WVTK's Addison County Candidates Debate

Port Henry, NY based WVTK, which calls itself "Addison County's Radio Station," is broadcasting a candidates' forum today, Thursday, October 25, 2012, between 8:00 AM and 9:30 AM that is being hosted by the Addison County Chamber of Commerce in the Ilsley Library Community Room in Middlebury.

The candidates attending were for Addison County's contested and uncontested races for its two Vermont Senate seats as well as the House Representative seats in the General Assembly for the 2012 election cycle. Due to the number of candidates present WVTK is keeping the group on a tight time schedule.

The first question to the candidates pertained to funding for health care. Each candidate answered on topic except for would be "Senator" Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner. As he so often does, Robert Wagner pivoted to what he likes to refer to as a "Gund Institute" report or study that has already been shot down in the General Assembly for its unreasonable economic assumptions and prescriptions. The junk economics proposed by this "study" were rejected by governments early in the 20th century. In short, the plan is based on the economics of Henry George, a contemporary and rival of Karl Marx. What Wagner, Gund and the rest of the Georgists propose is nothing less than a mass grab of private property in Vermont on such a scale that it would bring a smile to Joseph Stalin's corpse. As Great Britain found when it began to ease into Georgism in the early 20th century, business investment ceased. That was the end of Georgism in Western Europe. History tells us what confiscatory private property grabs did to the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Nazi Germany, Khmer Cambodia and Cuba, to name only a few - scores of millions died.

By 9:00 AM, Wagner, continued to pivot away from specific questions to ride his various Vermont secession movement hobbyhorses - the "Gund Institute" nonsense; a state bank (an economically unsound idea that has already been dismissed as impractical in the General Assembly); the notion that the Vermont economy is in a complete state of collapse (despite VT's triple A bond rating and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country); an unfunded education plan - and generally sounded like the sole tinfoil hat guy on the room.

You can watch the forum here.

Meanwhile, in another matter related to Wagner's conflicting positions, there's been no word yet about whether Wagner will be returning the $288.30 Federal subsidy he received while flying out of the airport in Rutland, VT, which is exactly the kind of Federal subsidy that he "is strongly opposed to" and has argued harms Vermonters that I revealed he'd hypocritically availed himself of (as in sticking his snout in the federal money trough) here. Wagner must publicly give back that subsidy money or he'll be exposed for the hypocritical fraud that many of us Vermonters know him to be.

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