Tag Archives: Tom Monaghan

Put Not Your Trust in Whackjob Rich Dudes

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The new cover story in Seven Days is an absolute classic in what that newspaper does best: Deep dives on Vermont issues, entertainingly written and festooned with telling anecdotes.

The subject is Raj Bhakta, wealthy founder of theif-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it WhistlePig Whiskey brand and archconservative Catholic. The story, compellingly told by Brian Nearing, covers Bhakta’s string of broken promises regarding the former campus of Green Mountain College in Poultney. (Funny how these Jesus Dudes have no problem going back on their word.) Six years ago he was seen as a, pardon the expression, savior for the campus and the area’s economy; now he’s cutting ties with the project in a way that promises to thoroughly screw the town and its taxpayers.

You should read the story for yourself. I’ll just mention a few of the low points of the Bhakta oeuvre, as documented by Nearing:

  • He first came to public notice as a contestant on Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice.
  • During a 2006 run for Congress in Pennsylvania, he “he rode an elephant into the Rio Grande accompanied by a six-man mariachi band” to draw attention to border security issues. (He lost by a two-to-one margin.)
  • After buying the GMC campus in 2020 with grand promises of redevelopment, he immediately started “rubb[ing] people the wrong way” in Poultney by dressing “like an aristocrat,” …”park[ing] his collection of luxury cars on the glossy floor of the former college gym,” and joining a public Zoom meeting “brandishing a cigar in front of a painting that appeared to depict him as Napoleon,” among other things.
  • Bhakta has “sparred frequently with state and local officials, even as the town sought to grease the skids for his project.”
  • During his ownership, the campus has fallen into disrepair and would, at minimum, require substantial investments just to restore any shred of usefulness.
  • The status of GMC’s extensive and valuable library seems to be a mystery.

And worst of all for Poultney, his current plan is to donate the entire shebang to some kind of nonprofit enterprise whose goal is shoring up Western civilization and instigating the “spiritual revival of our Christian faith,” which hey, if it was true to the Gospel I’d be in favor, but Bhakta’s Revised Version sounds like white nationalism. If he finds a sucker taker for the campus, the town would lose a major source of property tax revenue — and still be on the hook for providing water and sewer services, which would be a huge burden.

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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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