Contesting the Progressives’ Takeover of Vermont: Commune colonialism about to clash with the locals

Recently, the state of Vermont announced that pension and health benefits for state employees and teachers are underfunded to the tune of $4.5 billion (in a tiny state of just 627,180 residents). Then, in protest against Trump administration rule changes, it diverted some $750,000 from state coffers (each year, indefinitely) to fund abortion services through Planned Parenthood rather than continue to accept federal subsidies which had been proffered since 1970.

Many Vermonters, like most Americans, are struggling to pay their property taxes. I live on land passed down to me from my great-great-great-great-grandfather, in a house I built by sawing timbers on the 6.5 acre lot, on a foundation I constructed with granite block. There is no mortgage -- and also no running water, no septic system, no plumbing or electric, and the driveway is impassable without four-wheel drive. But our real estate taxes are just under $2,500 annually, roughly equivalent to a $65,000, 30-year mortgage at current rates. Yet, in 30 years that phantom tax mortgage will not be paid off -- it will be massively larger.

Vermonters love their state, but most are struggling to afford to live here. Many are paying $10,000 or more annually in real estate taxes on family land, which is often in a “current use” conservation program -- but still the taxes escalate. Retirees sell up and live in RVs, “going mobile” to avoid taxes. Young people seek tiny houses to shrink what the Vermont government can siphon off from their incomes. But still the government bureaucracy swells, regardless of the underlying economy.

Maybe another another way of looking at it is that Americans no longer have the right to own their own property, by the definition of own. If I don’t pay my property taxes, even though I paid off my property 25 years ago, a government entity will seize my land. And most people live I’

on property under contract such that they under the terms actually own the land but the bank owns the loan and can do the same. The Virginia Constitution make clear citizens rights we’re guaranteed to life liberty and property. funny how the US Constitution dropped the word property from the famous statement and instead added pursuit of happiness. I guess they meant free Wi-Fi and Netflix.

But Vermont keeps electing communists like Sanders who’d gladly take everything from people then dole it back as he sees fit.

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Its not just Vermont. Many voters seem to like the idea of growing government and diminishing liberties.

It costs us over $800/month in “street tax” to keep the thiefocracy of illannoy from confiscating our house. The bulk goes to the schools (eg the democrat party by way of the teachers union). America...the land of the corrupt.

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‘Thiefocracy’. Love it!

Yes, we are the land of the corrupt. Corruption from sea to shining sea.

Vermont is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile my M-I-L is trying to sell a house up there - a “handyman special” with rodent infestation, an asphalt roof from 1979, and leaky storm windows. Like any house in the woods up there, it is a money pit for someone who wants one. I rattled off a list of things she would need to do to make it minimally marketable and she got defensive, bordering on delusional. If this article was remotely readable I might have shared it with her. But American Thinker needs a proofreader as much as that place in Vermont needs a new roof.

The power to tax is the power to destroy—regardless of what services are or are not provided.

High property taxes create an incentive for blight—people (especially the elderly on fixed incomes) do not want the tax assessor to see how wealthy they are.

In our town the elderly always vote “no” on _everything_—because “yes” is always a vote for higher taxes—which they cannot afford.

This began in the early 1970s. A group of socialist Brooklyn Jews (and other Marxists I assume) decided to buy vacation land in Vermont and eventually have enough population in this low population state to declare their ‘permanent’ move to the state and then take it over. It was as much as a takeover as it was when the Nazis and Soviets took over Poland. Only without bloodshed.

I knew and worked with some of these Marxists, starting in 79 when I worked in NYC. These people thought they were ‘improving’ a backward state. I never gave much thought of it till it I noticed a rock ribbed conservative state became a socialist state.

“Its not just Vermont. Many voters seem to like the idea of growing government and diminishing liberties.”

See: Colorado...Thanks to the voters of this once fair and red state, in their infinite wisdom, we now have a commie poofter governor, a commie legislature, unrestrained greed for the produce of the people by the counties, and an avalanche of new programs and taxes to go with them...

I have no mortgage or other debt, except for my annual property taxes that have quadrupled in the last 20 years...

Land of the free?

Vermont is a beautiful state. No doubt, gorgeous.

But it is Leftist Land now.

We stayed at a farm that had solar panels, and I asked the woman running it about them, and we got into quite a discussion that made it clear she was a conservative in a Leftist state. She ridiculed their asinine energy policy and laughed when she said that due to some circumstance (perhaps hydroelectric issues in Canada or something like that) at some time they had to purchase nuclear generated energy to make energy ends meet and the Leftists were going nuts. She said to meet their 2050 goal, barring some breakthrough, they don’t even have enough appropriate space to put up wind turbines (where they have potential of catching wind)

Insane. Such a beautiful state, and some want these ugly turbines on every ridge sticking up over that beautiful green. Effing Leftists.

My wife and I go up there quite often. My wife and I were up in the far northern part of Vermont up near St. Albans, and we were toodling down some deserted rural road just for fun, and saw an old, gray, dilapidated, collapsing barn.

In faded white hand lettering was written “Take Back Vermont!”

It made me sad. Vermont used to be quite conservative at one time, and that barn looked like the last gasp of a dying breed.

Sat next to a international Lufthansa pilot at a tiny bar in the middle of nowhere Green mountains a few summers back.
Hew was telling me that he has been all over the world and was on vacation.
I asked if you have been everywhere why did you pick Vermont for vacation?
He replied that for him it is the most beautiful and peaceful place he has ever been to.

I got to admit The Green Mountains ARE beautiful and VERY peaceful..

In the 1990s, i used to visit Vermont at least 3 times a month. I used to be a member of VAST (Vermont Association of Snow Travelers - the umbrella group of snowmobile clubs that maintain the trails) and I loved swimming up in the lakes there. Anyway, my ex and I were there and I stopped for gas. The guy saw my license plate and he was commenting how out of state people were ruining Vermont, then he saw my Reagan bumper sticker and he said, "Oh you aren't a liberal. 😋

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