John McClaughry, Myers Mermel and Wendy Wilton write 40+ commentaries a year discussing the most pressing public policy issues in Vermont. These are published online and in newspapers throughout the state, including VT Digger, the Caledonian Record, the Rutland Herald, the St. Albans Messenger, the Bennington Banner, Vermont Biz, TrueNorthReports, Times Argus, the Eagle Times and Vermont Daily. If you see an EAI commentary in your local newspaper, shoot us an email! And if you don't see our commentaries in your local papers, let your newspaper editors know.
A combination of factors could well lead to much higher heating oil prices by the end of the year. Ironically, that’s what the climate change warriors have worked hard to bring about for the past six years – but if this happens, the increased fuel cost will go into the petroleum supply chain, not to the state to finance green subsidies. Let’s hope that global warming will bring us a string of mild winters.
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The debate is raging over the U.S. Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion overturning the 1973 abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade, and its follow on opinions in Doe v. Bolton (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The advocates for a constitutional right to abortion have never quite agreed just where this right can be found in the Constitution. But they do agree and have strongly argued that the judicial rule of stare decisis – a presumption of the validity of longstanding earlier decisions – should be invoked to keep in force the right declared in Roe v. Wade 49 years ago.
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One signature and one vote thwarted the attempt to upend heating in Vermont's built environment. Governor Phil Scott won the game of political ping pong against the Legislature, when the latter failed to override his veto of the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) bill by one vote.
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On May 11 the short life of the Clean Heat Standard (CHS), promising “clean heat for a cooler planet”, came to sudden but probably not final end.
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The growing reawakening of enthusiasm for nuclear powered electricity has been a remarkable development over the past ten years.
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The climate lobby is racing to push through the Clean Heat Standard heating fuel tax bill – without any legislator voting on the record to launch this costly program. For climateers, defeating the Menace of Climate Change trumps Vermont’s constitutional requirement of legislative accountability. The Check Back Amendment would require a vote of the legislature after March 2023, when all the details are known.
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Vermont’s poorly maintained voter lists are placing the integrity of our 2022 election at risk, as newly uncovered evidence from the 2020 election shows.
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The Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) requires Vermont to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by specific amounts by 2025, 2030, and 2050. Failure to meet these mandatory targets would allow any person to sue the state, at taxpayers' expense, for non-compliance. The GWSA appointed a 23-member Vermont Climate Council to create an action plan.
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Governor Gavin Newsom recently ordered the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Since the 1990s, 16 states have adopted CARB’s more stringent emission standards in place of federal regulations enacted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Newsom’s mandatory transition to zero emission vehicles will thus have a domino effect in the CARB states (including small, rural Vermont), which will be legally bound to outlaw the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles.
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The Vermont legislature is moving swiftly into its final six weeks. A major issue, as always, is parceling out revenues to cover the $8.1 billion Fiscal Year 2023 general plus transportation fund budgets. That process is eased this year by the tsunami of Federal dollars rolling into the state, allowing the solons to fund programs and causes that in ordinary times, with normal state revenues, would not make the cut.
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