Rob Roper – Page 2 – Granite Grok

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

Woman Palestinian flag jihad pixaby

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

America flag sunrise field Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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 12^th to something resembling normal pre-Covid levels.

Cartoon hit with taxes

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

EV charging electric vehicle

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

Light bulb filament original Photo by Alessandro Bianchi on Unsplash

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.

Unhinged Democrats

Ignore Voters, Dictate to Media, Threaten to De-Platform Republican Lawmakers

If Democrat Senators got an earful from their constituents about rising property taxes, rising crime, and the cost of housing while they were home, it was nothing like what they heard from Senate President Pro Tem.

Vermont Must Cap Individual Property Tax Increases

The massive property tax increase coming our way as the result of an education funding system gone out of wildly control poses the very real threat of forcing some – perhaps many – Vermonters out of their homes. It will certainly cause painful choices for household budgets, making it even harder make ends meet in the Green Mountain State.

Will Legislators Fix Their Clean Heat Standard Catastrophe?

Last spring, it looked like the Clean Heat Standard (S.5/Act 18) was headed for a second successful veto by Governor Scott when Senator Jane Kitchel (D-Caledonia) rescued the “Rube Goldberg” carbon tax on home heating fuels from the abyss by inserting a so-called “check back” clause into the bill.

Cartoon hit with taxes

Vermont’s Education Property Tax System Is Not Broken

Vermonters head into town meeting week with a massive property tax increase looming over our heads, as much as 40 percent in some communities. There is a collective wail on Front Porch Forum and on social media, at least in my town of Stowe, that “the system is broken!” No, it’s not.