When President Lyndon Johnson launched his War on Poverty in the 1960s, he pledged to eliminate poverty in America. More than five decades, several welfare programs, and $25 trillion later, the welfare system has utterly failed the poor.
Here’s where Pollina’s myopic arrogance kicks in. Why doesn’t his Bernie Rule apply to a convenience store clerk or a childcare worker? If you want to earn more money and work fewer hours you’re simply “not signing up for the right kind of job.”
Those who have enlarged the size of government at the expense of liberty have fooled themselves into thinking that there is something morally superior about redistributing other people’s money while padlocking their own wallet.
A former Vermont State House journalist — a sincerely good, decent, civil person of long and pleasant acquaintance — recently chastised me on my Facebook page for backing “racist” President Donald Trump.
Carbon taxes are a cure worse than the alleged disease: They have a minimal impact on emissions and will do next to nothing to affect climate change. In the end, they hurt the very citizens they are intended to help.
The billing from Green Mountain Power is about $75 to $80 per month. But what I found interesting in the detail of the charges were the assessments for energy efficiency charges and the Electric Assistance Program — 9 percent of the total billing.
Vermonters are falling behind the rest of New England in terms of tax competitiveness and income growth. Thankfully, we haven’t used our legislators’ poor behavior as an excuse to live beyond our means.
The climate change warriors have always excluded wood from their carbon tax schemes because, according to them, wood burning is carbon neutral — new wood growth eventually sucks back the carbon dioxide released from combustion. Now we learn that that takes a hundred years.
That’s right, on a per capita basis, we each paid $5,015 to our Vermont government in 2017, more than any other state.
In sum, I believe a pluralistic system is the best way to tap into the multiple pathways that work for a wide range of students. It is also the best route to quality. Consider the success of Vermont’s widely diverse independent schools.
Republicans have been placed in the untenable position of seeming to advocate for environmental degradation by challenging the diversion of public resources toward this “global warming menace.”
Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric on the $15 minimum wage — rhetoric echoed by many politicians here in Vermont — just suffered a violent collision with economic reality.