Tag Archives: Vermont Daily Chronicle

Return of Dregs of the Ballot: The Flamethrowing Farmer

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Attention voters in the South Hero school district! If you’re looking for a school board candidate who believes there are two and ONLY two legitimate genders, the 2020 election was fatally tainted by fraud, Vermont is a totalitarian state and its media “actively censor” conservative viewpoints, and higher education has been taken over by “Marxist (i.e., Centralized Control) professors,” then cast your vote for Robert Fireovid!

On the other hand, if you think he’s a dangerous extremist, please vote for someone else. Anyone else.

Fireovid considers himself a victim of our socialist culture, and believes the schools are leading our children down the primrose path of gender fluidity. He has written that he would seek to bar teachers from teaching about “alternatives to heterosexual practices” or asking students to declare their preferred pronouns. He would examine school libraries for any materials that “contain sexual content or discuss gender fluidity.” He would also prevent the district from punishing school staff who insist on using “pronouns consistent with a student’s actual physical sex,’ which I assume means whatever they’ve got in their pants.

You want that on your school board?

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Let’s Check In On Downtown Burling — Oh, Dear

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There’s a lot of politically-motivated bemoaning of the Queen City’s fallen state these days. Crime, vandalism, fear, lawlessness, tsunamis, earthquakes, alien invasions… but now somebody’s brazen enough to label it an “apocalypse.”

Granted, it’s only Guy Page of the Vermont Daily Chronicle, but still. He really outdid himself with this one:

Fact check, please!

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Joe Benning Peeks Over the Parapet and Is Met with a Volley of Arrows

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Fresh off a loss in his bid for lieutenant governor, outgoing Sen. Joe Benning wrote an essay on how the Vermont Republican Party can pull itself out of its far-right briar patch and be competitive again. You’d think that some Republicans’ ears would be open after an election where everything but Phil Scott went horribly awry for them.

But the VTGOP is not open to a change of course, judging by the swift, aggressive, and downright accusatory response to his essay. Not to mention the ugly, racist blast of id posted by “Farmer” John Klar at about the same time. You look at the leadership of the VTGOP and the ticket it put before voters, and you have to realize that there are a lot more Klars in this party than there are Bennings.

Benning decried his party’s “loudest voices” and their belief that January 6 was a harmless rally, their “vitriol and hatred,” and their adherence to “every Q-anon conspiracy imaginable.” He wrote that in order to be competitive, “the VTGOP course must remain center/right” to attract support from independents and centrists.

Benning’s essay was a thoughtful reflection on political reality in Vermont from a conservative Republican. It was posted on, well, two of those “loudest voices,” the Vermont Daily Chronicle and True North Reports. (Note: A somewhat different version of his piece has been posted on VTDigger, for those who’d rather not give those right-wing “news” operations even a single precious click.)

And oh boy, the comments. They came in bunches, and they were angry.

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Scary Eagle Man Election Eve Anecdote FAIL

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Gerald Malloy made the customary Election Eve rounds of all 14 Vermont counties today. The antepenultimate stop was in Rutland, where his visit sparked a touching memory of an early encounter that fortified him for the long road ahead.

“Dolores Luebke,” hmmm….

Would that be the Dolores Luebke who’s served as chair of the Pawlet Republican Committee? The Dolores Luebke who’s a Second Amendment absolutist? The Dolores Luebke who has repeatedly made baseless accusations of election fraud against former state representative Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, who’s now running to retake his old seat?

Yeah, if that’s the kind of “substance” Malloy possesses, allow me to fervently hope he loses by a truly embarrassing margin.

Receipts!

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Big Ol’ Cop Whines Like a Baby

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Oh noes, Northfield Police Chief John Helfant has a bad case of the hurt fee-fees. Helfant, who has somehow kept his job despite being labeled as an unreliable witness by the Washington County State’s Attorney, claims he’s a victim of retaliation for his bigoted comments about transgender athletes.

Let’s back up a minute. Helfant felt it necessary to wade into the controversy triggered by a disgrace-to-journalism report by WCAX-TV, since taken down and banished to purgatory, about the situation with the Randolph High School girls’ volleyball team. WCAX’s original report, for which it has failed to apologize and devoutly wishes would go away forever, featured one interview with an athlete who, at the bidding of her mother, went public with a complaint about a transgender team member. By all other accounts, she made up some shit about being harassed by the trans girl.

Helfant, who previously made a fuss about a Black Lives Matter flag at the high school, wrote a letter to school officials complaining about the equal accommodation offered to the trans girl and accusing the district of abetting criminal activity. Just to be sure it went public, he offered it up for publication by the Vermont Daily Chronicle. In it, Helfant repeatedly referred to trans girls as “biological males” or even as “male students” and called for them to be segregated in locker rooms and bathrooms. He wrote that the district might be criminal accessories to voyeurism for allowing the trans girl — oh, pardon me, “male student” — to use the gender-appropriate locker room.

The district has temporarily removed him as a volunteer coach for the girls’ soccer team, citing unfinished paperwork related to the customary background check for school coaches. You know, because there have been so many instances of youth coaches sexually abusing their charges, background checks seem like a good idea, no exceptions, even if you’re a police chief. Or, say, a Catholic priest.

Maybe it’s retaliation, I don’t know. But if I were running the district, Helfant would be kicked to the curb for good.

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