Right Side Up: Anti-Phil Scott Ad…Helps Phil Scott

This week, on Right Side Up, Alison and Mike discuss an anti-Phil Scott ad from Democrats that, when you look at it point by point, is actually a great endorsement of Republican Governor Phil Scott.

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TL;DR (by Grok AI): Full transcript below.

• A Democratic ad attacking Gov. Phil Scott on affordability, housing, healthcare, and vetoes actually functions as an endorsement of him, because those problems come from decades of Democratic legislative majorities, not the executive.
• They stress basic civics: the legislature writes laws; the governor can only sign, let bills become law unsigned, or veto. Scott’s record number of vetoes blocked costly policies.
• Examples of vetoed or opposed measures include the clean heat standard, a renewable-energy standard, Act 181, and a healthcare bill that was not true reference-based pricing.
• Scott used executive orders on housing (faster, cheaper permitting, smaller wetland buffers) and healthcare (directing agencies and the Green Mountain Care Board toward reinsurance and reference-based pricing).
• Committee chairs blocked testimony and collaboration on wetlands, energy, education, and other bills.
• Healthcare, education, property taxes, energy, and transportation costs; Democrat-backed policies raised them, and the governor’s vetoes and budget fights limited the damage.
• Young people and retirees leaving the state, weak job growth versus New Hampshire, and high overhead for businesses are blamed on legislative policy, not the governor’s office.
• Rejecting Democratic candidate Amanda Janeway’s top-down ideas (universal primary care, more government direction of the economy) and warn they would repeat past failed single-payer experiments.
• Urge voters to look past party-line or snippet-based ads, research candidates, and elect a tighter Republican–Democrat balance so committees actually debate and pass permitting, regulatory, and fiscal reforms.
• Closing message: stay informed, and treat the election as the real accountability mechanism.

Transcribed using a third-party app [very lightly edited]:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You’re listening to Right Side Up. My name is Mike Tagliavere.

My co-host is Allison Despathy. Allison, good morning. How are you? I’m doing great.

Good morning. Nice to be on again. Thanks, Mike.

Yeah. It’s been great weather. This weekend was really good.

Gorgeous. I don’t know what you did. I know.

I attended a vast meeting for the first time. Oh, good. Yeah.

Barn at the top of the world. Yep. A beautiful location.

Good turnout, sounded like. Oh, incredible turnout. Excellent.

There was more than 300. I think there were more than 350 people in attendance. That’s awesome.

It was really great. And you and a few other legislators. Yes, myself and at least four other legislators and the lieutenant governor was there as well.

Good. He spoke a few minutes. Good.

I was in grandchild land, so just recovering. Oh, okay. Wonderful, but exhausting.

Wouldn’t trade it for the world, that’s for sure. So we’ve got a lot to cover, and I think it may turn out that we cover only one thing in this show because there’s a lot to break down. There really is.

Yes. So I don’t know. This is an ad.

I don’t know where it first appeared, but this is an ad supposedly against Phil Scott, and our listeners know when we end the show, stay safe, stay informed. Informed voters, people with any kind of knowledge of current events and stuff like that. And civics.

And civics. Right. Would see this and scratch their head and say, well, you just made an advertisement for, in favor of, another term for the governor, Phil Scott.

Yes, and calling out the democratic legislative issues. Exactly. Yeah.

And so it says the top caption, what did you get in the last 10 years? We got progressive policies. Why? Because the legislature, the bodies, the Senate and the House both were dictating to the governor what got passed and whether he was going to hold his nose and let what passed go into law without a signature, veto it or sign it. Right, right.

And I think he has had, thank God, 65 vetoes because you think of a lot of the bad policy and bills that we’ve ended up with because of democratic leadership in the legislative body. Obviously, you guys coming in, Mike, broke the supermajority where a lot of these bad laws were passed over the governor’s veto. But one, thank goodness for these vetoes, which now the Democratic Party is trying to spin into.

Look how bad he is. He’s has the most vetoes in Vermont governors. Thank goodness, because there have been so many bad laws that they have attempted to pass.

And this brings me down to like basic civics 101. And we may have discussed this. And I think that listeners or anyone informed knows this.

And if not, please ensure that you understand the legislative branch creates the policy and the law, and the executive branch executes this. So if you have a problem with where things are landing with regards to laws, the affordability crisis, you have a problem with the composition of the legislature, which we know for 30 or so years has been Democrat, including a Democratic supermajority. So this is the real problem we’re contending with.

And now to see the Democrat Party come out and try to blame Phil Scott for these problems that we face in health care and housing and affordability. It is unbelievable. And it really does.

Yes. And it also just, Mike, epitomizes either ignorance on their part or I think it’s really to me, it breaks down to an insult to the voters. Yes.

Like taking advantage of the fact that they may not understand how this works or because people are working two jobs or three jobs. Right. Maybe there’s a two-parent household, and both parents are working that number of jobs, right? And trying to pay for health care and child care and all the other bills.

If you’re trying to raise a family and understanding, you know, not understanding necessarily where this comes from. And then basically now them trying to place all this blame on on Governor Scott, which is really the opposite where it’s been the legislative. It’s the legislative body’s fault.

Yes. And we’re seeing, you know, people we keep hearing, oh, democracy, democracy, democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for lunch. Right.

And in this case, the Senate and the legislature and the House decided who was for lunch. And it was the governor. They were going to wag the dog, if you will.

They were going to dictate these are the laws you have to deal with. Right. Right.

You can sign them, let them go into law without signature or veto. And no matter what, we are going to bash you in the media, which they did in twenty, twenty three, twenty, twenty four biennium. We saw a lot of that, and it turned a lot of independent Vermonters and even moderate Democrats off.

I know it for a fact because I heard it out of them. Yes. And this is how so many good Republicans got elected to help like yourself, to help break the supermajority.

Yeah. And that’s one thing they didn’t list on this. What did you get in the last 10 years because of people being fed up? We had the largest turnover in the country to break that.

And that’s what we go back to the Vermont voters at that time. Two years ago, they knew who was responsible for the higher property taxes. Yes.

They knew who was responsible for this clean heat standard that was trying to be pushed through. And they voted against it by voting for Vermont Republicans, thankfully. Yeah.

So it is really an insult. Mike, you’re definitely right. And I would also say one of the best examples of this is the governor’s recent executive ordered on order on health care.

The legislature is run by a Democratic majority. And I hate to sound partisan on this, but this really is just a basic reality. The legislative branch in Vermont has been run by the Democratic Party.

That is who is in leadership. They have, for 30 years, failed as an example to fix health care policy, to open up more choices, and to help make it more affordable for Vermonters. And the governor then has to come in with this recent executive order doing what he has in his power, which isn’t a lot because he can’t create laws.

But he can direct his agencies in the executive branch and departments to say, you know what, do everything in your power to try to help the situation because the legislature has failed. And I can give you an example. I can give you an example of that.

The executive order that came out in June of 2025 regarding housing and trying to streamline permitting and enable permitting to be done quicker, so that and with less. Less cost. And one of those items in the executive order was a reduction of the buffer.

Yeah, the wetland, the wetland, wetland buffer from 50 feet to 25 feet. Right. And it was fought in the legislature.

It was fought in my committee. I know I lived it, and we tried, and there was a push, and there was a bill that made total sense that was mostly technical changes to A&R policy. Agency and natural resource.

Right. Yes. And it failed, and it was glued to the wall because it would have enabled the possibility of an amendment for the legislature to codify that 25 feet.

Right. And taking this a little bit further, this is also where the Department of Natural Resources has tried repeatedly over the past years to go to the House Environment Committee that you reside on. To try to fix some of these wetland rules that have been a problem that they, as an agency, are trying to correct.

And that has been blocked by the House Environment Committee like your former chair. Because of the lack of the majority that we needed to pass this common sense. Yes.

And that has been about the composition of the legislature and showing a perfect example like you just said there of the governor trying in his power and authority to do what he can. But everyone should really understand this: policy and law creation comes from the legislature. So when you see an ad like this that’s trying to rip into Phil Scott, it backfires.

Well, it backfires. It totally backfires. Well, I’m going to do what I can to make sure it backfires because there are a lot of people who are not informed enough to understand what this ad is trying to say.

But it’s saying the exact opposite. Right. If you have knowledge of what’s been going on.

Right. And the Democratic Party who also came out in a recent Facebook post, I think maybe two days ago. They have, I can quote right on here.

They say, Phil Scott promised affordability. After a decade in office, Vermonters are paying more for housing, health care, everyday essentials. Oh my goodness.

They have just pinned themselves to the wall because it’s their fault. The Democratic Party’s fault. It’s in the green book.

Unbelievable. It’s in the green book. The legislature gave us what’s in the green book.

Right. And if you look at who’s in the majority, look at what we tried to do just this past biennium and how we tried to fight some of the worst of the worst. Oh, you did.

And thank God you were successful. And how much worse it would have been. Without.

Right. Right. These are the things that when I saw this, I was like, are you kidding me? I know.

You can’t seriously think that there are not going to be a lot of people who understand where this affordability and no collaboration. No. Number six, no collaboration.

No, we should break these down. We should absolutely break these down, Mike. Yeah.

Every time the governor tried to have collaboration, there were people testifying in my committee trying to get the collaboration with the wetlands. Right. Rule.

Right. And it would have broken down to a minuscule. I think it broke down to less than one percent of the landmass of Vermont.

And it still couldn’t move through. Still could not move. Right.

Right. It was if no collaboration. Wow.

I know. No common sense is more like it. And I would also say to this, I think just keeping in mind that obviously this is being put out by the Vermont Democratic Party because they’re trying to support their candidates.

You know, it’s sort of their role to do their attempt here to support Amanda Janu. But it clearly also demonstrates, like I said, either the ignorance, how naive they might be. Right.

And it’s also sometimes it’s so easy for someone to have a scapegoat. So they’re obviously trying to take this and point fingers at Phil Scott. But hopefully people can see through.

And so we can just break down maybe one by one. They have number one, the most vetoes in the state’s history assigned to Governor Phil Scott. Thank God.

It’s the only thing that has kept us from going off the brink when you start to realize what has he actually vetoed. I think it’s worth us going through that, Mike. Yeah.

There’s a lot of things that he vetoed to make total. Like I said, it made common sense to veto them. Yes.

We would have had the list at the other end here: out-of-control health care costs. Right. Thank goodness he had the veto.

Yes. Affordability. Correctness.

Thank God he had the veto. And that’s where housing crisis standard like we can get specific. He vetoed clean heat standard.

He vetoed renewable energy standard, which would have raised electric rates like a one billion dollars more for Vermonters and electric rates over 10 years. I mean, maybe 500 million to one billion. There was some different joint fiscal office notes on that.

He vetoed Act 181. And more and more Vermonters have tuned into. Wow.

Act 181 was an attack came out of Act 181. Yes. You know, well, that’s what the Democrat, the progressive policies have given us in the last 10 years.

Yes. They gave us Act 181. And they also, thankfully, because people outside the building started asking, they gave us the revolt against Act 181.

And so much awareness of what is going on inside the building. Oh, it’s been a reactivation of civic engagement. I mean, it’s like Vermonters waking up and realizing if we are not involved, we are going to get crushed.

Look at what is happening. So honestly, when you start to break down versus this sort of excuse me, you know, B.S. put out there in a Facebook meme, when you actually start to break down, wait, what did he veto? And then you’re like, oh, my gosh, thank goodness. OK, where would we be otherwise? We talk about this all the time.

The families in Vermont, young people, retirees, everybody is doing their best to make sure that they can actually afford to stay in the state. Yeah, and afford food. Keeping track of what the governor vetoed and why.

Right. Keeping track of press conferences and not just seeing snippets on the local news because you’re not getting the whole story in those snippets. Right.

That’s why this needs rebuttal, because it is basically if you’re in the know, this is an ad in favor of two more years of Phil Scott. Right. And hopefully people have the information and can sort of see beyond the propaganda attempt here, because this is a true manipulation of the reality.

One hundred percent. I don’t know where we’re at for time. You’ve got a little bit more time.

We’re going to we could maybe look at another minute. Yeah, another minute. We can look at this out of control health care costs like you had said.

Oh, my goodness. And again, this has been going on since the 90s with the Democratic Party leadership. And thankfully, Governor Scott vetoed S-190, which was not true reference-based pricing.

And like we already said a bit ago, he went with his executive order, which directed Green Mountain Care Board. Yeah. To do the reference-based pricing that you already have the authority and power to do.

Yes. And thankfully, also with that veto, he had the numbers to back it up. Yes, exactly.

So that was twofold. Definitely. OK, so it’s this this can turn out to be.

The best thing for him. I mean, this is great. I mean, his next press conference.

You should like use it as his checklist. Well, let me speak to you for doing the legwork and putting this out. I really appreciate the endorsement here.

Thanks, Democratic Party. Because to me, that’s what it looks more like an endorsement than an attack. I know.

Let’s make a list of all the high points. On that note, right? Yeah, we’re going to we’ll we’ll break this down a little bit more after we pay a few bills. You’re listening to Right Side Up.

[musical interlude]

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. You’re listening to Right Side Up. My name is Mike Tagliavia.

My co-host is Alison Despathy. OK, Alison. So we were at the out-of-control healthcare costs, and those reach into other things. The healthcare costs are leading to other problems with line items in the budget.

Right, especially property taxes as a big one, education costs, property tax increase, just our ability to afford to pay for healthcare. I mean, I think I’ve said multiple times, I don’t even have healthcare insurance at this time because I cannot afford it. And that’s what’s so appalling to see them try to blame that on the governor when it’s been all in the legislature’s hands for decades to fix this policy.

And the governor’s EO, basically what he did was look at other states and what was working to drive down the costs. Yes, like reinsurance, like New Hampshire does, big difference, exactly. So what the governor did through executive order, because he couldn’t get the legislation that he wanted out of the House or the Senate or both, he did it on his own in hopes that now next session we can help it by codifying it.

And the other thing I think to keep in mind is there’s only so much, again, because he does not write the laws. No. He only has so much authority with his agencies and departments to direct them to say, everything in your power to bring down healthcare costs for Vermonters, please do it.

And that involves the community rating issue, the guaranteed issue, the guaranteed issue, the community rating, the reinsurance, there’s many ways, the reference-based pricing. So he has directed that to make it happen. And the other thing that I think is so upsetting is, again, going back to not only the fault of the Democratic-led legislature in failing to address this healthcare cost crisis we have, but also looking at the Green Mountain Care Board as a regulatory body, Mike, because Blue Cross Blue Shield was just recently presenting this lower deductible, lower cost, or I’m sorry, higher deductible, lower cost plan that would have been a little bit more around like a catastrophic approach that I could have, and I think many Vermonters would have potentially considered.

That’s what I had when I was in my early 20s. It was basically catastrophic coverage. Exactly, like they do it for people who were like younger and healthier, but maybe closer to something more affordable, and the Green Mountain Care Board failed to act on that.

So you have the failure of the legislature, you have the failure of this sort of regulating body that came out of when we were looking at single-payer universal healthcare. And that was back in the 90s when we got that? The Green Mountain Care Board was in 2011 when that was put into place, yeah. And then we saw that there was going to be, I think it was like an 11 or 12% tax increase on businesses, or payroll tax on businesses in Vermont.

11 or 12%. It was insane. Anyway, that all fell away.

Green Mountain Care Board is there. So the fact that here we have a lot of Democrats and Democrat candidates trying to blame the governor for this healthcare crisis is just appalling. I mean, it’s so wrong and so manipulated.

Well, that’s why I’m glad you were on board with, we got to talk about this, because if you know what’s been going on, if you’ve seen what the governors tried to do, if you’ve seen what legislators in both the House and the Senate have tried to help the governor do, then you know that this is just projection. It’s okay, we did this to you, but we’re going to say that the governor’s at fault. And it just cannot stand.

And you know who’s also been really critical in this conversation, and you might remember his name better than I, but Department of Financial Regulation, the commissioner, is it Kaj, the Department of Financial Regulation, who’s been very, very vocal in trying to shed light on this healthcare crisis and what the legislative bodies could attempt to try to do. But again, it just gets smashed down because the Democratic Party has not taken any steps. And what they attempted- Taking more steps toward universal healthcare.

More expensive, unrealistic, government-controlled, no, it doesn’t make any sense. And we already went down that road 2011, 2014, with Shumlin saying, oops, sorry, going to be way too expensive, we can’t do this. Yeah, and if we’re so unlucky to get a Genovese governor, and I hope that’s not the case, and I don’t think that is actually going to be a reality, then that’s what’s going to happen again.

We’re going to see a repeat of history. Why would we want that? Well, she’s trying for the universal primary care, which is, again, a nightmare when people are trying to get out of that system and have direct primary care, which really makes a big difference for patients and doctors, both people in that transaction. So to see her pushing this universal primary care plan is, it’s just ridiculous.

But if we keep working down the list, what do we have next? Number three is the affordability crisis. And it’s a, like I keep saying, it’s like a hydra. It’s got tentacles reaching into every, practically every line item in the budget.

Yes, and every sector, every sector. Every sector. Yes.

You know, we’ve got de-education. I don’t think they refer to education in this. I’m curious why.

I know. But education is part of one of the pieces that definitely needs to be addressed. We have increasing costs and falling proficiency scores, not to mention the mental health of our students.

The kids, less and less, want to go to school. They don’t like going to school for numerous reasons. And when we have high health care costs that dribble down into the, or reach into the, excuse me, education budget, they’re causing everybody.

So we’re paying more for education costs for state employees and teachers and administrators. And we all feel that when we get our property tax bill. Absolutely.

I mean, I don’t know if I already had said, like, it literally took me more than a week to even open my property tax bill because I, like, tucked it aside. I didn’t even want to see what it was. So like you said, health care plays into that.

This is hugely part of the affordability crisis. And really, honestly, correct me if I’m wrong, Mike, but if Democrats had their way, that cost would have gone up even more because they wanted to not buy down the property tax as much as… Right. Right.

They wanted a 7% rather than a 3 or 3.5. And thankfully in the Senate, it was given, the governor got his ask. Right. Right.

And it came back to us and got passed. So he’s trying on the affordability. Come on.

And the affordability crisis has hurt us when it comes to the transportation issues we have. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Because the education bill or the education fund is actually getting money out of the transportation fund. And we know, we feel that every day.

While our roads suffer. Driving down the road. Yes.

And our cars suffer. Yes. Exactly.

Right. And then I think, because I, of course, work on a lot of energy policy. So looking at higher electric rates because of the renewable energy standard.

Well, that’s the next housing crisis. So we have… And then the housing crisis. Right.

And then also the clean heat standard. And I think of the cap-and-trade and cap-and-invest transportation programs, which all increase the costs of transportation fuel and gas and diesel. I mean, if they get their way and they try to push this forward.

And just think of that. And Mike, I just have to say, you talked about it like a hydra. But think of all the ripple effects.

So you start increasing costs of electric rates, heating rates, transportation rates. You’re increasing costs for all businesses, all services, everything that we go to purchase or need to fix our house or have in our house, et cetera. All those costs are going to go up.

So it’s all the downstream effects of the policy that has been promoted, pushed, and attempted by the Democratic-led legislature. Thankfully, again, these governor vetoes have come into play. But this is what is just so disturbing.

So yeah. So that goes through. We’ve, let’s see, four reasons why you want to vote for Governor Phil Scott.

Yes. Number five. No accountability.

Oh my goodness. Right. Really? Right.

Seriously? Right. Well, think one about like they’ve essentially destroyed the Ethics Commission. You know, that has been sort of reduced hugely with any sort of real oversight or authority as needed.

No accountability. I mean, that’s been a big hit. Right.

Right. You know, the thing that comes to mind about this is there was a, during floor debate, there was some, one of the legislators brought up that there need to be a rating system or some sort of accountability for the governor. And thankfully, I didn’t think of it.

I wish I did. Representative Richard Nelson from Derby. What did he have to say? He said, we do have a rating system.

We do have something. It’s called an election. And the governor won.

There you go. Okay. By a very high margin.

Thank you, Rep. Nelson. So, I think the accountability one, number five, is definitely a feather in the governor’s cap because the governor has managed, whether you agree with all of his policies or not, and there’s no way you’re going to have agreement, 100% agreement.

There is just no way. It doesn’t happen. I remember when I first got elected, somebody said, you know what, if you get 80%, take it.

Okay. Yeah, that’s big. And I thought, man, why would you give that up? And then you spend two years in there and you want to make an amendment or you want to try to make a bill less bad and you take the 80% because your constituents really need it.

That’s why. Right. Right.

So, it really is when you talk about, it’s the elections that are going to do this accountability piece. So, the accountability one, that’s number five, in favor of keeping the governor. Right.

Right. Number six, no collaboration. Oh, that’s just a joke.

He has asked time and time and time again. There have been many meetings and I can remember and I can’t remember what dates, but it was during the super majority when both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tem took every opportunity to bash the governor. Every opportunity.

Right. That doesn’t reek of collaboration. That doesn’t say to the people who are listening or reading these press releases or these articles or commentaries on the internet, that doesn’t reek of collaboration.

No. And I would also say just as someone who works a lot on policy and visits a lot of committees because of the areas that I’m involved in, I would say that the other part there is when you have a committee chair who is actively blocking testimony and not allowing the real conversation or people to come in and really say their piece on a bill, and this happens all the time. And I would go back to, unfortunately, if you don’t mind me saying, Mike, Chair Kathleen James of House Energy and Digital Infrastructure.

She was a bit better this past session, but two years back, the amount of testimony that was blocked and not allowed to come to the table, one, that’s not accountable, two, that’s absolutely not collaboration. When you’ve got someone from another party who’s saying, I want to hear from this person. It happened in Senator Watson’s House or sorry, her Senate Natural Resources Committee around S325, which was related to changing Act 181.

Education bills. Pick a bill. A 455, wasn’t that the first education bill in 2025 session? Wasn’t it 455? I don’t know if it was 455.

But the education bill in both sessions, 2025 and 2026 session, there was really not collaboration. It was, okay, we have another proposal. What about this side? No, we’re not going to do that.

Right, blocking. And that happened in your committee this past time too. It definitely did.

So if you want to actually have a conversation about collaboration, I think we need to talk to some of the committee chairs. Yes, definitely. So, what are we, continually threatens to hold the state budget hostage.

If that is the last possible- Thank you for doing that, Governor Scott. We appreciate you doing that. It does not need to escalate.

The budget, meaning taxing and spending. Right, more and more. Isn’t that why there was a campaign, tap trees, not Vermonters? Yes.

I was involved in that coalition. Because there are programs, ladies and gentlemen, right now, we’ve already spoken about this. Programs that have passed that are sitting, waiting on the shelf for funding right now.

Right, right. They were passed and they were, one of the excuses, oh, don’t worry, there’s no funding in it. That’s not a reason to pass a bill, especially since somebody’s sitting watching.

There was a 90 plus million dollar settlement that came from what? Meta? Oh yeah. Or Google? Exactly, yep. When I saw that, I thought, oh, that’s great, money for Vermont.

And I’m thinking, uh-oh, somebody’s looking at a program that they have waiting for funding and they probably, as soon as they saw that headline, got on an email and said, good, we found the money. And then are we going to have to keep that going and alive? And then our budget escalates. I mean, our budget, as we know, has, what has it grown? It’s grown 40%? It’s grown exponentially, out of control since, what, 2018? $9.4 billion.

And I will say to many legislators that I speak with regularly, aren’t we doing enough? Why do you have to keep coming for more money? And it’s like, no, we’re not doing enough. We need more money. We need more money.

So watch out for monitors. No, we have to let more of the free market stuff take care of a lot of these things that we have proof. We have proof right now in other states where it’s working and we need to let it work here.

We need to at least try it. We’ve tried one way. We need to go with another way.

So ladies and gentlemen, we got to pay some more bills. We shall return. You’re listening to Right Side Up.

[musical interlude]

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to Right Side Up. My name is Mike Tagliavia, my co-host is Allison Despathy. Before we get back into our discussion of this ad in favor of re-electing Governor Phil Scott.

Right. I want to just remind our listeners, rightsideupradioatgmail.com. If you’d like to drop us a line, if for some reason you can’t catch us on WNTK radio, you can go to WNTK.com, find the podcast button, click on it, scroll down to Right Side Up and you can listen to any number of our shows. You can find us on Podbean.

You can find us on 802Scoop Facebook and 802Scoop YouTube and you can also find us on granitegrok.com. So, back to this ad that makes the case for keeping the governor right smack dab where he is. Yes, despite their attempt to do otherwise, when you break it down, you just understand that is the best option for Vermont. Governor Scott is the one.

We have number eight is young Vermonters leaving at a record pace and you wanted to go into one of the other ones. I think you talked about the, is it the housing crisis? We could go back to the housing crisis for sure. But I think these two kind of go hand in hand and it’s not just young Vermonters.

We have retirees who maybe they do want to downsize because that happens. Well, when you look at what they’re going to get versus what they’re going to have to pay to downsize, it really doesn’t make much sense, especially after they look at the price they’re going to pay and the increased taxes. Now, I can tell you right now, I know someone who’s one of those young Vermonters with a young family, both parents working, trying to pay for childcare, trying to pay for all the other expenses, trying to build a home, and they’re finding out how difficult it is.

These were not caused by the person sitting in the governor’s office currently. These were, the governor is trying to deal with policies that were thrown on him. Yes, from the legislative body.

This is where we have to keep, make sure people remember. And apparently the Democrat party putting some of this stuff out there doesn’t remember. You’ve got three separate branches and they all have three very distinct separate roles.

And creating laws and policy is the role of the legislature. So if we’re upset about our laws and policy, where do we go? To the legislature. Right.

We should be looking at the big, imagine you’ve got a thousand piece puzzle. You can’t blame one piece of the puzzle, the corner piece on the top left for doing. Yeah, the problem.

Ruining the whole puzzle. Right, right. So this is why we’re breaking this down and trying to get people to zoom out and look at all of these so-called issues.

Right. And it’s also job opportunity. I mean, this is where you start to think about, I live over on the border of New Hampshire.

So I live in Danville and obviously my husband is from New Hampshire. We’re right on the border. And you look at a business going, you know what, where do I want to start my business? Do I want to be in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, or am I going to be over in New Hampshire? And then you look at the fact that New Hampshire doesn’t have income tax.

And then you look at all the policies that the Vermont legislature led by the Democrat majority has been trying to push down. Higher electric rates, higher heat costs, higher transportation. We’re going to push you to have an electric car by making gas more expensive.

That’s all going to raise the cost of business overhead. Why would a business be choosing Vermont over New Hampshire with all this stuff coming down the pike? So this is also then, it pushes businesses out. It pushes then the potential for younger people or people, anyone looking for a job.

They’re not going to have the options because of this scenario. So instead of addressing these fundamental issues and making Vermont inviting for businesses, making Vermont inviting for people who want to retire and look at their tax burden, we don’t have that. We have the exact opposite policy pushing so many people out as we know, as the polls have shown, etc.

So how do we turn that around? We turn it around. Well, there’s an election coming up. There is.

We have to keep that in mind. This is why we thought it was so important to cover this ad in favor of having Phil Scott stay one more term. Yes.

And Amanda Jeannoux, as nice as she may be, clearly has no sense of economics, even though it maybe sounds like, Mike, I don’t know if you know for sure, maybe that was her degree. But to hear her talk about universal primary care, to hear her talk about her well-being, sort of top-down economy. I mean, apparently she doesn’t seem to really respect that sort of bottom-up approach of how innovation and ingenuity and businesses and people start to bubble through and come up and solve the problems.

The government is not designed or intended to solve the problems. It’s the real world people on the ground. But everything I keep hearing from her is top-down.

Here’s the plan. Here’s the economy. Here’s the health care.

The government picking winners and losers is going to have everybody as losers. There’s going to be a very select few who are the winners. Absolutely.

Very select. And we don’t need people picking and choosing those things for us. Like, stay back.

Absolutely don’t. Give me the options. I can choose what works for me and my family.

And that’s what needs to be respected. And that’s obviously where there’s been a lot of these hang-ups in the legislative policy law creation with the Democrats at this time. And again, I feel bad being partisan.

I mean, as an independent, there’s no way I can get behind that. We’ve seen the effect. That’s the effect an election has.

You have to be partisan. At some point, you have to look at the pros and the cons. And make that choice.

Right. You have to take a look at the pros and the cons. And look, if you find that there’s a policy that you don’t like, where did it come from? Right.

Right. How did we wind up with this policy? Right. And I think that’s where you come back to also this, you know, seeing some of the Democratic Party right now try to claim this affordability messaging and not owning the fact like, oh, hey, Vermont, you know, we’re sorry.

We created a lot of these problems. And then they go and they say the Speaker of the House, Lori Houghton’s, you know, publicly and privately, the minority majority leader got the votes. And if we get the majority, she’s going to be the speaker.

And she’s making huge assumptions. But it’s also Chittenden County and all the stuff that Lori voted for is all this affordability crisis nightmare. And so why would we if you really want that status quo? So really what it seems like, Mike, excuse me, is that the Democratic Party itself is rejecting the agenda that it has driven through Vermont for decades.

But they’re not coming out straight and saying, no, that’s why I said if you’re informed, if you have some sort of level of civic knowledge, if you have been paying attention, you’d be digging deeper than just the snippets that you’ve been given on the evening news, the local evening news. Then, you know, and you say, well, this could be very easily turned around as the pros, the reasons why. Right.

You want the governor to stay exactly where he is. And beyond that, also the reason why you want a Republican majority legislative body to work in conjunction with the governor to move this stuff forward, because it has not been happening. And keep in mind, you need a majority of one.

That’s all. Because right then you have in committees. OK, we’re not going to have every committee having a Republican or fiscal conservative legislator like I would like.

Yeah, I know we’re not going to have that. Right. But right away, a majority of one is going to change the makeup of some of the key.

Committees that are going to give us the policy that is going to give us permitting reform, regulatory reform like we need, it’s going to give us the transportation system budget that applied to roads and bridges. Yeah, you know, appropriately. Right.

Not robbed by other line items in the budget. I agree with you. We need that really, really tight balance between the Dems and Republicans because what it does, then you have debate.

Then you have collaboration. Then you have the real conversations coming together versus the, hey, we got so many. We don’t care what you think.

Sorry to push you aside. We can do what we want to do, et cetera. And so you’re right.

It really does need to be that tight. And that’s where we need to get more Republicans to bring the balance to force the conversations for Vermonters. That reminds me of that Addison County poster that I bought one of to give to one of my constituents.

What was that? 1770. Oh, there we go. Right.

Seventeen senators. Yeah. Seventy six.

So if we’ve got 30 total senators in the Vermont Senate, so 17 to 13, that would be a good flip. Republican Dem or even 1515. And then, you know.

Well, see, no, I’d rather not have that because then you’re always you’re you’re it’s going to it might. Oh, then the lieutenant governor. Well, then you’re forcing the lieutenant governor to always be the tiebreaker.

Good point. I believe that the Senate needs to be able to put stuff out without the the the lieutenant governor. The governor is a presiding officer.

Fine. That’s his job. But he doesn’t need to be the guy casting a vote every day to break it on multiple bills.

So if it was 17 senators, 76 House representatives, and then if the governor got in, then we have debate. We can actually go home at the end of the night, go back to our rooms if we’re if we’re not commuting every day. Right.

And know that we actually had a debate in committee that both sides are getting the opportunity to be heard. They’re going to have their witnesses. Right.

And they’re going to be able to bring common sense into the building. That would be amazing. Bring common sense to floor debate.

Right. I think there’s so much that could happen if that really, really tight balance was achieved in this election cycle. And hopefully Vermonters will get, you know, as you always say here, get informed, get the information to really make these good decisions, because this is the only thing that we’re going to have the chance this time around to to make these changes.

That we need to have that need to happen. Allison, I think one of the main things that happens if we get that. OK.

Vermont becomes a destination state instead of an exodus state. Right. Right.

And there are people, I believe, in the majority right now who are very nervous that the population of Vermont is going to grow because of their their views on climate issues and environmental issues. They see us as weeds in the on the landscape. I know we’re part of it.

Us humans are part of it and we care. It is humans and the land, not humans or the land. Right.

That’s my different perspective. That’s my perspective. There are too many people who are sitting in the legislature right now who do not have that view.

And we are part of the ecosystem in Vermont. Us humans are. And we are stewards.

We care and we’ve proven ourselves. Proven it. We have.

We have. We absolutely have. Yeah.

No, I’m so glad we were able to break some of this down. And hopefully people will dig in more and get more information as they, you know, move towards the vote. That’s why we say keep you stay informed.

There is only so much we can do in a one hour show. Right. And, you know, I I know you and I’ve joked it would be nice to do a three hour show.

I think we probably could have a nice conversation and talk about a lot of things. Right. But that’s that’s why we try to cover so many things in a short period of time.

And hopefully spark an interest. So people will dig into either the articles that we give you that we read from or spark an interest to do an Internet search or however you find your Internet, your information to dig a little bit deeper. Verify what we say.

We don’t expect you to believe everything we say. But we do do our research on that note. Right.

Right. But sometimes it’s better. You know, it’s better for people to come to the realization.

Right. Themselves to see something, see someone say something that they believed and then see like in a long form interview with someone who they were told not to like. They’re a bad person.

And then have that person come to the realization, say, well, I didn’t see or hear anything that makes me believe that they’re a bad person or they want to see our country fail or that our country is bad or that this policy is detrimental to the environment. Right. And many times it isn’t personal.

Many times it really is just you have to make sure because it shouldn’t be personal. It shouldn’t. It needs to be about that issue and understanding the issue.

Whatever that issue may be to you. Is it your property tax? Is it your health care? Whatever your property rights. You know, those are the things that hopefully people can dig into to understand how do you elect people to best support your interests and what you care about your values? Yes, definitely.

So, you know, there’s a lot to break down. I know coming up very soon, we’re going to have the ability to mail in our ballots, and I hope that people hold them. Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, take some time to hold them with it. Sit and do your research. Yes.

I am not telling you who to vote for. I’m just telling you to please inform yourself about your candidate. Yes.

So that you don’t regret come January 1st or the end of January when you find that the candidate you voted for is not supporting policies that are going to make your life safer, more affordable, make your kids safer, make them have a reason to move out of the basement and into their own place or stay here. Choose Vermont as their home because they’re fourth generation or seventh generation Vermonter and they want to stay here. Right.

Right. And hopefully people also just if you have a tendency to just vote party line, I just encourage you to try to break out of that box and really look closely, like Mike is saying to what is happening here in Vermont and who is going to best serve you. And let’s all try to rise above the partisan party politics and just come together on Vermont.

Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, I think when we do that, we move from Vermont into a much better place. Yes, much better.

Definitely. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve done it again. We’ve burned through an hour.

Remember, please stay safe, stay informed. Listen to Right Side Up.

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Transcribed using TurboScribe.

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