Over the years our federal government has created all sorts of citizen corps. During World War I it was the American Protective League, that my grandfather belonged to. During the Depression, it was the Civilian Conservation Corps, pioneered by an old Vermonter named Perry Merrill. President Kennedy’s contribution was the Peace Corps, sending idealistic Americans off to distant climes to help life up the ignorant natives. President Johnson hatched the Job Corps, camps to train idle youths in needed job skills. The Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes survives to this day.

With the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer, President Biden announced his intention to replace him on the Supreme Court with a Black woman. A following ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, disagree with that racial approach to filling the seat:

Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. According to a 2020 study from the Claims Conference, an alarming number of individuals from age 18 to 39 know little about the Holocaust, and young Vermonters are little different in this regard. The Claims Conference has advocated for Jewish Holocaust survivors since 1951, distributing $90 billion in compensation.

Women in Vermont are being told Proposal 5, the so-called Reproductive Liberty Amendment, will preserve a woman’s right to choose along the lines of Roe v. Wade. This is a highly misleading claim. What the vague language Proposal 5 actually does is give the father of an unborn child an “right to personal autonomy” equal to that of the woman.

Read Proposal 5 and you will see clearly that it mentions neither women, nor abortion. It says,

Six months ago, the Blue Ribbon Tax Structure Commission recommended expanding Vermont’s “sales tax base to all consumer-level purchases of goods and services except healthcare and casual consumer-to-consumer transactions” while reduce the sales tax rate to 3.6%.* Given the chance to consider the proposal, one senator appeared especially eager to consider the proposal.

You may be interested in a new national organization called Country First. It was launched last year by a man I admire, Rep. Adam Kinzinger. He is an eight term central Illinois Republican and was an Air Force pilot in the Iraqi war. He voted to impeach President Trump after the January 6 Capitol riot, and thus earned Trump’s undying enmity. The Democrats in charge of Illinois have just gerrymandered his district, so he will step down from Congress next January to lead Country First.

Thirty five years ago the scientist who set the alarm bells ringing about global warming was Dr. James Hansen, then director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. His testimony in 1988 launched Al Gore on his climate crusade, and Hansen, now retired, has continued as the preeminent guru of the threat of catastrophic climate change. He got himself arrested a few years back in the UK for picketing a coal burning power plant.

As the legislature takes up the Climate Action Plan’s recommendation to electrify pretty much everything in Vermont by the year 2050, including home/business heating and transportation, a big question is how are we supposed to create and deliver enough electricity to actually do that. And, of course, how much might it cost.

Last week, Jared Duval a member of the Climate Council and the Energy Action Network, testified virtually to the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.