To the editor: The taint of corporate involvement in politics and government
The Chester Telegraph | Oct 16, 2026 | Comments 3
When we hear Republican candidates earnestly talking about reducing regulations, cutting government programs and lowering taxes to help ordinary Americans, we need to recognize the distinction between tactics and strategy.
These proposals are tactics. The broader strategy behind them is to drastically reduce the role of government in our lives.
We have watched this strategy unfold in Washington, D.C., over the past year and a half. So let’s ask ourselves two simple questions: Have our lives become safer and healthier? Have our wallets and pocketbooks become fuller?
For most ordinary Americans, these are the measures that matter. And they are the measures by which we should judge the results.
When government withdraws from its role in protecting the public, providing essential services, and maintaining a fair playing field, the space it leaves behind does not remain empty.
Corporations, large financial institutions and billionaires step in to fill it. But their priorities are not our priorities. Their focus is their shareholders, their investors, and their own financial interests—not the well-being of ordinary Americans.
Over the past 40 years, we have seen how the growing influence of corporate wealth and concentrated financial power has distorted our economy and our political system. The critical question is not simply whether government should be bigger or smaller. It is this: Whose interests does government serve, and who benefits when government steps aside?
So when you hear politicians focusing tactics that will reduce the role of government in our lives recognize that these tactics will have real-world consequences for our families, our communities and our democracy.
Steve Dock
Chester
Filed Under: Commentary • Letters to the Editor
Mr. Dock has stated the facts while Mr. Stern ignores them. Vermont is not an island disconnected from national policies and failures that have impacted everything from the cost of fuel and food to interest rates, to the price and availability of nearly every consumer product and that have dramatically worsened the crisis around health care, housing, poverty and homelessness. Clueless wars, corporate greed, unchallenged mergers, and attacks on workers’ rights have directly impacted state and municipal economies. If Mr. Stern wants to expose the root causes of the problems facing Vermonters, he should not influence his analysis by his own political bias but should instead look closely and carefully at the direction the Federal government has taken, it’s failure to put people over corporate profits and its abandonment of anti-trust and human rights protections.
Dear Mr. Stern. Gee… I wonder why you don’t want to be associated with the national Republican Party? I’m sure if 47 was doing really well, you’d attach yourself to him in a hot second, but seeing that he’s a total failure, the republicans are all trying to run away. Just like most of the republican candidates don’t have red in their signs from here to New Hampshire. The electorate is smarter than you think.
We get 35% of our budget from the federal government – so it affects us.
Our municipal budget went up 8-9% due in Chester due to tariffs – so it affects us.
Heating oil in the Northeast is going up 50-80% this winter from this war – so it affects us.
School budgets will go through the roof because of this heating oil increase – so it affects us.
Tell me again how national politics and the failed policies of a majority Republican Party do not apply to Vermonters?
Never mind, I don’t feel like doing mental gymnastics with you.
First of all you are talking national politics which only involves one race. The answer to that is both parties have failed us miserably because of the terrible people in congress. It takes a special kind of idiocy to run up $40T in debt and still be unwilling to practice fiscal responsibility.
As for in Vermont we’ve seen 30 years of democrat rule in the legislature and we have seen Vermonters struggle to make ends meet increasingly and the incumbents have no answers for fixing anything.
Steve no one is talking about cutting any programs, only cutting the waste and duplication while looking to increase efficiency.
Take the mail in ballot system which costs taxpayers over $2M while just duplicating what is already in place with the in person and absentee ballots. Democrats see that as some kind of win while republicans see it as money that could be used to actually help people in need.