Tag Archives: Donald Trump

News You Should View: Mostly About Trump Again, Sorry

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Well, I thought I had a nice varied collection of stories for this week’s Vermont media roundup. But heck, five of the eight nominees have something to do with how the excesses of Donald Trump are reverberating here in our B.L.S.

Apologies, but that’s the world we’re living in and my starship is on the fritz.

A stark warning about Trump from someone who’s been right more than most. Journalist David Goodman hosts “Vermont Conversation,” a blandly-named weekly show on Radio Vermont/WDEV available afterward as a podcast under the auspices of VTDigger. This week’s guest was author and Dartmouth prof Jeff Sharlet, who has spent years chronicling the dark corners of the far right. He has foreseen the persistence of the Trump phenomenon, its return to power, and its authoritarian intent. He told Goodman that he and his colleagues have “all been surprised by the speed with which it’s happening,” and said that the opposition has a lot of work to do.

Sharlet said he’s seen “a lot more people tuning out than in the first Trump administration. And I want to say to people, you don’t have that privilege.”

Echoes of fascism in a small rural library. In the latest installment of her podcast “Rumble Strip,” Erica Heilman takes us to the Haskell Free Library in Derby Line, VT and Stanstead, QC for an audio accounting of authoritarianism’s jackbooted footprint. The feds’ crackdown on the security-imperiling cross-border traffic at the library, announced after a deliberately provocative visit from dog-killer and Trump functionary Kristi Noem has left both communities shaken. For no reason whatsoever except that our federal government feels compelled to act like a bully.

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Phil Scott Dips a Toe Into the Resistance River and Finds the Water a Bit Chilly

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At his weekly press conference, Gov. Phil Scott refused a call from Senate Democratic leadership to terminate Vermont’s agreement with the federal government that allows immigration detainees to be held in state prisons. “I’m not sure it helps the people being detained by moving them out of Vermont,” Scott said, citing a report that one detainee expressed relief that he was being held in our B.L.S.

And you know, he’s not wrong. At least not in one important way. Immigration attorney Brett Stokes of the Vermont Law and Graduate School and Falko Schilling of the Vermont ACLU told VTDigger that they’d prefer their clients to be close at hand, not sent to unknown facilities in other states — or even overseas. I understand that, and I think we should take their viewpoint seriously.

That said. There is a moral dimension to this question that Scott did not address. Do we as Vermonters want to be complicit in the Trump administration’s crackdown on alleged thought crimes? Are we comfortable being part of this authoritarian project? Phil Scott apparently is, as long as we can help shave the rough edges off.

I must also point out a bitter irony that went unnoticed by our news media.

“I get the frustration that people are feeling. People want to do something about what they see happening,” Scott said. ““But is that in the best interest of those who are being detained to just ship them off to somewhere else, Mississippi, Texas, wherever?”

Ahem.

Mississippi, you say?

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A Little Fascist Cosplay Right Here in Vermont

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Thank God Becca White was there.

I’m so sorry Becca White was there, because she had to witness… I’d call it a farce, which it is, but it may well be a harbinger of the post-democratic America that Donald Trump wants to create. A post-democratic America which would be no respecter of state borders, red, purple or blue.

The state senator from Windsor County was on hand when her friend and Vermont resident Mohsen Mahdawi was kidnapped by cowardly stormtrooper wannabes hiding their faces and driving unmarked vehicles. In fact, they needed four unmarked vehicles and who knows how many agents to corral a legal U.S. resident and known pacifist.

Brave, brave men. With little tiny penises.

What would we know about Mahdawi if not for White being present to document his kidnapping? We’d probably know the fact of his detention (his lawyer was present), but we wouldn’t have video proof of this unlawful action by a bunch of unAmerican secret police cosplayers.

God, it’s contemptible. And deeply scary. How’s that thing go? “First they came for the Palestinians, and I did not speak out because I am not Palestinian.” Something like that.

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News You Should View: Yeah, Most of It Is About Trump

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More and more of our Vermont news space is taken up with the local/state ramifications of Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, the rule of law, and the government itself. So much so that unrelated stories are sometimes getting short shrift. More on that in my next post, or at least that’s the plan. In the meantime, please enjoy the panoply of bad news that Phil Scott thinks we should stop fretting about.

Counting the Trump damage done. Going to start with not a story, but an ongoing data collection effort. Vermont Public is tracking federal funding losses in our state in an easily digestible list. This is not the “rhetoric” that our governor insists we’re wasting time on; these are actual cutbacks with tangible effects. You’ve read about most of these if you follow the news, but it’s good to have them all in one place. The most recent entry is a lost federal grant for a local history training program, which was mentioned in a recent post and will make another appearance later in this missive.

Environmental Law Center “threatened on two fronts.” From the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, a story about concern at the Vermont Law and Graduate School about potential Trump threats to the school’s Environmental Law Center. They’re feeling the heat, between Trump’s attacks on major law firms and educational institutions and his assault on anything that smacks of climate change or other inconvenient truths.

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Do Something.

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Like many disheartened liberals, I almost completely withdrew from following national politics after the November election. I just didn’t have the capacity to deal with a flood tide of bad news about what Donald Trump was going to do.

I still spend less time consuming national news than I used to. But I can no longer enjoy the luxury of abstinence. Things are just too bad and too consequential.

The above passage is from Chapter 24 of the Book of Proverbs. I came upon it while tracking down the famous quotation, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” It’s usually and wrongly attributed to Edmund Burke; as with many famous quotations, its actual origin is murky at best.

That sentence started rattling around my head as I was writing about the many ways in which Trump is already having a corrosive effect right here in Vermont, and about Gov. Phil Scott’s refusal to acknowledge the harm being done or speak out against it.

The last straw was the Friday, April 11 edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, in which she went deep on the crisis in the Social Security Administration the damage Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is doing at the Department of Health and Human Services.

So. I decided to do something.

Not just one thing. I decided to do one thing every day. Indefinitely.

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Hey, Governor, Can We Start to Worry Now?

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Gov. Phil Scott’s message that we should all take a chill pill regarding Donald Trump’s continuing rampage through the china shop of democracy and good government is starting to look remarkably poorly timed. This week’s Vermont news is loaded with headlines about Trump, and none of them are good. So I have to ask. Is it time to worry at least a little bit? Could our chief executive muster a discreet furrowing of brow on behalf of all the Vermonters having their lives tossed around by Trump?

The worst of all the stories is about the arrival of the feds’ jackbooted immigration regime, which threatens to imminently deport two Nicaraguan high schoolers who are here legally and have done nothing wrong. Adam Bunting, interim superintendent of the Champlain Valley School District, announced the federal action in a letter to the CVSD community. “These students, who have done nothing wrong, are suddenly being told they don’t belong,” Bunting wrote. “To deport these students is not only heartbreaking for those of us who know them personally — it also contradicts the very values Vermonters work to instill in our young people,”

A story by Seven Days’ Alison Novak notes that “Elected officials, including state representatives, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) office and state Treasurer Mike Pieciak, have also reached out offering support” to CVSD.

Hmm. Notice any absences there?

Governor Scott, where the hell are you? Do you agree with Bunting that the federal action “contradicts the very values Vermonters work to instill in our young people”? If not, please explain. If so, then SAY SOMETHING.

These deportation orders, as inhumane as they are and as shocking to our consciences, are only the beginning of this week’s parade of bad news.

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Phil Pontificates From His Perch of Privilege

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Our Beloved GovernorTM seems intent on torpedoing his own reputation as a “Nice Guy,” or maybe he’s giving it a thorough stress test to prove that it’s completely unsinkable. He has issued a statement in response to Education Secretary Zoie Saunders’ latest misadventure that simply oozes smugness and the kind of bland reassurance that could only come from a man in an unassailable position of privilege.

In a few short paragraphs, Scott casts himself as The Wisest Man in Vermont, remaining calm when all about him are unreasonably aflutter over Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and the federal government. And he paints Saunders as the victim of “some activists” who fomented “fear and anxiety throughout our education system.”

Yeah, that’s right, it’s not Saunders, who caused this whole ruckus by ordering all superintendents to attest that their policies and curricula were compliant with Trump administration orders — on Friday night, the worst possible time to distribute guidance on a touchy issue — and then barfed all over her shoes trying to walk it back. No, it wasn’t her fault, it was those damn activists. Whose number includes, among others, the associations representing Vermont school boards, principals, and superintendents, plus the teacher’s union.

Well, either the entire professional educational community is included in Scott’s shitlist of “activists,” or they are all easily duped flibbertigibbets who can be whipped into a lather for no reason by unnamed “activists.”

That’s bad enough, but I’m just getting started.

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Pieciak is Everywhere

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It’s pretty obvious to any Vermont Political Observer, capitalized or otherwise, that the skids are being heavily greased for Treasurer Mike Pieciak to be the next Democratic nominee for governor. But I’d like to point out a small but telling piece of evidence that should not go unremarked upon.

Last week the Vermont Bar Association held a meeting in Manchester, and the occasion was marked by near-universal castigation of the Trump administration’s assault on the legal system (as reported, after the fact, by VTDigger). Members unanimously approved a statement affirming their support for the rule of law. In addition, Digger reports, more than 200 Vermont attorneys and elected officials have signed a statement “supporting the independence of the judiciary and outlining 15 instances of the current administration allegedly disregarding the rule of law.” The statement also announces a rally for lawyers opposed to Trump’s trample on May 3 in Burlington.

Prominent people quoted in the article include Reiber, Attorney General Charity Clark, Bar Association board president (and former deputy AG) Josh Diamond, former assistant U.S. Attorney Scott McGee, Bennington attorney David Silver, and his daughter, attorney* Natalie Silver…

… and Treasurer Mike Pieciak.

Okay, Pieciak is, in fact, a member of the Bar, so technically he qualifies. But he hasn’t been an active attorney since February 2014, when he took a position in the Peter Shumlin administration. He’s been in state government, not as an attorney, ever since.

*Correction: Silver is not an attorney. She is a law school graduate awaiting her law license.

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Here’s One Way to Identify the Most Conservative Members of the State Senate

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You may have heard that many sectors of the Vermont economy have been thrown into turmoil by Donald Trump’s ridiculous tariff war with Canada. From tourism to energy to craft beer and spirits to maple products to construction materials (when we’re already in a housing crisis due in large part to high building costs), we have begun feeling the pain from Trump’s Quixotic crusade. (Meaning no disrespect to the Man of La Mancha.)

One small response to the situation has come in the form of a state Senate resolution, S.R.11, “supporting warm and cooperative relations on the part of both the United States and the State of Vermont with Canada and urging President Trump to remove all tariffs that he has imposed against Canadian imports and to refrain from subsequently imposing any new tariffs against Canadian imports.”

Seems like something we can all agree with, no? Even Republican senators can see the harm that threatens their constituents from a trade war with Canada. And indeed, the vast majority of Republicans signed on as co-sponsors, joining all the Democrats and Progressive/Democrat Tanya Vyhovsky. A total of 27 names are attached to S.R.11.

Checking my math real quick, that leaves a mere three senators who haven’t signed on.

The envelope, please…

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Phil Scott’s Two Big Money-Saving Ideas: Unshelter the Homeless, and Take Food from the Mouths of Schoolkids

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The contest for “Stupidest Veto in the History of Phil Scott Vetoes” is a richly competitive one, with numerous contenders for the honors among the [checks notes] 52 vetoes he has unleashed upon Vermont’s normally placid and communitarian political life*. But the next one he threatens to cast may prove to be the winner.

*Obligatory reminder: Scott has racked up 52 vetoes, more than twice as many as any other governor. He long ago surpassed Howard Dean’s second-place total of 21, and Dean served three and a half years longer than Scott. “Governor Nice Guy” indeed.

Scott is now promising to veto H.141, the Budget Adjustment Act, because the Democratic Legislature dared to spend a little more money on sheltering the homeless than he wanted to.

Honestly, why he has such a bug up his butt about the motel voucher program, I don’t know. He’s bound and determined to kill it, willing to go to almost any length to do so. Any length short of, you know, proposing an alternative, which he has never managed to do. Well, there’s permitting reform, which would likely increase the overall housing supply years from now.

It’s almost as big a bug as the one lodged in his rectum over universal school meals. Limiting free meals to schoolkids is, after all, his one and only concrete suggestion for cutting the cost of public education. “Governor Nice Guy” indeed.

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