Archive

Some 20% of Vermont’s economy and much of our social safety net depend on Vermont’s nonprofits. Yet the governance principles that help them achieve their missions are widely misunderstood or… Read More

Whomever we elect to lead us for the next two years, we’ll need to confront two gaping holes in our governance: strategic planning and ethics. Our last few decades ought… Read More

When I turned 18, my stepfather drove me to Hyde Park to apply for my draft card. When it came, I looked at it and asked him why I was… Read More

As headlines about young men massacring random or specific targets multiply, we must repress our implicit bias and the tribal labels we apply to these troubled young men. Otherwise, we… Read More

“Information wants to be free” is a mantra from the sixties that’s wreaking havoc with democracy. Our culture is at stake as digitization and the Internet largely eliminate the need… Read More

The scale of incarceration in our country is more than a gauge of domestic crime, it is a socio-economic indicator, telling us how we are doing on the key metrics… Read More

If you’re wondering why our bridges collapse, our trains collide, security lines stretch on, and our courtrooms have no judges … it’s because “potty politics” has become a more important… Read More

As the legislative biennium winds down, it’s time to consider what happened, what didn’t, and more important, why? Many Vermonters are vocal about wanting their government branches to change how… Read More

“We must agree to disagree” is a fair resolution to any discussion and such was the case with a thoughtful discussion I had recently about S. 107, a bill to… Read More

Periodically, we must relearn old lessons. A key such lesson is Franklin’s “Ounce of prevention…” adage – as relevant today as when Franklin applied it to fire prevention 250 years… Read More

With the highest incarceration rate in the world, American liberals and conservatives are crossing ideological lines to question why. For every 100,000 citizens, China jails 165, Russia 450, and the… Read More

Robert Proctor, a science historian at Stanford, has coined a new word that’s getting lots of attention… agnotology. Agnotology is the study of efforts to spread confusion and deceive people… Read More