Last May, Louras’ secret plan came to light in the Boston Globe, which said: “Louras made no apologies for excluding the public from the planning. If the proposal had been floated earlier, the mayor said, the debate would have become ‘about them’ — meaning the Syrians, their culture, and possible links to terrorism — instead of whether the city had the means to accommodate the refugees.”
Yes, and they couldn’t possibly have had a public discussion about whether the migrants had possible links to terrorism. That would have been “Islamophobic.”
Well, now, even in Vermont — Vermont! — this arrogant and authoritarian mayor has received his comeuppance: he has been voted out. Bravo, Rutland voters.
“In Referendum on Refugees, Rutland Mayor Loses Reelection Bid,” by Mark Davis, Seven Days, March 7, 2017 (thanks to Creeping Sharia):
Rutland Mayor Chris Louras, who endured months of withering criticism for his plan to bring Syrian refugees to the city, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday.
In unofficial voting results, David Allaire, a city alderman and leading critic of the resettlement, trounced Louras, a 10-year mayoral incumbent, by a 776-vote margin, according to results cited by the Rutland Herald and WCAX-TV.
“I’m simply wishing him luck and I’m moving on,” Louras told Seven Days Tuesday night. He declined further comment, saying he would “not hazard a guess” as to what the election results say about Rutland’s support for refugees.
Allaire did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
While Louras campaigned on a series of issues, and touted a reduction in many categories of crime, along with an improved downtown business district, the refugee debate has dominated political life in Rutland for the past year.
Louras had beaten Allaire in two previous mayoral elections.
A Rutland native, Louras reached out to refugee resettlement officials in late 2015 and hatched a proposal to bring 100 refugees from Syria and Iraq to the city, which has been losing population for decades. The mayor pitched the plan, without consulting the Board of Aldermen, as a humanitarian imperative and economic development initiative.
He faced a fierce backlash from many residents and aldermen, some of whom engaged in nativist rhetoric. Reporters from across the state and country descended on the city.
After months of conflict, Louras in September appeared to have scored a legacy-defining victory when the U.S. State Department announced that Rutland had been approved as a resettlement site and would begin accepting refugees. But President Donald Trump’s executive orders cracking down on immigration from Syria and other Muslim countries scuttled the plan. Only two Syrian families made it to Rutland.
Allaire always insisted he is not anti-refugee, but he led the charge to investigate whether Louras broke any laws in his handling of the proposal.
“We’ve had a difficult time getting any information from the mayor’s office or the refugee resettlement folks. It seems to be all cloak and dagger, behind the scenes,” Allaire, a sales manager for Interstate Batteries, told Seven Days last month….
marina says
Good Riddance !! Rutland is saved.
Custos Custodum says
Good riddance indeed! The article helpfully found by Cynthia (below) has this revealing passage:
Outside the People’s Republic of Vermont, this is known as “democracy.”
Jeanette says
There are plenty of “refugees” here already; how many has Louras moved into his home, with his family?
JawsV says
Well, 2 Syrian (Muslim) families made it. And they’re going to reproduce.
Brock says
He ought to be indicted for criminal conspiracy and fraud…
Frank says
They should protest any pension that he may receive while in office and his presence there uncomfortable to bear.
Bill says
He acted as a dictator pursuing his policies in secret and defying the people. The people of Rutland, in a free election, rose up and threw him out of office. This is how the system works. Similar results are needed in other rural towns and cities where Obama’s plantation of radical Islamists was pursed with like-minded Democrat dictators at the local level.
Frank Courtney says
Similar results are needed in Canada, Sweden, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands …
Ted says
We have an election coming in 2019 and we are hopefully going to get rid of Justin Trudeau who stupidly threw his arms open to tell any refugees the people of Canada would welcome them no matter what. I am sure the vast majority of us Canadians do not agree with him as to this statement. We welcome people to our country as long as just like Trump they are vetted and follow immigration rules and know fully well that when they eventually gain citizenship, raise their hand and swear to be a citizen and obey our laws. When they decide as 18 Jihadists did to bomb downtown Toronto, attack the Parliament buildings and behead the Prime Minister, get convicted and sentenced to life in prison and this Trudeau says deportation is un-canadian and should not occur, it shows how out of touch he is with us just like the Mayor in Vermont.
Oliver says
Why would the jihadists have wanted to behead TRUDEAU
Rob says
“Out of touch” doesn’t quite encompass Trudeau’s position.
As for Rutland, Vermont as a whole is experiencing a declining population. But rather than bringing in foreigners with uncertain loyalties, a rise in population might be achieved by lowering Vermont’s heavy state tax load. Vermont is very pretty, and more people might remain in or move to Vermont if it was more affordable.
Terry says
Why would they want to behead Trudeau?
He is their ” friend” and prays with them.
Jeanette says
The people whose cities have been infested with Muslims by these “elites” need a way to recover damages from the elites.
If their taxes go up to support the Muslims, a class action suit against the elite responsible should be possible. If anyone is hurt or murdered by one of the elite’s Muslim imports, damages should be recoverable from the elite.
If these elites’ bank accounts were actually vulnerable, they would think harder before they decided to dump the nasty, primitive gonads-on-the-hoof on innocent Americans.
marina says
Good Riddance ! Rutland is saved .
JawsV says
What about the 2 Muslim families that made it? How many kids did they have? Not 100% saved unless Muslims are at zero. They’ll probably start demanding a mosk and foot baths in the school. And prayer rooms for little Mohammed and Jihad.
Custos Custodum says
Two Muslim families = 8 wives = 8 x 5 kids makes 40 kids.
All kids and adults will be receiving welfare benefits for life, along with [un]earned income “tax credit” (i.e. voter bribes), free schooling, and for the older boys, frequent flyer access to the juvenile justice system.
Jeanette says
And that’s another issue – since when does America allow such blatant illegal behavior (polygamy)?
ICE let the multiple wives in, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be tolerated by state law enforcement (there isn’t a state in the US that allows polygamy – yet).
Ted says
I just heard the taxpayers of Canada are going to build a prayer room at Pearson airport for the use of Islamists only, it will include foot washing and prayer areas . How do these people in Ottawa decide that with a Prime Minister with a proposed massive deficit of 10 billion dollars right now, think that the money spent on a Prayer room for a minority will stand with my fellow Canadians? We need the election soon to get rid of this Trudeau.
Jeanette says
I have quit calling them “taxpayers” here in the US. We are “TaxVictims,” constantly victimized by theft for the benefit of wild, dangerous and sometimes treasonous agendas of the politicians.
Stan Lee says
Here’s hoping Vermonters like those of Rutland will take heart that a tide of votes against the left-wing status quo works in the interests of the people against political moves by elected leaders which are contrary to an established composition of citizens who want no foreign elements in their society to upset the growth direction of their towns or cities.
Ren says
Another libtard ousted. It is getting better and better.
Marty says
This former mayor should consider moving to France where the wisdom of invading Muslim rapefugees is in abundant evidence.
DFD says
Now the poor man has to work for an NGO, probably Soros funded. Or he will get a scholarship. At the very least, he will now subsist on research grants or after-dinner speeches.
Could ‘they’ simply dump him? possible… Would be the best 🙂
Jeanette says
Dump him in the middle east would be appropriate.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
What a strange way of reporting the results of an election. According to the linked-to article, the votes cast for each candidate numbered
David Allaire x + 776
Chris Louras x
Mike Coppinger 559
Kam Johnston 54
Presumably, the number x of votes cast for the second-place finisher Chris Louras was greater than 559, but we are not told the total number of votes cast, so this article-as-algebra-problem does not even allow us to calculate the percent of votes the winner won. This reporting is a Journalism 101 failure (and so easily fixed).
Cynthia in California says
Dear Mr. Spahn (I swan; who’d’a thunk it?): Full voting details on this FOUR-way race are available at https://vtdigger.org/2017/03/07/allaire-ousts-louras-rutland-city-mayors-race/ , together with the vital nugget that Louras’s dark-of-night plan would have had 100 Syrian families *per year* settling in Rutland.
The idea that we “can’t choose who our neighbors are going to be,” as stated in the Vermont Digger article, is ludicrous. Maybe we can’t choose who they *will* be, but we sure as h3!! can choose NOT to invite in, on purpose, those who have a high statistical probability of being involved with terrorism–or having family members who are.
Louras’s underhanded, private decision in this regard was not (as other commenters here have said) “liberal”; it was authoritarian to the ultimate degree. I think we can all give examples of authoritarians from both ends of the Right/Left political axis.
Kay says
100 families yearly is a big difference!
No, I guess we don’t get to choose our neighbors. Seems that’s the pervue of the elite orchestrating behind their walled properties.
Anne Smith says
The Islamic immigrants tend to have very big families – they are encouraged to do so by their religion. So the 100 per year would soon have outstripped the local residents.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
Thanks for finding this, Cynthia in California. So the winner won with 2196/4229 (=2196+1420+559+54) = 51.9% of the vote. And thanks for finding the nugget that the plan was for 100 Syrian families *per year*.
Ted says
I even up in Canada knew it was 100 per year. I was so glad that the people voted the Mayor out just for the elected politicians up here to maybe start to come sort of a realization of they are elected as to what we, the taxpayers want. NO SHARIA and no immigrants who will build a Mosque and ask Allah to kill all unbelievers, Jews, Homosexuals, Stone people for Adultery, Murder their own family members who decide to not follow their supposed peaceful Ideology and any other slight that they could imagine that slighted a Pedophile prophets teachings from the 4th or 5th century. We Christians at one time believed the earth was flat and everything revolved around it and you went to the stake if you disagreed with the churches teachings, why cant they come into the present times but I will answer my own question, POWER and domination.
quota raven says
Cynthia – I agree with everything you’ve said; I would, however, call this mayor “totalitarian” rather than “authoritarian”. He behaved as a dictator, and a lying, deceptive, sneaky one as well. Bad, bad guy. Rutland is well rid of him.
Cheers!
quota raven
Terry says
Bu Vermont still keeps a Senator who has been in Congress for 42 years and then there is Bernie Sanders, a socialist-whose wife bankrupted a college but walked away with a golden parachute.
And they are supposed to have three homes(one of which is supposed to have cost some $650,000)–a true socialist out for the little people.
So, Vermont seems to attract more really weird politicians -relative to its size-then more populated and larger states.
My views
Mike says
Let’s us assume that LOuras had the maximum X possible : 775. Total votes are 2164.So , Louras has had 36 % of the votes. Is it enough for you to say he lost or as a liberal minded you need more?
Wellington says
At best simply a fool. At worst a malevolent fool. Good riddance either way.
Jeanette says
That whole saying is “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” which seems particularly appropriate here!
jewdog says
When I moved to Charleston, SC I said good riddance to Vermont. I still remember the frenzied crowd of leftist students screaming at us as we went o the UVM auditorium for the ZAKA fundraiser – an Israeli religious group that rides a fleet of motorcycles to the rescue after terrorist attacks.
Plus,Vermont gave us the execrable communist pig Bernie Sanders and his terrorist sidekick Linda Sarsour. Now, the voters of Rutland have given a sign of redemption. Maybe there’s hope for the Woodchuck Republic after all.
JawsV says
Gramps Sandals the Islam-loving doofus.
Terry says
I think Sanders is up for re-election in 2018-not sure.
But- Rutland has been losing people for decades.
I think Vermont as a whole has been losing people.
DID THE POLITICIANS EVER THINK ( RHETORICAL QUESTION, I KNOW) THAT MANY OF THEIR LEFTIST INSPIRED TAXES AND REGULATIONS HAVE LED TO PEOPLE ( CREATIVE/INVENTIVE AND BUSINESS MINDED) TO LEAVE?
I doubt it. Probably saying that it was/is the fault of ( fill in the blank- as long as a Rep or Conservative, or a Cons. Repub.)
Cornelius Bradley says
The people have spoken.
Janeatte says
I don’t understand why the liberal wants Muslims if they want muslwhy they don’t go to them not to bring them here
Jeanette says
The New World Order globalist elites plan to kill 13 of every 14 people on Earth.
When they infest western countries with vicious primitives, it invariably seems to be the primitives who kill the westerners. If the Muslims kill all non-Muslims, then the globalists (who are above the fray, so far) will only have roughly 1.7 billion people to deal with. And those people are so inbred that they aren’t too smart, so are easier to control (until they, too, can be killed).
Rob says
I hope that this is the situation (in microcosm) that will play out across Europe this year.
Starting with Holland, France and Germany.
andra says
I hope so, too. But I don´t believe in it.
somehistory says
He has an evil look, not one of wishing the other guy *luck.* Unless, it’s bad luck.
If he read the Bible, he would have known his plan couldn’t stay secret. Jesus said, something to the effect, ‘everything done in secret will be brought into the light, and things hidden will be revealed.’ (Matthew 10:26; Mark 4:22)
Terry says
Benjamin Franklin put it best.
THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET- SO LONG AS TWO OF THE THREE ARE DEAD.
aDhimmiSaysWhat? says
Score one for the good guys!
Cornelius Bradley says
A big mistake Rutland will be better off without you.
melancholy observer says
It reminds me of poor old Fairfield a refugee suburb in Sydney Australia. where the deadbeat bleeding hearts and refugee lobbyists have flooded the town with 6,000 Syrian refugees in the last year. God why do we let these refugee advocates do this to us. The crime rate has soared, the police are losing control and pleading for more support. The fake news of groups like the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald cheer it on.Thank God one community has rolled a refugee(say Muslim) welcoming mayor! Let it be the beginning of a world wide movement. We certainly need one, if anyone has about doubts let them find the truth about Fairfield.
Angemon says
International political discourse in a micro-cosmos.
Good.
Richie says
I think any and all Muslim ‘migrants’ accepted into the US should only be sent to blue states like Vermont. Obama wanted to flood red states with Muslims as well as all manner of illiegals so as to gain more Democrat votes. Under Pres Trump’s tenure, he should flood blue states with Muslims, its only a matter of time before reality turns most locals into conservatives
Dan King says
If population decrease was his reason, why did he not promote his township with Americans. But the obama govt would not have paid him for helping Americans. Wonder how much his out of American shell bank account went up for his secret plan? He may need that money now, hope his socialist state taxes the hell out of it when he tries to bring it back into America.
John A. Marre says
No different from Obama.Willing to betray his constituents for political power.
Vic says
There are 180+ cities in the US where Department of State Contractors are “depositing” refugees and immigrants, majority of them being Muslims, with no intentions of integrating. A replica of Rutland X 180+.
The deals have been done between DOS and the Contractors and the mayors for years with much secrecy and without including the people of the town in the negotiations. The mayors will talk to people who own low income housing who have empty units and deals are struck to keep them full and take some of the money to implement refugee social service programs plus legal immigration documents. So you can see that it is in the interest of some, but not others….like adding a burden to the communities’ social services, medical services, jobs, transportation services, schools, etc. plus all the accommodation that is expected to be made because of the differences in culture and religion. Ever hear of halal meat markets? Special prayer rooms and prayer times? Separation of boys and girls in school?
This is a Billion $$$ industry and every person who participates shares in the rewards, so the fewer the better. So Is it wrong for people to prefer to have neighbors that want to assimilate into our way of life? What about preferring persecuted religious minorities like Christians? what about requesting that refugees respect the Constitution and the Rule of Law and not want to replace it with shariah?
I say follow the money and you will find that this whole setup is not truly about humanitarian assistance, but rather about sucking dry a cash cow. That cash, by the way, is coming from us the taxpayers. So why are we not allowed to be more involved in these decisions since we the people are the ones footing the bill?
R Cole says
Ha ha!!
Think why isn’t Saudi Arabia not taking these people??
A few hours drive and they are there! The Saudis could set up camps and temporarily shelter millions. Believe, they are afraid, too, that some might be terrorists.
Why doesn’t the Arab world want them?
So you have to wonder what’s up with the moral crusade to bring Middle East refugees in – and scratch behind the surface and a lot of it is to do with economics.
They argue anti-racism – but it’s about cheap labor.
Bill Clinton: Let Syrian Refugees Rebuild Detroit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjK08QEa6WI
A new kind of workforce.
Middle East and African migrants to the US are being hired in food processing plants and other labor intensive industries. That’s if they are ever employed at all.
It’s the new quick fix, but has long term repercussions.
When Germany brought in thousands of Turkish migrant guest workers – for industries that were on the decline – to do jobs Germans would no longer do. Although those jobs have vanished – the migrants have remained. Now third generation [allowing for marriages back to homeland – meaning significant portion of adults would not be German born] some 80% are on state benefits or welfare.
To bring in 100’s thousands of Syrian, Middle East and East African refugees to work in industrial sectors that will be automated in the near future, is counterproductive. What happens when the technology moves on, but most of these people do not?
http://uk.businessinsider.com/best-buy-robot-retail-shopping-2015-10
One of the problems the Vermont area is facing is drug addiction. Rather than writing off these people – and paying $100’s millions to resettle migrants – why not get these people into rehab, turn them into functioning citizens again. Don’t replace them.
Mass Islamic immigration stores up problems for the future. In Germany, although the Turks haven’t been big on terrorism – the largest German Muslim organizations who publicly profess to support a democratic and pluralist society – privately support Sharia law for Germany and see democracy as the enemy.
Trump’s cut refugee numbers by half – it could be that the mayor may have not gotten his migrants.
Terry says
I believe that there are several reasons why Saudi Arabia and The Gulf States are NOT taking in the Syrians.
1. Most of the ‘ refugees”- from what I have read-on JW and elsewhere- are not even from Syria, but the former Yugoslavia and Albania, and other poor European countries, and Libya.
2. The Gulf States and the Syrians- ( which are backed by Iran)- brings in the Sunni/Shia fighting.
3. S. A. & the Gulf States don’t want potential ( and real) terrorists moving in. (Neither would any SANE leader, nor any SANE person).
Jeanette says
4. Islam has a strategy to overwhelm the rest of the world, and that involves Muslims moving into non-Muslim countries and breeding like cockroaches (okay, they don’t use the word “cockroaches”). What Islam could never have foreseen was that these countries would be so wiling to sacrifice their own citizens.
Brenda Romano says
Anybody up for a go-fund-me page to send Chris Louvas to Syria?