This question was posed to me the other day by a friend (I will paraphrase and omit the profanities): “How is it that New Hampshire, a state roughly the same geographic size of Vermont with about twice the population spends half the amount of taxpayer money that we do?”
Rob Roper
A Truckload of Manure
The rhetoric surrounding the passage of the Clean Heat Carbon Tax (Act 18) was full of talk about “social justice,” a “just transition,” “engaging traditionally marginalized communities,” and “moving at the speed of trust.” Yeah, well, shocker, that was a truckload of manure!
Howard Dean vs. Phil Scott? Yes, Please!
Howard Dean made news the other day when he reminded Vermonters he was still alive. The dude is bumping up against the actuarial tables at 76, after all, and anyone born the last year Dean held public office is now of legal age to drink, which would come in handy if the increasingly radicalized Leftist activist returned to power.
Supermajority Votes for Even Higher Health Insurance Costs
Ask people why Vermont is unaffordable, and health insurance is one of the main pillars of our unaffordability crisis, along with education property taxes, the cost of housing, and energy prices. These highly regulated by our legislature plans go up every year by amounts far in excess of inflation. For 2024 alone, the Green Mountain … Read more
Clean Heat Mess Gets Even Messier – We’re taxing the poor so that the rich can benefit.”
The last time we checked in on the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) as they come up with rule recommendations regarding the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) for the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), they couldn’t decide who should own a financially valuable Clean Heat Credit created by a Clean Heat Measure (installing a heat pump, weatherizing a … Read more
Night Cap: The New Klan with a Nazi Twist
Watching enormous crowds of Americans shouting blatantly racist chants in support of an agenda that is unapologetically genocidal, and backed by internationally recognized terrorist organizations – met with at best indifference and at worst the active support of our elite institutions of government, news media, education, and entertainment — I can’t help but think, this … Read more
Night Cap: Food, Famine, Fear: Beware the Great Agricultural Reset
Americans awakening to the Orwellian Rule of Joe Biden and his crew of thieves have noticed that the perpetual lying is designed to inculcate pliancy through fear. When the COVID-19 hysteria began to wane, Big Brother Biden switched gears to the Ukraine crisis.
A Modest Proposal for the Homeless Hotel Debacle
It seems like we are enduring a constant kerfuffle over whether or not to extend the now-ended federally funded COVID-emergency “hotels for homeless” program with state tax dollars. Lots of them. Twenty million here, thirty million there….
More Independent Schools and More Choice Are the Property Tax Solution
Vermont taxpayers are desperate for relief, especially in regard to funding public education. The only way to provide that relief is to return spending levels on Pre-K to 12th to something resembling normal pre-Covid levels.
Democrat Supermajority Has No Interest in Solving the Property Tax Mess They Made
Democrats in the State House were parading around this week with a banner insisting, “If you make a mess, you clean it up!” Yeah! Big talk! They think this should apply to oil companies regarding climate change (another story I’ll get to soon), but apply that message to themselves regarding the colossal property tax tsunami of a mess they’ve made for us. Well, not so much.
The Clean Heat Standard is too complicated to implement
The Clean Heat Standard (CHS), the “Rube Goldberg” carbon tax on home heating fuels, became law almost a year ago over the veto of Governor Scott. The Democrat/Progressive supermajority that passed the CHS did so without providing – or even considering in any significant detail – how it would work or what it would cost. … Read more
Lessons From the Eclipse – Electrifying Everything is Dangerously Asinine.
The total solar eclipse this week was totally cool, for sure. How lucky we Vermonters were that we could just walk outside, take in this once in a generation natural phenomenon, then pop back into our houses to resume whatever it was we were doing twenty minutes earlier. Not so for the estimated 160,000 tourists … Read more
Left Wing Logic: Nothing in Vermont Is Affordable, Why Should Energy Be?
Most people would say, if you’re in a hole, stop digging. Not Peter Sterling, the executive director for Renewable Energy Vermont, who testified before the House Environment & Energy Committee last week, posing the loopy logic that legislators shouldn’t worry about passing policies that drive up the cost of electricity because the cost of everything else is unaffordable too. What’s worse than the argument itself is that the lawmakers are apparently buying into it!
Another Dumb Constitutional Amendment….
The Democrat/Progressive Supermajority in Montpelier isn’t just oblivious to reality. They are actively hostile to it. One has to conclude that they are purposefully attempting to destroy our state economy because nobody could actually be this stupid by sheer accident.
Democrats say, “Read My Lips: Yes! New taxes!” Republicans say, GET REAL!
Literally, and I quote, on the floor of the House following a vote to make Vermont the state with the highest corporate taxes in the nation, Progressive Democrat Brian Cina of Burlington took up the microphone and told Vermonters, “Read my lips: Yes! New taxes!” Cina’s — what should we call it?
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Legislate
Every week the Vermont Natural Resources Council puts out a short “Climate Dispatch” video interviewing one or another special interest activist posing as a Representative of the public.
Anti-Fossil Fuel Lobbyist Caught in Hot Mic Moment…
Peter Sterling, Executive Director of Renewable Energy Vermont and one of the chief nit-wits in Montpelier lobbying for every policy imaginable to force you and me to cut our carbon footprints down to stone age levels (because of the “existential climate crisis”), was caught on a hot mic — during a Climate Council meeting no less!! — gleefully making plans for a spur-of-the-moment ski trip to Chamonix, France.
House Passes Renewable Energy Standard Amidst Cloud of Baloney
This week, the House voted in favor of H.287, an act relating to the Renewable Energy Standard, by a vote of 99-39, with eleven members absent. Even with a half-dozen or so Democrats joining all of the Republicans in voting NO, it looks like the Democratic Party leadership has twisted enough arms, if everyone were present, … Read more
House Passes Racist, Homophobic Flavored Tobacco Ban
The Vermont House of Representatives passed S.18 – An act relating to banning flavored tobacco products and e-liquids. The roll call vote was 83-53, with a handful of Democrats and Progressives joining all but one Republican in opposing the measure.
Rearranging One Deck Chair on the Sinking Clean Heat Standard
With just a few days to go before crossover (the day the Senate has to pass its bills over to the House for consideration and vice versa), the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee finally took up discussion of the glaring defects – or, well, maybe one of them — in Act 18, the Clean Heat Standard, which they passed last year over the Governor’s veto.