Some people shouldn’t get into this entire protest thing.
On three separate nights this month, vandals irreparably damaged the smiling Ronald McDonald statue that sat outside the Ronald McDonald House in Burlington, Vermont.
“Isn’t this sad?” said Kristine Bickford, the house’s executive director, as she showed the ruined fiberglass body of the famous clown.
Continue reading Vandals attack, deface, then wreck statue outside of children’s charity.
So, Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell (D) won’t be seeking re-election. Why? Oh, the usual reasons: abuse of power, independent investigations, that sort of thing. Typical the-rules-for-other-people behavior, really:
[Bill] Sorrell is awaiting the outcome of an independent investigation of alleged campaign finance violations. Gov. Peter Shumlin appointed former state Rep. Tom Little to conduct the probe.
The charges against Sorrell were levied by Brady Toensing, vice chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, and claim that Sorrell coordinated with a super PAC, failed to report campaign expenditures on 16 occasions, improperly coordinated campaign activities with Dean Corren in 2014 and received a large campaign donation from a law firm he later hired.
One wonders what Vermont will do when they run out of other people’s extra energy production.
When the Green Mountain power company, Vermont’s largest utility, announced earlier this year it will be buying nuclear power from New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, many environmentalists felt betrayed.
“This is exactly why we closed Vermont Yankee, because we didn’t want any nuclear power,” they complained. But consumer demands left Green Mountain with no other choice. Nuclear is the ultimate reliable source of power – reactors operate more than 90 percent of the time – and Green Mountain needs back-up in case other sources stop working or if demand exceeds supply on a hot summer day.
Continue reading Vermont’s looking at going… back to nuclear? Only this time, it’s not theirs.
They shall make a food desert, and call it Vermont: “Vermont residents might have to go hungry — or drive into New Hampshire, upstate New York, or even Boston, for food — because of their state’s new GMO (genetically modified organisms) labeling law that takes effect July 1, 2016.” The basic problem here is that Vermont’s new law will allegedly fine companies for non-labeled products that show up in Vermont stores, even if the manufacturer didn’t put them there*. Admittedly, that’s what the Grocery Manufacturers Association is claiming; also admittedly, Vermont’s response is effectively ‘label your products nationally.’ That food retailers might instead decide that it makes more sense to stop selling processed food in Vermont has apparently not yet occurred to that state’s officials. And yes, you can make that call when a target market is less than 700,000 people. And also, yes: you cannot force somebody to engage in commerce**.
Continue reading Vermont playing (organic, free-range) chicken with the grocery industry over GMOs.
That’s where the hippies who like guns live. Which means that, sure, Sen. Bernie Sanders voted for legislation that protects gun manufacturers against the kind of lawfare that hardcore antigun fanatics dream of, furtively and with the shades drawn. And, apparently, the aforementioned fanatics are infuriated about this.
Heh. If antigun progressives keep going nuts on this topic, either Sanders will have to tell them to self-pleasure themselves, or else he’ll fold like a cheap suit. Either way sounds like fun to watch! – Personally, I vote for Bernie Sanders giving the antigun types the metaphorical finger. Better for the country if he does, honestly: the current codependent relationship between the Democratic party and its progressive base is kind of unhealthy. Continue reading Um, Bernie Sanders is from VERMONT, Slate.
I find I don’t really care one way or the other how Bernie Sanders runs: “Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is under intense pressure to run for president as a Democrat and not as a “spoiler” independent who could undercut support for the eventual nominee, according to several progressives.” …because either way it all ends in recriminations and tears for the progressive Left. If Bernie Sanders runs as a Democrat, he will be destroyed in the primary election by the Democratic establishment; and if he runs as an independent, he will be destroyed in the general election by the Democratic establishment. The Democratic party’s path to victory is sufficiently narrow* that they cannot afford even a traditional Nader-level of ineffectual third-party shenanigans; Bernie Sanders is a luxury that the Left should not indulge in… and yet, they will. Continue reading Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vermont) not wild about the Democrats’ brand for his 2016 bid.
Well, it looks like single-payer fanatics in Vermont decided to take Governor Peter Shumlin’s (D) despicable apostasy from their religion lying down: “The Vermont State Police have identified the 29 protesters arrested on suspicion of unlawful trespass for ignoring orders to leave the Statehouse following a sit-in Thursday in Montpelier.” More details here, including an unexpectedly entertaining YouTube video from “Democracy Now!” It’s very cute that DN! thinks that they’re people, in the media sense of the term; but it’s remarkable how many talking heads that that program attracts who look like they’re always ready to cringe from a blow.
Moe Lane
PS: There’s a certain amount of nega-nostalgia involved here with the aforementioned YouTube video. Watching a couple of dozen people dutifully repeating (DUTIFULLY REPEATING) statements when there’s absolutely no practical need to (they’re inside and everybody can hear everybody else just fine) really hammers home just how ritualized the whole thing is with these people. There’s like, zero original thinking going on here at all.
No, seriously. Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont (Democrat, mind you) finally gave his state’s proposed single-payer health care system the axe because there was no way to pay for it. Well, OK, there was: “Tax hikes required to pay for the system would include a 11.5 percent payroll tax as well as an additional income tax ranging all the way up to 9.5 percent. ” But there was no way that that would fly among Vermont voters.
…which is what Megan McArdle and I both said last spring. It’s the perennial problem Obamacare (and state exchange) supporters face: if they were upfront about the costs, they’d never have gotten the various laws passed. But the problem with kicking the can down the road is that eventually you run out of road. There isn’t the money for single-payer, and there’s the only the interest in getting it when single-payer supporters don’t talk about the money. And, as you can see from the Daily Carter article: the second you do start talking about the money politicians start to back right up.
Last note. Peter Shumlin is not yet officially won his governor’s race: since there wasn’t a majority, the results are going to get tossed into the state legislature. I’m sure that Shumlin doesn’t think that trying to push ahead with double-digit tax hikes would have said legislature ready to give his opponent the election. And neither do I. But I also think that Shumlin doesn’t know that a sufficiently infuriated legislature wouldn’t do that, either. …And neither do I.
Via Battleswarm Blog.
Hee. Vermont’s gubernatorial election is going to the legislature:
Under the Vermont Constitution, candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer are required to win a minimum of 50 percent plus one to be elected directly. If not, the race is decided by the Legislature.
In the history of Vermont, 23 previous elections for governor have gone to the Legislature, which nearly always gives the election to the candidate who won the most votes. There have been three exceptions, the last one in 1853.
And Peter Shumlin didn’t get the votes, so there you go. This actually happened to Shumlin in 2010, too: so he’s probably assuming he’s a shoo-in. But if I was a troublemaker in Vermont, I’d be getting the GOP delegation to go to the Progressive delegation and ask if they can think of a Democrat not named Peter Shumlin that would be acceptable to them. Solely because you take your pranks where you can get them – besides, it might even work. Probably not, but either way you’d get people in the Vermont state legislature screaming at each other for a week, which is not an insignificant thing to pull off.
Moe Lane
You really don’t expect Elizabeth Warren to care about New Hampshire, can you? The Senator can barely muster up enough energy to care about Massachusetts. So it’s not really surprising to hear that the woman apparently can’t be bothered to remember which state Jeanne Shaheen pretends to be from: Continue reading New Hampshire, Vermont: look, all those states look alike to Elizabeth Warren.
