Author Archives: John S. Walters

Unknown's avatar

About John S. Walters

Writer, editor, sometime radio personality, author of "Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives."

You Know Things Are Bad When the Sheriffs Are Ratting Themselves Out

1 Reply

A little over a year ago, in the midst of multiple scandals surrounding Vermont sheriffs, I asked if we might be better off getting rid of the office entirely. Sheriffs are chosen in extremely low-visibility campaigns; they routinely win re-election whether they’re capable or not; and their finances are tailor-made for exploitation. The office is an appendix from a much earlier stage in our history, and it’s prone to severe infection.

Now it’s gotten bad enough that the sheriffs themselves are calling for change. The Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, usually a staunch defender of the profession, wants to require that sheriffs prove their professionalism by holding the state’s top law enforcement certification. And the Vermont Sheriffs’ Association is calling for the resignation of (Only in Journalism Word alert) embattled Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore.

They’re probably a bit late on both counts. The State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs’ stance came in a report mandated by the Legislature, which is clearly honed in on the issue and is likely to see this suggestion as a baseline, not a topline. As for Grismore, well, shortly after the VSA call, he pretty much poured gasoline on his head and set himself on fire in open testimony before a legislative panel considering his impeachment.

So yeah, things are bad in sheriffland and the guys with badges are struggling to contain the damage.

Continue reading →

Well Hey, Vermont’s Unemployment System Is in the Shitter Again

1 Reply

Behold, tidings of great joy. Just in time for the holidays, the Scott administration is forcing jobless Vermonters to jump through hoops and navigate needless obstacles because the Labor Department can’t seem to keep the unemployment system working. The above messages are what you see when you visit the Department’s Unemployment Insurance webpage.

I mean, seriously. Each claimant is required to file every week. But the UI Claimant Portal is on the fritz, and the call center is so overwhelmed that people are being urged NOT to call. If I were of a conspiratorial bent, I’d suggest that this is a nice way to try to keep costs down — by making it very difficult for claimants to comply with the terms of the UI program.

But really, given the Labor Department’s recent track record, the explanation is more likely a combination of incompetence and underfunding.

Continue reading →

Bernie’s Right.

8 Replies

Sen. Bernie Sanders went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” yesterday, and triggered another feeding frenzy on peace-activist Twitter by refusing, once again, to call for a permanent cease-fire in the Gaza conflict.

Which is not to say he sided with the Israeli government, not at all. He was sharply critical of its aggressive tactics and its seeming acceptance of high civilian casualties and widespread destruction. He even supports a temporary cease-fire. He opposed the United State’s veto of a United Nations resolution calling for a temporary suspension of hostilities. But he’s not on board with a permanent one. Because how can you achieve peace when faced with an enemy bent on your destruction?

In terms of a permanent cease-fire, I don’t know how you could have a permanent cease-fire with Hamas, who have said before October 7 and after October 7 that they want to destroy Israel, they want a permanent war. I don’t know how you have a permanent cease-fire with an attitude like that.

Sanders also deserves credit for sticking to his principles. He has no direct say in the matter, so it’d be easy for him to change his position as Sen. Peter Welch and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint have done. But he hasn’t, and I’d be very surprised if he does.

Continue reading →

Burlington Democrats Yearn for a Golden Age That Probably Never Existed and Definitely Never Will

1 Reply

The suspense evaporated quickly. Democratic City Councilor Joan Shannon, a realtor who represents an affluent section of Burlington, eked out a first-ballot victory in the party caucus Sunday afternoon.

Her win is a disappointment for those who think Burlington is some kind of small-p progressive hotbed, but it’s not a surprise. Not when the media are banging the drum for the city’s alleged crime wave and when many residents feel a new sense of insecurity that’s not borne out in the crime statistics but does reflect Burlington’s shabbier feel of late — more a result of petty vandalism, littering, and out-of-control social ills than of actual crime.

But that’s a hard thing to look at and promises no easy solutions. Instead, let’s throw our hands on the Shannon deck, whose leader promises “to restore” the Queen City of hallowed memory.

Ah, the good old days. As Otto Bettmann would say, “they were terrible,” but our memories turn toward the past when present reality is too much to bear.

Continue reading →

You’re Not Going to Cop Your Way Out of This

1 Reply

I don’t know what we expected when we ended the motel voucher program and failed to address the opioid crisis with appropriate urgency, but this is what we should have expected.

The above photo of City Hall Park, posted on SeeClickFix, is disturbing to say the least. Some have responded on Twitter with laments about the decline of Paula Routly’s “beautiful burg” and strident calls to Do Something.

By now, I’m sure that Something Has Been Done. But when you have the sheer quantity of human misery now present in Burlington, you’re only playing a grim game of Whac-A-Mole. Unless you hire enough police to have a cop on every corner 24/7, this is going to happen. Or get worse.

Continue reading →

The Official in Charge of Human Services Would Like You to Ignore the Humanitarian Crisis She Helped Create

Leave a reply

You’d think the head of the biggest and most complicated agency in state government would have quite enough on her plate without dipping her toe into housing policy. But somehow, Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson found time in her busy schedule to co-write an opinion column — you know, those things nobody reads? — that addresses our housing crisis without ever mentioning our ongoing humanitarian disaster of unsheltered homelessness.

Samuelson co-wrote the piece with Commerce Secretary Lindsay Kurrle, whose job description actually includes housing supply issues. I’ve got no problem with Kurrle promoting the Scott administration’s housing push. But Samuelson? Coming from her, the piece comes across as dishonest and disengenuous.

The biggest howler comes right near the top, where the two secretaries boast that “we’ve been successful in transitioning an unprecedented number of Vermonters out of homelessness” this year.

Great, congratulations. What they don’t mention, of course, is that the unprecedented need for shelter was triggered by THE SCOTT ADMINISTRATION’S INSISTENCE ON ENDING THE MOTEL VOUCHER PROGRAM.

Nope, not a word of that. Shameless.

Continue reading →

Our Sincere Best Wishes to the New Chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges

5 Replies

From a quick look at her background, Elizabeth Mauch seems an odd choice to fill one of the hottest seats in all of Vermont. But fill it she will, as the new chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges.

It’s one hell of a big job, and she’ll have to hit the ground running.

Mauch’s first priority will be to continue cutting budgets. Mike Smith got things off to a strong start, but he almost certainly picked all the low-hanging fruit. It’s only going to get tougher from here.

Mauch will arrive in Vermont from perhaps the unlikeliest outpost of academia you could imagine: a small private college in a tiny town dead in the middle of Kansas, 200 miles west of Kansas City.

How small? Bethany College has a student body of… 800. That compares to a total enrollment of more than 11,000 in the VSC system. Bethany’s location, Lindsborg, has a population of… less than 4,000, most of Swedish descent. The hottest ticket in Lindsborg is the every-other-year Svensk Hyllningsfest, a two-day extravaganza that honors the community’s heritage with Swedish dancing, music, arts, crafts, a beer garden, and a big ol’ smorgasbord.

More culture shock? VSC is a public entity answerable to the people and political leaders of Vermont, while Bethany is a Christian institution owned and operated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

To sum up, Mauch leads a small college on a campus that covers about six square blocks and fits into a neat org chart. In Vermont she’ll take charge of a sprawling, multi-campus empire whose constituent parts were recently forced to merge.

And her tenure at Bethany goes back a whole entire [checks notes] three years.

Continue reading →

Phil Scott Popularity Challenge Accepted

3 Replies

Yep, it seems impossible, but the latest Morning Consult poll of gubernatorial popularity (Mississippi’s Tate Reeves bringing up the rear) shows that our very own Phil Scott actually improved his top-of-the-nation standing from his customary perch in the high 70s to… 84 percent. In a state where Democrats have a nearly 30-point edge over Republicans.

The poll was received with applause from Scott fans and many of those who draw paychecks from him. One of the gov’s top Democratic boosters, Ed Adrian, suggested I try to blog my way through this. Because, as what Dorothy Parker would call my Tonstant Weaders are aware, I’m not exactly on Team Phil.

For many reasons I find him an underwhelming leader. He’s not a creative thinker. He’s been in office for nearly seven years, and I can’t think of a single bold policy idea he’s put his weight behind. Well, he used to claim that he could reinvent state government and save tens of millions a year, but that was a complete bust. He took strong action that one time on gun legislation, following a credible threat of a mass shooting at a Vermont high school (which inspired one of the best columns I ever wrote, so don’t say I won’t give him credit where it’s due).

Otherwise his tenure has seen Vermont’s most intractable problems get worse: Housing, opioid addiction, workforce, demographics, climate instability, and more. He himself cites these issues at every turn. And yet his proposed solutions tend to be lukewarm. He nibbles at the margins instead of sinking his teeth into the issues.

So why is he so overwhelmingly popular?

Well, let’s start with this: Popularity is not a measure of quality. Bud Light is popular. Potato chips are popular. “The Macarena” was popular in its day. Indeed, I will argue that broad popularity requires a fundamental inoffensiveness. A song or foodstuff or bestselling book can’t be difficult or challenging. It has to be accessible, first and foremost. And boy oh boy, from an ideological perspective, Phil Scott is nothing but accessible.

Continue reading →

Hot-Take-a-Palooza

1 Reply

For those of us who believe Twitter became a hellscape after Elon Musk walked in the door with a kitchen sink, the last few days have been a reminder of why the platform was already kind of a hellscape before that awful day. Specifically, what’s left of Vermont Twitter, which ain’t much, went absolutely to town with bad takes on the shooting of three Palestinian students Saturday night in Burlington.

The common theme: Commenters of all persuasions blew right past the human tragedy in their rush to hammer home their political talking points.

It began, predictably, with the chaos crowd, who seem to take great pleasure in promoting the idea that Burlington has become a cesspit of crime. Wow, three people shot near the UVM campus? Among the tall trees and stately mansions? Time to roll back criminal justice reform and give the BPD whatever it wants!

That sentiment expired as soon as the nationality of the victims became public knowledge. Palestinian collegians wearing keffiyehs? Hardly seemed like a random act.

And then came the cries of “hate crime.” That’s what it turned out to be (pending further revelations about the shooter), but at the time there was no concrete evidence to support the notion. It was all circumstantial. Powerful, but not definitive.

Continue reading →

Once Again, Phil Scott Ducks Accountability for Being a Republican

3 Replies

The Vermont Republican Party held its biannual, or possibly biennual, convention on Saturday. (Above screenshot from the VTGOP’s own website, although they might get around to fixing it after they read this post.) They actually had kind of an impressive speaker lineup, including Reagan-era anti-tax activist Grover Norquist (who must have been wondering how the hell his career descended to the point where he was sharing breakfast with a few dozen graybeards in frickin’ Burlington), Scott Brown, who’s gotten an incredible amount of mileage out of one lucky victory thirteen years ago, and Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor, who switched her affiliation from Democratic to Republican after differing with her former party’s caucus on some high-profile issues.

All of which makes me think that there are some conservative deep pockets underwriting the travel schedules of far-right figures, because ain’t no way the VTGOP could have pulled this level of “star” power in the past. But anyway…

Speakers also included professional troll Scott Presler, a gay conservative dudebro who was touted as a get-out-the-vote activist. Not mentioned in your convention program: His stint as a lead organizer for an anti-Muslim hate group, his description of the January 6 “Stop the Steal” election denial gathering as “a civil rights protest,” and his promotion of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Oh, and his version of GOTV includes the all-out promotion of “ballot harvesting,” a common conservative complaint about Democrats collecting and delivering ballots en masse. If you’re unfortunately enough to remember the film “2,000 Mules,” which focused on unsubstantiated claims that liberal activists were harvesting huge numbers of questionable ballots, well, Presler wants to take that idea up to 11: “”I don’t want 2,000 mules. I want 2 million mules,” he told a GOP voter training session in Pennsylvania.

I can’t tell you whether he brought the same message to the Waterfront Hilton, but it seems likely.

Continue reading →