Monthly Archives: October 2025

For the Second Time in Two Days, Our In-State Media Have Been Scooped on a Vermont Story by a National Media Outlet

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Yesterday, it was Politico stirring up a hornets’ nest in Vermont with its story about a trove of Young Republican Telegram messages that amounted to a dick-swinging contest over who could be the most offensive — including Vermont Sen. (for now) Sam Douglass. (Speaking of which, he is so far resisting universal calls for his resignation with what I can only describe as a “No one was driving, officer, we were all in the back seat singing” defense. Goddamn weasel.)

And today comes Grist.com with a story about wasteful spending by the state of Vermont in subcontracting part of its flood-response efforts. A story that might have been uncovered by one or more of our respected media operations, but oh well.

The story, entitled “How Vermont Lost Track of Millions in FEMA Flood Recovery Funds,” recounts how the state was apparently fleeced by its subcontractor. The consequences: federal aid didn’t go as far as it could have, and the feds might demand clawbacks from the state because of the apparent waste.

At a time when we don’t need to be giving the Trump administration any excuses to cut federal funding to a deep blue state.

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I Tried to Tell You About Sam Douglass (and There’s a Lot More Like Him)

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Gov. Phil Scott couldn’t act fast enough to distance himself from newly-disgraced state Sen. Samuel Douglass. Within hours of a Politico report that identified Douglass as an active participant in a racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic Young Republican group chat that reads like a bunch of adolescent boys trying to out-gross each other, Scott had called for Douglass’ resignation — along with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders.

That’s nice, but Douglass’ politics have been obvious for years. His extreme views were out there for anyone to find, long before our “moderate” governor lent his support to Douglass’ 2024 campaign, long before Scott’s buddies in the Burlington-area business community dumped tens of thousands of dollars into Douglass’ campaign treasury.

Scott must have known what kind of person he was endorsing. Unless he pulled a Sergeant Schultz because he needed Douglass-style Republicans to win elections and eat into Democratic majorities.

I know this because, as far back as 2022, I wrote about Douglass’ extreme views. My post wasn’t based on any deep investigative dives; it was the product of simple searches of social media and YouTube. It was all out there for anyone to find. Too bad no one in political authority or our news media bothered to look. Until Politico gift-wrapped the story and dumped it in our collective laps. Now, suddenly, everyone is paying attention.

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Was Nicholas Deml the Worst-Ever Hire by the Scott Administration?

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I put the title in the form of a question, but based on what I’ve learned in recent days, there really isn’t much doubt about it: Nicholas Deml’s tenure as corrections commissioner was a complete disaster, and he leaves the department in a perilously weakened position going forward.

To recap, Deml was an outlier from the very beginning. The Scott administration normally promotes from within, and the Department of Corrections usually places a high value on seniority. Deml’s three predecessors*, Nicholas Michael Touchette, Lisa Menard, and Andrew Pallito, had each served many years in DOC. (Menard and Touchette began their corrections careers as prison guards and worked their respective ways to the top of the chain.)

*Not counting James Baker, who served as interim commish between Touchette and Deml. Baker didn’t have corrections experience, but he did bring a lengthy background in law enforcement leadership.

And then Deml was hired in November 2021 from a post with the Central Intelligence Agency. There was hope that as an outsider, he would instill a long-overdue culture change to the department. Despite his lack of corrections background, he must have had some great ideas, right?

Well, his four-and-a-half year tenure was marked by the sadly customary kinds of missteps and scandals. And then he quit in July, in a Friday afternoon newsdump, with less than three weeks’ notice and without any sort of immediate job prospects aside from a vague nod toward launching “an advisory practice to continue the work I care about most.” (More on that later.)

At the time, I wrote about the strangeness of his departure — and the complete lack of curiosity about it from our Pillars of the Fourth Estate. Knowing what I know now, I see nothing strange at all about his sudden bugout, and I’m even more perplexed at our media’s quick dismissal of the story. There is evidence aplenty that Deml’s tenure was disastrous. You don’t have to dig very far to uncover it, and you don’t have to work very hard to find former department officials willing to spill the beans.

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News You Should View, That’s What College Papers Are For Edition

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Over the summer, I kinda got out of the habit of checking in with the three campus newspapers in our catchment because they don’t regularly publish anything when the students are away. But hey, it’s fall, and one college paper has stepped up to the plate to give full coverage to a big story that’s landed on its doorstep. Also in this space: Another potential deportation that makes no sense, another town facing a water shortage, a telling indicator of the soft market for office space, and one story that deserve dishonorable mention. If you’re here for the snark, skip down near the end.

Trump administration trying to bribe Dartmouth. Our authoritarian-minded chief executive has taken a new tack in his war on academia. He’s offering financial incentives to select institutions that adopt his ideological agenda. Which would be the death knell of academic freedom, but hey, if you want an omelet you gotta break some eggheads.

One of the nine bribery targets is Dartmouth College, which has already flown its Trump-friendly colors in a few unsettling ways. And there’s The Dartmouth, its student newspaper, with broad coverage of how the Ivy League’s party school might respond.

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Are You Unfulfilled Because Your Career Isn’t Evil Enough?

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Don’t you know the devil wears a suit and tie

I saw him driving down the 61 in early July

White as a cotton field and sharp as a knife

I heard him howling as he passed me by

Rarely do I begin one of these posts with a song lyric, but this one speaks to me right now It’s a song by Colter Wall, a retelling of an oft-told yarn about bluesman Robert Johnson meeting the devil and learning his secrets… at a price.

In the case now before us, the devil isn’t howling down a country road in a Cadillac. He’s a bureaucrat with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, trying to recruit willing desk workers for the unconstitutional, illegal, and yes, evil work of ferreting out the undocumented for prosecution and deportation. VTDigger:

ICE plans to hire at least a dozen contracted workers for the effort at its National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which is located in an unassuming business park in Williston. … [The contractors would] use sites such as Facebook, Instagram and X… to generate leads about “individuals who pose a danger to national security, risk public safety or otherwise meet ICE enforcement priorities.”

Yeah, because of course people who pose a clear and present danger to national security are out there openly sharing their nefarious plans on social media platforms.

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News You Should View, Belated Edition

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This edition of NYSV features content posted last week by Vermont media outlets. I did most of the groundwork last weekend, and then other stuff intervened — a pair of more timely items and a bit of semi-elective surgery, to be specific. So here it is, finally. And once again, these pieces were posted in the last full week of September. Mostly.

Hey look, another local newspaper! Somehow I had never heard of The North Star Monthly, published in Danville, Vermont. That is, until it won a big fat award from the New England Newspaper Association. The Monthly took home NENPA’s “Newspaper of the Year” award in the Specialty Publications category. I will definitely add it to my list of Vermont media sources.

Other Vermont publications receiving hardware included The Vermont Standard of Woodstock, which will feature a bit later in this post, and Usual Suspects VTDigger and Seven Days. Vermont dailies were shut out of the awards for Daily Newspaper which, considering the quality of most of ’em, isn’t much of a surprise. The closest dailies to get NENPA recognition were The Keene Daily Sentinel (Keene, NH) and The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA).

The Old Guy’s Still Got It. If Mike Donoghue did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The former Burlington Free Press fixture is now a freelancer who focuses mainly on cops and courts, and has a knack for swooping in and grabbing scoops from under the noses of established outlets. This time he scored a pair of stories about Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, commissioned and published by The Vermont Standard.

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Richie Rich Returns, With a Delightful New Bestie

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Hey, remember this guy? Brock Pierce, former child actor (career highlight: he’s the 27th listed actor in the credits for The Mighty Ducks) turned failed tech entrepreneur turned crypto billionaire turned wannabe political mastermind? The guy with a long track record of associating with [alleged] pedophiles (hey, Epstein!) and living in the gray areas of the law?

The guy who tried to run for Pat Leahy’s U.S. Senate seat in 2022 despite his apparent residence in Puerto Rico? (And whose campaign — which never actually materialized — was managed by none other than Ben Kinsley, centrist political actor best known for his tenure at the ineffectual pseudo-centrist policy shop Campaign for Vermont?) At the time, I dubbed Pierce “Richie Rich” in homage to Rich Tarrant, the original rich guy who wanted to buy one of Vermont’s Senate seats — and because the now middle-aged Pierce looks exactly like a wealthy child all growed up.

Well, he’s back, and standing resolutely at the side of… disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

You just can’t make this shit up.

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News You Should View, Emergency Dispatch

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Hats off to The Hardwick Gazette, not because of my association with it, but because they pulled off the scoop of the goddamn week. In the process, the doughty weekly showcased the importance of strong, active local news operations, especially as our daily papers have focused on their core communities and our statewide outlets just can’t cover all the gaps.

Last Friday, federal agents conducted “a coordinated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action that involved five vehicles” in the town of Hardwick, population less than 3,000, not exactly an epicenter of crime, not the place where Trump’s immigration crackdown could actually do anything to make our country safer. As The Gazette put the pieces together, what emerged was the apparent detention of nine individuals who all “worked for the same construction company,” which could not be immediately identified.

Rumors about this action reverberated around social media over the weekend. The Gazette’s editor, publisher, chief cook and bottle washer Paul Fixx put the pieces together in time for this week’s edition. And as far as I can tell, no other media outlet has reported on this coordinated action targeting people who may or may not have their papers in order, but who apparently held jobs in an industry desperately short of personnel.

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