Throughout the campaign season I wrote about the Barons of Burlington, a bunch of well-heeled men — well, almost entirely men — and their obviously coordinated effort to buy a bunch of state Senate seats. They wrote fistfuls of four-figure checks to six Republican candidates for Senate plus their choice for lieutenant governor, Democrat-turned-Republican John Rodgers.
So, now that the dust has settled and the campaign finance reports are nearly complete*, it’s time to answer the musical question: Did the Barons buy the election?
*Final reports are due December 19, but the bulk of the money has been accounted for by now.
The obvious straight-line answer is yes. Their seven chosen candidates swept the field, reducing the Democratic/Progressive majority from 23 seats to 17 with the tie-breaking LG vote going to the Republicans.
The less obvious answer is, well, not really. There is abundant evidence that their money didn’t swing the election — that the Republican gains would have happened anyway.
I rarely trumpet the “Donate” feature on this blog. The timing rarely seems right, especially in this year of an ongoing — and worsening — crisis of homelessness made worse by Our Betters’ deliberate policy choices. But Giving Tuesday offered an opportunity.
Which I took. And wow, did you ever respond.
Between Giving Tuesday and the day after, my income for the entire year went up by more than 20%.
All I can say is, thank you. Your response is heartening and inspiring.
Since Thanksgiving Eve, at least five Vermonters have died after being turned away from the state’s General Assistance Emergency Housing program. Three deaths have been publicly reported, but at least two more can be added to the list. We’re up to five. And counting.
Or shall I say, in the words of End Homelessness Vermont’s Brenda Siegel, five “that we know about.” There is good reason to take her word for it; EHV has done a far better job than the state at keeping in touch with unsheltered people, assessing their needs, and trying to keep them safe and warm. And yes, Siegel is an advocate, but she has no need to exaggerate or embellish; the crisis is quite bad enough as it is.
There may have been more deaths that we don’t yet know about. There may be more by the time you read this post. This is an emergency. If the Scott administration was operating with less pride and more compassion, there would be an immediate summit meeting of state officials, key legislators, shelter providers, and housing advocates to find ways to help more people with available resources. The governor is right about one thing: The motel voucher program is a stopgap. It’s too expensive and doesn’t address any issues beyond roofs over heads.
There are options. There are ways to handle the situation — not perfectly, but better than we are now. The Scott administration has failed to explore other ideas. Instead, its policy has been to use whatever money is on hand to prop up the voucher program while making no provision at all for a better, longer-term solution. “It doesn’t have to be the motel program,” Siegel said. “There are other options. But we cannot keep unsheltering people.”
In my recent post (since amended) about the deaths of Lucas and Tammy Menard, I was guilty of the very thing I have accused state officials of doing: Treating real people as symbols or statistics or props. My post caused further distress to the people who knew the Menards. And I apologize for that.
I ventured beyond my knowledge in depicting their situation, which was terribly unfair to them, their family and friends. I painted them as hopeless poster children when, according to Lucas’ sister, they had agency, they had help from those closest to them. They addressed their situation with intelligence and grace, and handled it far better than I could possibly imagine myself if I were in their situation.
The sister’s account can be found in the Comments section under the post originally entitled “How Many More Menards?” (Hell, the title itself reflects my thoughtless presentation of Lucas and Tammy as props for my argument.) I won’t quote the comment here; I’ll leave her words in the way she expressed them.
I should have known better. The people I’ve met who are struggling to find security in this world are not victims; they are smart, resourceful, and enterprising. They have their challenges, but they do their level best to adapt and rise above.
I write about political issues from a 30,000-foot perch, which has its advantages but risks losing sight of the real people in the crowd. That’s what I did in this case, and again, I apologize.
As I write this, it’s about to be Giving Tuesday, a time to give to people, causes and entities worthy of your support. I’m not telling you The Vermont Political Observer is worthy; that’s your call. Regular readers are already spending their time and attention here. I’m hoping you will tangibilize (word?) that decision by kicking in a little coin.
Or, as Reverend Ike would prefer, some “quiet money.” Not the noisy stuff, the quiet kind that falls silently into the collection plate.
Donations are gratefully received via the, what a coincidence, “Donate” feature accessible by this link or near the top of this website. You can make a one-time gift or set up a monthly contribution. I like to think I deliver something of value, consistently posting three or four times a week — a very high productivity rate in the blogosphere.
Note: This post is deeply flawed and hurtful in ways I did not intend. In making a case against state policy, I used the Menards as symbols — or props, if you prefer — in ways that dishonor their memory and affect their family and friends. I apologize. I’m keeping this post as is, but I have written a follow-up with an apology and further reflections.
Lucas and Tammy Menard may have been the first to die because the State of Vermont didn’t care, but they will not be the last. There are roughly 1,500 people, all of whom were officially classed as “vulnerable” due to age, disability, or other factors, who have been unsheltered by state policy since mid-September. Our leaders put all of them in the most horribly uncertain of circumstances because we could not muster the political will or managerial smarts to provide for these people.
Instead, we were satisfied with a policy that amounts to “culling the herd,” weeding out those too compromised to survive the onset of winter living in a goddamn tent. The Menards’ deaths could be seen as a policy success in that regard. The long, long list of the unsheltered has just been reduced by two, so hey, congratulations?
It’s a situation that would seem to warrant charges of negligent manslaughter against certain politicians and bureaucrats — except for that pesky immunity standard they enjoy for official acts. And if you think accusing Our Betters of willfully committing two felonies is a bridge too far, well, let us turn to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of “manslaughter” as
…resulting from the failure to perform a legal duty expressly required to safeguard human life, from the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony, or from the commission of a lawful act involving a risk of injury or death that is done in an unlawful, reckless, or grossly negligent manner.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! The Vermont State Police found two people dead inside a tent in Wolcott on Thanksgiving Eve. They were Lucas Menard of Montpelier and Tammy Menard of Berlin. Few details are available, although police do not suspect foul play.
Unless, of course, you consider this fall’s mass unsheltering “foul play.”
And yes, the Menards were among the close to 1,500 vulnerable Vermonters recently unsheltered following cuts in the GA emergency housing program. Brenda Siegel of End Homelessness Vermont says they were clients of her organization who had “complex medical needs” but were denied shelter by the state. Siegel on Facebook:
Wonderful vibrant people. And Tammy herself helped so many others. Tell me again how what we did was fine and people will manage. Is this what you mean by “manage”?
I can’t add much to that, except to remind everyone that this was the inevitable and long-predicted result of denying shelter to so many of our most vulnerable. And the cold weather is just beginning. Siegel gets the last word:
I wanted nothing more than to be wrong about the catastrophic outcomes this policy would cause. But I knew that I was not.
Welp, Gov. Phil Scott has revealed himself to be all hat and no cattle when it comes to climate action. As Seven Days’Kevin McCallum reports, our alleged climate fightin’ leader is calling for a full retreat on, you know, doing anything about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With the exception of furrowed brows and earnest expressions of concern. Per McCallum, here is Phil Scott’s climate agenda:
Kill the clean heat standard
Kill the Global Warming Solutions Act
Ignore our 2025 emissions reduction targets
Ignore our 2030 emissions reduction targets
Effectively put all our eggs in the 2050 basket
That’s one hell of a platform for a guy who claims to believe that climate change is a clear and present threat to humanity’s future.
His argument here, as on every other issue, is affordability. Vermont simply can’t afford to cut emissions or transition to a clean energy future.
A couple things about that. “Affordable” compared to what, exactly? His projections about the unaffordability of energy transition appear to rely on the assumption that fossil fuel prices won’t rise. Anyone who’s played Russian Roulette with the cost of propane or heating oil could testify otherwise.
Putting all his chips on affordability also ignores the impacts of climate change. As we have seen, Vermont is far from safe in this regard. In fact, we have one of the highest totals in the nation of federally-declared disasters since 2011. We don’t have beachfronts or flatlands, but we do have a rugged topography of mountains, hills, and deep valleys. The latter is where (a) most of our people live, and (b) the runoff easily overwhelms our rivers and streams when greenhouse gas-fueled downpours occur. We have yet to experience catastrophic wildfires around here, although the risk has been worryingly high for a good chunk of this year. Just a matter of time.
But Scott’s latest statements should come as no surprise. All he’s done is pull the sheep’s clothing off his inner wolf. In truth, he has been a resulote obstructor of serious climate action since he became governor. (Back in 2021, I called him the biggest obstacle to climate action in Vermont.) Kind of fitting for a guy who’s spent his entire adult life working with fossil fuel-powered machinery.
This month’s Republican wave deposited some worthy members who can bring a socially moderate, fiscally conservative perspective to the Statehouse with some measure of dignity and open-mindedness. Not that I agree with them politically, but they should not be dismissed as extremists or nay-sayers. (Lookin’ at you, incoming Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck.)
But others who floated in on the tide will bring some truly out-there positions to Montpelier. There have always been a few of these folks, but too few to feel comfortable about spreading their wings and exposing their views. They have limited their participation to grumbles and grimaces and often departed after a term or two because they couldn’t stand being in a tiny minority. Or because the voters got wind of their views. (Lookin’ at you, one-term state rep Samantha Lefebvre.)
In the new biennium, there might just be a critical mass that will give them license to fly their freak flags. I can give you five names of far-right figures previously featured in my posts about “stealth conservatives” who won their elections and will take office come January. There are another eight on my suspect list who campaigned on the standard-issue “affordability & common sense” Phil Scott word cloud but showed signs of dog-whistling. I haven’t had a chance to dig into their histories. Yet.
The phrase “Two Vermonts” has a long and storied history. Its roots run deeper than the origins of Vermont itself. Way back when, our B.L. Not Yet S. was the tattered rope in a tug-of-war between New Hampshire and New York. And then, for much of the Vermont Republican Party’s 100-year-plus hegemony, a governor from the eastern side of the state was inevitably succeeded by someone from the west. There was a very clear division between the two Vermonts tracing the spine of the Green Mountains.
If you do an Internet search for “Two Vermonts,” you get a staggering quantity of hits. It’s been a long time since the line was about east versus west; instead, various divisions are drawn by a writer or speaker in service of the argument they are making. The two Vermonts have been defined as, among other things: The places, rural or urban, where people are prospering versus those whose inhabitants are struggling to get by; The places where real people work hard at real jobs versus the realms of the picture-postcard; The locales struggling with drugs and crime versus the enclaves of the well-to-do and the tourists; Rural/parochial areas versus urban/cosmopolitan ones.
There are also non-geographical conceptions of Two Vermonts: A simple divide between prosperity and poverty, or between a Vermont that seriously engaged with climate change and another where harmful emissions are still on the rise.
I’ve got a new spin on this concept based on this month’s election results. If you follow I-89 from Burlington to White River Junction and I-91 from there to Brattleboro, you will have traversed one Vermont. The rest of the state, or most of it, is the other Vermont. Neat, eh?
You can see this most clearly in the incoming state Senate. There are 17 members of the Democratic/Progressive caucus, and fourteen of them hail from counties on that freeway corridor: Chittenden (6), Washington (3), Windsor (3), and Windham (2). The other three hail from Bennington (2) and Addison (1).
The Vermont Political Observer. 