Tag Archives: Newport Daily Express

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

5 Replies

We appear to have a combustible situation in the tiny Northeast Kingdom town of Glover, whose population includes our current lieutenant governor.

At issue is the dirt-track road seen above on Google Street View. It’s called Rodgers Road, and Lt. Gov. John Rodgers wants to claim part of it as his very own private property. He would allow recreational access, but block any motorized vehicle traffic. Rodgers is not the only resident of the road, and others would be inconvenienced (to put it mildly) if they could no longer use it. He has reportedly bullied the town road crew, and is threatening to take his hometown to court if he doesn’t get his way.

Nice guy, huh? Kinda sheds new light on his stated intent to work with all parties in the Legislature. C’mon, the guy can’t even get along with his own selectboard.

This situation was reported by WCAX-TV way back on May 8, which shows you how much attention I pay to local TV news. I am rather stunned at the lack of follow-up by other media outlets. It’s clearly a story of public interest and WCAX’s report was backed by emails between Rodgers and town officials. It was worthy of coverage by VTDigger or Vermont Public or Seven Days, the latter of which devoted significant space in January to a profile piece identifying Rodgers as a potential future governor*. You’d have to ask these outlets why they’ve chosen to ignore this story. It’s maybe the kind of thing we ought to know about a potential future governor, no?

*That story quoted Rodgers as saying “We need to hush the noise from the left and the right and govern from the middle for the benefit of all Vermonters.” Again, he can’t even get along with his own damn selectboard.

There has been follow-up, by WCAX, the local daily, and at least one national news operation. Let’s catch up, shall we?

Continue reading →

Here’s a New One: Republicans Wanting to Limit Money in Politics

1 Reply

Will wonders never cease. Two Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would set limits on fundraising for legislative offices. It’s scheduled to get a quick committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, and is likely to be ignored after that. But if the Democratic majority was interested in some world-class trolling, they’d let the bill go forward and watch Republican leadership work frantically to pull the plug on the thing.

Two House members from the Kingdom, Woody Page and Larry Labor, are the lead sponsors of H.116, which would prohibit House and Senate candidates from raising more than $1,000 from any single source — including candidates’ contributions to their own campaigns — and set a $29,000 ceiling for total fundraising by any legislative candidate. (The bill would also do a bunch of other things, but the legislative limits are by far the most impactful.)

Page and Labor found a very friendly ear in The Newport Daily Express, which published a totally one-sided article about the bill that extensively quoted the co-sponsors and just about nobody else. This, despite the fact that the story quoted Page and Labor’s vociferous criticism of former Democratic state representative Katherine Sims, who lost a bid for state Senate in November. There’s no sign that the Express sought comment from Sims, which is gross journalistic malpractice.

What the two Kingdoms’men don’t seem to realize is that their bill would hurt their own party’s cause much more than anything else. Well, there’s also the rank hypocrisy of Republicans, the party of plutocrats, bitching about excess money in politics, but hey, who’s counting?

Continue reading →