Nicholas Wade, formerly a senior science reporter at the New York Times, issued a dazzling investigative report last week on the origins of the COVID virus. He leans to the conclusion that COVID somehow escaped from the Wuhan laboratory, although the case isn’t closed yet.

On May 18, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos distributed a press release in defense of S.15, an elections bill currently under debate in the Vermont legislature, that would make permanent the practice of mailing live ballots to all active voters regardless of request.

What follows is a point by point refutation of claims made by the Secretary of State regarding the content and potential impact of S.15 on Vermont elections by Rob Roper, president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Points made are in red italics.

The Washington Post reported last week that  “nearly 40 Senate Democrats are pushing President Biden to overturn a Trump-era policy that helps some nonprofits that pour money into elections conceal their donors’ names.

According to theories surrounding the concept of “systemic racism,” disparate outcomes between races in any system is all the evidence you need to conclude that systemic racism exists in that system. Hence, our healthcare system is deemed systemically racist because Blacks are disproportionately impacted by Covid-19.

Well, by that standard, S.15, the elections bill under debate in the Vermont House of Representatives as we speak that would make permanent mailing ballots to all registered voters regardless of request, would appear to be injecting a systemically racist policy into Vermont’s voting system.

Yes, the Vermont Climate Council, the twenty-three member climate change task force whose numbers have swollen with the incorporation of a multitude of outside subcommittee members, want more money for themselves in their efforts to make your life less affordable.

The forced remote learning fiasco imposed on Vermont public school students this past year highlighted the lack of common benefits available from the state’s education system.

            A few days ago I received a copy of an email to a constituent from Rep. George Till, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. The Committee is apparently discussing which if any of the recommendations of the Vermont Tax Structure Commission to enact.

Here’s the latest on the climate change battlefront. Guy Page of the Vermont Daily reported last week that “The Vermont chapter of the Sierra Club is standing with the national Sierra Club petition to the Biden administration to regulate dairy farms of 500 or more cows under the Clean Air Act, due to air pollution and climate concerns. If approved, the regulations would affect about 30 Vermont farms, at least to start with.”