News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
The Equity Advisory Group (EAG) to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) heard testimony on July 9th from Richard Giddings of the Department of Children and Families about how the Clean Heat Standard law would impact low-income Vermonters who receive home heating assistance in the winter. The news was not good for LIHEAP (Low Income Heating Assistance … Read more
VT Digger recently published an op-ed by a local left-wing environmental lawyer. You wouldn’t know it unless you went looking, but Joslyn L. Wilschek is a Utilities and Environmental lawyer with a law office in Montpelier, and her op-ed is about (drumroll) the environment. It is also blinkered.
Elected Democrats in Vermont must have short memories, or maybe they don’t care. The Legislature is advancing a climate bill to hike the cost of heating your home. France added a climate gas tax hike no one but elites wanted a few years ago that set the country on fire in protest.
Breaking: Vermont cited by DHS as ‘sanctuary jurisdiction’ defying federal immigration law with Guest, Rob Roper. We will also discuss the Vermont Legislature’s progress on Education Reform, and whether the Clean Heat Standard is ‘dead‘. Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or … Read more
It’s safe to say Senator Terry Williams (R-Rutland) and the Republican senators landed a blow with their parliamentary attempt to strip the Natural Resources & Energy Committee of the Clean Heat Standard repeal bill (S.68) and bring it to the floor for an up or down vote. Though all seventeen senate Democrats banded together to … Read more
When Vermont voters threw out a historic number of Democrats in the November 2024 elections, including the chair of the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee chair, breaking the supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, a very big reason was the Clean Heat Standard. That was a signal that nobody apart from the special … Read more
What do the impending, across-the-board Trump administration and Congressional cuts to federal education, energy, and human services mean to Vermont? Ask this question to legislators and advocates in the State House and the response is like a Greek chorus chanting, ‘We don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.’ (Whether the play is a comedy … Read more
Next to perhaps property taxes, the biggest issue to motivate voters’ rejection of the Democrats’ supermajorities in the last election was that party’s tone-deaf attitude regarding the Clean Heat Standard carbon tax/fee/surcharge on home heating fuels. In a state where people are struggling mightily to make ends meet the idea of adding a $1-$4 tax … Read more
Following the loss of their supermajority in the 2024 General Election, Democrat leaders in the State House seem willing to reconsider or even potentially abandon some climate and environmental policies they have long championed. We’ll update you on another much more distressing Vermont National connection, which is the Norwich grad who was inside that Tesla … Read more
Last year, the Vermont Legislature wrote and passed a law, S.259, the “Climate Superfund Act.” Its stated purpose is to fiscally fine fossil fuel companies for damage caused by “climate change.” Its actual purpose is to grub about for money to fill holes in mismanaged budges created by big-spending Democrats. I’ve said plenty about how … Read more
Act 18, the Clean Heat Standard law, required the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to design the detailed rules for how the program’s carbon credit market would work in practice. That plan is due, and the PUC’s draft report indicates it doesn’t. Work that it. One main component of the PUC’s task is to determine who … Read more
The Vermont Senate contains thirty seats. Democrats/Progressives currently hold twenty-three of them and the office of Lieutenant Governor, who presides over the state senate and can cast tie-breaking votes. So, for the Republicans to take control of the senate for the first time since the 1990s, they would have to hold the seven seats they … Read more
Vermonters face a critical election year – nationally and here in the Green Mountains. Years of steadily increasing property taxes, government fees, and stifling regulations promulgated by a spendthrift, ideologically extreme Progressive legislature have burdened retirees, young Vermonters, and the state’s low-income residents. In the name of helping the poor, the climate, and various social … Read more
Of the many unique Vermonters wishing to represent their district one name begs the question – who is VL Coffin? VL is short for Voranus Lothrop, named after Lieutenant VL Coffin, a volunteer in the Civil War from Maine. Like his namesake who served as a senator, among other positions in Maine’s government around the … Read more
The big news last week regarding the Clean Heat Standard potential study results was the reveal that the program is likely to add somewhere between $1.78 and $4.03 per gallon to the cost of heating oil and kerosene and as much as $2.12 to a gallon of propane. But also of note is the somewhat … Read more
When Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources, said the Clean Heat Standards “carbon credit” tax on home heating fuels could drive up costs by 70 cents per gallon, the advocates of the program shouted her down and said, “Wait for the official analysis done by the real experts, you know-nothing, political hack!” (I’m consolidating and … Read more
The Vermont primaries are over, and the official general election campaign season of 2024 has begun! With property taxes increasing by unprecedented amounts, energy costs rising with a new, potentially massive tax on home heating fuels up for a vote in January 2025, another double-digit premium increase for health insurance just announced, a new payroll … Read more
For going on half a decade, beginning with the lead-up to the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) in 2020, the Democrat/Progressive majority’s Voldemort number – that which shall not be named – is what these greenhouse gas reduction policies will cost Vermonters. They have already spent millions of our taxpayer dollars on … Read more
The Equity Advisory Group (EAG) to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) heard testimony on July 9th from Richard Giddings of the Department of Children and Families about how the Clean Heat Standard law would impact low-income Vermonters who receive home heating assistance in the winter. The news was not good for LIHEAP (Low Income Heating Assistance … Read more
Vermont has just done something hailed by Climateers as groundbreaking and memorialized by The Week with the headline: ‘Vermont becomes first state to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate change.’ Really?