By Guy Page

The Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School and Vermont’s Racial Justice Alliance (VRJA) are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop construction of the $47 million Champlain Parkway, AKA the Southern Connector in Burlington. The suit says local, state and federal officials have not fully considered its impact on the ethnically diverse community living in the Maple & St. Paul Street neighborhood, according to a VTBiz.com report. Now in its 35th year of planning and regulation applications, the project received all permits in April. 

Bernie Sanders wants you to know that 1) he knows the cost of everything is rising, if you can find it at all, and 2) there’s a government program for that. To read the extensive list of government programs for people who can’t afford the rising cost of fuel and food and everything else, or who can’t find baby formula, headlined “Do You Or Your Family Need Food Assistance?,” see the June 6 Bernie Buzz. No mention from the Senate Finance Committee Chair about how progressive energy and spending policies have contributed to record inflation.

Mike Pieciak, the straight-faced Covid data delivery man at Gov. Scott’s press conferences now running for state treasurer, decided to become a lawyer after watching the 1992 comedy “My Cousin Vinny,” starring Joe Pesci as a screwball lawyer. “I so loved the Joe Pesci character, and also the prosecutor character,” he said in a recent Vermont Business Magazine interview. Who knew? 

There won’t be a Republican running for the Stowe House seat long held by retiring Heidi Scheuermann, but independent Jed Lipsky, a logger, will run against Democrat Scott Weathers. Lipsky – who is not to be confused with The Logger, comedian Rusty DeWeese, also of Stowe – has lived in Stowe since 2000. He was interviewed by the Stowe Reporter “after getting out of the woods and changing his shirt.”

Organizers of the second annual Black Voices Matter concert scheduled for May 26 in Bradford was “cancelled due to acts of racism within our community,” according to co-founder Jenn Grossi, as reported in the June 1 Journal-Opinion community newspaper. No specifics about the acts of racism were given out of respect for the victims, because “racism is a traumatic thing,” Grossi told Bradford selectmen. Funds already raised would be distributed to the BIPOC artists involved in the project. 

Maurice Martineau of Montpelier recently reminded Vermont Daily Chronicle of these evergreen words of Pres. Ronald Reagan: “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his/her actions.”