Vermont had the highest percent increase of drug overdose deaths from March 2020 to March 2021, 85.1%, according the most recent Center for Disease Control data available. Overdose deaths increased from 114 to 211.

On or about April 2021, the character of human immunity changed. It is when the prestigious Mayo Clinic decided that the immunity acquired after COVID-19 infection is inconsequential. Before this paradigm shift, scientists believed that exposure to infections resulted in powerful and enduring protection known as adaptive or acquired immunity. The adaptive immune system is after all, a complex and integrated physiological marvel that protects the body by targeting threats with precision and accuracy.

There has been a reported uptick in bad behavior in Vermont’s public schools, highlighted this past week by incidents in Bristol, where a second grader in the local elementary school destroyed a classroom. If you see the pictures, it is difficult to believe a seven-year-old could be capable of inflicting this kind of damage. And, according to multiple reports, this is not an isolated incident.

On October 6, Hank Kim, of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems testified in front of the Pension Benefits, Design, and Funding Task Force, which is responsible for finding a way to reduce Vermont’s massively underfunded state employee and teacher pensions.

Last week I received a “Dear Fellow Vermonter” newsletter from Senator Bernie Sanders. It appeals for support of Bernie’s $3.5 trillion dollar social entitlement bill. Writes Bernie “this $3.5 trillion investment will be paid for by demanding that the wealthiest people in our country and large profitable corporations, start paying their fair share of taxes.”

At the October 5^th meeting of the Vermont Climate Council, paid consultant David Hill provided a sector by sector rundown of what and where emissions must come if the state is to avoid a self-invited lawsuit for failing to meet its self-inflicted emissions reduction targets. When the subject turned to the agriculture sector, Hill informed the Council that 70% of Agriculture GHG emissions comes form “enteric fermentation” which is the politely scientific term for cow burps and gas releases from the other end of the animals. This, Hill proclaimed, must be reduced by just under 50% by the year 2030.

Last week I watched news reports on WCAX and WPTZ, featuring the “Facebook whistleblower” Francis Haugen. She’s the former Facebook employee who copied thousands of pages of internal documents to prove that Facebook designs its products to attract customers, whose fees pay their bills and generate lots of profit for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Well, duh.

The penultimate Climate Action Plan Virtual Public Engagement Event last Thursday was full of drama, despair and even discussion of rationing to beat climate change.

For a while now, we have been reporting and commenting on how utterly unrealistic, economically irrational, logistically impossible, and downright nutty the policy prescriptions being kicked around by the Vermont Climate Council are. Turns out members of the Council and its subcommittees aren’t totally oblivious to this fact either. They are fully aware that they are setting up the elected legislators who ultimately support their recommendations for a political suicide mission.