This, my friends, is what you get when you ask Canva’s AI illustration tool to render “Vermont landscape.” And it’s a great example of the stuff you see when you visit websites or social media feeds for conservative candidates or causes.There’s a lot of AI usage; there are also things like tech bros defending rural Vermont and sudden-onset farmers with…Read More

I realize there’s a “Day” for just about everything, just as the Catholics have a stunning collection of patron saints. But fact-checking? Now there’s a party. For those wishing to celebrate IFCD, it’s on April 2. You’ve got plenty of time for venue-shopping and caterer-hiring. Anyway, in my post about the filing deadline, I offhandedly remarked on the difficulty of…Read More

Well, I didn’t expect to be recycling this cheeseball graphic so soon, but here we are with House leadership violating one of the fundamental rules of running a legislative body. Last time it was letting the minority Republicans win something for the first time in (per Rep. Mark Higley) 18 years. This time it’s depending on Republican votes to pass…Read More

Another day, another cheeseball graphic from the Internet. But in the case of the Vermont Legislature, there’s something a little bit off with this picture. It’d be more accurate if the red “X” was removed, because its conflict of interest rules are more designed to enable conflict than prevent it. And the standard, as flaccid as it is, seems to…Read More

Has Danziger been our cartoonist laureate yet? If not, why not? Anyway, to business. Recently, Gov. Phil Scott took a flying elbow off the top rope in the opinion section of The Hill, that bastion of conventional wisdom inside the Beltway. It was a complete and utter smackdown from beginning to end. And I’ll stop with the wrestling metaphors now,…Read More

As expected, Aly Richards has declared her candidacy for governor, becoming the second person willing to take on S.S. Phil Scott, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier of #vtpoli. And I am all for it. Richards is the former head of Let’s Grow Kids, the organization that led the charge for improved child care. She’s currently chair of the University of…Read More

Seems to be a bit of a kerfuffle down Chester way. It goes back a couple weeks, but it hasn’t been noted beyond local press accounts. At its March 18 meeting, the Chester select board was doing a bit of routine annual business: designating newspapers of record, where official notices are to be published. And boy, did board chair Lee…Read More

Gov. Phil Scott has chosen to address Vermont’s health care affordability crisis in seemingly the only way he knows how: By proposing a modest deregulation of the marketplace. The situation as we know it: Health insurance costs are skyrocketing and have been for years. Like many other challenges we face, it’s gotten worse during Scott’s time in office. It’s hitting…Read More