The day after the Burlington Free Press published its Safest State story about Vermont, the UK Daily Mail dropped a bomb on Burlington: “The idyllic northeastern state being ravaged by drugs, crime, and homelessness: ‘People don’t feel safe.‘“ I missed it when writing about the former, though I did point out the latter.
We’ve been observing the Democrat decline in Burlington and Vermont for years, so I’m sorry for not looking further afield for contrary evidence. I got a bit focused on making fun of researchers using unemployment and climate change as metrics for state safety.
Safe is subjective, then, I suppose. Vermont has the second highest rate of homelessness in the nation (California, which they aspire to emulate is first). Vermont has some of the highest overall tax burdens in the nation (your labor is definitely not safe). And I bet, if you ask around, they won’t agree all that much about climate harms (which also do not include the economically unsafe regulatory and tax burdens that come with climate policy).
Climate and Crime
Nothing Vermont does as a state is going to have any effect on global “climate change,” even if you believe in the partisan definition or its political programs. Including what puny humans do on the ground there – or in most US states – so that it is absurd as a measure of public safety. China erases a decade of effort in the communist blink of an eye, again, so the exercise is, anywhere but where the pollution truly is futile – if that’s even what you think you’re doing.
Then there’s Burlington. The Mail is not cruel nor unkind, just direct.
Vermont’s problems are on display in Burlington, its largest city, with some 44,000 residents, including some 350 unhoused people living on the streets or camped out on the idyllic waterfront of Lake Champlain.
Many of them congregate at night in Church Street, the beloved red-brick home to boutiques and eateries, ravaged by such drugs as fentanyl and xylazine, also known as ‘tranq,’ scaring off locals.
Residents recently told Fox News that the area gets ‘really dangerous’ at night.
An older woman remarked that locals don’t step foot in the area after dark because ‘people get beat up at nighttime.’
Since the end of August, Burlington police have been warning residents of the need to be on guard, after a string of attacks by ‘large groups of suspects and perpetrators,’ which included juveniles.
Burlington’s problems, and there are many, are all Democrat-driven. The city made prosecuting sex crimes illegal (legalizing adult sex work). It is a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state bursting from recent border crossing spikes from Canada they claim to welcome. It has the classic false compassion of a rising welfare state, making it a magnet for indigents, drug traffickers and users, criminal aliens, and bums. Assault and murder are up as rival foreign interlopers fight and kill each other.
Cloward and Piven are at work in a city and state where most of the legal residents don’t know what that means—but then they do. They are living it, and they just didn’t realize it has a name that is nearly 60 years old. It is a man-made, chaos-driven crisis—cracks made by the government, filled with more government, which deliberately makes them bigger.
But the news in Burlington is not all sad (or, better yet, mirthless). This paragraph made me laugh out loud.
The city is working to hire more cops and funnel money back to law enforcement after budget cuts. Nearly a third of the city’s force was lost to attrition.
A bit short on details? The city fired them in honor of George Floyd’s overdose or lost them when they saw the writing on the wall. Who wants to work for a city that not only does not have your back but would eagerly sacrifice your career and your family for the chance to go viral on TikTok? Look at the oppressor!
And then there’s this, which is not good news about Burlington, but…
John Klar, a farmer and former tax attorney in small-town Barton, blamed the crises on ‘expensive and inefficient progressive policies that inequitably tax working-class Vermonters.’
‘This has been aggravated by sanctuary city laws, reductions in police and drug interdiction, lax criminal law enforcement, and skyrocketing property values during the pandemic,’ Klar told DailyMail.com.
He added: ‘Native and young Vermonters are fleeing the state in droves.’
John is one of our many contributors. Read more from him here.
One more point. New Hampshire has a Burlington, sort of. Joyce Craig’s Manchester. She accelerated the ruin of that city and now wants to be governor: crime, homelessness, drug problems. She’s a sanctuary girl, too, but Manchester elected a Republican mayor earlier this year, hoping to slow the bleeding and turn the city around. They elected more Republicans to the city council, too.
Granite Stater’s should take that hint. Kelly Ayotte is no prize. She is as much a five-families insider as anyone can be. But she won’t lead New Hampshire into Burlington territory. With a Republican legislature, they ought to be able to keep the rising tide of progressive disaster at bay for a few more years. After all, New Hampshire was the second safest state (we lost number one because of workplace injuries or something). Not that I’d object to being lower down the list because we refused to waste millions playing Vermont’s version of environmental three-card Monty.
