Dan DeWalt, a frequent contributor to these pages and one of the founders of this newspaper, writes that if he didn’t love his country, he “wouldn’t spend so much time trying to get it to live up to its purported principles.”
NEWFANE-It is time to bring the imperial governorship of Phil Scott to an end.
As his tenure has increased, he has warmed to the Trumpian style of governance: preferring rule by executive orders over collaboration with the Legislature, ignoring the constitutional advise-and-consent role of the Senate, telling Vermont towns that support their school budgets that they don’t understand the ramifications of their votes and holding the state budget as hostage when the Legislature doesn’t do what he wants, to name a few examples.
His constant browbeating of the Legislature — he seems to forget that they represent those of us who voted them into office — has been effective. He has successfully pushed his framing of issues and election outcomes into the forefront of discussion as the Democrats struggle to hold onto their convictions.
Over and over, centrist Dems roll over on command and come up wagging their tails, but instead of a pat on the head they get a kick in the ribs as he belittles their competency and demands his way or the highway.
We don’t need Democrat appeasement, moving to the muddled middle making small tweaks to a failing system while staunchly maintaining the validity of that system which ignores the actual needs and interests of Vermonters in order to keep the ball rolling for big business and the moneyed class.
We need a governor with the vision to cut through the system, fundamentally change our priorities, and put the people first.
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Amanda Janoo is the right person at the right time. She recognizes that the governor’s job is not “to manage decline,” as she puts it, but to rethink how we can actually generate housing for all, healthcare for all, and equity in our tax system.
The governor has shown nothing but contempt for our schools and our teachers. He is hell-bent on imposing a centrally controlled education system that eviscerates local control and makes the state the lone arbiter of how every town runs its schools.
Amanda knows that not only will the massive school consolidation underway not save money, it will take away educational and community enrichment opportunities that small local schools afford to their communities.
She understands the value of local control and recognizes that Vermonters have the intelligence and commitment to decide how their children deserve to be educated. She knows that one of the biggest cost drivers to our schools is the lack of universal healthcare and the ever-increasing insurance costs to districts.
Governor Veto rejected a legislative tweak that would have partially addressed the insurance elephant in the room. Then he proposed his own tweak.
Amanda has a plan for universal primary and preventative healthcare for all Vermonters. If you visit her website, you will see that this is more than just a grand aspiration; she has clearly spelled out, for this and most all of her platform proposals, what her proposal does, how it works, how it’s funded, and the overall view of why it is a good idea.
She also has detailed plans about homes for Vermonters, keeping wealth in Vermont (rather than watching profits and dollars drain out to corporate and out-of-state owners), building a strong economy for our future, and revitalizing democracy.
Her plan for building a vital economy through a green industrial policy is a stark contrast from Scott’s determination to keep the state open for corporate pillage.
At the end of the last legislative session, an overwhelming multipartisan vote called for a moratorium on building any data centers in Vermont until we can fully understand the true costs of electric and water usage, as well as the full environmental and human impact that such a giant center would bring to the state.
True to form, Scott vetoed the bill, and now big tech is eyeing the former site of the Vermont Yankee power plant in Vernon as a potential site for a data center. If they move quickly, they may be able to secure the location before we can begin to understand the ramifications of the project.
The governor stayed true to the moneyed interests, while ignoring ours.
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Amanda Janoo is an economist, a person with a wide-ranging resume of jobs that have given her a good grounding for running a state, building coalitions, and keeping track of how to pay for what we build.
She is the the candidate that we have been waiting for, and now we have a chance to put her into action.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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