Just as Vermont cuts the budget at the expense of our Vets, Teachers, Seniors, the less fortunate and especially the middle class (corporations get away tax-free), they’re sinking a lot of money into tasers, drones, surveillance cameras and vans, and two new armories. Why?

Are they expecting massive civil disobedience, or unrest? Are they mishandling Vermont’s finances so badly up in Montpelier, that they need to set the police on...

Dear Editor, 

I participated in the rally in Burlington on Sunday to oppose destructive industrial-scale energy development in the Northeast. Prior to the altercation, I had actually thanked the Burlington Police Department for their mellow behavior earlier in the day—I'm afraid I must rescind that thank you.

Whether you agree with the tactics of some protesters or not—some of whom likely felt standing in the driveway was their last resort for communicating to elected officials who would otherwise have continued to ignore them—but in my mind, this incident is largely about how police...

The Common Core State [sic] Standards are corporate, top-down educational imperatives brought to Vermont villages and towns by money provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and political muscle  provided by the Obama administration.  We didn't ask for them and had the citizenry known what was involved, there would have been outrage against them.

Here's one tiny example of what the Common Core curriculum--written by people who have never set foot in a classroom since their own student days--will mean.

 In the Vermont Standards, standards which put us at the top of achievement by national and international measures...

Europe is giving new meaning to the term "bootstrapping," the age-old (virtuous) idea of picking oneself up off the floor after some blow or reversal of fortune has laid you low. The new method might be called "skyhooking" in which a massive rescue apparatus secured at some mysterious point unseen in the clouds lifts whole exhausted nations from their knees in order get them to summer vacation. Hence: the interesting spectacle of an entire continent headed for vacation despite facing utter financial ruin, revolution, and civil war.

No one who has been to Europe in our time can doubt that it is a lovely place to stage...

The vastness of the fraud and criminality at the heart of the international private banking cartel can no longer be denied or explained away. Let’s look at the news of only the past two weeks.

In a courtroom in New York, a long investigation culminated in the prosecution of three wheeler-dealers for their role in rigging the U.S. municipal bond market. The scope of the scam and cost to ordinary Americans are extraordinary. Here is how it was reported by Matt Taibbi, the investigative journalist writing for...

You know folks, I’m a bit worried about my 16-year-old son, Jimi. When he was 13, he grew three inches. When he was 14, he grew five inches. When he was 15 his growth slowed to three inches, and no matter how much I feed him, now he isn’t growing at all past his current six-one. Could someone please tell me how to achieve sustainable growth for my son, so that he can keep getting bigger forever?

The insanity of my plan is no less than the insanity of the explicit goal of the Rio environmental summit: sustainable development. That phrase could mean a lot of things in theory; in practice, what it means is, in the words...

For months the debate has raged in Vermont over the possible replacement by the Air Force of the Vermont Air National Guard’s aging fleet of F-16 fighter jets with state-of-the-art F-35 jets. Not only will the controversial new fighters cost $115 million a piece, but they will be significantly noisier than their predecessors. For that reason the debate has been framed primarily as an environmental impact issue. As many as 2,000 homes near the Burlington International Airport might have to be abandoned, if the screaming meemies are adopted.

But there is a much more fundamental question that seems to have...

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney. “Was he . . . subtly hinting that he’s really the guy in charge?”

The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled “Jon Stewart Blasts Senate’s Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,” and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called “...

I still remember the first time I saw director Ridley Scott’s film “Alien.” Even scarier than the U.S. of Empire.

It was 1980 and I was twelve, kidsitting for the neighbors through the woods, and had to walk home at midnight through the pitch-black forest after foolishly solo screening the film on HBO - uncut and uninterrupted. I still remember the tag line – “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Nor could they hear me in the forest, for that matter. “Alien” forever altered our conception of a fantasy film, with its unique blend of science fiction, horror, and badass character development, with the...