The founder of one of the state’s earliest political blogs — Vermont Tiger — is taking a break.
On Tuesday, Geoffrey Norman sent out an email to friends and readers, announcing that after five years of continuous publication of think pieces on politics and a wide variety public policy topics — education, health care, state finances and economics — he was putting the site on “a kind of modified sabbatical.”
Publication will be on an occasional instead of daily basis, he said. The letter to followers came with this ominous parting message:
Impossible, just now, to say when – or even if – we will return to business as usual. This is a blog. Most blogs have fairly short half-lives.
Lately, Norman says, he’s had less time for the day-in, day-out chores of managing Vermont Tiger. Work is starting to get in the way — he is under a lot of deadline pressure for the completion of several books and he is a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard. Norman, who lives in Dorset, is the author of 20 books (novels and nonfiction), and he is a contributor to articles in several national publications, including the National Review and The American Spectator.
Vermont Tiger has been the go-to source for opinions from high-powered local commentators, including UVM economist Art Woolf, entrepreneur Tom Evslin, John McClaughry, founder of the Ethan Allen Institute, Bruce Lisman, a former Wall Street executive and founder of Campaign for Vermont, Rep. Cynthia Browning, a Democrat from Arlington, and Emerson Lynn, the publisher of the St. Albans Messenger.
The blog has been largely a volunteer effort supported by occasional financial donations from individuals.
Though Vermont Tiger has a right-of-center reputation, Norman eschews labels: “The conventional, knee-jerk, unthinking, pigeon-hole definition is that it’s right wing, bordering on fascist I suppose, which, you know, gets old.”
“We tried to provide an intelligent and engaging alternative view of things in Vermont,” Norman said. “I think in some cases, we did things people are talking about now.”
Vermont Tiger’s contributors have doggedly dissected issues. Tom Pelham, former tax commissioner under Gov. Jim Douglas, wrote a series of stories about the state budget. Woolf has tirelessly examined the state’s renewable energy plan, the state’s economy and tax policy. Norman said the smart grid became the cause du jour as a result of Evslin’s relentless coverage. “No one talked about in the mainstream media until we started doing it,” he said.
Hugh Kemper, a retired Wall Street investor, analyzed the cost drivers behind rising school budgets across the state as student enrollments were falling. At the time, Kemper’s long-running series of investigations into school finance bumped up against conventional wisdom, which was that health care and energy costs were driving up costs. His analysis pointed to staffing as the main cause.
“We never tried to say Vermont schools weren’t good, but we never bought into the idea that they were vastly better,” Norman said. In comparisons with other small rural states, Vermont’s student performance is average, he said, and “we spent a lot more than we had to.”
Vermont Tiger was launched in response to Republican Gov. Jim Douglas’ endorsement of Catamount Health, a government subsidized program for uninsured and underinsured Vermonters. “Catamount was a failure like we all thought it would be, but it wasn’t instructional failure,” Norman said. “We didn’t learn anything from it.”
“We’ve made a lot of the plausible and intelligent critiques of the various health care plans that have come along,” Norman said. “Now there are whole sites that have cropped up in opposition to Green Mountain Care (the state’s single-payer initiative). We’ve been on that case since the beginning.”
