Vermont Tutors Illegal Aliens on How to Slip the Grip of ICE

Progressives use government task force to protect illegals and expose citizens to risks. 

By John Klar | Feb 6, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Illegal Immigration, Opinion

President Donald Trump has not announced any plans to deport foreigners who are legally in the US. Rather, he’s focusing federal resources solely on protecting Americans from violent offenders. Still, progressive ideologues across the nation have rallied to “protect” people illegally in the country from enforcement of longstanding immigration laws. Vermont, an outspoken bastion of sanctuary protections, has created a “Task Force on the Federal Transition Panel,” Stacked completely with pro-immigrant partisans, to prioritize the “safety” of people illegally in the state (including violent gang members) above the health and safety of taxpaying citizens.

Sanctuary State of Mind

The shamelessly anti-Trump panel is charged with “reviewing key steps workplaces can take to be prepared for a visit from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.” This is consistent with Vermont’s oxymoronic “Fair and Impartial Policing” policy created as part of a 2017 law that prohibits local and state police from assisting federal authorities in immigration-related civil actions such as traffic stops.

The new Task Force was created by Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak, a Democrat who has his eyes set on running for governor of the Green Mountain State. In announcing his patently partisan plan, Pieciak invoked the fears of people illegally in the state while ignoring the concerns of endangered native Vermonters:

“The Trump Administration’s attacks on immigrants have stoked fear, confusion, and distrust throughout Vermont’s communities.

“These measures could have a profound impact on our economy, particularly our agricultural sector and housing development, both of which rely heavily on immigrant labor to support their workforce. I’m honored to partner with local and national experts to help ensure Vermont employers and their workers know what to do should ICE come knocking.”

Criminal Welcome Mat

It is unclear how much of the state’s housing shortage is due to illegal migrants who settle under Vermont’s “Welcome illegals!” sanctuary banner. Many Vermonters believe progressives abuse taxpayers by imposing a dangerous political ideology of lawlessness and open borders. The task force does not appear interested in hearing from police officers or citizens on the front lines of the state’s growing crime wave.

The recent murder of Vermont Border Patrol Agent David “Chris” Maland, apparently by members of an extremist transgender cult, has sparked a backlash against lax immigration law enforcement. Pieciak’s crocodile tears for illegal farm and housing laborers have invited gang trafficking of drugs and sex workers into what historically has been the safest state in the nation.

Vermonters are dying from fentanyl overdoses. Murders committed by out-of-state gang members have become familiar headlines. Progressives have wrongfully attacked Vermont’s police officers as racist for arresting “people of color” at higher rates than its domestic demographics – ignoring the high proportion of violators who are not Vermont residents.

Venezuelan Felons in the Green Mountains

On Jan. 27, Venezuelan Jorge Humberto Moreno Martinez was apprehended following a reckless car chase. Court records reflect that Martinez was previously deported after serving three-and-a-half years for a New York felony burglary conviction. He re-entered the US illegally, resulting in his recent re-arrest:

“Court records also state that when agents from the Department of Homeland Security attempted to arrest Moreno at a parking lot in Williston, on January 27, Moreno fled in a vehicle, hitting three law enforcement vehicles before travelling at more than 100 miles per hour on a busy street before he was apprehended. As he drove, items were discarded from Moreno’s vehicle. Law enforcement recovered some of those items, which tested presumptively positive for cocaine base and cocaine.”

Vermont’s sanctuary policies – allied with such “reforms” as defunding the police, decriminalization, cashless bail, and lax probation standards – have seeded a crime spree that puts innocent citizens at risk. The alleged “sufferings” of illegals and the faux argument that Vermont must defy federal laws to “help the farmers” (another exploitation) is growing tiresome for voters.

Vermont Farmers Exploited by Progressives

The farmers exploited by Pieciak are mostly cow-milkers, of which there are now fewer than 600 in the state. These farms indeed depend on immigrant farm labor for arduous agriculture work, but that doesn’t mean all farm laborers are here illegally or that dairy farmers support protecting violent criminals.

One Vermont dairyman who operates a 1,500-cow farm in Irasburg –near to where Maland was slain — agreed to talk with Liberty Nation News. Like most Vermont dairies, his farm maintains all required legal paperwork for its immigrant workers. But this dairyman very much disagrees with Pieciak’s alarmist representations:

“Arresting dangerous felons is just returning to the way it was before the Biden administration. Over the decades, we’ve had people picked up by immigration, but usually, they are allowed to come back to work if they are not charged with violent or illegal activity. I only remember one person ever being kept in custody because he had a charge of some sort. But if one of them is guilty of dealing drugs or committing violent crimes, I want them to be arrested to keep our communities safe, same as any American citizen. Sure, I’m a dairy farmer, but I’m also a father and grandfather who wants my family safe.”

Violent Gangs Victimize Vermonters

Vermonters recognize what government progressives like Pieciak appear to find cognitively dissonant: not all “undocumented entrants” are victims. As Rep. Tom McLintock (R-CA) recently attested:

“[W]orst of all, among these illegal migrants have come the most violent, dangerous, and malevolent criminals and criminal gangs in the world, while sanctuary laws in democratic jurisdictions protect them as they prey on innocent Americans.”

Venezuelan felon Martinez does not appear to have been serving Vermonters by laboring on a dairy farm. Pieciak shamelessly invokes farmers as justification to resist ICE. As more Vermonters die from fentanyl traceable to organized gangs and open borders, the sober reality of the real victims becomes more evident. Pieciak will have to answer to the family and community of any Vermonter murdered or raped by an “unauthorized entrant” protected by government actors using taxpayer dollars. After all, he helped to create a sanctuary for violent criminals.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

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Vermont Town Requires Building Permit for Yard Signs

Clever dairy farmers figure out how to fight city hall. 

By John Klar Sep 23, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, Opinion, Politics

 

A Vermont dairy family has been issued a notice by their town demanding that they obtain a building permit because they have more than two political yard signs (that support GOP candidates) displayed on their property. Rather than pay the $25 fee (plus 3% for credit cards) to comply, young newlyweds Sara and Ryan Bullis pulled the small signs from the ground and attached them to the side of a truck trailer stacked with hay bales.

Yard Signs of the Times

The Bullis family has milked cows in scenic Grand Isle, VT, for four generations. Their business name captures the idyllic beauty of their home: Savage View Farm. A complaint posted on an online community bulletin board (allegedly by a seasonal summer resident) about yard signs appears to have sparked the administrative response from the town of North Hero. The neighbors of Bullis farm display numerous Democratic candidate signs: It is unclear whether they obtained the requisite “building permit” to stick the small political campaign signs in the ground.

Vermont famously banned billboards in 1968. State law restricts political campaign signs like those on the Bullis farm and their neighbours’ from being too close to the road (to ensure safety and view) and restricts them to election season. Vermont’s state laws are narrowly tailored and do not extend into what Vermonters can display on their barns, their living room walls, or land not within the regulated setback. North Hero’s building permit requirement stretches a more intrusive hand than the state, and farmers like the Bullis family will not be bullied.

The community post condemning yard signs also mirrored what appears to be widespread societal ignorance of fundamental free speech guarantees. The post targeted yard signs for a list of grievances: They are ineffective, environmentally harmful, could incur legal fines (at least in North Hero), create “visual clutter,” and – woe to Vermont voters – pose a “potential for divisiveness”:

“Displaying political yard signs can sometimes lead to tension or conflict between neighbors with differing political views. This can contribute to a polarizing atmosphere within communities.”

Free Speech Prevails

Such sentiments display a desire – or an actual call – for government (in this case, a small town whose zoning administrator was hired in April) to stifle citizens’ most basic liberty so that they won’t be exposed to differences of political preference during an election year when the opinions of candidates and voters are supposed to be paramount. Perhaps when citizens broach their political concerns to legislators (such as about a property tax increase of 25% or more in many Vermont towns in 2024), it creates a “polarizing atmosphere.”

There is even greater irony in the idea of using aesthetics to negate free speech: to exploit Green Mountain scenic views as justification for silencing locals’ political views. How dare these “deplorable” farmers botch the tourist view for which their skyrocketing taxes have paid? Vermont’s 1968 billboard legislation exempts signs smaller than 150 square feet, and state officials take no position on its potential application to mobile signage such as those employed by Savage View Farm to continue expressing the family’s political views directly to their neighbors.

Give Cable TV the Boot – Check This Out!

Vermont’s aesthetic ironies don’t stop here, though. The state is all in for solar panel arrays, which have poisoned the view and usurped much fertile farmland without any political messaging other than the visible hypocrisy. Solar panels pollute horribly, not just as eyesores but in their manufacturing and disposal – an exponentially greater threat than yard signs in coal and energy consumption and ecotoxin generation. Those chemical pollutants may be invisible to tourists driving EVs (which generate 30-50% more toxic rubber dust than gas-powered cars, accounting for 78% of ocean microplastic pollution), but the solar panels are plain to see.

Foreign corporations collect state and federal subsidies to plant ugly rows of toxic solar panels in the Green Mountains, while summer residents use local ordinances to silence the political views of those who might object. The US Constitution was created to prevent exactly this type of bullying, and it will remain a bulwark against delusional ideologues who object to constructive criticism, scientific facts, or their neighbors’ audacity to publicly express their opinions.

An Unheroic Vermont Town

The town of North Hero will perhaps have a difficult legal row to hoe if it proceeds against rebellious newlywed farmers Sara and Ryan Bullis. Constitutionally, it is hard to see how any town can justify push-in yard sign regulation under a building code – what’s next, the dogcatcher rounding up horses and cows for flatulence? Property assessors inspecting basements for verboten political signage? Road crews scraping political stickers off car bumpers? This ordinance is obvious government overreach, running afoul of established constitutional law.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas summed up the legal view of the importance of political speech practiced by these dairy farmers in Reed v Town of Gilbert, Arizona:

“Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech. That is why the First Amendment expressly targets the operation of the laws — i.e., the “abridg[ement] of speech”—rather than merely the motives of those who enacted them.”

Some residents are not convinced this Vermont town’s motives were innocent. The town clerk’s husband is running for State Senate as a Democrat against some of the Republicans whose signs graced the Bullis farm. North Hero’s zoning administrator has stated that only one “friendly letter” has been issued, and that the town clerk was not involved in the decision, which was “not an official notice of violation,” merely a request “to come into compliance with the town’s regulations by obtaining a permit.”

As the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, it is not the burden of citizens to prove bad intent: The dangers of censorship must be prevented for those who one day might. Vermonters must be allowed to communicate freely with their community.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

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Even Stupider Than The Stupidest Litigation In The Country

May 11, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

I have had several posts on a collection of related cases that I have called “The Stupidest Litigations In The Country.” These are cases where climate hysterics have sued oil and gas producing companies, or the federal government, or both, seeking various extreme punishments ranging from massive damages up to and including an order to end all production of fossil fuels. The asserted grounds vary somewhat from case to case, but a central theme is a claimed constitutional right to a “clean and healthy environment.”

My last update on these cases was a post on April 9. A main subject there was the lawsuit of Juliana v. United States, which is one of the cases where the federal government is the defendant and the goal is to require it to force an end to the production of fossil fuels. The occasion for the post was that, nine years into the litigation, the federal defendant had just launched its third effort to get the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to end the case on the ground of “non-justiciability” — that is, to get the court to rule that such an issue of society-wide energy policy is not a proper subject to be decided by a court. Instead, the Department of Justice was arguing, this sort of question must be left to the political branches of government, that is, legislatures and executives. (On May 1, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit in fact ordered that the Juliana case be dismissed. We’ll see if that sticks. The plaintiffs still have a few litigation options left, including seeking “en banc” review from the full Ninth Circuit, and seeking review from the Supreme Court.)

Meanwhile, be careful what you wish for. If the decision to blame energy-producing companies for everything wrong with the environment is to be left to the political branches, what’s to stop those political branches from jumping into this act?

In the last few days, the legislature in the state of Vermont has done just that. NBC News has the story on May 7, with the headline “Vermont passes bill to charge fossil fuel companies for damage from climate change.”

It looks like little Vermont (population about 650,000) is going to step up to save the planet where all the big players like the federal government and California have failed. The idea here is that the state will force the fossil fuel producers to pay damages to compensate for any losses attributable to “climate change.” If you believe that all extreme weather is the fault of “climate change” (and it appears that they do believe that), then this could add up to some enormous sums. From NBC:

Vermont lawmakers passed a bill this week that is designed to make big fossil fuel companies pay for damage from weather disasters fueled by climate change.

Here is a link to the state legislature’s website for the text of the bill. As of now, the bill appears to have passed both houses of the legislature, and is awaiting the signature of the Governor. The Governor — Phil Scott, a Republican — may well balk. However, the bill passed with very few dissenting votes, so even if Scott vetoes it, there are likely to be plenty of votes of override.

My comment is that this legislation is even stupider than the stupidest litigations. It’s so stupid that even California hasn’t tried it.

Here is NBC’s summary of how the new law will work:

Vermont’s bill, referred to as its Climate Superfund Act, would . . . mandate that big oil companies and others with high emissions pay for damage caused by global warming. The amounts owed would be determined based on calculations of the degree to which climate change contributed to extreme weather in Vermont, and how much money those weather disasters cost the state. From there, companies’ shares of the total would depend on how many metric tons of carbon dioxide each released into the atmosphere from 1995 to 2024.

So what exactly is the game plan? I don’t think that they have thought this one through, to put it mildly. Isn’t every citizen of Vermont a user of fossil fuels? How about the state itself? Exxon may have produced a bunch of gasoline by pumping crude oil and refining it down in Texas, but the state of Vermont is the one that made all those emissions by running a fleet of cars and trucks and heating all its buildings. Is the state prepared to restrict at all the use of fossil fuels in its territory, or is it just going to pretend that nobody but the fuel producers has any role in making emissions?

I can’t wait to see how the litigation back-and-forth plays out. Many possibilities suggest themselves. One likelihood is that the producers could raise prices to their Vermont distributors to recoup whatever extra costs Vermont imposes on them, thus effectively passing any damage claims right back to the Vermont consumers. Or potentially the oil companies could join into the litigation as third-party defendants all the citizens of Vermont and the state itself. That would be fun.

There is likely to be a huge issue of Vermont getting jurisdiction over all or even a few of the fossil fuel producers. Everybody can name about five gigantic oil companies, and most people have the impression that those five companies are responsible for most emissions. But in fact there are hundreds of companies that produce oil, natural gas and coal, and far and away most emissions come from fuels both produced and consumed outside the U.S. 

Most production of fossil fuels occurs in places like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India. Even as to U.S. producers that sell products in Vermont, I believe that under recent Supreme Court law (Daimler v. Bauman), Vermont does not have the ability to force producers to respond to claims in Vermont courts unless the company is either incorporated in Vermont or has its headquarters in Vermont. That’s probably none of them. Will Vermont launch dozens of claims around the country, most in states (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc.) that are friendly to fossil fuel producers?

At the Pirate’s Cove, the Pirate has this comment:

What happens if the fossil fuels companies decide to leave? How does the government itself operate without fossil fuels? How do many heat their homes? Get to work? Operate their boats? Do visitors want to deal with high costs, or, just go elsewhere? How do truck bring goods in if there are no gas stations? How do planes get fuels?

Well, the companies can’t get together and all agree to leave. That would be a violation of the antitrust laws. But they can go to the legislature and dare it to ban them all from selling anything in the state. That’s what I would propose they do.

Somehow, the Vermont legislature cannot see how ridiculous it looks blaming fossil fuel producers for carbon emissions when in fact all of the people of Vermont, as well as the state itself, are the ones buying and burning the fuels. Why don’t they just stop if it’s such a bad thing?

The Burlington, VT 'Anti-Palestinian' Shooting Story Makes No Sense

“And when he saw us, it was like — he just connected the dots,” one of the men said.

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

In early January, FrontPage Magazine’s story, ‘The Greatest Islamophobia Hoax in America Exposed’ about the “anti-Palestinian” hate crime in Burlington, VT that never was, went viral. It was picked up by Townhall, Newsbusters, Real Clear Investigations, Instapundit, HotAir, Legal Insurrection, as well as Larry Elder, and a twitter thread on it went viral.

NBC News, which I had specifically called out in my coverage, returned with a defensive interview with the three Muslim men who had been shot in a confrontation with a mentally unstable local organic farmer who, contrary to their narrative, hated America and was pro-Islam.

The Muslim activists at the center of this case once again tried to tie Israel’s campaign against Hamas terrorists to the incident. In reality, as a local news outlet already documented, James J. Eaton, the man who shot them, was an anti-American leftist who expressed support for Hamas.

After weeks and weeks of non-stop media coverage and claims by the Muslim men that the attack was a “hate crime” and had something to do with Israel and hatred of Muslims and ‘Palestinians’, not a single piece of supporting evidence turned up. Opposing evidence did.

Eaton, a Bernie Sanders supporter, had actually tweeted that “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up” and “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”

He commented on a video of a Muslim man, saying, “people of faith constantly impress me.”

Local accounts describe him as violent, unstable, “progressive” and a “hippie guy”. His LinkedIn bio stated that his causes included, “civil rights and social action” and he argued that, “we can build the world we want. First we need to redistribute wealth and income.”

Biden, Kamala, Bernie Sanders and various state officials were rushed into making statements denouncing “islamophobia” even though there’s zero evidence of any “hateful” motive.

“Anybody who steps out from a porch and attacks three random passerby, for whatever reason, is expressing a form of hate,” Police Chief Jon Murad argued.

That makes every random act of violence into a hate crime.

Murad however admits that the attack was random. And, bowing to pressure from Islamist groups like CAIR and local politicians, he’s redefining all crime as an act of hate. Or, as he told CNN, the difference between “a hateful act and a hate crime”. And the difference is evidence.

“Although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question that this was a hateful act,” Susan George, a Soros DA, argued.

How can there be “no question” of something and also no evidence for that same thing?

While local authorities are backing away from the idea that Eaton, a leftist who supported Hamas, was motivated by hatred of Islam or the Hamas-Israel war, the media is doubling down.

NBC News had the men suggest that James J. Eaton, the man who shot them, “may have seen them before and was possibly waiting for them that day.”

How would Eaton have known when they would be coming home from a family birthday party?

Was he waiting on a porch with a gun for hours a day in the hopes that, in a 97% white city, three Muslim men would come walking down the street so he could go over and shoot them? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go to a mosque if he wanted to shoot some Muslims?

Hisham Awartani, one of the Muslim men, told NBC News that “systemic dehumanization” of the Arab Muslims settlers in Israel who claim to be ‘Palestinians’ caused Eaton to shoot them.

“It’s something that, you know, has always been the case, like, in, Western discourse through the media. Like, the Palestinian is assumed by default to be terrorist,” Awartani argued. “And when he saw us, it was like — he just connected the dots.”

How would Eaton have even “connected the dots” that they were ‘Palestinians’?

The shooting took place at night on a small residential street with no streetlights. The Muslim men were walking on the other side of the street.

The NBC News story once again repeats the claims by the men that two of them “were wearing keffiyehs when they were shot and all three of them were speaking Arabic with occasional English words woven in.” Keffiyehs are worn by every other hipster and if Eaton were shooting anyone in Burlington wearing one of the terror scarves, he would have run out of bullets.

Eaton would have needed the night vision of an owl to spot their scarves from his porch across a dark street. He would have also needed excellent hearing to make out what language they were speaking from that same distance. And psychic powers to decide they were ‘Palestinians’.

In their account, as retold by NBC News, “as they walked they saw a man standing across the road come down the porch of a home, pull out a pistol and shoot them.” And all of this happened as he somehow managed to make out their scarves and recognize their Arabic.

Kinnan Abdalhamid, one of the Muslim men, told CNN, “We see this man on his porch essentially looking away from us. He turns around, looks at us, and without saying a word — it was almost surreal — he went down the steps, pulled out a pistol and shot my friend.”

So in reality, Eaton wasn’t watching for them or even facing in their direction.

The admission that Eaton did not say anything to them is important because the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee had falsely claimed that “a man shouted and harassed the victims, then proceeded to shoot them. We have reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab.” In reality there were no words exchanged between them.

Despite this absurdity, Sen. Bernie Sanders (of whom the shooter was a fan) furiously fulminated that, “the idea that three young men walking down the street get shot, perhaps because of no other reason than they are Palestinian, is unspeakable. But I gotta tell you, this is not just a local phenomenon, this is happening all over the country.”

He did not list any cases where ‘Palestinians’ were being shot while walking down the street. Or explain how long Eaton intended to hang out on a porch with a gun until a ‘Palestinian’ came by.

“I don’t know why he’d have a loaded pistol and stand on the porch,” one of the Muslim men admitted.

The obvious answer is that it had nothing to do with them.

Eaton was the subject of 37 police reports in New York State. An ex-girlfriend had asked police to take his guns because she was afraid of what he might do. He had a history of mental illness, paranoid delusions and previously had guns taken away from him. None of this was political.

The gun he allegedly shot the Muslim men with was bought in April and long before the war.

The local police chief and Soros DA were eager to find some basis for calling it a hate crime. After getting access to everything Eaton ever wrote, they still have nothing. No hate crime enhancements were filed. And the authorities have been warning that the evidentiary requirements are too high to expect them to be filed since they do require actual evidence.

“Even as we speak, the ATF and FBI are investigating the tragic shooting of three men of Palestinian descent in Vermont. That investigation, including whether this is a hate crime, is ongoing,” Attorney General Merrick Garland promised back in November.

And, even as we speak, with the ATF and FBI on the case all this time, there’s still nothing.

The three Muslim men and the media keep pushing the claim that Eaton was motivated by hatred of Muslims or ‘Palestinians’, not because they care about holding him accountable, but because they want to use the incident to attack Israel and Jews.

“I don’t think too much about if there’s gonna be hate crime charges,” Hisham Artwani, one of the Muslim men, admitted to NBC News.

Kinnan Abdalhamid, another of the men, told NBC News that he didn’t just want to pin it on Eaton. “I think there’s been a lot of attempts for us to fully only demonize the guy, but we realize this is part of a larger systematic issue.”

Why this disinterest in holding the actual guy who shot them accountable?

Normal crime victims would care more about whether there are hate crime charges than creating the perception of a hate crime. And they would want to demonize the shooter.

Eaton was just a crazy guy with no politically convenient motive. No one wants to talk about him, instead the media and anti-Israel activists, including the men at the heart of the confrontation, want to talk about how evil Israel is. The NBC News interview, like all their previous ones, is littered with smears and false attacks over Israel’s war against terrorists.

Artawni rambles to NBC News that “what’s going on in Palestine, it’s still going on. And, like, that’s more on my mind right now.”

That much is true. The Muslim men would much rather exploit their encounter with a crazy guy, who loved Muslims and supported Hamas, to smear Israel, than talk about the actual shooter.

And the media would rather push the lies, myths and smears than finally tell the truth.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Vermont Resettled Somalis, Shootings Are Up 185%

By Daniel Greenfield  @ Sultan Knish Blog 

Shootings are up 185% in Vermont from 2021 to 2022.

“We are not used to this level of violence in Vermont,” Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger complained after the city racked up 5 murders. That may not sound like much, but it gives the normally sleepy city, where Bernie Sanders got his start, a higher murder rate than Philly.

When James Eaton, a mentally unstable leftist who had praised Hamas, shot and wounded three Arab Muslim men outside his home, the media eagerly diverted attention from the crime wave to the shooter, who was conveniently white, while falsely blaming it on ‘Islamophobia’.

The discredited hoax was not only trying to rally support for terrorists, but also to distract attention from the real perpetrators of the violence that has overtaken Bernie’s old city.

The shooters in Burlington, VT are much more likely to be Muslim male teens.

Another recent shooting out of Burlington made the national news when Hussein Mohamed, the underage son of Somali immigrants who don’t speak English, shot and killed Madden: a local 14-year-old boy. It was reported that “state police were able to make an arrest despite at least two eyewitnesses from the car providing multiple false statements about the crime.”

The murder wave in Burlington was touched off in 2022 when Abdiaziz Abdhikadir, 19, shot and killed Hussein Mubarak, 21.

Abdiaziz Abdhikadir had been part of a Somali Muslim refugee family profiled by the New York Times under the headline “U.S. a Place of Miracles for Somali Refugees.” Of that family, one son was convicted of assault with a firearm, another of “aggravated assault for shooting a man in November 2020” and Abdiaziz Abdhikadir was the grandson of that same family.

Abdhikadir had allegedly become a member of a Somali gang that stole cars while “wearing surgical gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints behind” and two of them had attacked a man in broad daylight while wearing ski masks.

Mubarak had been born in a refugee camp before being his family was resettled in America where his “older and younger siblings” spent time in jail, while he turned to selling drugs.

The reporting on the incident and other violent encounters in Burlington are littered with mentions of drug dealing, stolen cars and guns, shootings in garages and names like Abdirahman Mohamed, Ahmed Mohamed, Badal Khadka and Abukar Hilowle.

Abukar Hilowle was accused of a few shootings, including one in which he allegedly shot the driver of the car he was in, resulting in a car crash, and another in which he shot two middle-aged American men on the street, one of whom had told him to “chill”, but the Muslim perpetrator claimed that he was responding to “racial slurs” by his two victims.

In 2022 it was reported that, “by mid-summer, about half of the city’s gunfire incidents were connected to a small group of new American young men.” The inaccurate euphemism “new Americans“ was being used to refer to Somali and other often Muslim African immigrants.

The perps are usually repeat offenders who wander in and out of the justice system.

In 2020, Bonide Badibanga was arrested for aggravated assault during a fight over drugs. By 2022, when he was accused of trying to shoot his brother, he had racked up 47 police contacts and 11 arrests. Despite being briefly charged with attempted murder, his family refused to testify and he received a plea deal last year for time served.

Mayor Miro Weinberger however has claimed that the role of migrant settler teens in the wave of violence is not “particularly relevant”.

When the three Arab Muslim men were shot, State’s Attorney Sarah George rushed to claim, without a shred of evidence, that, “there is no question this was a hateful act.” But the Soros DA has been accused of giving violent drug gang members a pass for the sake of social justice.

Burlington’s crime level rose sharply after the City Council had voted to defund 30% of the police department during the peak of the BLM race riots.

Burlington City Councilor Ali Dieng, an African Muslim immigrant who has run for mayor, has attacked the police while introducing resolutions to boycott Israel and has urged funding for social services to explore the “root causes” of the violence by members of his community.

Tens of thousands of dollars were allocated to the Vermont New American Advisory Council (VNAAC), a group in which Ali serves as a secretary, which were used to pay for 15 hours of group therapy with “a therapist of African descent” along with “listening sessions” in which it was determined that the foreign population in Burlington had a “deep distrust” of the police.

“We all know in the 21st century, black people in this country continue to live in fear of losing their lives at the hands of law enforcement, or members of the white supremacy groups,” Ali Dieng had claimed after a resolution ordering the flying of the BLM flag at City Hall in 2020.

The reality is that black people in Burlington are being killed by other black people.

Ali Dieng has spent his political career alternating between falsely accusing America, the country that took him and his people in, of racism and accusing Israel of violence. The actual violence and racism are coming from the Muslim immigrants hiding behind those accusations.

When Hussein Mohamed killed Madden Gouveia, a 14-year-old local boy, local eyewitnesses attempted to lie to the police about what happened. The NAACP and other local leftist groups rallied for Mohamed who was portrayed as the victim. Meanwhile Gouveia’s family lost their son.

“Thankfully, through God’s work, (Madden) came to my house a week ago,” Ricky Worthen, his brother, wrote. “He walked to Battery Park with me and my daughter and spent two hours with us. I know now that was God’s way of showing me, I should cherish every moment and from this day forward I will”

While Madden’s family were thinking of God, Allah was on trial in Vermont.

Allah had been caught with fentanyl: the drug at the heart of the overdose epidemic and also of much of the local Muslim drug dealing and violence in the city. The police had busted Zahir Allah, a black convert to Islam, just outside Burlington, and he was tried and sentenced to less than three years in prison for trafficking in the deadly drug.

Muslim drug gangs are killing each other while fighting over territory in Burlington VT and across much of New England. And increasingly spreading their wave of terror across America.

While certainly not all shootings or murders in Burlington, VT involve Somalis, it is startling to see how many do, especially since the city has a relatively small Somali settler population.

Only a few hundred Somali Muslims were resettled in Burlington with horrifying consequences.

The question in Burlington, VT and across a nation under siege by hate, extremism, violence, crime and terror spread by first, second and third generation ‘refugees’ is how much more can we take, how many more lives can we lose and how long can we go on living this way?

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

The Greatest Islamophobia Hoax in America Exposed

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

When three Arab Muslim students were shot and wounded in Burlington, Vermont, politicians and the media immediately hyped it as the ‘Islamophobic Crime of the Century’.

President Biden issued a statement declaring that “there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America.” Vice President Kamala Harris’ statement bemoaned that “far too many people live with the fear that they could be targeted and attacked based on their beliefs or who they are”. The three Muslim men identified as ‘Palestinian’, two of them were wearing keffiyehs and Kamala, like many other leftists, was implying that the shooter was ‘anti-Palestinian’.

“The idea that three young men walking down the street get shot, perhaps because of no other reason than they are Palestinian, is unspeakable,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said. ”But I gotta tell you, this is not just a local phenomenon, this is happening all over the country.”

Then he blasted Israel.

“I’m heartbroken by yesterday’s senseless shooting of three Palestinian-American students visiting Burlington. We do not tolerate hate or Islamophobia in Vermont,” Sen Peter Welch tweeted.

“I do want to be clear that there is no question this was a hateful act,” Sarah George, a the local Soros DA, claimed without evidence.

“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad argued.

Anti-Israel groups convened a rally calling for the destruction of Israel.

“I stand here to stand with oppressed people who now fear for their lives just walking down the street here in Burlington,” Vermont Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman told the hateful mob.

A speaker at the hate rally with the antisemitic University of Vermont affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine blamed the shootings on Jews, calling them the “shameless monsters who enabled this” and denouncing “a crime of unspeakable racist hatred, a crime borne out of white supremacy, out of fascist, genocidal malice, a crime borne out of Zionism.”

All of these claims, along with many others around the shootings, were based on lies.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee falsely claimed that “a man shouted and harassed the victims, then proceeded to shoot them. We have reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab.”

In reality, they had been shot by a local resident outside his house who did not say a word.

The three Muslim men were returning home from a party on Saturday night when James J. Eaton, a local resident with a history of mental instability, stumbled out of a white clapboard house on the residential street and without a word fired four shots at the three men.

Eaton had been described as “that hippie guy” and “progressive”, an organic farmer who had posted a meme with a definition of “Amerika” that called it “the worst sense of the United States, ie imperialism, corruption and the global exportation of American culture.”

He appeared to be a Biden supporter

Media outlets, anti-Israel activists and politicians attributed the shootings to the Hamas war. Everyone from Biden and Kamala on down emphasized the “Palestinian” identities of those shot and implied that Eaton had attacked them because he was opposed to the ‘Palestinian’ cause.

In reality, Eaton supported Hamas.

On December 6, Seven Days, a local news outlet known for breaking stories about local politics, revealed that Eaton had tweeted, “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up.”

Responding to an article about a proposed ceasefire, he wrote, “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”

Local politicians were aware of this which is why in December a Burlington City Council resolution from Councilman Ali Dieng, an African Muslim immigrant currently running for mayor, trying to tie the shootings to an attack on Israel failed, and so did a resolution pushing the false claim that the students had been targeted because of their identity.

The latest Islamophobia hoax had fallen apart in Vermont, but still lingered nationally.

Media outlets which had rushed to spread the false claims never retracted or modified them. After a month of pushing the lie that the shootings were a response to Israel’s campaign against Hamas or to the ‘Muslim’ or ‘Palestinian’ identities of the three men, the new information was not reported, acknowledged or in any way addressed by politicians and media reporters.

NBC News, which had run an entire ‘live blog’ about the shootings, pushing anti-Israel and Islamophobia narratives, did not provide an update that would have contradicted its narrative.

Even in December, NBC News still continued running articles falsely linking the shootings to the Hamas war and attacking Israel. A Dec 5 article quoted one of the men shot as spreading anti-Israel propaganda and claiming that “this is happening to Palestinians across the country and, more importantly, in Gaza. We’re mad at the system that’s allowing not three of us to be injured but thousands and thousands and millions of us to be displaced and injured and killed.”

PBS ran a similar article in December quoting an uncle of one of the men as contending that “even in this country, even in this town — that many of the risks that exist for my nephew and his friends in Palestine exist for them here.”

This torrent of anti-Israel and pro-terrorist propaganda was based on absolutely nothing.

There was never a single shred of evidence that the men had been targeted. And the only basis for this claim that was ever cited was that two of the men were wearing ‘keffiyehs’ and speaking English and Arabic when they were shot. This entirely circumstantial information was amplified with feverish claims and rushed statements by elected officials, prosecutors and police.

The reality that has emerged is that Eaton was mentally unstable, left-leaning, opposed to America and supportive of Islamic terrorists. He was neither Jewish nor pro-Israel.

He had actually publicly stated his support for Hamas.

Eaton could not have known that the three Muslim men were going to walk past the house where he was living and it’s implausible that he would have had the time to plan such an attack.

The Muslim men were walking down the middle of a small narrow residential street with no street lights at night and Eaton would not have had enough time to realize the men passing by were Muslims, grab a gun, run out and shoot them. That’s even assuming that he had spent the whole evening by the window watching for incoming Muslims in an 87% white Vermont city.

Most likely, Eaton, suffering from an episode, stumbled out and opened fire.

Shooting four rounds at three men suggests this was not a planned mass shooting. He might have just as easily shot at anybody on the street or at nobody except the voices in his head. According to his mother and an ex-girlfriend, he had a history of violence and mental illness.

All of this was well known, yet the media instead chose to push a false anti-Israel narrative.

The Burlington shootings were far from the first Islamophobia hoax to gain a national platform.

The killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque were initially billed as Islamophobia. Biden even issued a statement declaring that “my administration stands strongly with the Muslim community” and warned that “these hateful attacks have no place in America.” The attacks were Islamophobic, but the perpetrator was a Sunni Muslim Afghan refugee who hated Shiites.

Hasan Minhaj, the Netflix Muslim comedian, was recently exposed as having made up the stories of discrimination that he had built his high-profile career around. During the campaign against Hamas, CAIR promoted a false claim that a Muslim man had been hit by a Jewish driver shouting “Kill all Palestinians,”and “Long live Israel”. Before Biden and other elected officials could issue statements, the actual perpetrator turned out to be the victim’s own brother.

And then there was the rash of Hijab snatching hate crime hoaxes across the country which included Yasmin Seweid, an 18-year-old college student in NYC, falsely claiming that three Trump supporters had tried to tear off her hijab while shouting, “take that rag off your head”.

The Burlington shootings were similar to a different category of hate crime hoaxes in which a crime did occur, but the motive was misattributed to ‘Islamophobia’. One was the rape and murder of Nabra Hassanen: a 17-year-old Muslim girl in Virginia by a low-IQ illegal alien MS-13 member from El Salvador after a fight with her friends. Another was a parking dispute in Chapel Hill that had nothing to do with Islam and where the shooter was a Rachel Maddow fan.

(As in Burlington, leftists and Muslims seem to shoot far more Muslims than conservatives do.)

Despite the facts of the cases, sustained pressure by Islamist groups led the authorities to brand these crimes as being ‘Islamophobic’ which then allowed groups, many of them with terror ties, to claim that any criticism of Islam or Islamic terrorism would get Muslims killed.

The Burlington shootings were blatantly exploited to attack Israel and promote terrorism.

Vigils in front of City Hall and at Brown University called for the destruction of the Jewish State.

One of the men, Hisham Awartani, told the hateful mob at Brown that his shooting “did not happen in a vacuum” but that he was only “one casualty in a much wider conflict” and “had I been shot in the West Bank” and “the medical services which saved my life here would have likely been withheld by the Israeli army.”

While the Burlington story has fallen apart, like the previous ‘Islamophobic’ hoaxes the damage was already done. The larger purpose of Islamophobia hoaxes, like that of Islamic terrorism, is to reframe the perpetrators as the victims and to justify Islamic violence against non-Muslims.

That is why the truth matters. Islamophobia lies kill, the truth exposes the killers.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Fear porn, testing hysteria, and tyranny

January 3, 2022 By Patricia McCarthy

According to the mainstream media, print and digital, COVID is surging, omicron is deadly, and everyone with a scratchy throat runs to a testing center to see if he is "infected."  It's madness on a grand scale.  Most of them are not infected, but these thousands of hypochondriacs are waiting hours in line for a test that, even if negative, may be positive the next day.

The clamor for more tests is ridiculous.  Everyone has known since July that the PCR tests were faulty to the point of being entirely useless — which the CDC finally now admits.  The tests are a form of trickery, another tool in the government's fear campaign.  Viewers who rely on the mainstream media for news have been illegitimately frightened into believing that the sniffles mean omicron and that omicron is serious.  It's not.  It's a cold.

How can so many Americans born into this country that was "conceived in liberty" be so submissive to the state?  Perhaps because for thirty years they've been lulled into obedience and have forgotten how to think for themselves.  "Take these experimental vaccines — they'll protect you from COVID."  Oops!  That is not true.  "Take these vaccines, and you could still get COVID, but you won't end up in the hospital."  Oops again.  Not true.  "Get the booster, and you will be protected."  Another oops............To Read More.....

NBC witnesses the “unintended consequences” of defunding the police — in Vermont.

Ed Morrissey Dec 17, 2021

 

“In Burlington, Vermont?” NBC reporter Stephanie Gosk exclaims in this utterly predictable story of outcomes from the Defund the Police movement, even in bucolic Burlington. The city leaped into the “Defund the Police” movement by cutting its police department in the wake of the George Floyd murder, cutting funding by nearly 30% and imposing a hiring freeze.  As NBC’s follow-up explains, this new set of incentives produced two major shifts. Even officers who didn’t get cut left the department, unwilling to risk their lives for a city that refused to support them. Crime went up and Burlington suddenly transformed into an unsafe urban center. Now Burlington wants to end its “grand experiment,” while Defund activists shrug at “unintended consequences”:........It will take years, perhaps a decade, to recover from this “grand experiment” by progressives in charge of America’s cities. In fact, the cities themselves may never fully recover as people with means vote with their feet against progressive leadership and the community destruction it creates..............To Read More........

 

My Take - Schadenfreude!!!

 

Continuous shaming of the unvaccinated

By Jon Lynch December 16, 2021 22 Comments

As COVID continues to ravage through Vermont, so too does the increasingly invective rhetoric deployed against those who are unwilling or unable to take the vaccine.

A vaccine so remarkably ineffective at preventing contagion, that Vermont – the state with the highest vaccination rate in the nation – recently made national headlines for also having the highest case rate in the nation.  And higher case rates have led to more deaths – many more deaths.  There have been three times as many COVID deaths since the vaccines than before.

Now, we should not repeat Governor Scott’s favorite illogic by inferring causation where only correlation has been observed, but that does look a bit funny, doesn’t it?  What kind of vaccine leads not only to more infections, but also to more deaths?  Don’t dig too deep, Vermonters – remember, this is “science” and you just don’t understand it.

Don’t worry though – Governor Scott understands it, and he knows whom to blame.  He told us with great conviction and contempt at his weekly press conference that 5% of Vermonters are responsible for burdening Vermont’s healthcare system with 75% of Covid hospitalizations.  He added, “…the 95% of adult Vermonters who have done the right thing are not the problem… …and they should not be punished.”.........To Read More....

 

Vermont school commits to kiddie porn as enlightening for children

December 11, 2021  By John Klar

Vermont's Essex-Westford School District, which includes the town of Essex that last year fired a high school lifeguard for merely questioning Critical Race Theory, has done it again.  In the midst of a national furor over a sexually explicit graphic novel, the school has proclaimed it has the duty to expose children to pornographic imagery — to support free speech.

It is axiomatic that free speech rights do not extend fully into schools — they never have.  For example, the First Amendment protects quite a shocking variety of pornographic materials, including bondage and rape videos.  Are those acceptable, protected school teaching materials?  School administrations are supposed to be answerable to the appropriate needs of children.

But ESWD has declared itself the champion of the minuscule percentage of children afflicted with gender dysphoria, which not only is rare, but most often disappears with adulthood.  All children must be sacrificed at Essex-Westford............To Read More....

 

Vermont Woman Fired, Denied Unemployment for Refusing Vaccine, Becomes Homeless and Flees to Florida

'It Was Simply Because I Stood Up to This Vaccine Thing' 

By  Patricia Tolson October 4, 2021

Karen “Kay Sea” Skau is a single mother of two adult children, Zachary (23) and Colby (21) who was living in Vermont. She had applied for a job at JK Adams in Dorset—makers of kitchen cutting boards and serving trays and sellers of a wide variety of assorted kitchen accouterments—and was hired just before Thanksgiving in November of 2020. Having survived a physically abusive marriage and stage four endometriosis—which required multiple surgeries and left her unable to work—she was proud to finally be standing on her own two feet.

“This was my first job after 10 years so it was a huge deal to me,” Skau told The Epoch Times. “As a mother of two, going back into the workforce after a horrible illness, was a big deal to me. I had just gotten my first apartment by myself because I was going through a divorce so this was a huge step toward independence. My marriage was extremely abusive so it took a long time for me to get over all of that and to build myself up with my confidence and everything.”.............To Read More....

Vermont transfers wealth from taxpayers to state employees

July 16, 2020 By John Klar

 Vermont is suffering a crisis of big government, a bureaucratic tax-and-regulate strangulation that is destroying what is already the smallest economy in the nation. Even before COVID struck, Forbes had predicted that “The state’s economic outlook is … weak with job and income growth expected to badly lag the rest of the country over the next five years.” Post-COVID, the Green Mountains finished near the bottom of the national pack (42nd) in the first quarter of 2020, with a 6.1% drop in GDP.

During the COVID-19 threat, Vermont’s Legislature gave itself a raise while it rammed numerous pre-planned progressive initiatives through a remotely-convened legislative process. The state announced an expected $459 million budget shortfall due to the pandemic, and has yet to revise it’s estimated $4.5 billion pension shortfall to reflect the impacts of COVID. Yet, the Legislature appropriated millions of dollars to subsidize EV cars, and seeks to enact a Global Warming Solutions Act that grants legal standing (and a statutory claim for attorney’s fees) to out-of-state special interest groups to sue the State to compel compliance with arbitrary carbon emission “targets.”

These efforts spray gasoline on Vermont’s fiscal flames. In the years since 2013, Vermont employees have been granted wage and benefit increases that outpace inflation: in only one of those years has Vermont median income risen faster than inflation (median income numbers are not yet available for 2019, but state workers gained 2.6% in salaries and 3.9% in benefits in 2019, exceeding annual inflation of 2.3%). Thus, in all years but one Vermont citizens’ income did not keep pace with inflation: their net worth is steadily deteriorating........To Read More......

Vermont Conservatives Have Had Enough of Their RINO Governor

September 22, 2019 By John Klar

When a few branches are dragged strategically from a swollen beaver dam, the sudden release of rushing water quickly widens the breach, and all the beavers' tireless efforts are swept away in mere minutes.  In Vermont, the waters of resentment have risen steadily behind the faulty dam constructed tirelessly by "Republican" Governor Phil Scott.  The vulnerability of this muddy mess stems from a putatively GOP beaver who has watered down the mud that once held Vermont's GOP together, by incorporating the building blocks of liberal policies, topped with a heated pugnacity toward POTUS Trump.

The schism in Vermont was evident in the 2018 midterms, when large swaths of conservatives abandoned the Vermont polls in disgust with Phil Scott's outspoken support for sweeping gun law restrictions that he had specifically promised he would oppose.  Yet Phil Scott won handily, as many centrist Vermonters were not quite ready for his progressive transgender opponent.  The Busy (Helping the Liberals) Beaver Scott credits his broad popularity for his win, but polls show he is supported inversely to his party affiliation: 56% of Democrats approve of him versus 15% of Republicans.  If ever there was a RINO (Republican In Name Only) beaver governor Phil Scott is that creature. 

Meanwhile, Vermont's progressives fancy that their sweep of House and Senate seats in 2018 was due to their construction skills (of government programs, sanctuary status, Black Lives Matter flags in public schools, cannabis legalization, committees to call all Vermonters racists, gun control schemes, etc.).  In misplaced confidence in a nonexistent voter mandate, these progressive beavers grew especially busy in 2019, constructing muddy extremist laws to ensconce abortion through the third trimester and preparing to enact ambitious carbon taxes, minimum wage hikes, business regulations, and other government-expanding dams to liberty and commerce.........To Read More....

Editor's Note:  Here are some previous articles dealing with this.  RK

• Contesting the Progressives’ Takeover of Vermont
• Vermont 'right to abortion' bill goes even further than New York's: 'Fetus shall not have independent rights'

Contesting the Progressives’ Takeover of Vermont

September 19, 2019 By John Klar

Recently, the state of Vermont announced that pension and health benefits for state employees and teachers are underfunded to the tune of $4.5 billion (in a tiny state of just 627,180 residents).  Then, in protest against Trump administration rule changes, it diverted some $750,000 from state coffers (each year, indefinitely) to fund abortion services through Planned Parenthood rather than continue to accept federal subsidies which had been proffered since 1970. ..........

Those “alienated and deviant members of society” are indeed imposing their new ideas on Vermonters: labeling natives racist, championing the progressive front of extremist abortions, transgender surgeries, schoolchildren activism, carbon taxes, and minimum wages.  As desired, the locals are fleeing their native lands:..........Vermont’s progressives are deliberately heaping financial burdens on native Vermonters, even as they pile government rewards on welfare recipients, government employees, and favored progressive interests like Planned Parenthood, and “social justice” groups.  Black Lives Matter and Antifa are welcome: locals are denigrated and condemned.  The state is infamously offering $10,000 payments (from poor Vermonters’ pockets) to wealthy out-of-staters to relocate here. ..........

It has taken nearly 50 years for the hippie conquistadores to seed their Bohemian denizens in Bernieland.  After a failed effort in the late 1990s to “Take Back Vermont,” the real “first great test” is brewing.  The “new majority” will indeed be fragmented, then dispersed, as the indigenous Green Mountain population is woke and galvanized into a voting block of its own............

Vermonters’ tolerance of these foreigners has expired.  In 2020, Vermont will flip red, sharply reversing the fortunes of those who misjudged this brave little state.  The natives simply can’t afford not to reclaim their heritage.........To Read More.....

My Take - First of all, I don't think Vermont is going to go red because this has been going on for decades and these people kept electing obvious lunatics to their local and state governments, and to the federal government.  Does this author mean to tell me Vermonters didn't  notice what was going on all this time?  I don't have the least bit of sympathy for them.  They're getting exactly what they deserve.  If they move out, even better, because what eventually will be left will all be losers living in a socialist paradise.  Only socialist paradises all resemble bankruptcy and dystopia.