Category Archives: 2022 election

They’re Just Going to Beat This Crypto Bro Thing Into the Ground, Aren’t They?

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I don’t know what U.S. Rep. Becca Balint did to so mightily offend the journalistic nabobs at VTDigger and Seven Days, but our two most prominent political media outlets seem bound and determined to lash her tightly to disgraced crypto king (and long-lost Fourth Stooge) Sam Bankman-Fried. Hell, they’ve probably started pre-writing her obituary with the headline “Balint, Beneficiary of Fraudulent Crypto Bro Wealth and Vermont’s First Woman in Congress, Dies at [insert age here].”

Digger’s been at this for a while now. Every time there’s a fresh development in the downfall of Bankman-Fried, Digger’s political team cranks out a story that reports said development and fills out the space by recapping all the old stuff about his million-dollar donation to a political action committee that then spent it in support of Balint, and hinting at a deeper relationship between the two.

It’s a nice way to fill the news hole, but c’mon.

Digger’s latest breathless retelling of the same old story refers to Bankman-Fried as “Balint’s $1 Million Benefactor,” which is about the most sinister possible way to characterize the situation. “Benefactor” implies two very untrue things: That the two had some sort of undisclosed relationship, and that he straight-up gave her a big bag of cash.

In truth, Bankman-Fried gave a bunch of money to the Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports LGBTQ+ candidates. The Victory Fund then spent it, almost certainly at SBF’s behest, on a last-minute ad blitz supporting Balint’s bid for Congress.

And no matter how long our political media keep chewing on that dry old bone, they can’t prove that Balint knew about any of this, that she’d made a deal of some kind with SBF, or that the money made any significant difference in Balint’s primary win over then-lieutenant governor Molly Gray. They continue to hint at it whenever they can, but that’s as far as they can get.

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Paul Dame Measures Once, Cuts Twice (Updated with CORRECTION)

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Update! Dame’s essay has been posted on True North Reports. The “Donahue” typo is fixed, but nothing else.

Update Update. I got something badly wrong. I wrote that Sen. Richard Westman is a Republican presence on the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. He is not. Dame was right about that, and I apologize for my mistake.

I could write a blogpost every week about VTGOP Chair Paul Dame’s weekly email to party members, but that would be a big waste of my time and yours. Once in a while, though, it’s too good to pass up.

Take this week’s message. Please, take it. It’s entitled “Democrat Steamrollers” because (1) he’d rather be ungrammatical than refer to the Democratic Party as “Democratic,” and (2) he sees the Democratic majorities in the Legislature running roughshod over everything. In his essay, he takes three big swings and misses all three. Yer Out!

Dame’s complaints begin with the reassigning of Rep. Anne Donahue from the Health Care Committee to Human Services. The House majority had “punished” Donahue “by stripping her of her [Health Care] Vice Chair position and assigning her to another committee entirely.”

A few things. First, he’s deeply concerned about Rep. Donahue’s status but he couldn’t be bothered to spell her name correctly. That’s right, he called her “Donohue.”

Second, exiling Donahue to Human Services is a pretty damn soft landing. That committee is also heavily involved with mental health care, so she’ll still have a chance to put her knowledge and passion to good use.

Third, the Dems’ alleged machinations are picayune compared to what Dame’s fellow Republicans in the U.S. House are doing with their majority. So far, I’ve heard no hint that Speaker Jill Krowinski has ordered a bunch of investigations of Gov. Phil Scott’s family.

Finally, whatever the Democrats may have done to reduce Republican influence is nothing compared to what the Republicans did to themselves by running an incompetent campaign and allowing the Dems to win a supermajority!

Enough of that. Let’s get on to the real whoppers.

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Broke. Destitute. Insolvent. Beggared. Strapped. Bust. Pauperized. Skint. Embarrassed. Down at Heel.

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The Vermont Republican Party doesn’t have much money to spend right now, but here’s a suggestion: Invest in a metal detector. You might improve your fortunes by finding some spare change and, who knows, maybe a pirate doubloon or two.

This isn’t exactly new for the perpetually impecunious VTGOP. But if anything, it’s gotten worse — especially when compared to the Vermont Democratic Party, which had a gangbusters 2022 by comparison.

The latest Federal Elections Commission filings covered the month of November. It’ll be a few days before we get the year-end reports. But I doubt the situation will change all that much, and the situation merits exploration right now.

(Reminder: Although the VDP and VTGOP are state parties, the vast majority of their financial activity is under federal jurisdiction. The figures that follow are all from FEC filings.)

The VTGOP ended November with a paltry $2,204 in cash on hand. The Dems: $207,060, nearly 100 times as much. And that was after generous Democratic expenditures in the run-up to Election Day. The VDP’s goal was to enter the off-cycle period with enough resources to avoid post-campaign staff cuts. They’ll have to maintain a solid fundraising pace to accomplish that, but so far things are looking good.

Meanwhile, the VTGOP just suffered its worst legislative defeat ever and couldn’t sniff a statewide victory for any candidate not named “Phil Scott.” They need some serious rebuilding, and they have no resources to even begin the work. The numbers tell the tale.

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In Honor of the Restoration of Power, It’s the Return of Lightning Round!

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It’s been a long, strange week chez VPO. Along with many other Vermonters, our power went out on the morning of Friday the 23rd. Unlike most other Vermonters, we didn’t get our power back until the evening of the 28th. (Our neighborhood suffered the downing of multiple power poles and the damaging of its substation.) Most low-key Christmas ever.

So that’s why no blogging in a week. In the meantime, things kept happening (on a reduced-quantity holiday schedule), so here I am to proclaim the return of POWERRR and to catch up on stuff I might have missed. Today’s bits include a surge in criminality that can’t possibly be the Progressives’ fault, a minimal sentence for a “savage beating,” how the F-35s put Burlington in Putin’s crosshairs, and a country-rock revenge fantasy from a very unsuccessful House candidate. En avant, mes amis!

Rutland Crime Wave Fails the Preferred Narrative. On December 27, VTDigger reported on Rutland’s dramatic rise in property crimes. Thefts from cars up 400% from the previous five-year average, and a more than threefold increase in stolen cars, thefts from buildings, and retail theft.

I don’t know how they’re going to pin this on Radical Socialist Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George or “defunding the police,” but I’m sure they’re looking for a way. After all, Rutland doesn’t exactly fit the profile of a crime-friendly center of rabid progressivism, and yet here they are suffering a crime wave. Some are blaming restrictions on bail, but the obvious cause is substance use. According to the Rutland PD, 75% of suspects in retail theft are known narcotic users, as are 64% of auto theft suspects and 100% of robbery suspects.

Yeah, I think we’ve pinned down the problem there. Opioid deaths continue to set new records. Opioid-related crime appears to be fueling any increase in lawlessness. Can we stop nattering about progressive criminal justice reform and address the real problems?

No, I guess that’s no fun, is it.

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He Knows When You’ve Been Bad or Good, and If You’ve Been Bad He’s Giving You Something From the VTGOP Gift Collection

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I hope you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet because now’s your chance to please the Coolidge lover in your life. And we’ve all got one of them, haven’t we?

Pictured above: Two items from the “Coolidge Was Cooler” line of VTGOP merch. All five items feature the same hastily-photoshopped image of Calvin Coolidge sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses. See, Coolidge was cooler than Joe Biden of aviator sunglasses fame. Ha ha, cough.

This is the best design available from the Vermont Republican Party’s online “SHOP” page. Hard to believe I know, but the rest of the collection is even sadder.

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Storm Clouds Above the Statehouse

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There is much to be said about Gov. Phil Scott suddenly pulling a voluntary paid family leave program. For instance, that he has never ever pushed this issue at all unless the Legislature is actively considering a universal program. This isn’t a principled position, it’s an artifice meant to draw votes away from the Dem/Prog caucuses.

But something else, something subtler but equally discomfiting, is on my mind at the moment.

There are signs that the House-Senate tensions of past years are flaring back up again. If so, key legislation could fail because of differences between the two chambers, real or imaginary. If that happens, they’ll be disappointing the voters who elected record numbers of Dems expecting them to get stuff done.

This tension was minimized if not eliminated in the current biennium, thanks to the efforts of House Speaker Jill Krowinski and outgoing Pro Tem Becca Balint. It’d be a shame if Balint’s departure triggers a return of the bad old days.

The usual sniping between House and Senate is most often expressed in senators’ apparently innate sense of superiority. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen senators speak of state representatives as if they’re misbehaving kids on a school bus, and treat House legislation as if it’s toilet paper stuck to their shoes.

The most prominent example of the House-Senate tension has been the twin battles over paid family leave and raising the minimum wage. The House has preferred the former, the Senate the latter. The result: No paid leave program and woefully inadequate movement on minimum wage. On two occasions the Legislature has passed watered-down versions of a paid leave program and Scott has vetoed them. The inter-chamber differences have done much to frustrate progress toward enacting a strong paid leave program over Scott’s objections.

And now, here we are again with an apparent House-Senate rift on paid family leave.

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VTDigger Coughs Up a Hairball, Calls it Caviar

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The headline is dramatic. “Former campaign staffer sues Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brenda Siegel for unpaid wages, expenses.” Wow, sounds serious.

Well, it’s not. In fact, the story is so bereft of substance that it makes you wonder how it got published at all.

For starters, the “former campaign staffer,” Bryan Parks, worked for the Siegel campaign for less than a month. The amount of money in question is less than $600.

Six hundred dollars.

Reporter Sarah Mearhoff, who will not be submitting this shitball for any journalism prizes, gives over the first six paragraphs to Parks’ account, his disillusionment with the candidate, his insistence that it’s not about the money, and how he waited until after the election to file his suit “so as not to appear politically motivated.”

And only then, after Parks is given all that space, do we get Siegel’s response: “No, I don’t owe him any money. He is completely paid up.”

Well, there you go, right? Game, set, match, right?

Er, no.

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Joe Benning Peeks Over the Parapet and Is Met with a Volley of Arrows

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Fresh off a loss in his bid for lieutenant governor, outgoing Sen. Joe Benning wrote an essay on how the Vermont Republican Party can pull itself out of its far-right briar patch and be competitive again. You’d think that some Republicans’ ears would be open after an election where everything but Phil Scott went horribly awry for them.

But the VTGOP is not open to a change of course, judging by the swift, aggressive, and downright accusatory response to his essay. Not to mention the ugly, racist blast of id posted by “Farmer” John Klar at about the same time. You look at the leadership of the VTGOP and the ticket it put before voters, and you have to realize that there are a lot more Klars in this party than there are Bennings.

Benning decried his party’s “loudest voices” and their belief that January 6 was a harmless rally, their “vitriol and hatred,” and their adherence to “every Q-anon conspiracy imaginable.” He wrote that in order to be competitive, “the VTGOP course must remain center/right” to attract support from independents and centrists.

Benning’s essay was a thoughtful reflection on political reality in Vermont from a conservative Republican. It was posted on, well, two of those “loudest voices,” the Vermont Daily Chronicle and True North Reports. (Note: A somewhat different version of his piece has been posted on VTDigger, for those who’d rather not give those right-wing “news” operations even a single precious click.)

And oh boy, the comments. They came in bunches, and they were angry.

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The State Senate Approaches a Demographic Tipping Point

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Seems like I’ve been waiting forever for the Vermont Senate to undergo a demographic shift. Every two years there’s been talk of a retirement wave, but it never materializes. Senators consider stepping aside, then realize they’re indispensable. (They’re not.) And the voters rarely eject an incumbent except in cases of overt criminality (Norm McAllister) or advanced senescence (Bill Doyle).

The shift has been painfully incremental until this year, when almost one-third of all senators decided to bow out. The nine incomers are younger, five of them are women, and one is a person of color: Nader Hashim joins Kesha Ram Hinsdale and Randy Brock as the three non-white members of the upper chamber.

(The tiny Republican caucus managed to get older and no less male. Its two youngest members, Corey Parent and Joshua Terenzini, will be replaced by a couple of old white men.)

Got more numbers to plow through, but here’s the bottom line. The Senate is on the verge of a historic shift, but it’s happening in slow motion. We might reach the tipping point in two years’ time. We’re not quite there yet.

There are still plenty of tenured members in positions of power. They account for most of the committee chairs. But only — “only” — eight of the 30 senators will be 70 or older. At least 13 will be under 65, which doesn’t sound like a lot but in the Senate it definitely is.

The incoming Senate President Pro Tem, Phil Baruth, straddles the age divide. He’s only — “only” — 60. But he’s entering his sixth two-year term, so he’s familiar with the Senate and the elders are comfortable enough with him to make him their leader. As a senator he’s been a strong policy advocate unafraid to ruffle feathers, but as Pro Tem he’ll know he can’t push his caucus too far too fast.

There are the preliminiaries. Now let’s dive in.

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The Governor Gets a Little Post-Election Workout

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Phil Scott didn’t exactly sweat out Campaign 2022. He did spend Election Eve barrelling around the state, touching down in all 14 counties, as is his wont. But before then, it was more like The Campaign That Wasn’t. So I guess it’s no surprise that he needed to flex his muscle after the election with a brisk session of punching a straw man.

His post-election message, “Vermonters Called for Balance and We All Need to Listen,” is classic Phil Scott from beginning to end. He starts with a Reaganesque appeal to our own well-developed self-regard. Referring to that Election Eve tour, he wrote “This 500+ mile tour has a way to put things into perspective. It reinforces how beautiful our state is and how much it has to offer.”

Having established his sunny view of Vermont, he identified one thing we have to do better on. No, it’s not the opioid crisis. It’s not climate change. It’s not universal health care or paid family leave. It’s all about economic opportunity, which is a distinctly Republican view of human fulfillment.

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