Tag Archives: Newport Dispatch

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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News You Should View: The Empire Strikes Back

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The response to this feature’s debut was overwhelmingly positive, so here we are again. For those just joining us, every week I’m scanning the news coverage of Vermont and pointing out a bunch of items that might have escaped your attention. These could be news stories, essays, blogposts, podcasts, videos, or what have you.

This week’s subtitle is a reference to the second installment in a series, but also to a story that might turn out to be dramatically impactful — but has barely been covered by our mainstream outlets. Probably a matter of time before our own domestic empire strikes back.

The Statehouse Transgender Kerfuffle. This story began in the Vermont Daily Chronicle, the extremely conservative outlet for right-wing opinion and news of questionable veracity. A recent VDC story has gained traction in the wider conservative media ecosystem, which could lead to significant implications for our relations with the Trump administration.

And here it is. On Wednesday, March 12, the Vermont Family Alliance, a conservative activist group, tried to hold an event in the Statehouse promoting “detransition,” the allegedly growing phenomenon of people who’ve had gender affirming care subsequently deciding to return to their birth gender. Transgender activists disrupted the event, leading Statehouse officials to call a halt to the proceedings. This story has been relentlessly followed up by the Chronicle and been amplified by Fox News and other outlets as an example of the oppressive left trampling the free speech views of conservatives.

It’s a stupid story but if it filters up to the Trump White House, we might find ourselves in the crosshairs just like Maine Gov. Janet Mills or the University of Pennsylvania. I may be writing a full post about this, but I did want to spotlight it in this forum.

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Scott Milne hints at an actual policy position

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So, Our Man Mahatma was up in Newport on Wednesday, hangin’ out at the Agway and talkin’ politics with the folks. And there to capture the excitement was a camera from the Newport Dispatch, an online-only news website.

Simple, short video, a few Q&A’s; one of which concerned rising property taxes. And while Milne did not take an actual position, he did hint at the vague outlines of a position. Which, for him, constitutes news. Take it away, Mahatma:

“I think there’s a need to rapidly address a solution for not having taxes increase any more while we figure out how to restructure things. That’s gonna be one of the fundamental principles of our campaign, something we’ll be talking a lot more about over the next two weeks. So I’d ask you to stay tuned. You’ll be happy with what we’re going to be talking about.”

Sounds like he’d call for a freeze on property taxes while he and the Legislature work out a longer-term solution. It sounds unworkable to me; there’d be a pretty rough immediate impact on school budgets and the transfer payments needed to ensure equal funding across the state. But hey, it’s an idea from Scott Milne. And that’s news.

But then he kinda blows it by promising an actual policy in “the next two weeks.”

Oh, c’mon now. When he outlined his two-stage campaign — attack Shumlin in August, unroll his positions in September — it seemed way too late to introduce a Milne Plan to the voters. Now he’s promising a Plan by the end of the month. Only a few weeks before the election.

Meanwhile, Milne continues to cede the conservative spotlight to Libertarian Dan Feliciano, who once again held a news conference yesterday where he once again got more attention than he deserves. The funny thing is, Feliciano pulled a Milne: he criticized Shumlin on state spending, but refused to say how he’d cut the budget.

Scott Milne has allowed Dan Feliciano to become a big problem. Not as a viable contender, but as a third “real” candidate in the race, likely to be included in gubernatorial debates.

If those debates were simply Milne vs. Shumlin, then Milne would have room to attack and establish his own positions. With Feliciano sharing the stage, there’ll be a lot less room to maneuver. Milne will be the Man In The Middle, and he’ll almost certainly look wishy-washy by contrast to the tight-fisted Feliciano and the self-proclaimed “progressive” Shumlin. He’d have to be a very strong, forceful presence to stand out in that situation. And to date, Milne has shown no ability whatsoever to be strong or forceful.