 Good evening and welcome to Town Meeting Television's continuing coverage of the 2022 election. I'm Mark Johnson. I'll be your moderator tonight. We're going to have a discussion here with two of the five candidates that are running for governor. Unfortunately, the three other candidates are not able to join us tonight. We want to send out our best wishes to Brenda Siegel, the Democratic candidate who's been feeling ill today. Governor Phil Scott, the Republican, was invited and was unable to attend. And our third candidate, Bernard Peters, also was not able to join us tonight. But we have two independents that are joining us tonight for our discussion. And of course, we welcome your phone calls as well. And let's give a nice warm welcome this evening to Kevin Hoyt and Peter Duvall. They are joining us here in the studios of Town Meeting Television. We're going to begin tonight with, we'll start with Kevin Hoyt. We'll have opening statements of about a minute. And Kevin, maybe you can tell us about your experience and why you're running. Sure. Well, I guess my adult career started in engineering. I was a technical draftsman in the structural steel industry, a project manager. And then it kind of did us real hard crossover where I started the future hunting conservation program. So I started conservation programs all over the world. I've been blessed with world travel. That's where I've hosted and produced outdoor television on a national and world level for about three decades. I'm an expert in wildlife, again, conservation educator. Firearms is another big thing for me. So I finally ran. I guess I got, you know, to the point where I didn't know if I could afford to live in the state that I love with the people that I love, the tax situation. And I'm a big 2A guy. So I was tired of losing my rights and freedoms and watching my friends and neighbors suffer. So I ran for office in 2018. Got my butt handed to me from a guy from Chicago about that forced an election audit. What we found was incredible. And from there just went on and on the money laundering embezzlement, some really incredible charges against our own government. So I'm also a federal witness for the, I'm the reporting party for Chad Schmidt. The Bennington County Sexting Sheriff is, Vermont Digger calls him. And Chad is one of many people involved with a RICO investigation. That's a federal, multi-state, RICO investigation, but done on a local level. So I don't think anybody gets away this time. Racketeering. Racketeering. Right. We've all been racketeered on a big level. All right. Peter, your experience. Why are you running? Well, I'm running because I'm disappointed in the blue team and the red team. You know, they use the same language. They talk about the same crises. And there's no, there's not going to be any change because their methods are the same. They talk to the same people in the middle of the electorate as they see it. And then they recycle those words and put them out as policy. So I want to inject new language and work on getting underlying concerns, underlying issues surfaced so that we can see the connections between a lot of these isolated crises that keep popping up. And so that's why I'm running. I've had a long background in transportation and energy, been on a few boards in towns. And so I have a lot of quiet experience with government. Okay, great. We're going to defer to our phone callers tonight. So let's head to the phone here. And good evening. You're on town meeting television. Thanks for joining us. You have a question for the candidates? Yeah, I don't know what's being proposed, but the question I have is about, I don't know what's being talked about because I don't have cat TV. So, but I'm gone from Bennington. And I guess the question I have is, what are the candidates going to do about election integrity? Okay, all right. Thanks for your call. Peter, let's start with you, election integrity. Is that a concern that you have? And what are you going to do about it? Well, I am a computer scientist. So I've been keeping up with the literature as we see it. In our profession. And early on, there was opposition, real concern about the integrity of touch screen voting machines, because you don't actually get to see the result that the voter intended. It's processed. And there's really no way to secure that. So the thing is, we're running for statewide office in Vermont, and Vermont has really some of the best tech techniques for elections, handmarked paper ballots, super secure, they can all you can always go back and look at the original indications that a human made to a piece of paper. And when you put the ballot in one of those counting machines, it's just that counting machine that does the counting. There's no, there's an air gap, we would say, between that machine and everything else. So when you see a printout from the receipt from the tabulator, it's really showing you just the count that's in the machine. And then the rest of it is handled by election officials with observers from, you know, multiple parties. So I think the integrity in Vermont is pretty good. All right, Kevin, what do you think about that? I disagree wholeheartedly. Nobody can tell me we had fair, free, solid elections because I did the audit. I was part of a group and we put over a thousand hours of work in. I can prove 60 to 70% fraud and trace it back at least until 1975. I was five years old. Basically, we released over 500 names in the county of 5,500 people. That was the A's and half the B's, right? So again, all the way back to 1975 is horrific and even worse than the crime, we actually have the cover-up. We have two documents. One of them from James Condos, the Vermont Secretary of State. It's just resigning, I believe because he's going to federal prison. And the other one is from the Bennington Board of Civil Authority. It always falls back on your board of civil authority. And those documents, again, are confessions saying they never looked. Anyone, no one ever looked at any of our election fraud. Again, 500 names. We had over 322 discrepancies between the town records and the state records. That's errors. Discrepancies is another word for errors. So that's unacceptable for me and it's more than enough for an audit. And again, none of the numbers added up at all. That's what caused me to run. When I ran originally in 2018 for House of Representatives, I didn't even know we voted in March. That's how active. And again, that's my guilt. I didn't participate, right? So when I ran, I needed 600 votes in Bennington to capture that seat. I got 609 on what was supposed to be a record low year. My closest Democrat got 1200. And then the other Democrat in Bennington got 2000, the most in the history, right? I needed 50 signatures. I got 206. But then out of 206 people, only 48 of them were actually registered. So what happened to the 96%, right? The problem in Vermont State is we've never done an audit of our election rolls in the history of the United States, right? So again, if I'm Kevin Hoy and I moved to Texas, how they're smart enough, they won't use my name right away. But we have a whole list of voters who voted and the vote wasn't counted. And then another list of voters who didn't vote, but somebody did for them, right? Because again, if they know who voted, they know who didn't vote. I think the cheat is done electronically. And I think that's been proven now. And then the real magic happens in the 60 days it takes your town, local officials to transfer it to the state. And that's why we have 322 discrepancies. That's part of our recal investigation. All right. Let's let's switch the topic to education. Again, we want to remind you if you have any questions or comments for our two candidates. And I please feel free to jump right in. Let's talk about education. I think there are questions and concerns about the funding of education. Are you happy with the current system and how it's being done? Or are there any changes that you think ought to be made and how Vermont schools are funded? We'll start with you, Kevin. Right. I think it's collapsing. And my advice is let it go. If you still have your kids and those indoctrination centers, get them out. They're telling you you don't even have parental consent once they go to school. We're going to hormone black your kids. We're going to make them take part in medical experiments. We're going to do a whole bunch of things. Our kids are being terrorized. So I think the first thing for election or for education reform is to get the state out of elections or out of education altogether, along with Chinese core curriculum and the teachers union. We've got too much power. So I think the future in Vermont is going to be charter schools and private schools and home schools. And it's as simple as the money follows the student and the money, something else we have to talk about. I think we're up to what $20,000 per student for some of the lowest test scores in the nation. And that's unacceptable to me. And I think it's another giant racket. I think, again, they've taxed you to death with income, every kind of tax that you can think of. So now they have to bury an education. And I think we're watching it fall as we speak. Peter, what do you think? Well, property tax is a little awkward with the rebate. But we've gotten used to it. And it gets the job done. There are some tweaks we could do to that to make it more income sensitive. It's already income sensitive for the homestead. It's long been suggested to eliminate the cliff for income sensitivity, just to get rid of it, because there aren't that many people that are affected by it. And then maybe we put some kind of cap on the size of a homestead. So not giant mansions are getting the income sensitivity. Well, the question was about funding. So the other thought I had, this is education tax, but every tax is an expenditure and every tax credit is an incentive to do something. We do have differential residential non-residential rates. So perhaps the non-residential rate should get bumped up a little bit because we do have a lot of vacant housing in Vermont. And the reason it's vacant is because not really primary residents. So I'm thinking an increase in the non-residential tax rate would perhaps help free up some space. And that's just a change in the tax code. You don't have to hire a whole bunch of people. You don't have to spend time building a whole bunch of buildings, going through the process of designing buildings. It's just a conversion of the use. And I think that would be pretty effective and pretty quick. Speaking of building, here in Burlington they're talking about building a new high school for $175 million because of contamination from chemicals. How concerned are the two of you that this is going to turn up in other schools throughout Vermont? And what role should the state have in providing funding for this here in Burlington? It's pretty much falling on the shoulders of the Burlington taxpayers. We'll start with you on that. Well, we need to have healthy spaces for people. So that's important to make sure that kids have a healthy school building to be in. I think it's important to recognize, you know, it's a lot of money and the building is a huge commitment. And the current building's been around for more than 50 years, but these days we should be building buildings that last centuries. So a durable building that is worth the investment is what I would be looking for and it's also a, it's a habit-setting environment. The things that kids do in school become the things that they do later on at work or maybe even at home. So it should be a model building. And that means using the best practices in constructing and designing the building. And there are already plenty of examples of large buildings that generate more electricity than they consume. And they have zero wastewater discharge, zero waste, and they produce useful human wear and urine-based fertilizer. I think this is where we need to go with dealing with waste, making sure that we're turning it into resource. So I just read, skimmed the Seven Days article and, you know, they're still talking about it being an efficient building. Efficient is not any longer sufficient for new construction. It needs to be carbon negative through its life. And it needs to be dark sky compliant and supportive of biking and walking, shared mobility, and micro-mobility. And it needs to support future modes of learning. Okay. Let me stop you there, Kevin. How concerned are you about this becoming a statewide problem? There's so many different ways that I could reply to that. I'd like to start by rebutting his last response in regards to taxes, because I think that's one of the major problems is them. It's not, we don't need to increase minimum wage. We need to drop the cost of living, i.e. taxes. So I'm against any more taxes for the good people of Vermont. We can't afford that, right? I'm not sure what Peter's making for an income, but your average Vermonter is in a lot of trouble, right? As far as the, you know, the school system, again, I think I answered it in my last one. I think it's another racket. But I'm going to give you another one in Burlington, right? I spend about $56 million a year on Lake Champlain, right? And that's just through taxes, and because Fish and Wildlife, it's our number one fishery in Vermont. Cleaning up the lake. Right. Well, the city of Burlington regularly releases from three to five million gallons of raw septic into it every year. And I don't agree with Peter. I don't want to grow my food and septic in urine. That's a bad idea, in my opinion, right? So again, what we have here is another government-created problem, and their solution is always to tax us, control us, and restrict us more, right? Right here this year, they just released another half a million gallons. This is an overflow. They released this into your lake, and I hope you're ashamed of that, and I hope people stand up for it. Again, I'm a conservation guy. Our national renewable resources are important to me. And guess what? They're going to need more money again because they just dumped half a million, 500,000 gallons of raw septic into your lake. In June, they closed our beaches in July. There's no such thing as blue-green algae. That's not algae at all. It's caused from fecal chloroform, right? And that's on top of what we spend in St. Albans. I think a billion dollars to redo their infrastructure. I was there two weeks ago. There's human feces and tampons floating on top of the water. You can smell it. I wonder if Vermont traveling tourism uses that. Come to Vermont. Enjoy our beautiful water. Just don't let it touch your body. That's disgusting. As a Vermonter, I'm no longer willing to accept it. All right. Let's talk about healthcare, which is a huge cost, I think, for all of us. Recently, the Greenmount Care Board, which is the regulatory board approved, double-digit increases for the two major insurance carriers. What would you do if you're elected governor to prevent that continuation of that trend? And we'll start with you, Kevin. Well, again, I think this is a very complex answer that we're not going to cover in a minute. But healthcare is a fundamental right. I actually have a no trespass order from my hospital emergency room right now because I didn't want to wear a mask. Tell me that's legal, right? So I think this is another system, another box, that they've kept us in, kept us divided with, that's actually fallen. I think in the holistic realm, right, in the cannabis realm, I think there's a whole bunch of different ways, other than big pharma, to handle our problems. So I'm very, very interested in that. And the basic structure that we have, I think it's as key as just cutting ambulatory care, and getting hold on the grips. There's a ridiculous that you pay $400 for an EpiPent. That's a necessity for a lot of people and they can't afford it anymore. So what happens now is the insurance company is another lobby group, another problem that's connected, big pharma, big politics, right? It's all, it's the same group, right? Big corporation. And this is part of it. So I think if you, the problem right now is, even if you have state healthcare, a lot of the hospitals and doctors are no longer accepting it because of these excessive rates, because of insurance companies and your politicians. So now they don't accept that. So now it's left to you guys, the people, and we can't afford it anymore. So again, I think that's something that we're looking at changing completely. And I think it's imploding on its own. We don't have to do much except let it go. All right. Peter, what do you think about healthcare costs and how to bring them in and the insurance increases? Well, language is what I was talking about before, language and the way we think about things. Healthcare is sort of like an misappropriation by the medical industry for what's really medical care. And I think we might want to just get away from that and talk about recreation and fitness and wellness sort of separate from the big institutions and medical care. And by doing that, we'll definitely head toward being healthier for monitors. You know, CalME is supporting universal dental and vision and hearing and primary care for wellness. And that in funding that through the state, we can do that. It will reduce, you know, the long-term costs that are related to our unhealthy behaviors, you know. All right. Let me take a phone call here. Thank you for calling. Good evening. You're on the air. Hi there. My question is, I agree with Kevin that the corruption everywhere, but that it's here in Vermont is heartbreaking because I'm a native. How long does Kevin think it will take? And that saying he gets elected to weed out all the riffraff and, you know, cut down the bureaucracy and just get some good people in and get something, you know, normal and legal going. All right. Let me thank you for your call. And Kevin, questions directed to you will give you a chance to answer. Right. It's sort of soft. That's kind of a complicated question. And again, I'm not part of the FBI. I'm not part of Homeland Security or Department of Justice. I can see the dominoes falling and the people missing and disappearing all across Vermont State or getting arrested, right? Or resigning. There's a lot of things going on. I don't know. Timelines, right? But I think we're here. I mean, we're watching it. The financial is going next. I think we're probably getting all new money. We're bankrupt. We've been bankrupt for a long time. A lot of the other countries aren't even accepting American currency, right? So I think there's a lot of issues facing us in general. As far as timing goes to clean it all up, I'm not sure when it's happening. I think it's happening right now. It's been happening. It's right in front of us. But the media is a huge piece of this. The media is not telling you. And it's because they're implicated. Again, we've got the evidence, Rob Wilmington, Vermont Digger and even, you know, the fact that it's just me and Peter and hats off to Peter for being here today. It's the independent candidates. The Democrats and the Republicans never even showed up, right? That's disgusting. And what they're doing is they're having their own private little debate. Again, I'm not even listed. We're a month and a half and away. I'm not even listed as a candidate in Vermont Digger yet, right? And they're not allowing me. I don't know, Peter, were you invited to the September debate that Vermont Digger is having? Because yeah, again, this goes against the Communications, Federal Communications Act of 1934. This goes against Vermont and federal election laws. Let me stop you there. That's why we love it's a rigged system. Go ahead. Peter, how the caller wanted to know if there's corruption out there and how quickly do you think you could clean it up? I'm curious where you get your information. But I think there's a lot of times when what is not mistakes, but just like normal self-interest turns into maybe something that appears to be corruption. And it might be a little bit of a stretch to say that we've got corruption all over the place. I have had, I've had some times when I thought this is really not right, what's happening. And that's really more of a, been a more of a problem of officials not doing their job as prescribed. It's just getting sloppy, having been entrenched so long, different bad patterns developed. Can I respond? No, we have a number of other issues I want to get to as well. I think we all could agree that there is an opioid problem in this state. I think it'd be safe to even call it an epidemic. What would you suggest that this state does to decrease that? And as part of your answer, are you in favor of safe injection sites to start with you, Peter? Well, I wish Brenda Siegel was available to give us her description of how things are going right now. But this is one of those situations where red and blue are battling over something. I'm not sure. It's a real point of a good point of contention whether or not to have a safe injection site or not, because we have such a rural state. Hardly anybody's going to be able to get to a fixed location so regularly as a heroin user would need. And this is also another pattern that I've been observing. And that is the idea that the United States is the gold standard for everything. And just looking over the border in Canada, they have mobile safe injection sites. And in some places, they're starting to do safer supply. And I would think since marijuana has transitioned from being this horrible thing through to being a medical material or medicine to being something that is now decriminalized, legalized, and turned into a profit-making substance, I think it may be we ought to look at safer supply for opioids, but maybe some of these other drugs because I'm kind of concerned about black market and retail market where there's a profit motive. So that's it. Let me get your thoughts on this. Sure. This is my number one concern. I think as Vermonters, as Americans, and as the world, this is the real pandemic. And we've got the answer. It's a world precedent. We've got the proven way out. The problem is, our Democrats and Republicans just talk about it. And that's we decriminalize it. I'm not talking about legalizing it. If I catch you dealing your trafficking, we're going to put you in jail for a long time. But for your everyday average user, I want to decriminalize it for sure. And that comes with a giant shot of economic growth and development. And I'm talking about real rehab, not a 28-day detox, and then we throw you right back in the same circumstances. Right now, we're paying to Narcania 25 times. We send you to rehab 45 times. Eventually, we pay to put you in jail. And then we're putting you in a coffin. Right? How many friends and neighbors need to die before we actually do something about it? So I think the answer is real rehab. And I'm talking three months to 18 months. And 18 months comes with mental health therapy. It comes with jobs training and aftercare, sober living. So if you can share this vision with me, we're talking about hundreds of facilities all across the states. All across the states. So I'm going to need, you know, landscapers and architects and engineers and plumbers and electricians and doctors and nurses and therapists and jobs, jobs, jobs. And then afterwards, here's another word you won't hear out of another politician's mouth. Instead of higher taxes, I like return on investment. Right? Imagine Vermont with these facilities. I care about our brothers and sisters in New York state and in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire. And we have nothing like this. So I would love to have Vermont lead the nation that started in Holland. I think the idea of safe injection sites back to that queue on its own is ridiculous. But I think if you do it in a whole system like they did in Holland or Portugal, again, we have led the nation led the world in opioids. We grow by three to 500% every year, right? In Portugal, they cut their crime by 420% reduced drug use by 56 overdoses by 85 heroin use by 75. So this is just a matter of doing it. The politicians just want more money. All right. We're a half an hour goes very quickly here. So let's give you each another minute here just to wrap up any final thoughts that you weren't able to get to. Kevin, we'll start with you. Oh, well, there's a there's a million issues that are happening. And these are historic times and how blessed are we to all be a part of it and who wouldn't want to be a part of this? You know, I've got a pretty extensive background. I think I'm qualified and I've accepted this role, but it's not because I want it. I can't imagine anybody wanting to do this job. I'm not a politician. It's my best attribute, right? I've never been a banker. I've never been a lawyer. I think we've been again, not only racketeered, but over government, right? There's we can't afford them anymore. And if I'm governor, I'm going to let you keep a little bit of your own money. And I think you can spend it a whole lot wiser than the knuckleheads we have in office now. So rather than fight over corrupt seats, nobody really wants in a rig system. I plan on just arresting them all. Then we can go back to talking politics afterwards. I've got the policies, the economic growth and development. I have the ability to bring air power. We can generate your car and your home with air. I'm in contact with manufacturers. We're going to make armor out of hemp, stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum. I want to make wood. How about we cut down, we make lumber without cutting down any more trees? All you college kids, green energy people, right? Green energy is a scam. Go ahead, Pete. Let me interrupt you and have Peter final thoughts here, Peter. Well, because there's a tiny chance that I may be wrong. I've been told not to say this, but I'm going to lose. And Kevin, you're going to lose. Brent is going to lose, because Phil Scott's going to win. He's the master of the image. You're going to cheat, Pete. I'm running because Red Team and Blue Team are not getting the job done. And they're drawing these false battle lines. Meanwhile, the planet's cooking. And the oceans are depleted and neutrified and acidified. And we're filling up with microplastics and novel pollutants from modern civilization. And there's mass extinction and extreme weather, sea level rise, drought, flood, crop failure. We're in trouble. And so far, we're getting lip service and tokenism from the big names. I'm looking for the underlying themes and solutions that address multiple issues simultaneously, thinking global and acting local. Thank you both for coming in, Kevin Hoyt, Peter Duvall. And thank you all for joining us tonight as well. That's going to wrap it up for us here at Tom Meany Television tonight. And have a great night.