Vermont amuses me. It’s like watching drunks play Jenga, but in this case, it is socialists pretending that socialism here will be different. The university system, for example, is a money-losing inefficient mess, but no one wants the changes needed to make it “work.”
And it doesn’t need to work. Socialism doesn’t work. Dysfunction within what in most states is the breeding ground for Marxists (college campuses) is the norm. There will always be more things on which to spend other people’s money than there are people or money. And it’s difficult to pretend to support things like free tuition or school-debt forgiveness -massive welfare programs, etc., when there are not enough people or things to tax to pay for it.
This is the trap and, ironically, one that springs in parallel to a deliberate plot to reduce the number of potential future taxpayers needed to fund the ever-expanding state whose priority is always to feed itself before any of the programs or promises it makes.
Cuts are baked in and inevitable.
In the case of higher education, Vermont is on the cusp of consolidating public colleges and universities to (cough-cough) “unify the state colleges, streamline academic offerings and achieve financial sustainability.” Part of that process included a decision to shift to an all-digital library system.
Many in the forward/Progress camp took unexpected exception to the idea of all online libraries. In the wake of the ensuing kerfuffle, the President of this collective college endeavor has resigned “for personal reasons.” He has been replaced in the interim by an apparatchik named Michael Smith, whose credits include working “for years in a number of state government positions, most recently as the secretary of the Vermont Agency of Human Services during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Joy!
He is either well-regarded for his bureaucratic sleight of hand, or someone hates him because changing the palace guard doesn’t make the solvency problem disappear. The balance sheet isn’t balanced, and it matters not which collectivist you put at the helm. You either charge more, tax more, or cut something and not just the person of color you replaced with a pasty white guy. But the digital-only library idea is on hold, so there’s that.
“We knew this work would be difficult -– in fact, none of this work is simple or easy but we are making steady progress and will be ready to launch Vermont State University in July,” Sophie Zdatny, the current chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System, said in a statement announcing Grewal’s resignation.
Smith says he is “excited to work with the faculty and staff and welcome the inaugural class who will help chart this new path forward” [so that] “Together, we are making history and securing a legacy that will serve generations of Vermonters.”
Do you mean the generations of Vermonters not yet born who are already on the hook for taxes to pay for the laundering of money through Pharmaceutical companies, “green energy boondoggles, and wars in Ukraine?
Those generations aren’t going to have much to offer, especially with that oppressively expensive heat standard y’all are so hyped on, or the idea that a rural state should ban cars and trucks that don’t run on electricity that isn’t there.
Calling me a hater won’t change any of that.
