For those just joining us, The Veepies are my occasional awards for stupidity in the public sphere. We’re still setting a brisk pace in that regard. So, here we go…
The We Gave You a Crappy Half-Apology Because We Had To, But We Really Didn’t Mean It Award goes to the Bennington Selectboard. Last month, the town reached a settlement with former state representative Kiah Morris over the police department’s actions, or inactions, regarding threats against Morris. This came after the state Human Rights Commission issued a preliminary finding that the Bennington PD had discriminated against Morris and her husband James Lawton. As part of the deal, Bennington had to issue a formal apology. And it was kind of half-assed, blame-the-victim stuff: “It is clear that Kiah, James and their family felt unsafe and unprotected by the town of Bennington.”
See, it’s not that the town did anything wrong; it’s just that Morris and her family felt unsafe. Put the onus on the victim. But wait, there’s more!
Whatever little value there was in that “apology” was completely undercut by the town’s attorney Michael Leddy, who insisted that there are “no reasonable grounds to believe” that the town was guilty of discrimination, and by Selectboard chair Jeanne Jenkins, who told VTDigger last week doesn’t believe the police department discriminated against Morris.
All they will acknowledge is that Morris “felt unsafe.” Well, Morris and her family have since relocated to Chittenden County, so problem solved, I guess?
After the jump: Empty climate rhetoric, Medicaid money for school cops, and propping up a dying industry.
Next, the Do As We Say, Not As We Do Award goes to three Scott administration officials for a rousing essay posted last week on VTDigger about how we face a “moral imperative” to confront climate change. The three were Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore, Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn, and Public Service Commissioner June Tierney, and the essay was all about how we must act quickly and decisively to confront the menace of climate change. They called it a “moral imperative,” even.
This, from the administration that’s tried to slow-play climate action — and from the governor who vetoed the Global Warming Solutions Act.
Well, Scott has a climate action plan now, but it’s only because he can pay for it with federal Covid relief money. He has consistently opposed any climate measure that would cost Vermonters a single dime. You’d think that a “moral imperative” would be worthy of some investment.
Extra Bonus Shamelessness: The essay touts the GWSA and the Climate Action Council it created. No mention of Scott’s veto, or of his contention that the Act was somehow unconstitutional. All hunky-dory now.
On to the We Have a Very Broad Definition of Health Care Award goes to the Vermont Agency of Education. According to the Vermont ACLU, the Agency has allowed two public school districts to use federal Medicaid money to pay for police officers in their schools.
The ACLU noted that the decision “runs counter to Medicaid’s purpose of providing medical assistance, rehabilitation, and other services to families, including students with disabilities.” Well, yeah.
What makes this doubly ridiculous is that there’s no evidence that cops in schools actually do any good. It’s law enforcement mission creep, just like the discredited DARE program that had police officers give Nancy Reagan-style “just say no” speeches in the schools.
Finally, the We’re Betting Big on Buggy Whips Award goes to the state government for spending nearly $300 million to prop up Vermont’s declining dairy industry. That’s according to state Auditor Doug Hoffer, who combed through state budgets to identify all the ways we spent money to support dairy farms.
Look, I know, cows are picturesque and dairy farms are sooooo… Vermonty. But that money is a band aid on a brain tumor. The economics are all wrong and getting worse. That’s why the number of dairy farms in Vermont has shrunk from over 4,000 in 1969 to fewer than 650 today, despite generous state support.
Stephen Collier, counsel to the Agriculture Agency, argued that the industry still generates over $2 billion a year in activity, but then essentially admitted that it’s also a matter of image. It’s a prop, “a huge part of Vermont’s identity as a state, especially in rural areas.”
Look I get it. Cows. But for a long stretch of Vermont’s early history, we were all about sheep. There were more than a million of ’em in Vermont. It was what we did. (Well, that and clearcut our forests.) But the sheep boom went bust, and Vermont’s identity didn’t shrivel up and blow away. It changed, it adapted. It can do so again.
I know it’ll never happen because Vermont doesn’t do change, but it’s time to take a serious look at the dairy industry’s place in our state. It’s not an unalloyed good; it’s a major contributor to our water quality problems. “Agricultural activities are a major nonpoint source of phosphorus in the Basin and may also contribute significant quantities of sediment and toxic substances, such as pesticides,” according to the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
That’s what we’re paying for?
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Read between the lines John. I strongly suspect that the half-assed “apology” that Kiah Morris received was part of a negotiated settlement which required some type of apology but still allows Kiah to bring suit against the city on other fronts. Why else would their attorney be so adamant about claiming that the town has done nothing wrong? Me thinks that the matter is still far from over.
What exactly is your position John on the climate issue other than climate change is real?
Vermont, as well as the rest of the country, is simply not serious about climate change. Especially the non-renewable RE cult and their unplug/replug fantasy which is really just a Master Race fantasy of affluent middle class white people – largely male – who want the rest of us to pay through the nose to protect their high-energy, high consumption lifestyles, high wealth while pretending to do something about the destruction of the biosphere. Not one critical word about the system that creates these problems, just more RE industry spin from carpetbagging scum who want to make money off the misery of future generations. Public discourse in Vermont is vacuous and banal when come to CC and its journalist’s are largely to blame. What counts for ‘public discourse’ largely reflects the interests of the class most culpable (and the ones signing the checks for the bourgeois press) which means that whatever actions are taken will not address the underlying causes but only symptoms. You can still destroy the planet manufacturing billions of solar panels and electric cars and heat pumps.
The latest edition of Engineering and Mining Journal features a remarkable admission on part of the editor of the industry’s most prestigious publication – that the ‘energy transition’ (electrification of transport, replacing ICE with EVs, heat pumps, etc) will require an incomprehensible level of destruction of the natural world to feed this fantasy. Quite surprisingly he advises watching the recent documentary Bright Green Lies and implies that the doubts raised in the film are serious and legitimate because ‘people are starting to run the numbers…”. For an industry that would be poised to profit tremendously from such a scheme, its heartening to see a person close to environmental front raise a red flag and suggest we all start talking about the larger issues and not for the strawman of ’emissions’.
Lots of legitimate evidence is piling up that the GND/RE fantasies are just that but the reality is the affluent do not care what they sentence the rest of us to. They will remain safe, smug and self-satisfied with their Teslas, their solar arrays and powerwalls, their passivehauses ( an extensive study in the EU revealed that those with the most insulated and ee houses had 3x the carbon foot print that those in had the least ee homes – stands to reason as all the evidence is the upper 10% of society produces the most emissions both macro and micro). Fortunately their effort at trying to shut down criticism and doubt is failing.
Scott was correct in protecting 90% of Vermonters from the 10%.
https://vtdigger.org/2020/09/11/jeff-dardozzi-carbon-dioxide-the-effluent-of-wealth/
So… we shouldn’t develop the least destructive energy sources available? What’s the option? Release a few plagues?