Archive

Michelangelo’s David courtesy of BBC Media When I was young and in search of the facts of life, there was no discernible pornography. The closest we ever got was a book we… Read More

  Image Courtesy of Oregon Public Broadcasting With the second highest per capita homeless rate in the nation, the legislature ended, as of July, current state funding for providing hotel/motel… Read More

Photo by Nancy Stevens A measure of the Vermont legislature’s commitment to Vermonters’ well-being is the extent to which it commits the money earned from licensing and taxing addictive substances… Read More

Photo supplied by UVM Medical Center We’re at an inflection point in healthcare reform in Vermont. The number of Vermonters who can’t access or afford healthcare is a rising tide… Read More

On its surface, the term “affordability agenda,” often used by our Governor and legislators, makes sense… but it’s important to dig in and examine the politics behind it. A recent… Read More

I don’t want any one thing in the New Year but rather a new way of understanding leadership and governing from our executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. I don’t have… Read More

    I’m reading former UVM President Thomas Sullivan’s new book, Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates, written in collaboration with Leonard Niehoff of University of Michigan Law… Read More

Last Monday, VTDigger reported on a convocation on “Crime and Punishment” in Burlington City Hall held by a group called “The Keep Vermont Safe Coalition.” I flattered myself by imagining… Read More

We like to think of philanthropy as pure altruism… making a gift, and it often is, but philanthropy also has its dark side. Criminal Theft and Deception Among the darkest… Read More

I have a love-hate relationship with religion. Born of a German-Jewish father and a mother of Dutch background and atheist tradition who married a Morrisville, Vermont Catholic after being widowed… Read More

Elmore Community School In an earlier column, I looked at the difficulty of addressing Vermont’s complex systems with our limited leadership and dated governance tools. As technology and information systems further complicate our… Read More

In the ‘60s, I began to understand that politics was something that could affect my life as I grew up. I watched Walter Cronkite report nightly on domestic and international… Read More