The Ethan Allen Institute is proud to announce that Meg Hansen has joined our Board of Directors.

As a bedrock principle of state energy policy, Vermont law requires the Public Utility Commission to specify “strategies for reducing electric rates to the greatest extent possible in Vermont over the most immediate six-year period, for the next succeeding six-year period, and long-term sustainable strategies for achieving and maintaining the lowest possible electric rates over the full 20-year planning horizon consistent with the goal of maintaining a financially stable electric utility industry in Vermont”.  Disturbingly however, by requiring highly subsidized wind and solar electricity our elected officials have prevented this law from being followed. 

A key component of the Climate Action Plan just put forward by the Vermont Climate Council is a  thing they’re calling “The Clean Heat Standard.” This is a convoluted scheme that is in practice a stealth tax on home heating oil, propane, natural gas, and kerosene that will drive up the costs of those products for consumers.

Last month there was an horrific report out of Waukesha, Wisconsin, where a crazed driver ran his SUV through a Christmas parade, killing six people.

Leafing through a new Cato Institute monograph the other day, titled “How Wealth Fuels Growth: The Role of Angel Investment” by Chris Edwards, I extracted a few useful thoughts.

            The Brattleboro Reformer is reporting a story of potential voter fraud in regard to a vote on the closing of Windham Elementary School. The article states,

A complaint filed by two parents at Windham Elementary School claims three non-residents participated in a controversial vote resulting in the school staying open rather than closing.

When Vermont’s Legislature appointed the Pension Benefits, Design, and Funding Task Force, there was a good chance tax increases would be discussed at some point. Now, Vermonters have a little clearer idea of what those could look like.

The Vermont Climate Council is poised to recommend that Vermont join the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) as a partial funding source for their Climate Action Plan, due in December. TCI is a hypothetical “cap and trade” scheme for motor fuels that several states would have to sign onto to make viable. The Council pursued this policy avenue despite repeated warning signs that TCI was not popular within the New England/Mid-Atlantic region, did not have the support of a majority of state governments, and did not look likely to ever become enacted.

Here’s an intriguing quote from last Wednesday’s Weekly Dispatch: “Freddie deBoer considers himself a democratic socialist, but he’s come to a conclusion that very few of his fellow leftists have. “It’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise,” he writes for The New York Times.