By Kay Trudell
One of the reasons many Vermonters, and especially conservatives or Libertarians or Independents (or even sensible moderates), are upset with you (legislators) is that you are not serving the people.
Who elected you to drive our fuel prices up so high that we cannot heat our homes or afford to buy a car unless it conforms to the type of vehicle you say we must drive?
Who elected you to rule over the interior of our homes or how we must heat them? You did not explicitly say you would do these things when you ran your political campaigns.
We Vermonters were not marching in the streets demanding that you do these things to us. The only types of governments that order their citizens to drive only a particular type of vehicle, and then pass laws that punish them economically for doing so, are Communist governments. Free market, liberty-respecting, Constitutional governments do not do such things.
And yet here you all are, either passing the laws directly or supporting them with your writings and your speeches, or refusing to oppose them boldly and fearlessly. What about the U.S. and Vermont Constitutions?
Who are you serving? Yourselves or the citizens of Vermont — many of whom cannot afford to buy your mandated cars or convert their homes to your elitist vision of Utopia. Democrats and Progressives in the Vermont leadership positions are governing like Socialists.
Many legislators in both political parties scoff at the GOP Platform and conservatives. As a result, we have no strong opposition party to the socialist/Marxist train slamming down the tracks toward us.
Where are the strong condemnations of these pieces of legislation and many others like it from Phil Scott? We need a governor like Ron DeSantis in Vermont! Now, that is a Republican. Phil Scott’s responses are weak-kneed and placating. He uses his veto pen every so often, throwing a bone to people like me, but I have yet to see a robust condemnation from him of anything the Socialists in Montpelier are doing to us.
What I see going on appalls me — and I am not alone. We the people are being boiled alive by inches, like the frog in the pot of water. The clean heat standards, or whatever trendy name the Vermont Left has come up with, violate the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says that we have the right “to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures” and that this “shall not be violated”.
This Socialist piece of garbage legislation strips us of the right to be secure in our houses and effects. It in effect seizes our homes and cars! What will happen to people who cannot afford to implement these mandates (unfunded)??
Will they lose their homes? Freeze in the winter? How can they pay their fuel bills? Drive? Will the leftists in the legislature forbid fuel dealers from servicing us? What other states have these types of Communist legislative mandates? Maybe California. This is all UN Agenda 21/30 and the globalism coming out of the World Economic Forum.
Why does my own governor not more strongly oppose these efforts to feed us to the Socialist beast with every fiber of his being? Most of you in elected office have surrendered most of the ground on social/moral issues. You are passing laws or carrying them out which make us look more like we have the morals of ancient Rome in its declining days. The Democrats and Progressives have gone even beyond that, and are now proposing an unconstitutional bill that attacks churches — H.113.
It is not law, you say. It is only proposed legislation. Why was it even introduced? In the 1803 landmark Supreme Court decision Madison v. Marbury, the justices wrote that any law which violates the U.S. Constitution is null and void and repugnant. You folks are proposing repugnant legislation. Why? Just because you feel you can? You are stomping on both the Vermont and U.S. Constitutions. H.113 is an attack on the free speech of churches, synagogues, etc. The legislators who introduced it should be rebuked. Why not? They wish to rebuke the churches.
What in the world do they think the First Amendment means? Government is to stay out of religion entirely. Winston Churchill condemned Socialism in the strongest words possible. We need a Winston Churchill here in Vermont!
Phil Scott, you are acting more like Neville Chamberlain. I shouldn’t have to be this blunt within my own party — or even outside of it. I am not a serf to an agenda. I am a free citizen of a Constitutional Republic — something the Vermont legislature and governor and some mayors need to remember.
My leadership should be acting on my behalf. What is wrong with them? Obey the Vermont and federal Constitutions! Who are our Vermont legislators serving? Themselves and their personal agendas, looks like. Certainly not the people who elected them.
My husband and I are seniors. Who is going to help us pay our home heating bills in the future? Or buy us a $65,000 electric car? We aren’t poor, but my last car cost me just $28,000 and it was brand new. NOT an EV, by the way. I have never spent even close to $65,000 on a car. Ever.
And you Democrats and Progs, if you think I am upset with my own party’s governor, I am ten times more upset with the things you are doing to we the little people of Vermont. You are ruling us like the nobility of Europe — the reason our Founding Fathers fled from Europe. Do you have no knowledge or respect for the U.S. or Vermont Constitutions? Their attempts to curtail the powers of the government and protect the citizenry from tyranny? You are trampling on them!
My elected leaders in both parties should be ashamed of themselves. All of you need to go back and read the U.S. and Vermont Constitutions, and stop turning we ordinary citizens into your serfs who are having their constitutional rights trampled upon in the name of your elitist agenda. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Have some empathy for your constituents who will be burdened by these oppressive mandates. Serve the people of Vermont, not your personal agendas or the globalist, elitist visions of the WEF.
The author is a Grand Isle County resident.