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Consult the following Vermont organizations for more information about their complimentary currency programs: www.reachvt.org ; www.vtfarmstand.org ; www.orexchange.org. Also: Search the Vermont Commons web site for economic, financial and local currency features written by Amy Kirschner, Hazel Henderson, Chris Martenson, Adrian Kuzminski, Gary Flomenhoft, Jim Hogue, and others.
In the last several decades many independence movements around the world have been successful and the number of sovereign...
Editor, Vermont Commons:
The Healthcare Reform package currently moving through the legislative process in Vermont does not explicitly describe the funding mechanism for the system as envisioned post-overhaul. The closest description of what the funding mechanism would be comes from the Hsaio report. Hsaio states that in the case of any of the proposed benefit packages, the funding of the program and the payment protocol for services would be essentially the same across all options. It is imperative that Vermonters and our elected representatives look objectively at the potential effects of changing the funding of health insurance and the payments for medical care.
The proposed funding mechanism would...
Unless you have completely ignored the Gulf oil spill, the Japanese nuclear meltdown disasters, and continual lies and radiation leaks from Vermont’s nuclear power plant, you are probably scared as hell of the age of “energy descent” that seems to have arrived.
The pressures of overpopulation, overconsumption, peak oil, environmental catastrophe, nuclear meltdowns, financial meltdowns… all are bearing down on us emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Many who dare to awaken from denial of these realities are likely find themselves depressed, scared, angry, and even hopeless, because we are unclear what we, as citizens, can do. How do we build lifeboats for sustainability and survival, since it’s clear that our “...
The crimes and follies of the Bush-Cheney Administration boosted their fortunes on the left, secessionists admit, just as the statist lunges of Barack Obama energized independence sentiment on the right. But no matter which party lays claim to leviathan, the case for radical devolution loses none of its cogency.
The problem with the United States is one of scale, and it cannot be solved simply by electing new or different or better people to public offices. As Donald Livingston says, “The public corporation known as the United States has simply grown too large for the purposes of self-government, in the same way that a committee of 300 people would be too large for the purposes of a committee. There needs to be a public debate...
The newly created downstairs theater and bar space at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier was filled to overflowing on a February Tuesday night. The crowd had turned out to watch short, snappy presentations on the transition from oil dependence to community resilience.
The format forced the speakers to keep moving: each was allowed to submit 20 slides, and the computer kept each slide up for only 20 seconds. After the full six minutes and 40 seconds had passed, the name of the next speaker flashed on the screen, for 20 seconds, and then the next presentation began.
The event was organized by Kate Stephenson, executive director of Yestermorrow Design/Build School in the Mad River Valley. Ben Graham of Transition Town...
There are several red herrings flopping wetly in our midst. Boss Kiss (Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss) is trying to sell a doozy with his admonition that “no one can be ruled out” as a partner in fighting climate change in Burlington. The mayor insists we must pursue partnerships even with the likes of Lockheed Martin, a corporation that has done its utmost to both create climate change through the carbon-belching military and to perpetuate climate change inaction through its membership in the Chamber of Commerce – to say nothing of the effects on homegrown green industry of inviting a politically highly favored financial behemoth like Lockheed to the party. To anyone serious about addressing climate change, this partnership is the anti-...
Can you imagine in five minutes’ time,
All your wealth gone, washed away in the tsunami tides?
Can you imagine in half an hour’s time,
Your house shaken and completely devastated?
Can you imagine in three hours’ time,
Your family torn apart forever?
(From: From Reading the Almighty’s Sign, Taufiq Ismail, December 28, 2004)
We’ve been watching news of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis with a mix of awe, fascination, helplessness and despair. Hurricane Katrina, meet the BP Gulf oil spill. These days, the Japanese murmur Sikataa ga nai, which loosely translates as “It’s beyond our control,” “It’s out of our hands,” or “What can you do?” While we may not be busy digging...
A few weeks ago, I was surprised. It wasn't a good surprise, though it wasn't a bad surprise, either. It was the kind of surprise that takes a minute to sink in, and then forces you decide how you feel about it. It was the kind of surprise that makes you reconsider where you line up on the so-called “right-to-life” and “pro-choice” spectrum.
Let's be clear, here: I am in a monogamous relationship. We have sex. I take birth control. But occasionally, a girl takes antibiotics or accidentally misses a day of the population-control pills and finds herself sitting on the toilet, counting the days back on her fingers, wondering when – WHEN? – is she supposed to start worrying that there's something more to the bloat than water-...
Green Blooded: Vermont at a Crossroad is an emerging documentary film project featuring the voices of Vermonters. Find out more at www.greenbloodedvt.com. Ths interview was conducted by publisher Rob Williams.
Green Blooded. Provocative film title. Can you explain it?
Teo Erik Zagar: Just came to me at some point for no apparently obvious reason. Probably a feeling I had about the sense of place and fidelity we fulltime residents have for the territory [Vermont]. There's also the distinctive character of the people – stubborn, striving for self-sufficiency and self-government,...
The Seventeenth Amendment of the United States Constitution marked the end of the U.S. as a true federal republic.
"Federalism" is the word that describes the idea of a national government that shares the power to govern with self-governing states. The Constitution was written to establish and harmonize a balance between the national government and the state governments. When the Constitution was written, the framers feared that a concentration of power in a central government would usurp the states of the sovereign authority to govern through locally elected officials. They sought to prevent the overreach of government by creating an elegant framework to distribute power as widely as possible through a structured competition...
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