In the span of less than an hour we went from, “We’re not proposing a carbon tax,” to “We are totally recommending a regional carbon tax on motor fuels, which likely won’t raise enough revenue to cover all the spending we want, so we’ll need another source of revenue, which will likely come from a straight carbon tax at the state level.”
After record-breaking turnout in 2020, and with zero evidence of widespread fraud or election rigging, why would they want to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote? The answer is simple: because they were unhappy with the results and want less people to vote.
Free speech is one of our foundational principles and we must fight to maintain it. We must not allow ourselves to be steamrolled by thuggish tactics and fear-mongering.
The “remedy” of concerned citizens regaining control of curriculums only rarely succeeds. A better solution: let objecting parents send their children to independent schools, taking a large fraction of their public school equalized per pupil cost of education with them.
Mr. Varney is correct to flag this program as another entitlement that he feels will never be repealed. However, it will do a lot of damage in the meantime.
Powerful teacher union bosses saw shuttered schools as an opportunity to extract billions and billions of additional dollars from hard-pressed taxpayers for the unionized government schools that they largely control. The shakedown scheme succeeded to an extent they never could have imagined pre-COVID-19.
An amusing rant by John Hagen on VTDigger seeks to attack “right-wing criticism” of critical race theory. The piece is so rife with untruths that it is a choice piece of writing for sensible Vermonters to examine carefully.
New York City makes it almost impossible to get a permit to carry a firearm for self-protection. Here’s what TV journalist John Stossel had to do when he applied.
In addition to meeting with adults, I also had the chance to play some ball with dozens of young Vermonters who are attending summer programs funded by the American Rescue Plan Act. These young Vermonters are the future leaders of our country.
Carson v. Makin states the question this way: Does a state violate the Religious Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting students participating in an otherwise generally available student-aid program from choosing to use their aid to attend schools that provide religious, or “sectarian,” instruction?
Equally egregious is that this legislation would have created 6.5 new bureaucratic positions in state government, with an annual appropriation of $850,000 for pay and benefits. That works out to $130,000 per bureaucrat — an insult to every Vermonter.
Many people have questioned me on whether I believe health care reform efforts are working in Vermont and if so to quantify it. To accomplish that, it’s important to go back in time and talk about efforts over the past couple of decades to create a baseline.