Monthly Archives: October 2025

More Evidence That Nicholas Deml Was a Failure

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It’s been a minute since I wrote about the disastrous tenure of Nicholas Deml as corrections commissioner. To recap, he was on the job for the better part of five years and during that time, there was an almost complete turnover in the top ranks of the Department of Corrections. Most crucially, just about anyone with relevant experience left the department and were replaced with people who had no discernible background in corrections or law enforcement.

And now I have a bunch of numbers that underscore Deml’s failure to bring the long-awaited culture change to DOC. They come from the state of Vermont’s 2025 Employee Engagement Survey, available online for the entire state government and for every individual agency or department.

The results show rampant disaffection within the ranks at DOC. The numbers for Corrections employees are, across the board, substantially worse than they are for state government as a whole. If Deml had any positive impact on the department, it sure as hell doesn’t show up in this survey.

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Greetings From Elysium. How’s the Weather Down There?

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Recently I had the opportunity to sit in on an update and short-term forecast of the economy and the markets. It was an exercise in what they call “wealth management” — stewardship on behalf of the well-to-do. I did so as an investor with retirement funds in the markets, who’s been feeling a fair bit queasy about the chances that Donald Trump’s doggedly anarchic policies might cause everything financial to drop straight into the toilet.

Well, I have some very good news wrapped in a bad-news burrito.

The good news, from this analyst’s perch: The economy is doing pretty well, actually. It has weathered Trump’s reign of error because of some very strong fundamentals. Also because deregulation and tax cuts are business-friendly. By every measure, the outlook is positive.

In the aggregate, that is.

But within the aggregate, there are distinct winners and losers. I bet you can guess who falls into which category.

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A Band-Aid on a Broken Arm

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Welp, Gov. Phil Scott has unveiled his 14-point “short-term action plan” (his words, underlining the lack of sustained commitment) to improve public safety in Burlington. And, unsurprisingly, it’s a combo platter of disappointing, punitive, and cheap. It’s more political than policy, aimed at demonizing Vermont’s biggest and most important city and avoiding his administration’s culpability for the problems that beset all of our communities.

Kudos to Seven Days’ Courtney Lamdin for spotlighting, near the beginning of her story, the most crucial shortcoming in Scott’s plan:

Conspicuously missing from the plan is an expansion of homeless shelter capacity in Burlington or elsewhere in Chittenden County, despite the dire need for it. The plan also ignores specific asks that Burlington city councilors made of Scott in a resolution they passed in August.

Yeah, ignoring dire needs is kind of Phil Scott’s jam. Remember in June, when I headlined a post about his veto of H.91 “Phil Scott Doesn’t Give a Fuck About the Homeless”? His Burlington “action” plan validates my point. He is, quite literally, the Levite averting his eyes as he walks by a wounded traveler. His plan is heavy on the punitive and light on the humanity. The goal is to remove the unfortunate from his view shed, not to actually help them. The best outcome for Scott’s plan is some short-term cosmetic improvement while the underlying economic and social causes of our problems continue to exact their toll.

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If Jim Ramsey Is Leaving a Legacy, It Didn’t Involve Fundraising Success

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When I wrote earlier this week about Jim Ramsey’s imminent departure from the Vermont Democratic Party, I didn’t think to check in on party finances. Not until someone suggested that I do so, and boy howdy, did it tell a story.

Ramsey was elected interim chair last February by the VDP state committee. He succeeded David Glidden, who barely managed to last two years in the job. Ramsey made a barnburner of a speech to the state committee and won in a walk over former state senator turned podcaster Andy Julow, thanks in part to the active backing of the party’s top three elected officials: Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Attorney General Charity Clark, and Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas. At the time, State Rep. Kathleen James called Ramsey “the perfect leader” with skills in “the nuts and bolts of fundraising.” James and Ramsey both hail from Manchester, so she may not be the most dispassionate of witnesses.

And if Ramsey brought fundraising skills to the post, there’s no hint in the party’s financials that he ever put them to good use.

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Sam Douglass Enters the Lucrative Field of Self-Pity Monetization

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Oh, you didn’t seriously think disgraced former (?*) state senator Sam Douglass would learn something from his mistakes? Nah, that’s not how today’s crop of neo-Nazis roll.

*Douglass announced Friday afternoon that he would resign on Monday. But VTDigger has reported** that as of 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, no resignation letter had been received. And as of 12:00 noon Wednesday, Douglass is still listed as a senator on the Legislature’s website.

** Digger also brings us the darkly humorous aspect of this sad affair: Douglass apparently remains chair of the Orleans County Republicans, which means he is in charge of the first steps in the process of filling his vacant (???*) seat in the Senate.

Indeed, Douglass has doubled down on the notion that he is the real victim here, a popular idea in far-right circles. He has taken to GiveSendGo, the Evangelical crowdfunding alternative to GoFundMe, to beg for money from the gullible. And maybe he’ll cash in; he’s counting on the old H.L. Mencken axiom, which is usually a safe bet. But it’s sad that he hasn’t learned a damn thing from the self-induced implosion of his political career.

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News You Should View: The Last of His Kind?

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Apologies for skipping a week. Between Nicholas Deml and Sam Douglass, there was a lot going on. But here we are with another collection of news content worth your attention. Starting with a bit of sad news.

Remember when every newspaper had local columnists? They occupied a space between opinion and reportage. They were familiar figures to readers, and had their fingers on the pulse of community life. As a news consumer in southern Michigan, I got to know and appreciate Detroit Free Press columnists like Hugh McDiarmid (politics), Neal Rubin (entertainment, also penned the Gil Thorp syndicated comic for many years), and Bob Talbert (fluff and nonsense with a purpose). Those days are long gone, as newspapers have cut and cut and cut until there’s practically nothing left.

One survivor of the good old days: Jim Kenyon of The Valley News. I’ve been reading his stuff since I moved to this region in 2000. And now, at the age of 66, he’s retiring. I haven’t seen this reported in his own paper yet, but The Dartmouth has published an exit interview with him. I’m sorry to see Kenyon go, especially since I’m certain that he will not be replaced. He’s a luxury item in a bare-bones industry.

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From This Day Forward, Let No One Say It’s Too Early to Talk 2026

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Well, the Vermont Democrats fired the first shot of the election season today.

Sadly, it wasn’t the unveiling of a top-tier challenger for Gov. Phil Scott. No, it was a candidacy for the seat being vacated by disgraced Republican Sam Douglass. A candidate whose presentation is straight out of a Third Way fever dream. So I guess this is how the Dems are going to try to recapture seats they lost in 2024: By pretending to be moderate Republicans.

Meet Gaston Bathalon, checker of all the boxes. He’s a native of the Northeast Kingdom, a veteran of 30 years in the military, “a fighter for the… Kingdom” who’s dedicated to restoring “dignity and integrity” to a seat besmirched by Douglass’ online hangouts with toxic Young Republicans.

As I read through his announcement email, I honestly couldn’t tell whether he was a Democrat or Republican until I got down to the very bottom, where it says “Paid for by the Vermont Democratic Party – http://www.vtdemocrats.org. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

So he’s a Democrat, I guess. Not that you can tell from his announcement or his minimalistic campaign website, either. It’s more than a bit sad when Democrats see their identity and message as something that has to be slipped past the voters, like putting a dog’s medication inside a ball of hamburger meat.

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Whiny Little Bitch-Ass Punk Resigns in Whiniest, Littlest, Most Bitch-Ass Punk Way Possible

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If there was any doubt about whether soon-to-be-ex-senator Sam Douglass was unfit to hold public office, he removed it with his self-indulgent, clueless resignation statement — newsdumped on Friday afternoon, no less, without ever speaking to a single reporter.

If anything, it was even worse than the non-apology “apology” he issued the day before.

It was longer, that’s for damn sure. It rambles on mawkishly for a page and a half, single spaced. VTDigger has embedded the whole thing in its story on Douglass’ departure, so you can go read it there if you want to. I don’t have the stomach for it.

The heart of the matter is his assertion that he is resigning “to keep my family safe.” So he thinks he’s the real victim, I guess?

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Musical Chairs

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Next month could bring leadership changes in both of Vermont’s major parties. On the Republican side, November’s election for party chair has produced a spirited contest. The incumbent faces a challenge from a prominent elected official and seems to be in some trouble with party brass.

More on that in a moment, but first, we’ve got breaking news from the Vermont Democratic Party. Jim Ramsey, who was chosen as interim chair last winter following the sudden departure of David Glidden, will not seek election to a full two-year term. When he succeeded Glidden in February, Ramsey delivered stirring remarks to the VDP state committee, castigating Gov. Phil Scott’s “harmful policies,” calling for the party to field “a competitive candidate” to run for governor in 2026, and concluding “Let’s go to work, and let’s win.”

Well, if any of that comes to pass, Ramsey won’t be around to see it. Here’s how he explained his decision in an email to this observer:

Over the course of the past few months, my work commitments outside of the VDP have been increasing, and much of it is occurring away from Vermont, particularly in Washington, DC.  This is expected to continue at least through 2026 and into 2027.  As a result, my wife and I will soon be moving there on a full-time basis, and my role as VDP Chair will end when my term expires next month.  

Not great news for the party, which has struggled for years to find good leaders and keep them in place. There’s been a lot of turnover in the unpaid position of party chair and the paid staff position of executive director. Now they’ll be breaking in a new chair with the 2026 campaign season just around the corner.

When Ramsey was chosen as interim chair, there was another hopeful in the running: former state senator turned podcaster Andy Julow. Would he be interested in another run? Magic 8-Ball says “Ask Again Later.”

Now, back to the Republicans.

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The Next Apology Will Be the First One

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One of my pet peeves of modern journalism is its willingness to slap the label “apology” on things that fall far short of actual apologies, which require an acknowledgement of personal wrongdoing and a real commitment to self-improvement.

It’s bad enough when public figures, usually politicians, get away with the “I apologize to anyone who was offended” routine, which shifts the onus onto those who were offended and implies that the offender didn’t really do anything wrong. What’s worse is when VTDigger gives state Sen. Sam Douglass credit for an “apology” in his first public statement after the explosive POLITICO report that threatens to sink his political career.

It was not an apology, not at all. Douglass did use the words “I apologize,” but not in reference to anything he said or did. Instead, he vaguely waved around in the passive tense about stuff that happened while he might have been in the vicinity but wasn’t paying attention.

And Digger’s headline called it an “apology.” Whoever wrote that headline should read a frickin’ dictionary.

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