Monique Thurston - Vermont Taxpayers Suffering in Cold and Silence
“I am cold … my arms … fingers … toes. Fire and ice … the cold that freeze-sucks my body is matched by the heat it creates in the belly of my psyche — the heat of anxiety. After all this, how am I going to pay my bills?
This anxiety attack hit hard when I, and many homeowners throughout Vermont, received our property tax bills last summer and we saw the increase in the homestead education tax. That bill might as well have stamped on it: “You cannot afford Vermont!” (34 towns turned down their school budget this past Town Meeting Day. I was lucky I am so poor for I received for last year a hefty payback. Still, I’m behind.)”
The above words were written by the iconic Vermont photographer Peter Miller in a VTDigger commentary in 2014.
Ten years have passed, and the legislature has made no attempt to control property taxes in order to address the excruciating pain expressed by Peter Miller and multitudes of others suffering in silence.
Ignoring the looming property tax bomb that has finally exploded, the legislature has instead been obsessed with controlling Vermont’s carbon emissions.
The first climate policy, the Vermont Energy Act of 2009, passed by the Vermont Legislature, established specific mandatory price setting requirements for renewable energy technologies which required utilities to pay solar developers five times more for their unreliable electricity than the utilities were paying at the time for reliable electricity from the grid operator ISO-NE.
In 2016 at a legislative breakfast in Vergennes I asked Senator Chris Bray, a lead sponsor of these policies, why such ratepayer punishing policies were necessary, he responded, “I’m just trying to be a good steward of the planet.” So much for being a good steward of his constituents!
In 2020 the super majority Democrat legislature forced the Global Warming Solutions Act into law over the veto of Governor Scott. This law made progressively greater emissions reductions mandatory, without regard to cost or the hardship they would create. The GWSA went so far as to allow anyone to sue the state if emissions targets were not achieved.
Four years later the legislature is poised to pass a law requiring all Vermont electricity to be 100% renewable by 2030.
Another bomb that is poised to drop on Vermonters at the beginning of the next legislature session in 2025 is the Clean Heat Standard, which requires fuel dealers to charge their customers more for their heating fuel in the future. How much more? The DPS estimated 70 cents per gallon. The goal is to replace all the conventional heating systems in the state with heat pumps and somebody has to pay for it.
The irony of all this is that the promoters of the “transition” to renewables and heat pumps don’t believe it will make a difference, either to the well-being of Vermonters or to the planet. Co-sponsor of the 100% renewable bill, Rep. Laura Sibilia put it this way on the House floor, “We have heard folks say that stopping all of Vermont’s emissions would do nothing to change the weather patterns that we are seeing with climate change. With apologies to my environmental friends, I mostly agree. If Vermont cannot stop climate change, then why bother bringing forward sweeping climate change legislation?”
Adding to the absurdity of Vermont’s “all cost – no benefit” rush to renewables is the fact that Vermonter’s already have the 4th lowest per capita carbon footprint in country! As a state, Vermont has the lowest emissions of any state in the country.
Fortunately for Vermonters, the Public Service Department, charged with protecting ratepayers from excessive or unnecessary costs, has sided with consumers against renewable energy policies from the beginning.
In his 2021 Report to the Legislature, current PUC Chair Ed McNamara pointed out that investments in conservation and efficiency saved money for each ton of carbon removed by reducing consumption of fossil fuel.
Unfortunately, the Democrats in the legislature have consistently ignored the PSD’s recommendations, including the most recent one concerning the “100% Renewable by 2030” bill. Citing consumer surveys that prioritized affordability and reliability ahead of renewables, the PSD proposed a plan that cost $150 million vs their $1 billion estimate based on the draft bill language – for the same emissions reductions.
The PSD’s proposal was rejected by the House Environment and Energy Committee, whose chair and co-chair, Amy Sheldon and Laura Sibilia sponsored the bill.
One must wonder why the legislature even asks the PSD to do exhaustive studies, modeling various scenarios, hiring expert consultants and spending millions of taxpayer dollars, when their advice is routinely ignored!
The Democrat controlled legislature does not mind spending your money, or their time, to “bring forward sweeping climate change legislation” that provides no benefits for Vermonter .
So here you have it Peter Miller, while you wrote in anguish in the Vermont Digger ten years ago that you froze and worried about how you will be able to pay your property taxes, the Legislature has been focused on CO2 , while admitting it is a useless exercise, instead of addressing the soaring cost of education and the regressive way we pay for it.
After less than a week of discussion, on April 24th, the Vermont House of Representatives gave its final approval to H887 which would raise property taxes 15% for homesteads and 18% for second homes, apartment buildings and businesses, while rejecting proposals aimed at containing costs.
The icing on the education cake is a proposal by House Ways and Means Chair Emily Kornheiser that school boards could adopt a school budget without voters’ approval.
Lest you think that the income sensitivity adjustment will solve the problem, Peter Miller despaired that the income sensitivity adjustment did not make his property taxes affordable in 2014. Were he alive today, he would find that while property taxes have risen dramatically, the income level at which a property tax qualified for an exemption has decreased from 141,000 in 2016 to 128,000 in 2023. While property taxes and home values have risen, incomes have not kept pace, and any benefit from the homestead exemption continues to be reduced by the legislature. They need your money more than you do it seems.
In 2016 Peter Miller wrote another painful commentary in VTDigger called, “ I am Vermont Broke”, where he described his last attempt at financial survival, a book project called, “The Vanishing Vermonter…An Endangered Species”.
It is time to repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act, to concentrate on cost effective and beneficial Conservation and Efficiency and to tackle the enormous monster that is the Education Property Tax.
The author is a retired physician living in Ferrisburgh.
Views: 105
Comment
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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on May 10, 2024 at 8:56am
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Visualizing The Tax Burden Of Every US State
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/visualizing-tax-burden-e...
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Comment by Willem Post on May 9, 2024 at 10:49am
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The elites, and IPCC, and WEF, and $politicians, and entrenched bureaucrats, and compromised academia, and lapdog Media, have combined to perpetuate and/or enrich themselves and impoverish all others, using the unscientific hoax of "CO2 causes global warming".
The hoax is based on fossil fuels and CO2 being the villains
However, CO2 greens the earth, creates flora and fauna, including us, and increases crop yields per acre, and reduces desert areas.
We need more CO2, as proven by plant growth in greenhouses with 1000 to 1200 ppm CO2
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The West’s scam includes wind/solar/batteries/hydrogen/CO2 extraction/EVs/air-source heat pumps, etc., to enrich/reward world elites, who will continue to fly their planes and sail their yachts
No command/control, choking restrictions off any kind on them!!
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These elitists caused the impoverishment of the EU, especially the UK and Germany., which are overrun by millions of scruffy, poor, inexperienced, uneducated, culturally-different folks, from all over, crossing borders, or secretly flown in, unvetted, to get free work permits, free phones, and free debit cards, and free housing, and free sucking from various leftist/Democrat-run government programs.
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The elites want to impose their no-fossil-fuel misery on the rules-based world to the glory of the Golden Billion in The Garden of Eden.
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However, fast-growing BRISC, with 11 members and 20 applicants, including China, India, Russia, etc., are not playing along with the multi-$trillion per year hoax and scam, and the demonizing of fossil fuels.
In fact, they know it is a Western, rules-based, insanity, to impoverish them..
Excerpt:
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-p...
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-e...
Important Role of CO2 for Flora and Fauna Growth
Plants require require at least 1000 to 1200 ppm of CO2, as proven in greenhouses
Many plants have become extinct, along with the fauna they supported, due to a lack of CO2
As a result, many areas of the world became arid and deserts.
The current CO2 needs to at least double or triple
Earth temperature increased about 1.2 C since 1900, which is due to many causes, such as fossil CO2, flora CO2, and permafrost methane which converts to CO2.
CO2 emissions of fossil fuels are a blessing.
CO2 has increased from about 296 ppm in 1900 to 423 ppm at end 2023. It:
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1) Increased world greening by at least 10 to 15%, as measured by satellites since 1979. Increased greening produces oxygen by photosynthesis. It forms a filter in the upper atmosphere that absorbs harmful UV radiation, with wavelengths below 240 nm.
2) Increased world fauna
3) Increased crop yields per acre.
4) Reduced desert areas
.https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-study-2001-2020-gl...
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-a-life-gas-no-c...
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-not-pollution-i...
.Benefits of CO2
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/co2_pitch_4-3-24_baeuerle_eng...
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Oceans Absorb CO2Sea water contains 3.5% salt, NaCl, by weight.
CO2 molecules continuously move from the air into sea water, per Henry’s Law
CO2 and NaCl form many compounds that contain C, O2, H2, Cl. They sustain flora and fauna in the oceans.
At the surface, seawater pH = 8.2, the % presence of [CO2], [HCO3−], and [CO3 2−] is 0.5, 89, and 10.5;
“Free” CO2 molecules at the surface, is only 0.5%; CO2 out-migration is minimal, given the conditions.
As a result, the oceans are the major sink of CO2 from human and natural sources in the TS.
At least 40% of new CO2 in the TS, human and natural, is added to the oceans; about 50% stays in the TS
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The Machinery of Fascism Revisited
Hardly anyone who is politically engaged and active is fully aware that there is nothing particularly new about what is called the Great Reset. It is a corporatist model – a combination of the worst of capitalism and socialism without limits – of privileging the elite at the expense of the many.
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-machinery-of-fascism-revisited/
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Comment by Monique Aniel Thurston on May 5, 2024 at 8:37pm
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Mary Adams , thank you very much on your brilliant article on Howard Dean, very helpful as he is caressing the idea of another run !
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Comment by Dan McKay on May 3, 2024 at 8:14am
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Vermont seems to have some sort of perverted electric market structure. Utilities in Vermont can own generation plants. They have a lot of hydro and have a contract with a nuclear plant and have a border with Canada. Why are they messing with solar, net energy billing, and battery storage?
Vermont is like Maine. They both have a way out of this renewables,spiraling cost agenda, but go along to get along with the enviro- pervs.
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The politi do not give a rat’s ass about the naive, well meaning people who elected them to be their proxies
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This is not about “cleaning up CO2”, a life gas, but about collecting federal subsidies for favored special interest groups that contribute bribe money, aka, campaign contributions to $politicians
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I'll bet the greenies in Vermont ignore that approximately 50% of the
state’s annual CO2 emissions are sequestered by the state’s trees. In Maine it is 100%. Even with nature cleaning up what little carbon is created by their poor economies, the Democrats of Vermont and Maine keep pushing impossible, costly solutions for problems that aren't there.https://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Legislative-Reports/VFCSWG-R...
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Comment by Steve Thurston on May 2, 2024 at 11:35am
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People think solar panels and wind turbines are going to reduce "extreme weather events". Mother Nature thinks otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKQolIbuf4&pp=ygUrdGhlIG1vc3Qg...
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Whatever they are doing in Vermont, they are doing the same thing in Maine, right down to the local level. Our town select board in cahoots with department heads want to ram a 30% increase over last years municipal budget.
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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