep what they produce, versus people who consume value produced by others. Is that basically how you see it?
If so, I think you have the dependency relationship backward. The affluent and owners of capital are themselves deeply dependent on government policy to acquire, preserve, and enlarge their wealth. For decades, American state policy has funneled a disproportionate share of the gains from rising worker productivity upward, effectively subsidizing the affluent at the expense of the lower- and middle-classes that actually produced those gains.
Since 1979, net labor productivity has risen by more than 90 percent, while real hourly compensation for production and nonsupervisory workers has risen by only about one-third.
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
Every year the middle and lower classes are contributing more and getting back less, while the affluent and owners of capital remain dependent on a policy regime that subsidizes their lavish lifestyles at the expense of the most hard working members of society.
So before treating affluence as evidence that someone is a “producer,” shouldn’t we first ask where that affluence actually comes from?
If anything, we need to end the culture of government dependency among the affluent. Wealth alone does not entitle anyone to preferential economic policy, and lower- and middle-class workers should not be expected to subsidize that arrangement indefinitely. The affluent need to contribute their fair share.
Another Marxist sticks its head up. Always the same. Someone else created the weather individuals created. Keep voting for people that are willing to sell the united states to china one factory at a time.