Monthly Archives: February 2026

We Have All Been Here Before

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This unprepossessing gentleman is I.F. Stone, crusading journalist and truth-teller. I’ve been reading The Haunted Fifties, a collection of his writings that includes a four-page piece he wrote in December 1953 — more than seven decades ago — that stopped me in my tracks. It could literally have been written yesterday. Which tells me some very disturbing things about my own country’s history and the throughlines that lead directly to Trump’s racist authoritarianism.

The piece is called “Bleak Landscape of the Resistance,” and recounts a meeting in Chicago organized by the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, which definitely sounds like a group that could have been formed last week in Minneapolis. (The article can be downloaded from the I.F. Stone’s Weekly Archive, or you could buy a copy of The Haunted Fifties through an online used bookseller.)

I don’t think we realize how bad things were in the 1950s. It went far beyond Joe McCarthy. The executive branch — yes, under the “moderate” stewardship of President Eisenhower — was just as committed as McCarthy to rooting out “subversive” elements, which meant any one who had ever displayed the slightest shade of pinko.

Reading Stone’s piece made me realize that McCarthy is the convenient fall guy for a much broader and more intense anti-immigrant regime that was just as destructive as anything Trump has managed to do. To label this period “The McCarthy Era” is to absolve many others of their complicity in a campaign of oppression that led to the deportations of many — including American citizens who happened to be born elsewhere.

Calling it “The McCarthy Era” also isolates this period as an outlier in our history when the truth is quite the opposite: Trump may be cruder than Ike or John Foster Dulles or J. Edgar Hoover or A. Mitchell Palmer, but his official actions are very much in line with similar episodes that litter the dark side of American history.

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Thankfully, These People Are Nowhere Near the Levers of Power (In Vermont)

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Regular VPO readers are well aware of my feelings about Vermont exceptionalism: Too often, it’s an unmerited sense of self-regard and an unwarranted obstacle to progress.

But there are times when Vermont really is exceptional in a good way. Like Tuesday morning, when a blessedly small cohort of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers assembled in the Statehouse for “Children’s Health Day,” an event aimed at spurring legislative action to, um, preserve “health care freedom” which means fighting vaccine and mask mandates. Thanks to Trump, people like them are now in charge of America’s public health programs. But in Vermont, they’re a tiny, ineffectual band of whiners.

Pictured above: guest of “honor” Mary Holland, head of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaxxer organization founded by, you guessed it, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The local organizers included Amy Hornblas*, notorious anti-masker who is STILL sounding the alarm over mask mandates that expired more than five years ago, and Alison Despathy, purveyor of Anthony Fauci fanfic conspiracy theories.

*Hornblas, a perpetually smiling grandmotherly type, approached me** before the press conference and asked if I’d ever written about her. She introduced herself only as “Amy,” so I didn’t immediately put two and two together. Now I can say, yes indeedy, I have written about her. And I suspect she knew that.

** She was one of three women*** to approach me at the event. One woman offered me a Children’s Health Day sticker. I replied “I’m media, so no.” Then she said “It’s just to show you’re for the children.” Sure.

*** The third poked my elbow during the event and asked who I was writing for. “Myself,” I said.

The fact that I was wearing an N-95 mask and holding a notepad probably didn’t endear me to anyone else in attendance.

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Them Bennington Boys Are At It Again

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Well, the confirmation vote on Michael Drescher came out as I expected — with barely enough support from Democrats to drag his nomination across the finish line. Congrats, Vermont! One of Trump’s willing instruments now has a lifetime appointment on your state Supreme Court.

The vote was 15-15, with two Democrats joining all 13 Republicans in support and Lt. Gov. John Rodgers breaking the tie in Drescher’s favor. It could have been different if David Zuckerman still wielded the gavel, but you know what they say about spilled milk.

It also would have been different if Bennington County didn’t have such a rich tradition of electing centrist Democrats with renegade tendencies. Because the two votes that enabled Drescher’s elevation came from Bennington’s two senators, Seth Bongartz and Rob Plunkett. Ahh, reminds me of the bad old days when the scent of Campho-Phenique hung heavy over the Senate’s chambers and the county was represented by Bob Hartwell and Dick Sears.

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If Phil Scott Gives a Damn About Affordability, His Health Care “Plan” Doesn’t Show It

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Gov. Phil Scott has chosen to address Vermont’s health care affordability crisis in seemingly the only way he knows how: By proposing a modest deregulation of the marketplace.

The situation as we know it: Health insurance costs are skyrocketing and have been for years. Like many other challenges we face, it’s gotten worse during Scott’s time in office. It’s hitting everybody in the pocketbook. It’s driving the increase in property taxes and putting the squeeze on government operations. Our hospital system is close to collapse. Well, except for the University of Vermont Medical Center, which has become the designated whipping boy for rising costs.

And now we’re facing a dramatic rise in uninsured Vermonters thanks to the Republican Congress’ termination of federal subsidies. Per VTDigger’s Olivia Gieger, more than 2,500 Vermonters have already dropped their insurance plans — a decline of nearly eight percent. In the first two weeks of no federal subsidies!

And a Department of Vermont Health Access official has said that even more people will decide to go bareback as they face the harsh reality of through-the-roof premiums.

This is terrible news for our struggling hospitals, which will almost certainly have to absorb higher costs for charity care as uninsured Vermonters avoid seeing the doctor until they resort to the most expensive kind of care there is — emergency room visits.

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