Can somebody do a wellness check on Bill Schubart, prominent denizen of Vermont’s shallow, brackish pool of “public intellectuals”? Because he just published an essay that brings to mind the toxic excesses of early 20th Century liberalism — you know, the fine folks who enthusiastically took up the eugenics movement.
No, he didn’t call for sterilization of the unfit. But he did advocate a return to the Good Old Days when there were asylums to warehouse the many, many types of people deemed “unfit” for proper society.
He did his level best to craft a frame of compassion around this appalling idea, but it didn’t work. When you start talking about removing certain people from society, you are headed down a dangerous road.
I went to Shaw’s earlier this week, and was met by this massive display of Halloween candy occupying a giant bloc of high-traffic real estate almost three months before the holiday. Thought it was funny, took a pic and posted it on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter.
It’s awfully early to be laying in the holiday treats. But it’s rapidly getting late for those trying to restore flood-damaged homes. Cold weather is just around the corner, and with it will come “the second wave of the disaster,” as homeowners and renters who can stay where they are for now could be displaced when the leaves turn and thermometers drop toward the freezing mark.
“The second wave” is how Barre attorney John Valsangiacomo, chair of the board of Capstone Community Action, expressed his concern over what’s coming in a matter of weeks. His words ring true, and there may be no way to avoid another massive displacement on top of what we’ve already seen.
Valsangiacomo was a guest on the August 9 edition of “Vermont Viewpoint,” broadcast on WDEV Radio and now available as a podcast. The show came to you live from Nelson’s Ace Hardware in downtown Barre, where host Kevin Ellis skillfully brought us the experiences and views of civic leaders and Main Street merchants.
There is much to say about the show, as well as Ellis’ equally insightful August 2 broadcast from downtown Montpelier. For now, let’s stick with Valsangiacomo’s words of warning.
People occasionally tell me that I “like” a political figure I’ve praised, or “don’t like” one I’ve criticized. It’s a way of consigning my views to little boxes of emotion. It’s not about policy or character, it’s about “liking.” Or not. I find it subtly demeaning.
Former gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel is one of those I supposedly “like,” and Gov. Phil Scott is on my perceived “don’t like” list. Neither is true, really. With Siegel, it’s not about liking or not liking, it’s about respect. She acts on her principles. She’s the only political figure who’s put herself on the line for our most vulnerable. The much more “likable” Phil Scott has not, not at all, not ever.
He did help out a neighbor with his backhoe, an action posted on Twitter by a former member of his cabinet. The tweet triggered a widespread fluttering of hearts in #vtpoli circles. What a great guy! What an authentic Vermonter, helping out a neighbor in time of need!
Yes, well, I’ve always thought Phil Scott would make a fine neighbor. I’m sure he’s always ready to help out, especially if it gives him a reason to haul out one of his big-boy toys. But there are no circumstances that would find him slogging through floodwaters, rescuing unhoused Vermonters from a riverside encampment as Siegel has done.
Hearty congratulations to the good people of Hyde Park, who have “amicably resolved” a dispute over the siting of a homeless shelter. “Amicably” is the word chosen by VTDigger’s social media poster to describe a deal that will severely restrict the civil rights of shelter residents, so the amicability does not extend to the unhoused.
The story as a whole, originally posted by the News & Citizen of Lamoille County, betrays a complete blind spot where the unhoused are concerned. Nowhere are their thoughts or feelings expressed, nowhere are they seen as anything other than pawns in a game. And I must confess a similar blind spot; the import of the story didn’t hit me until housing activist Josh Lisenby pointed it out on Twitter, which I refuse to call X. In fact, I borrowed the headline of this post from one of Lisenby’s tweets.
The tale of this amicable resolution is a tawdry one all round. It begins with Lamoille Community House proposing to open a shelter at what is now the Forest Hill Residential Care Home. That much is fine; cue the tawdriness, in the unshocking form of a California tech entrepreneur who looks, well, exactly how you’d expect he looks.
Voters are reportedly flocking to the polls in Ohio today, as part of a drive to enshrine reproductive rights in its constitution. A similar effort could not possibly have happened in Vermont thanks to our paternalistic, top-down system of government.
In case you haven’t heard the story, abortion rights advocates in Ohio mounted a successful petition drive to put a reproductive rights amendment on the state ballot in November. Republicans in control of state government, realizing the amendment was polling very strongly, ginned up their own ballot question to try to derail the November vote. “Issue 1” would raise the bar for constitutional referenda from 50% to 60%. (Last November, Michigan voters approved a reproductive rights amendment with 57% support.) Republicans then scheduled the Issue 1 vote for today in hopes of winning a low-turnout election. But early turnout has been very strong, and it looks like the Republican chicanery won’t work.
Point is, Ohio is on track to hand a stinging defeat to the anti-abortion movement thanks to a governmental process that doesn’t exist in Vermont because our founders decided to protect We, the People from ourselves. They did not create a mechanism for the public to gain access to the ballot.
Regarding reproductive rights, things have worked out just fine in Vermont because the Legislature was like-minded. But what if it wasn’t?
For all their fetishizing of the Constitution, conservatives sure have a funny notion of what the First Amendment means. Take Deb Billado. [Cue Henny Youngman voice] Please, take her!
Billado, the ex-chair of the Vermont Republican Party, is now the CEO of the Vermont Institute for Human Flourishing, a conservative religion-oriented nonprofit that promises to “work to restore the traditional family to its central, pivotal, and honored place in civil society.” The VIHF gets the bulk of its funding from none other than Lenore Broughton, devoted backer of ultraconservative lost causes like the defunct True North Reports and, well, the VTGOP itself.
This fall, the Institute plans to hold its second annual “Restoring Our Faith” summit, which was born out of the notion that the Covid pandemic enabled the secular takeover of society. This year’s Summit will feature discussions on these troubling cultural trends and the critical role of faith, marriage, and the importance of protecting children in a flourishing society. featuring a motley crew of D-list conservative ranters. The announced lineup is a decided step down from last year, when the keynote speaker was the somewhat unobscure Dennis Prager, panjandrum of Prager University, last seen getting approval from the Florida Board of Education for its curriculum materials that, among other things, teaches that slavery wasn’t such a bad thing because slaves learned potentially useful skills and never mind the whipping, sexual assaults, forced separation of families, and, well, that whole being enslaved thing.
More on this year’s “featured” speakers later. The issue before us now is that Billado is in a frenzy because Front Porch Forum apparently rejected an inquiry about advertising the summit to FPF subscribers throughout Vermont.
According to The Williston Observer, FPF rejected the inquiry based on its rigorously enforced Terms of Service, which are designed to keep the forums civil and community-focused. And this, sez Billado, is A VIOLATION OF HER CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, waah waah waah.
Let’s start with this: VTDigger has been doing yeoman’s work since the skies parted and the rains descended on July 10. They’ve ramped up their coverage to meet the need for information and insight, and that’s been absolutely critical in this age of ever-diminishing traditional media. And as a nonprofit organization, Digger has to meet its costs somehow or other.
So why does its joint fundraising campaign with the Vermont Community Foundation make me a little bit queasy inside?
Because, I think, it either crosses an ethical line or comes very close to it.
The details: Digger and VCF are raising money by selling a line of “Better Together” merch. The proceeds, minus the cost of the goods, is split 50/50 between the two entities. VCF devotes its half to flood relief, while Digger covers the cost of flood reportage with its share. The graphic design is, to my uneducated eye, kind of lame — of a piece with Digger’s recent website reboot. But that’s beside the point, and I’m sure the simple, direct design has its adherents. I don’t do TikTok either.
As a longtime denizen of public radio, I’ve spent more than my share of time dancing around this particular line between journalism and fundraising. During pledge drives, I’d be delivering the news one minute and begging for donations the next. Still, this Digger/VCF arrangement feels different, I think because it’s happening in the middle of a dire emergency — and looks like it’s capitalizing on the crisis. I’ve been part of public radio pledge drives, which take huge amounts of planning and organization, that were halted or postponed because of breaking news.
So I asked Digger CEO Sky Barsch about it, and she offered a strong rationale for the joint campaign. I wasn’t completely mollified, but I see her argument.
We have apparently seen the last of the invisible-except-on-Twitter “Draft Phil Scott” effort, which put forth a plausibly earnest belief in the potential national appeal of our indisputably popular Republican governor. I never took it seriously because, well, I see no path forward for Scott or any candidate who’s not a creature of the far right.
The arguments in favor of Scott: He’s the most popular governor in the country (true); he’s a real man of the people (that’s his image, certainly); he is particularly popular in the Connecticut River valley (okay); that popularity would give him a shot at success in the historically pivotal New Hampshire primary (nah); and a strong showing in the Granite State could make him the candidate of choice for those seeking an alternative to arch-criminal Donald Trump.
Well, if I hadn’t jumped off the bandwagon before then, that last imaginative leap would definitely lose me. Because the Republican Party of DPS’ imagination hasn’t existed since a lifetime ago. And I’m talking the lifetime of senior-discount-takin’ Yours Truly, not any of you young whippersnappers.
Is there such a thing as Chronic Wasting Disease among political parties? Because if there is, an epidemic is brewing among state Republican parties. Suddenly, in several key states, GOP coffers are alarmingly empty in a way that calls to mind the Vermont GOP’s underperformance over the last several years.
Last week, the conservative National Review published a piece called “The Quiet Collapse of Four Key State Republican Parties” that chronicled the woes of the GOP in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota — states “that would be tantalizing targets in a good year.” In addition, the Georgia GOP “is spending a small fortune on the legal fees of those ‘alternate’ Republican electors from the 2020 presidential election.”
The problem, according to the National Review’s Jim Geraghty, is “the replacement of competent, boring, regular state-party officials with quite exciting, blustering nutjobs” more concerned with culture war and ideological purity than the tedious work of party-building.
Sample nutjob: in my home state of Michigan, formerly the home of bland conservatives like Fred Upton and Gerald Ford, the state GOP is now helmed by election conspiratorialist Kristina Karamo, who not only believes that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, but so was the 2022 election in which she lost her bid to become secretary of state by a mere 14 percentage points.
The result of such leadership: Parties in battleground states that are racked by infighting and barely have two nickels to rub together.
Even in the best of times, the court system is stacked against renters. When landlord/tenant disputes arise, property owners can afford lawyers while renters cannot. The flood will seriously exacerbate this imbalance. As I predicted back on July 14 and VTDigger reported on, ahem, July 31, the flood “disproportionately hit Vermont’s affordable housing stock.”
All those renters occupying flood-ravaged housing will find legal resources very difficult to come by. The scope of this problem has yet to unfurl, and it’s going to be bad for months to come. At minimum. A lot of tenants are going to get screwed.
“There are very few private attorneys who will represent tenants, who are generally low income and unable to pay,” said Sam Abel-Palmer, Executive Director of Legal Services Vermont, a nonprofit focused on civil litigation. His organization and Vermont Legal Aid try to make up for the failure of the free market, but they can offer perhaps 10 full-time attorneys to help all the renters in Vermont. Besides that, there are a few private lawyers who take some cases on a pro bono basis and the state Bar Association pays reduced fees to some members who represent renters.
That’s about all. It falls short of meeting the need, even in the absence of a major disaster. “We sometimes can take cases, sometimes we can offer advice,” said Abel-Palmer.
The Vermont Political Observer. 