The Progressive Destruction of Vermont

Dave Zuckerman's plans to tax us into oblivion

Vermonters are suffering economically, and the state’s Progressive party (led by Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman) is sharing its plans to make it worse. The pattern that is becoming clear is that rich people exploit the poorest of Vermonters to take more and more money from working Vermonters – making them poorer and more likely to become the poorest. Meanwhile, the government grows bigger and bigger, siphoning off wealth into bureaucratic waste. Vermonters can’t afford this anymore.

(Fetching a few bales of hay in a Jeep, with Belle the working dog.)

Vermont’s progressives love to be the “first” in the nation to do things – the first to ensure abortion through the last trimester; the first to ensure sanctuary state “protections” for children from other states to receive transgender hormones and surgeries without parental knowledge; the first to impose huge fees on fuel oil (in one of the coldest states in the nation); the first to grant out-of-state corporations the “right” to sue the state for not meeting climate “targets,” and many others. Will Vermont be the first state to become insolvent?

Vermont’s Progressive party either cannot do math, or it believes Vermonters can’t. Let’s do some math, comparing what Vermonters pay for basic necessities and services with other US states. 

Food. Vermonters pay the second highest grocery costs in the nation, after Hawaii, and even higher than Alaska. Yet Hawaii’s median income is $84,857 and Vermont’s is $72,431. As a percentage of income, Vermonters pay far more than either Alaskans or Hawaiians (who must import the vast majority of food products) for groceries. 

Public school costs. Vermont’s 2024 public school spending was the third highest in the United States (excluding Washington, D.C.): $21,219 per student versus $21,334 in New Jersey and $24,881 in New York. Adjusted for median income, New Jersey residents pay less for school costs: only New Yorkers pay more than Vermonters. Vermont has lost more than 30% of its student population since 2000, but not a single Superintendent; student scores are disgraceful; Dave Zuckerman is calling for more money and more taxes for failing schools. 

Real Estate Taxes: Only Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey have higher real estate taxes than Vermont, but the median income for New Jersey is $74,314, Connecticut’s is $83,771, and for New Hampshire $88,464. Vermont’s median home value in 2024 was $398,737, taxed at a rate of 1.9% for an average tax bill of $7,576.00. Vermont boasts the third highest real estate taxes in America as a function of income.

Health Insurance. A recent study of the nation’s healthcare costs concluded that “Vermont takes the 4th spot with a score of 58.77. The state has one of the higher average health insurance premiums at $908 and healthcare spending per capita of $12,756. Vermont’s high expenses across various metrics reflect its ranking among the top states for costly healthcare.” But Vermont claimed this dubious honor with much lower median income than the three states with higher healthcare costs – residents of New York, Alaska, and New Jersey all make a lot more money on average that Green Mountain denizens.

This list goes on. Here are some additional facts: 

– Vermonters pay tens of millions of dollars in added electricity rates to fund rooftop solar panel arrays that are only half as efficient as field arrays. This money comes from renters and old-age pensioners to fund new solar panels for wealthy homeowners. This is grossly regressive.

– The Vermont legislature did a study to impose a sales tax on groceries, calculating how many tens of millions of dollars it could reap annually and then redistribute (a portion) to the poor. This is a perfect example of a government skimming operation. 

– Vermonters now pay for school meals for ALL children, a regressive policy that compels renting retirees on fixed incomes to subsidize free meals for millionaires who own their homes mortgage-free. This costs over $30 million annually. 

– Similarly, Vermont taxes now subsidize daycare – after the state essentially shut down private daycare using burdensome regulations. 

Vermonters are being impoverished by virtue-signaling elitists who don’t feel the burn from these higher taxes, electric rates, grocery bills, and fuel costs the way working-class citizens do. Yet David Zuckerman is now condemning Phil Scott for not ponying up unlimited funds to inefficiently house poor people in hotels at taxpayer expense. This is just another dragon eating its tail – housing is not affordable because Dave’s policies have made it more expensive: his solution is to tax Vermonters more and more in a socialist spiral that is very obviously destroying the low-income Vermonters.

Dave constantly portrays his opponent John Rodgers as an elitist when Dave is a trust fund recipient who also received a sweetheart farm deal subsidized by Vermont taxpayers when dairy farmers were struggling – John Rodgers has not sucked off the public teat in this fashion, let alone benefitted from the many privileges of wealth and position that Bernie Sander’s acolyte David Zuckerman has been showered with his entire life.

Dave says this of John is his September 28 newsletter: “instead of offering solutions to the problems people are facing, he leans into personal attacks that have no place in our politics.”

I guess I have missed John Rodgers’ personal attack against Dave – all I see is an almost incessant stream of personal attacks by Dave Zuckerman calling the Rodgers kettle black. The shoe of elitism just doesn’t fit John Rodgers: it is time for Dave Zuckerman to pick up his glass slipper and put it back on his own foot where it belongs, then repent for destroying our economy in the name of impossible climate and social justice fantasies – Vermonters can’t afford Dave’s economic experimentation and gaslighting for even one more year! 

But forget about Dave’s attacks on John Rodgers – look at his attacks on Vermonters’ wallets and their children’s futures: look at your tax, electric, fuel, school, and grocery bills, all skyrocketing in the name of “helping you” fight those terrible elitists. 

One day, Vermonters of all stripes will truly awaken to the destructive policies enacted by elitist progressives in the name of enlightenment. In his 2016 book “Listen, Liberal: or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People,” liberal critic and essayist exposed Dave Zuckerman and the modern “Progressive” Democratic Party for what they truly are:

“The Democrats posture as the “party of the people” even as they deviate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege in a way that Americans find stomach-churning. And every two years, they simply assume that being non-Republican is sufficient to rally the voters of the nation to their standard. This cannot go on.” (p.256) 

THAT is progressivism, the elitist Trojan Horse that is transforming Vermont into a Martha’s Vineyard for rich city folks from Boston. You know – more Dave Zuckermans. And it really has become stomach-churning…..