Category Archives: justice and corrections

Remember the Great Anti-Police Protests in St. Johnsbury? Yeah, Me Neither.

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Ah yes, the golden days of the early ’20s, when hordes of left-wingers took over the streets of St. Johnsbury and the town’s progressive leadership responded by cutting the police department’s budget.

Oh wait, you say that didn’t happen?

Well, then explain this.

The briefly (and marginally) successful “defund the police” movement in Burlington is being blamed — several years later — for the Queen City’s struggle to fight crime, substance use, vandalism, and fears about public safety. And yet, according to VTDigger’s Kingdom correspondent K. Fiegenbaum, the town of St. Johnsbury is suffering from exactly the same suite of problems.

As are most or all of Vermont’s other cities and towns, from Rutland to Bennington to Brattleboro to St. Albans to Montpelier and beyond.

It’s almost as if the root causes lay beyond a certain city’s brief dalliance with trimming police budgets. It’s almost as if the problems are systemic, statewide, beyond the capacity of any local or county official to control. Even when, as in St. J, St. A, and Rutland, those officials are predominantly Republican and not at all “woke.”

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The Republicans Choose a Candidate for Chittenden State’s Attorney Who Doesn’t Want the Job

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This is a much younger Jace Laquerre (age 17 at the time), seen here with his beau ideal during the 2016 Republican convention. As he said at the time, “I got involved in politics through Senator Rand Paul, who inspired me to get involved through his principles of liberty and limited government.” At the time, Laquerre boasted of his involvement in “Young Americans for Liberty, Students for Life and the NRA.”

Fast forward to 2026, and Laquerre, now in his late 20s and sporting a J.D. Vance-style close-cropped beard, has just been chosen by the Chittenden County Republicans to run against incumbent Democratic State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George. This, despite the fact that (1) he’s not an attorney, and (2) he doesn’t actually want the job. (He is, according to his LinkedIn page, a software engineer. Something something relevant skills and experience.)

See, the Republicans didn’t field a candidate for the position. George’s Democratic primary opponent Bram Kranichfeld won the Republican nomination thanks to write-in votes from Republican voters who failed to heed (or misunderstood) Gov. Phil Scott’s advice to vote for Kranichfeld in the Democratic primary in order to defeat George. Kranichfeld then declined the “honor” of the Republican nomination, which allowed the county Republican committee to name anyone else as a replacement.

Anyone, it would seem. Including someone who isn’t qualified and, need I repeat myself, doesn’t want the job.

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The Greatest Little Hellhole on Earth

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So, CNN just published a little exercise in clickbait under the try-hard title “We searched for America’s best towns to visit. Here are the top 10.”

And as is often the case, our very own Queen City made the list for, according to the subhead, “Lovely surroundings, farm-fresh food, community spirit.”

Not mentioned: Violence, insecurity, homelessness, substance use, vandalism. You know, the stuff that consumes the imagination and rhetoric of Gov. Phil Scott and his collaborators in the Burlington Democratic Party, not to mention the “if it bleeds, it leads” world of teevee news.

I know, you can’t put too much stock in these kinds of rankings. They aren’t exactly done with the most scrupulous of journalistic standards, and they do gloss over the faults and failings of the communities listed. (New Haven, which has public safety problems that make Burlington look like a daycare, ranked #2 on the list.)

Burlington does have problems, and I don’t mean to minimize them. But it’s also, as CNN put it, “a close-knit community, where civic engagement runs deep.” And there’s the waterfront and the lake and Church Street and Pine Street and the Old North End and the UVM campus and the nearby mountains, among many other positives about our biggest little city.

So maybe Our Political Betters could spend a bit more time actually helping Burlington with positive language and policies instead of trashing it for short-term political gain.

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Scott Admin Does Blatantly Political Thing and Accuses His Opponents of Playing Politics, Part Eleventy-Billion

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If this wasn’t reported as an in-kind donation to the Bram Kranichfeld campaign, it’s only because the dollars-and-cents value was incalculable. Last week, out of nowhere, and without extending the courtesy of informing the mayor of Vermont’s largest and most important city, the Scott administration dispatched the Vermont State Police to patrol the allegedly mean streets of Burlington.

Scott spokesperson Amanda Wheeler had the unmitigated gall to provide this comment to VTDigger: “This is nothing more than the Governor wanting to make sure Burlington is safe for residents and visitors, despite others framing this as a political issue.”

Oh, come ON. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

As is often the case, the governor is the one who’s playing politics and, like a certain orange-skinned chief executive, accusing his political rivals of the very thing he’s engaging in. I think they call that “deflection.”

In case you think I’m exaggerating, let’s look at the course of events.

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One Last Go-Round for Doug Hoffer

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When you visit the official website of almost any elected officeholder, you’ll be greeted by a picture of said grandee. Or a whole bunch of pictures, because the ever-hungry ego must be placated.

But not Auditor Doug Hoffer. When you visit his homepage, you see a rotating gallery of Vermont writers who have won major awards, including Robert Frost, David Moats, Galway Kinnell, and yes, Louise Glück. I find that refreshing. Touching, really.

Hoffer’s not your typical politician. Sure, he’s got an ego and a sense of his own importance, but he has never ever expressed the slightest interest in climbing the political ladder. He’s kept his nose to the grindstone and produced a lot of great work, holding state government accountable for how it spends our tax dollars. Because as a Progressive (slash Democrat), he believes that government performs many valuable functions and has a responsibility to do them as efficiently as possible.

He isn’t as focused on self-promotion as most politicians. And I think he has suffered for it; his work has been routinely undercovered in our media and often ignored by those in the Legislative or Executive branches who ought to be taking his findings to heart. A couple of factors have worked against him: (1) Democrats and Republicans don’t like Progressives, and that’s his primary political orientation, and (2) he often challenges conventional wisdom, and nobody likes to hear that.

Now he’s on his way out, retiring at the end of his current term. He’s spending some of his last months in office encapsulating his past efforts in easily digestible form, hoping that people will pay attention. Kind of like an old rock-and-roller putting out a Greatest Hits album. Spoiler alert: It ain’t working very well. He’s getting the full lame-duck treatment. It’s a damn shame.

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Rubbin’ One Out in Our Capital City

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There are many points of interest to this story, but if you’re going to take away one lesson, it should be about the importance of healthy local news media. Because if not for The Montpelier Bridge, the doughty nonprofit news organization, nobody in and around the city would know that a hinky-as-all-getout “health spa” seems to be operating right in the middle of downtown. In a building co-owned by a current candidate for state Senate, no less.

No, not in some half-empty strip mall on the outskirts or in a ramshackle building along a truck route. It’s in a prime storefront, just a couple of blocks away from the Statehouse. (Which makes me yearn for a look at the outfit’s client list, just to check for political types stuck in the nation’s smallest capital city for several months with plenty of spare time on their, or someone else’s, hands.)

Back in March, The Bridge first broke the story of the “Hawaiian Spa” and another dubious enterprise in a more downmarket address in Montpelier. In its most recent edition, the story was revisited and updated. Has anyone else followed suit? Not the local almost-daily Times Argus. Not Seven Days, which often strays down to central Vermont to cover state politics and local businesses. VTDigger, which frequently publishes content from The Bridge, has kept its hands off this hot potato.

If not for The Bridge, would anyone outside the local constabulary know? I don’t think so. And while there’s no absolute proof that the Hawaiian spa is selling massages with happy endings, its presence is surely a matter of public interest.

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Return of the Broken Gavel

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Well, I didn’t expect to be recycling this cheeseball graphic so soon, but here we are with House leadership violating one of the fundamental rules of running a legislative body. Last time it was letting the minority Republicans win something for the first time in (per Rep. Mark Higley) 18 years. This time it’s depending on Republican votes to pass a major bill because a solid majority of Democrats wanted to change it.

Whatever the merits of the bill in question, this is another case of leadership malpractice. If you can’t convince your members to go your way, then run to the front of the pack and at least pretend you’re leading.

The bill, S.208, passed the Senate as a ban on police personnel — local, state, federal — wearing masks or otherwise concealing their identities, and requiring the wearing of visible identification. The House Judiciary Committee removed federal police from the bill because a court decision struck down a similar California law, and Judiciary felt that S.208 would suffer the same fate.

But when the bill went to the full House, it became clear that most Democrats preferred the Senate version. House leadership repeatedly postponed a floor vote as it sought a way forward for the House Judiciary version. Apparently they gave up, because the vote finally happened on Wednesday. A proposed amendment to restore the Senate version came before the House, and more than two-thirds of voting Democrats bucked leadership and voted for the amendment.

Now, that’s embarrassing.

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We’ve Got Multiple Prosecutors Driving Drunk, and Somehow the Problem is Sarah Fair George

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It’s another sad chapter in our ongoing saga of misdeeds by county-level officials in Vermont. This time it’s Grand Isle State’s Attorney Doug DiSabito, busted for drunk driving inside the Franklin County courthouse.

DiSabito, for those unfamiliar, is one of Vermont’s loudest voices for law-n-order. Except maybe when it applies to himself.

News of his arrest came just a few days after Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos had her law license suspended by the state Supreme Court following her own drunk driving conviction.

Addison to the south… Grand Isle to the north… and right there in between is Chittenden County, where the unacceptably progressive Sarah Fair George is once again under attack from within her own party. I guess it’s okay to rack up the DUIs as long as you do your best to keep poor folks behind bars. Priorities.

In the case of Vekos, it’s almost certainly a matter of months before she’s turfed out. She hasn’t ruled out a run for re-election, but at least one challenger has already entered the fray. If she doesn’t get her license back, it’ll be quite a stretch for her to seek another four years on a job she is currently unable to perform*, although stranger things have certainly happened with county-level elected officials.

*I know, she can continue to do paperwork and stuff, but she can’t do a damn thing in court.

DiSabito, on the other hand, has been in office since 2014 and has not faced significant opposition since his first primary. In 2022 he ran on the Democratic and Republican tickets, and he has announced his plan to do the same this year.

Will anyone pull a Bram Kranichfeld and give this guy a run for his money? Somehow, I doubt it. And even if they did, no one has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of voters in county elections.

I must stipulate that DiSabito has merely been arrested. (Inside a courthouse!) He deserves the presumption of innocence until his case is heard. But it’s hard to take him seriously as a force for law-n-order if he’s engaging in behavior that not only breaks the law, but actively endangers everyone who shares the public roadways with him.

Allegedly.

Bring Me the Head of Sarah Fair George

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Well, they’re at it again. They’re going after Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George, who will face a contested Democratic primary for the second straight campaign.

Or should I say, in the words of the Vermont Daily Chronicle, “controversial, George Soros-backed incumbent” Sarah Fair George? So Guy, can you cite any specific support from Soros, or could you simply not resist tootling one of your favorite dog whistles?

Sorry, digression is my jam. Last time around, in 2022, the “Get Sarah” forces did a faceplant, as George beat well-funded challenger ($62,000 for a county-level primary????) Ted Kenney by almost a two-to-one margin. This time, former Burlington city councilor Bram Kranichfeld is stepping into the hypothetical breach. He brings a softer edge to the tough-on-crime message that didn’t work for Kenney, but the fundamental thesis is the same: George’s progressive policies are to blame for the perception of rising lawlessness in the Queen City.

I fully expect Kranichfeld will receive generous support from the Barons of Burlington, and will benefit from every breathless bit of crime coverage between now and primary day. Will it make any difference? I expect not, to be honest.

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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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