Find new ways to make your summer count By Secretary Anson Tebbetts As the weather gets warmer, Vermonters are comforted by the simple pleasures of summer, among them, fun with friends at Vermont country fairs and festivals. My own family has enjoyed fairs all over the state year after year. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has caused this summer’s…

By Alon Ben-Meir The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in broad daylight came amid a high point in the continuing rampage of the coronavirus throughout the country, killing over 100,000 and infecting nearly 2 million while more than 45 million have lost their jobs. The death of Floyd is no longer seen…

By Angelo Lynn Donald Trump is a failed president. Americans are facing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 30s, the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918, and the worst civil unrest and protests since the riots of the late 1960s. It is no coincidence that these three calamities have…

By Rep. Randall Szott, D-Barnard Around this time last year, as the legislative session was ending, I was reflecting on the meaning of politics and the politics of meaning. I wrote and published my thoughts and ended on this note, “If we pursue a legislative agenda committed to putting meaning at the center of our deliberations, we…

By Joe Kraus In the summer of 2012, a large and diverse group of citizens gathered to ask what could be done about the growing opioid crisis affecting our community. That group ultimately became known as Project VISION, a very eclectic collaborative of virtually every agency and organization dedicated to the welfare of the greater…

By Lee H. Hamilton We are living in a difficult time. Our country and its communities are deeply polarized; many Americans distrust one another as well as the government and other institutions. The novel coronavirus has deepened our problems in a way none of us imagined. The number of Americans who have contracted Covid-19 has…

By Meg Hansen Public health and the economy are two sides of the same coin. Yet, as the number of COVID-19 cases escalates and an economic implosion looms, crisis managers feel compelled to pick either heads or tails. President Trump, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are eager to reopen…

By Marc Sherman We are facing an unprecedented catastrophe. Whether you believe the threat is real and upon us or you think it’s a hoax, the reality is people are suffering very real illness and very personal challenges. For my business, Stowe Mercantile, we have closed following the governor’s proclamation for food service businesses. We unfortunately…

By Art Woolf We are in the first weeks of what will probably be the fastest and largest employment decline in Vermont’s history. The economy will be in much worse shape than I imagined just a week ago. Today there are 314,000 jobs in Vermont. By May, we will have lost 28,000 of them. That’s more than 8%…

By Secretary of State Jim Condos Trust in government is at an all-time low. As you can see playing out before our eyes in the news today, integrity is at a premium in times of crisis. Truth and transparency are necessary to effective leadership. In Vermont, we take great pride in having a government that…

By Marilyn Miller I have been the executive director of the Vermont Automobile Dealers Association, more recently known as the Vermont Vehicle and Automotive Distributors Association (VADA), since 1984. From a change in our organization’s name to reflect an expanded membership to autonomous vehicles, I and the entire industry have seen a lot of change…

By Jim Condos For decades, Vermont’s Community Media Centers have provided our residents direct access to each other, our government and our community events. Now, more than ever, we need a strong network of public, educational and government (“PEG TV”) stations and their Community Media Centers to provide these important services that keep our civic…

By Angelo Lynn Score a small victory for Vermont’s Democratic Legislature as they managed to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of the recently passed minimum wage bill. The proposal increases the minimum wage from $10.78 an hour to $12.55 by 2022, with future increases tied to inflation or at 5%. At the current 3% inflation,…

By Greg Dennis Fear not, my fellow liberals: Donald Trump is a one-term president. If you believe, as I do, that anyone who says they know what will happen in the 2020 presidential election actually has no idea what will happen, then you can happily ignore the first sentence of this column. But if you…

By Jake Claro I encourage everyone to read through the Vermont Agriculture and Food System Plan recently released by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (VAAFM) and the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) in fulfillment of Act 83. The jointly created 2020 plan takes a balanced and honest view of multiple agricultural industries…