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My New Year’s Wish for Vermont
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
Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates by UVM’s Tom Sullivan and Leslie Niehoff
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
Don’t defund the police, fire, and rescue, consolidate and fund them cost-efficiently
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
Philanthropy: The Darkside of Giving…Getting
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
Temptation in the Supreme Court
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
Complex Systems(II), Simple Solutions
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
Complex Systems: a process for change
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
A Tsunami of Unwanted Children?
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
The Power of the Lemonade Stand
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
Equal Reproductive Rights (VT Prop 5) matters to all Vermonters
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
Does the First Amendment Allow Racist and Personal Threats of Violence?
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?
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