Daily Archives: April 17, 2016

Interview with the Mormon

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Hey, remember David Hall? The Mormon millionaire who’s been buying property in the Tunbridge/Royalton area, with an eye toward building a planned community based on ideas from Mormon church founder Joseph Smith?

Yeah, that guy.

All it takes is one massive fraud scandal to wipe everything else off the news agenda, doesn’t it?

Well, I have some unfinished business with said Mormon, David Hall by name. On Thursday, April 7, I was guest host on “Open Mike,” WDEV Radio’s local talk show. In the first hour, I interviewed Mr. Hall about his plans. We had a lively and thoughtful discussion that shed substantial light on his plan. (The interview is archived here.)

You may recall that I wrote about his plan shortly after it became public knowledge — a nice little ready-fire-aim masterpiece entitled “The Mormons are Coming! The Mormons are Coming!”

In light of our interview, I feel compelled to give a fuller account of his plan and my views. So here we go.

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You’re unbelievable

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Astounding Coincidences in Vermont Politics, EB-5 Scandal Edition…

a. Five days before the Bill Stenger/EB-5 scandal broke wide open, the Shumlin administration requests the deletion of archived emails from five former staffers in Shumlin’s office. One of the five is Alex MacLean, who left state government to take a job with Stenger’s massive development project.

b. On the day before the scandal broke, Senator Pat Leahy — until then a staunch supporter of EB-5 and Stenger — adopted a much more skeptical tone toward EB-5, saying that the program needed a major overhaul if it’s going to stay in business. Leahy insists he knew nothing about the imminent collapse of Stenger’s (alleged) pyramid scheme.

You know, call me a cynic, but I don’t believe any of it.

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