Careful With Those Co-ops Ballots 

My husband and I discovered that our ballots would be tossed out in the vote for Co-op board members. We had made mistakes in a procedure that was not intuitive to us.

Here is what happened: We checked the boxes, put the ballots in the envelopes provided, wrote our names and member numbers as they were on our membership cards on the envelopes, and put the sealed envelopes in the ballot boxes. Quite by chance, we found out that the names on our membership cards, while our names, are slightly different from how they show up on the official Co-op member list. (My card says “Jeanne Childs” but on the official list, only my formal name shows up, “Rita Jean Childs.” My husband’s middle initial was on the official list but not on his card.) We also wrote them on the front of the envelope instead of on the back flap.

Upon re-reading the instructions, we did discover our error, but it would never have occurred to us that the names on our cards were not the “official” ones. Neither did we pick up that they had to be written on the back flap.

It is possible that we are not the only people who might be making these mistakes.

So we are writing to Valley News readers in hope of helping them make their votes count in the Co-op board election.

PS: We did re-do our ballots/envelopes correctly and put them in the box. Hopefully they will now be counted!

Jeanne Childs

Hanover

Trump Is Right on One Thing

  

I just watched a YouTube clip of Donald Trump railing against the “rigged political system” we have been sustaining for the last few decades. I never thought I would agree with the orange-haired one on anything but, yep, rigged it is.

The GOP establishment doesn’t want him as their nominee. They won’t tell you that they don’t like his support for universal health care, women’s choice or anything else that doesn’t jibe with the extreme right wing that has taken control of the GOP.

If the majority of Republican voters want Trump and millions have voted that way, he should be the nominee.

The Democratic establishment doesn’t want Bernie Sanders, either. Corporate media, controlled by these “establishments,” have worked the rigged system in favor of Hillary Clinton. The Democratic National Committee is chaired by Clinton’s former campaign manager, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who along with the other establishment figure, Maggie Hassan, make quite a trio.

Again, I never thought I’d ever agree with Trump. But he’s dead on here. It’s a rigged system!

Daniel Moore

Grafton

Fight to Keep Local Control 

 

Vermont bill H. 249, which has been labeled  “an act relating to intermunicipal services,” needs to be voted down and cast aside ASAP. 

It is more of the UN Agenda 21 — centralized government and globalization at its worst. The U.S. is being subjected to the same horrible fate that resulted in the formation of the European Union, which is now failing miserably. 

This bill would grant  “ostensible authority” to unelected bureaucrats under the guise that it would reduce costs to communities through sharing of services. LOL. We know all too well that the actual effect will be to increase taxes, to further erode local control and to move a free state further down the road to the tyranny of centralization.

The greatest threats to us at the moment are corruption in government and graft. These have brought us to collapse as a nation. It is the U.N.’s drive toward centralization that is a deadly malignant force.

At this time voters’ primary focus must be to decrease taxes. Reduction of government expenses must be our goal. Government is “a child of the people” as it derives all its power from the consent of the people. In this regard, to spare the rod is to spoil the child.

Therefore, we should give towns a heads-up regarding next year’s budgets, as well as give the people some reason to attend the next Town Meeting.

I propose that voters insist that their towns  decrease  proposed 2017 spending at least a 5 percent before even considering passing a town’s budget. Allow no pay increases for town officers, and refuse to continue providing medical and dental insurance to them.

This will represent a step toward fiscal responsibility and keeping young people in the state by lowering taxes.

It will block the Agenda 21 creep, and it will stop government from financially bleeding the people. They will keep local control.

Timothy Price

Fairlee