Definitely. A strongly-worded letter is pathetic, basically Elizabeth-Warren-energy.

There were projections from state scientists posted on this sub of ~20-30 years max.

We desperately need leadership willing to take big, bold action on the climate . But I fear that as long as a few billionaire oligarchs can still make money while living in some climate-controlled bunker, nothing will ever get done. It doesn't matter if the ecosystem collapses, or billions of us die.

Floridians should not come here.

> > > Ultimately what's really a threat to Vermonters is a broken property tax system. As property values increase, so do property taxes and just like California and Colorado, eventually the taxes alone will evict the poor from their homes opening it up for rich people to take everything Vermonters worked for.

This is already happening. You're right it's bad for Vermonters, but the state government - majority non-Vermonter - wants working class Vermonters out and wealthy transplants in.

There was a bill in the legislature to ban airbnbs unless the owner lived in them 60-70% of the year. This would have meant that renting in-law apartments or spare rooms would still be fine, as well as renting out your house for a month while you go somewhere else in the summer, but that speculating on housing just to rent it out short-term wouldn't be allowed.

It got killed very quickly. Our legislators work for wealthy people and tourists, not us.

Better yet, expropriate airbnbs (non-owner-occupied) and out-of-staters' third homes (camps for Vermonters are fine). Make them into public housing.

> Trying to abolish something that can be as easily done as sports betting, just causes it to go underground. Those who are addicted will have no protections, they will be able to gamble more than they have, and they will be owing money to potentially dangerous individuals. In a legalized system, you at the very least have to transfer funds in, and that is a very helpful barrier.

This is the same argument that's currently en vogue regarding prostitution. But unsurprisingly, in the countries with legal prostitution, even rich, liberal democracies like Germany, none of the promised protections have arrived, and none of the dangerous people have gone away. Most prostitutes in German brothels are trafficked from poor countries and exploited by pimps, for example. It's tough to imagine it would be any different with gambling. Organized crime already runs the casinos.

One of the greatest tricks of the lower-case-l-liberal ruling class is lowering the bar for evaluating anything to mere consent. We're only allowed to consider if something is allowed, we're never supposed to ask if that thing is something anyone should be doing, and we're never supposed to ask if doing that thing is intrinsically harmful, whether or not anyone consented.

No, I'm not. I think all drugs should be legal to use, but doing so should be shameful, and to the extent possible, humiliating. The sites in Europe where you have to shoot up in a structure with transparent walls are a start, but we should go much farther. Drug dealers should be given the choice of the death penalty or a lifetime of hard labor. Basically the goal for drug use, particular IV drug use and opiods, should be "safe, legal, and rare".

That would be fine with me, but it's a moot point since the cat's a few light years out of the bag. Gambling is something we still have a choice about. Is it something people should do? Is it something the state government should make easier?

It's all part of the state government's plan: get the icky poor working people out, get the out-of-state WFH yuppies in.

Awesome. Let's make it easier for people to do something addictive and viciously corrosive to individual lives, families, and functional communities!

Fuck, if we need tax money, there are tons of better ways to get it. Soak rich people, soak third home owners, soak tourists, expropriate investment properties, whatever.

> See that's the problem though, one side is actually disgusting and the other is not.

Without getting into whether or not you're right - let's say you are - what's your intent here? Do you think you will win anyone over to your team by calling them disgusting? Or is that not the point, and this is aimed at your own team?

We regular people need to get angry, get organized, and make our elected officials terrified of us. Right now the state wants working-class Vermonters out and well-off out-of-staters in. This is a big reason why efforts to tax AirBnbs more, or crack down on hedge-fund ghouls owning them en masse (requiring AirBnbs to be owner-occupied 60% of the year, say) always get shot down, followed up by some VPR-class "fact checker" telling you that really, you don't actually want housing you can afford.

> I couldn't care less about Bernie's M4A plan or Biden

Your "important context" is just Biden deliberately lying to muddy the waters. Of course you don't care about relevant facts that support that. I'm glad you linked to what Biden actually said, because it comes off even worse.

Thank god for the fact-checkers! I was worried there was a threat to the parasitic insurance industry profiting off the suffering of millions! Some mush-mouthed dissembling, implying that M4A would be more expensive, when precisely the opposite is true, really did it! (It's amazing anyone falls for this garbage.)

Jesus Christ. Biden's dissembling was obvious. We've known for years - decades? - that M4A would be cheaper and better for individuals and the country. My family would have saved ~$2500 a year just in premiums under Bernie's M4A plan, even after the tax "increases" to pay for it. (Paying $4 to save $5 is obviously a good deal.) Even the most extreme right-wing opponents of universal health care at Koch-funded thinktanks have said for years that M4A would save at least $300 billion a year.

Biden, or at least his handlers, knows all that. So for him to give that mush-mouthed answer, implying that M4A would be more expensive, when precisely the opposite is true, should be appalling. And if you think his answer meant anything other than "I will block M4A to protect a parasitic insurance industry that's among my biggest donors", I've got a bridge to sell you.

PS: What's the approved "fact checking" apologia for Biden continuing Trump's effort to privatize Medicare?

Jesus Christ. Biden's dissembling was obvious. We've known for years - decades? - that M4A would be cheaper and better for individuals and the country. My family would have saved ~$2500 a year just in premiums under Bernie's M4A plan, even after the tax "increases" to pay for it. (Paying $4 to save $5 is obviously a good deal.) Even the most extreme right-wing opponents of universal health care at Koch-funded thinktanks have said for years that M4A would save at least $300 billion a year.

Biden, or at least his handlers, knows all that. So for him to give that mush-mouthed answer, implying that M4A would be more expensive, when precisely the opposite is true, should be appalling. And if you think his answer meant anything other than "I will block M4A to protect a parasitic insurance industry that's among my biggest donors", I've got a bridge to sell you.

PS: What's the approved "fact checking" apologia for Biden continuing Trump's effort to privatize Medicare?

I don't like Joe Biden because he said he'd veto Medicare for All. I don't like him because he told Goldman Sachs on day one of his 2020 campaign that "nothing would fundamentally change", and he followed through on that promise. I don't like him because he's deliberately continuing Trump's effort to privatize Medicare.

Oh, who am I kidding! I'm just some weak-minded asshole taking orders from my dear leader!!

I know, right! Anyone who doesn't like a president who said he would veto Medicare for All must be really stupid!

Only dumb people wouldn't like a president who's deliberately continued Trump's efforts to privatize medicare!

(Lol at the downvotes over inconvenient truths, haha.)

If you trust Google. I'm fine not giving money to an unaccountable, amoral megacorp and hoping they'll give it over to people making videos. More than half of the channels I watch are demonetized anyway (nothing salacious, just history stuff like The Great War).

Fundamentally, it's my computer, so I get to decide what it does, including whether it fetches and displays ads. If someone's business model revolves around me voluntarily doing something I don't want to do, that's either harmful or just a waste, that's not my problem.

I run Firefox with uBlock on my phone, but yeah.

> > > I hope the day will never come where this amendment becomes our foremost line of defense, because when that day comes there will surely be people like you poking spears in our backs.

How much defense will it really provide? A federal law banning abortion will just supercede the VT constitution, no? It will protect against a state law though, unless a new amendment gets passed.

I have not seen an ad on Youtube in at least a decade. uBlock origin handles them just fine.

Well, yeah. He's the one who squandered his parties brief supermajority on a milquetoast rehash of a Heritage Foundation policy paper, giving us a policy to the right of the Republican counter-proposal from the 1990s. He's the one whose staff admitted years later that they never wanted a public option, and certainly not universal healthcare, and that the Obamacare insurance mandates - massive corporate welfare for the useless, parasitic insurance industry - were where they hoped to arrive at via negotiations all along.

> Look if the people under the systems say it’s bad I believe them. It’s simple for me.

Same here. That's why I believe the ~90% of Canadians who want nothing to do with the American system.

It's worth remembering that when Shumlin canned single payer in 2014, the report he waved around at his infamous press conference said the opposite of what he claimed: even in the worst-case scenario, the overwhelming majority of Vermonters would have come out ahead under single-payer. The media, even VPR, just transcribed his lie and repeated it over and over. Meanwhile, the case for single-payer is even better now, since costs have roughly doubled since 2014, making the choice to maintain the current system even more fiscally (and morally) irresponsible.