The GWSA is likely to land on Gov. Scott’s desk at the end of August. There are five reasons why it deserves his veto. “He can take his stand on the liberties and economic well-being of Vermonters, accountable democracy, constitutional separation of powers, far more important spending priorities, and protecting the state from costly virtue-signaling nuisance suits, all in a misbegotten bill that will produce no detectable effect on climate.”

The Senate may be about ready to vote on the Global-Warming Solutions Act (H.688). The bill, heavily promoted by the Energy Action Network, would create a counterfeit government within the government, instruct state agencies to issue rules (that no legislator would ever vote on) governing anything and everything needed to drive down Vermont carbon dioxide emissions to arbitrary levels, and authorize law suits against the state if the process isn’t fast enough to suit the climate warriors. Responsible Senators should consign the democracy-shredding GWSA to a place of eternal rest.

The pressure of the pandemic and imminent huge budget deficits require that Vermont launch a thoroughgoing Performance Review, not just to “squeeze out waste”, but to bring state government back to focusing its core functions. Barack Obama can explain to Democrats the need to tackle this task.

The pandemic lockdown is decimating small businesses, many of which will never reopen. Here are four things you can do to help your favorite local small businesses weather the storm.

A year ago VSC Chancellor issued a white paper making clear the grim future of three Vermont State Colleges: Vermont Tech, NVU-Lyndon and NVU-Johnson. Things are far worse now, with the COVID pandemic and an enormous General Fund budget shortfall. Here are four alternatives that have been proposed.

Vermonters battled their way out of the devastation of the 1927 flood.  But Vermont is now a far more expensive enterprise, that can’t be sustained when state revenues disappear. Spending $17,873 per K-12 pupil in public education is too much for next year’s taxpayers to pay, after the economic disaster of 2020. This hard fact will force us to rethink the whole question of how we educate our children

The coronavirus pandemic alerts us to the depths of our complacency over destructive viruses for which we have no treatment. There are treatments, but official medicine has driven them out of sight. Now we need to put them to the test. One benefit from the pandemic is that senseless regulations are getting brushed aside, and another is that Vermont’s civil society has stepped up to aid the afflicted.

Proposal 9 declares that the people have a right to a clean environment and gives the green light to the Conservation Law Foundation to sue to get it. The state’s natural resources, it states, are “the common property of all the people”. Here comes the feudal King, and there goes  243 years of freehold and liberty.

On its 50th anniversary Vermont’s Act 250 is being updated to propel the people of the state into the new era of menacing climate change. The new bill tightens the regulatory grip over rural areas, expands the jurisdictional threshold, creates a three-person Super Board, and even requires applicants to assure “environmental justice”, whatever that may mean.