Archive

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

So much has been and is being written about reproductive choice that one is hard-pressed to say more. From the fact that three Trump-backed jurists hand-picked by the conservative Federalist… Read More

Since the agriculturalists in the Fertile Crescent supplanted many of the hunter-gatherers some 12,000 years ago, those early stirrings of capitalism have become embedded in our DNA. I see it… Read More

The Vermont State Constitution, dating from 1793, has been the basis of several pioneering events in Vermont history, The Marriage Equality Act and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (Brigham Decision).… Read More

It’s time for a statute prohibiting hate-speech, online bullying, and threats of physical violence. Five years ago, then Representative Kiah Morris (D-Bennington) resigned from the Vermont Legislature, where she had… Read More

Economic Growth or Strong families and Communities? Robert Kennedy said in a 1968 speech at the University of Kansas: “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health… Read More