Tag Archives: Brattleboro Reformer

Strap In, It’s Time for Another Touchdown on Planet Hank

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I hate to give this douchebag the slightest bit of publicity, because it’s what he thrives on. But “Planet Hank” Poitras is someone who needs to be taken seriously. He cannot be ignored. Because he could very well be a rising star in Republican circles. (Governor, any comment?)

Poitras is seen above in a video he posted online himself. Yep, this is his favored public presentation. The problem is, he apparently holds a position (or two) of responsibility in the Vermont Republican Party, and he’s been creating a bunch of AI-generated attack videos aimed at U.S. Rep. Becca Balint and Sen. Bernie Sanders — videos being eagerly shared by Republican Congressional candidate Mark Coester. Poitras is the kind of bare-knuckles antagonist who tends to float upwards in the turgid swamp of Donald Trump’s America.

And now he’s elevating himself to the status of Crime Victim Slash Martyr, a casualty of the widespread lawlessness he gleefully chronicles in his cheap-ass “Cops” knockoff videos.

In case you missed it, Poitras claims to have been the target of a home invasion and deadly attack. The alleged assailant is a young man who was the subject of one of Planet Hank’s breathless videos. The man has been arrested and is in custody. And so far, all we have is Poitras’ word for what happened.

If you think I’m exaggerating, remember that while the Brattleboro police officially cut off any cooperation with Poitras, he has many friends in the department — perhaps including the officer/officers who wrote up the incident. And then ponder this quote from the judge who oversaw the arraignment hearing:

There may be more to the story than is obvious from the affidavit.

So the judge smells something fishy? So do I.

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Vermont’s Campaign Finance System Is Useless, And That’s a Product of Deliberate Design

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Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas gave it the old college try. This year, after every campaign finance reporting deadline, she published lists of all candidates who failed to file as required by law. This was aimed at encouraging compliance, if only by the embarrassment of being publicly identified as a scofflaw.

It was a good idea, but it didn’t work. The proof? The most recent list of non-compliers, released after the December 15 deadline for Final Reports, was by far the longest of all the lists. Proof that avoidance of embarrassment meant nothing whatsoever to candidates for public office.

The list is actually three lists: Those who filed, those who filed an “Under Threshold” report (didn’t raise or spend $500 or more), and those who just let the deadline fly by. And yes, if your campaign had no reportable activity, you’re still required to officially attest to that fact.

Among statewide candidates, only two are in the failed-to-file category: Republican candidate for treasurer (and Republican National Commitee member) Joshua Bechhoefer and, um, incumbent Auditor Doug Hoffer. Oopsie.

It gets really embarrassing when you get to legislative candidates. The list of Senate scofflaws is almost as long as the list of those who complied. A total of 30 Senate candidates, including seven winners, did not file a Final Report. In the House, 105 candidates failed to file, including (by my count) 32 winners.

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The Press Coverage of the Temporary Shelters Is Somehow Even Worse than I Thought

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The Gods of Time were very kind to Gov. Phil Scott when they arranged for March 15 to fall on a Friday this year. The 15th was the expiration date for the Adverse Weather Conditions emergency housing program, and that’s when the governor, in all his infinite wisdom and alleged niceness, deliberately unsheltered nearly 500 vulnerable Vermonters.

And partly because it happened on a Friday, the press coverage was scant and woefully incomplete. Almost to the point of moral bankruptcy.

It was bad enough that the coverage of Scott’s decision was slanted pretty strongly in his direction. But the lack of attention to the details of his slapped-together temporary shelter “system” may well let him off the hook entirely for an administrative failure of the worst kind

Friday afternoon is the beginning of the long, dark, largely journalism-free weekend. Staffing is minimal at best. Our biggest outlets (VTDigger, Seven Days, Vermont Public) may have a designated reporter who’s on call to cover big breaking news, and the bar is pretty high for that. The TV stations have smaller staffs but still maintain a weekend presence because they’ve got airtime to fill. But don’t expect their A-Team, such as it is. Any coverage from Friday afternoon to Monday will mainly focus on fires, crashes and crime.

With the background set, what did we get for shelter coverage from Friday evening, when the shelters opened, until now? Damn near next to nothing.

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Well, They Found Their Fourth Shelter, and Oh My God

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A little late night catch-up. You may recall that the Scott administration was having a little trouble finding a site for its fourth temporary shelter. They had been looking in Bennington but then, at the last minute, they switched their focus to Brattleboro.

Or, to be more precise, the greater Brattleboro area. Because the site they identified, late yesterday, according to the Brattleboro Reformer, is a building formerly used by Entergy Nuclear when it operated the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Which closed, it says here, ten years ago.

Oh boy.

Just to be clear. They’re taking an office space that’s apparently been out of use for a decade, and they had one single day to set it up as a congregate shelter.

Tell me, is the Scott administration deliberately trying to make these shelters as dire as possible, or is it more of an Inspector Clouseau situation?

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I Think We Should Call This “Winters Hall”

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This, my friends, is what the Scott administration thinks is an acceptable shelter space for dozens of our most vulnerable Vermonters. This is the Agency of Natural Resources Annex building, technically in Berlin but closer to Montpelier than anything. Starting tonight, if the administration has its way, this will be one of four nighttime-only temporary shelters meant to house a total of roughly 500 people being booted from their state-paid motel rooms. For no good reason. Bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, pitched in multisyllabic words intended to drain all the human emotion from the matter.

(Note: Vermont Legal Aid is going to court to try to block the mass exiting operation. I kind of doubt they’ll succeed; this plan is cruel, obnoxious and heartless, but it’s within the purview of state decision-making authority. But we can hope.

Otherwise, what are we looking at here?

I haven’t been inside the Annex, so I can’t witness to the quality of the decor. Probably not great; it’s been used for general storage by various state agencies, which have apparently been busily clearing out all the stuff that’s been sitting around. I can’t swear to the bathroom or shower facilities, although I have heard that the building contains two single-stall bathrooms. For dozens of people?)

Food service? Refrigeration? Privacy? Personal storage? Need we ask?

Did I mention it’s in the Winooski River flood plain and that it was flooded last summer?

Opens at 7:00 p.m. Closes for the day at 7:00 a.m. It’s about a half-hour walk from the Statehouse. (Bitter irony alert: It’s almost directly across the river from a tent encampment that’s been occupied by unhoused folk throughout the winter.) There is no bus service on this industrial roadway that probably gets more heavy-truck traffic than anything else. Perhaps some, or many, of the residents will find day shelter in the Statehouse’s welcoming cafeteria. They sure won’t gain access to the governor’s own offices in the closely-guarded, entry-by-pass-only Pavilion Building.

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Stealth Conservatives: With a Little Help From the Press

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Today’s edition of Stealth Conservatives features two Kindly Old Grandpas, or so their newspaper profiles might lead you to think. On the left, in the photographic sense only, is John Lyddy, the previously discussed election truther running for House. On the right, in every possible sense, is Peter Caldwell, Republican candidate in the solid blue Middlebury House district.

Both received the benefit of kid-gloves treatment in their local newspapers. These candidate profile pieces are often cranked out in a hurry, out of a sense of obligation rather than due diligence. But in a day when many Republicans are purposefully concealing their ultraconservative views, our political media need to do better.

In July, the Brattleboro Reformer published an extremely friendly profile of Lyddy, who has repeatedly exposed his extreme views on social media. The uncritical piece depicted Lyddy as a goodhearted retiree who simply wants to serve his community. And it completely ignores his attendance at the January 6 insurrection (and insistence that the Democrats stole the 2020 election), his veiled threats against elected officials and government agencies, and his advocacy for “a brief correction by civil war” to remove Democrats from office.

Yeah, just a brief civil war.

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Hey Ted Kenney, This You?

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Ted Kenney, candidate for Chittenden County State’s Attorney who’s attempting the Philippe Petit-worthy feat of running as crimefighter and social justice warrior at the same time, might want to be more careful about the company he keeps. Especially in his own Facebook videos.

Kenney is the man at the back left of the group of supporters marching in the Essex Memorial Day parade. The man running point, in the green T-shirt and wide-brimmed hat, is Travis Trybulski, former officer in the Williston Police Department.

He’s a former officer because he and the town signed a “separation agreement” ending his employment. Why? Because Trybulski was the subject of a Brady Letter, a notification from a county prosecutor that an officer’s credibility is so tainted that the prosecutor will no longer use the officer’s testimony in criminal cases.

The reason given in the letter: Trybulski’s numerous “violations of the Fair and Impartial Policing policy through a clear pattern of profiling and bias.” (Information from the Vermont ACLU’s excellent Brady Letter database.)

The letter was signed by Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George, the person Kenney is trying to unseat in the August Democratic primary. In this endeavor, Kenney is more than happy to have the public support of a racist cop who basically lost his job because of Sarah Fair George.

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I Think They Used to Call This “Whoredom”

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The good people of Brattleboro must be wondering “What in hell happened to our local newspaper?” Because the Reformer’s owner, Belarusian native and skillionaire currency trader Paul Belogour, has begun exercising Rich Guy’s Prerogative over the paper’s content.

Last week the Reformer published a despicable opinion piece by Belogour entitled “War is the Answer” in which he explained why the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good thing. Well, actually, he didn’t say “invasion.” He said “the war between Russia and Ukraine,” which is exactly like saying “the battle between lion and antelope.”

That was bad enough, but at least it was labeled “opinion” and carried the usual disclaimer “The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.” But now the paper has published a “news” article that’s essentially a handjob for the boss.

The story, entitled “Refugees to be housed at Belogour’s Bulgarian hotel; his pro soccer team opens doors to displaced women, children.” Said soccer team is also in Bulgaria. It doesn’t even try to connect the story with Brattleboro, because there is no connection.

And it carries the weakest possible disclosure. Belogour is identified, deep in the article, as the owner of Vermont News & Media. Astute readers will know that’s the parent company of the Reformer, Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal. The rest of the reading public will not make that connection. It’s a deceptive, inadequate disclosure. But I bet it made the boss happy.

Those pieces are bad enough. What we don’t know is how many pieces have not been published. Newspapers have wide latitude when it comes to running wire service copy and syndicated columnists. If there was a ban on coverage of the global communitys reaction or the humanitarian disaster or Russian aggression or the heroism of Ukraine’s president, we wouldn’t be able to tell.

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Some Rich Guy is Buying Up Southeast Vermont

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Until today, I’d never heard of Paul (nee Pavel) Belogour, a native of Belarus who’s made a fortune in international investing and related software. Now, he’s the incoming owner of three newspapers in southern Vermont: the Brattleboro Reformer, Bennington Banner, and Manchester Journal. The big prizes are the Reformer and Banner, the only two daily newspapers south of Rutland.

This is either a really good thing or a really bad thing. When an oligarch swoops in and buys media outlets, it may be out of a true sense of obligation to support journalism. The owner’s deep pockets can counter the effects of the news business’ decline. Or it might just be a matter of collecting trophies and buying influence with little regard to the health of the publications. On the rich-guy scale, this purchase amounts to spare change.

Oh, and his native country is a corrupt dictatorship which ranks… let’s see… 158th on Reporters Without Borders’ ranking of 180 countries. RWB noted that Belarus is “the most dangerous country in Europe for media personnel.” Let’s hope Mr. Belogour doesn’t practice his homeland’s approach to the press.

The Reformer and Banner have been circling the drain for some time. How they’ve survived the pandemic on top of all that, I have no idea. But it’s not surprising that Massachusetts-based New England Newspapers, which bought the papers a few years back with an eye toward enhancing the bare-bones operations, has now decided to sell out.

There is another dimension to this. Belogour has been buying up properties in southeast Vermont at a rapid clip. He’s well on his way to becoming a real economic force in the region. And now he’s going to control the daily newspaper? That’s troubling.

So let’s look at the available Google trail on Mr. Belogour, shall we?

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Southern Vermont: Journalism-free zone?

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A while ago I was chatting with somebody from Seven Days, and I half-jokingly suggested that Vermont’s only financially healthy print publication should think about launching a Southern Vermont Edition. Or at least, including some southern Vermont content within the existing paper. (The Rutland Herald and Times Argus share stories, but what’s front page in one is often on page 5 in the other.)

Well, it might just be go time.

New England Newspapers Inc., has laid off 10 editorial employees in Vermont and Massachusetts.

The company laid off three newsroom staffers at the [Brattleboro] Reformer. Tom D’Errico, the manager of content marketing, Mike Faher, senior reporter, and Pat Smith, the newsroom clerk, were given notice on Friday. On June 12, Michelle Karas, the managing editor of the Reformer and the [Bennington] Banner left earlier to take a job at The Colorado Springs Gazette. The Banner laid off newly hired reporter Jacob Colone, and the [Manchester] Journal let go of Brandon Canevari.

Leaving two papers with “skeleton crews”: three reporters at the Banner and only two at the Reformer, whose coverage of Vermont Yankee has been invaluable to the entire state. And at the Journal, they’re facing a Zen question: what do you call a newspaper with no reporters? That’s right: zero.

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