Vermont can take care of its people AND the environment. We need new lawmakers who can ditch dogma, pride, and parties, and we need them now!
Vermont’s supermajority of lawmakers have delivered Vermonters the country’s highest taxes, rapacious rental rates, and unaffordable home prices, all while tripling homelessness.
These lawmakers prefer to obfuscate this assertion, but your new tax bill is irrefutable evidence. Every real Vermonter is feeling the pain.
Our defenders of “taxation without justification” ignore even the most direct evidence: a Pew Research study confirming that heavy and unreasonable regulation stifles new housing development, resulting in all of the bad things that have happened on their watch.
That didn’t stop Lt. Governor David Zuckerman from writing a letter to VTDigger in April, claiming that our need for more housing is "nothing less than “a Trojan horse for profiteering developers.”
In the words from The Shawshank Redemption, “how can [he] be so obtuse?”
Given that Zuckerman labels anyone who wants to build a home a “profiteer,” looking into the horse’s mouth may be helpful.
Zuckerman was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, once called the wealthiest town in America. It's a solid bet that he never had to worry about housing, food security, or money.
By his own labeling standards, doesn’t that make the Lt. Governor an “out-of-stater,” a “flatlander,” or an even more derogatory name strictly reserved for Massachusetts transplants?
Meanwhile, Zuckerman was welcomed into the state, and to the University of Vermont, where he studied, and later bought himself the Full Moon Farm, a for-profit venture. Zuckerman runs this venture while earning over $80,000 from Vermont taxpayers as a part-time elected official.
Under the Zuckerman rule, should he not be classified as a “double-dipper?”
Vermont’s own “Zuck" and his tribe signal that their anti-housing stance is for the environment. This claim is as rich as the manure on his farm, but at least manure helps growth.
There is, however, a special kind of stench when your 156-acre farm shields your view from homeless encampments and crumbling homes while stereotyping all home developers as “profiteers.” It seems that typecasting is now a plank of every party, including in Progressives.
It is well documented that other states have welcomed housing development and cared for their citizens while surpassing Vermont in air and water quality, but the Zucks also can’t see that from the porch of their little piece of the Green Mountain pie.
Near the closing of his letter, Zuckerman asked the following question;
Do you think we should irreversibly alter the landscape of Vermont for investors and real estate developers to make massive profits?
We would ask a different question:
Do you think that a person who came here and benefited from all Vermont has to offer while ignoring the needs of his neighbors is qualified to ask such a question?
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