Distractions from political leaders make it more difficult to focus on relocalizing the economy. When politicians who know better propose solutions to high oil prices that ignore the fundamental causes of the high prices, then the time it takes to debunk them eats away from the limited time during which we have abundant energy to use in relocalizing the economy.

Oh yeah, we could suggest that Vermonters keep their federal rebate checks in Vermont.

Right. We're not a Gannett-owned giant corporate commercial behemoth for nothing.

Check out the story.

And remember - KEEP IT IN VERMONT. 

Anthony Pollina of Middlesex is the Progressive candidate for governor of Vermont.

Vermont Commons: Let’s start with a very broad question. As
you’re considering becoming governor of Vermont, what is your vision
for our future? What direction would you like to see our state take?

Dispatches from the Fronts

1. Associated Press, February 16, 2008. By William J. Kole

Sean Connery thinks a Scottish
nation is a bonnie notion.

How about Spain’s Basque country becoming a
real country?

And what’s wrong with a People’s Republic of
Vermont?

Kosovo’s looming
independence raises all those questions and more. For starters: why is
statehood okay for some people but frowned on for others? After
all, isn’t the right to self-determination the essence of democracy
itself?

The following article discusses a work of fiction, The Shell Game.
The article presents the case made by author Steve Alten, and some
experts on international affairs, that the government of the United
States is planning a false flag attack on American soil. This attack is
to be blamed on Iran, and would be used as an excuse to impose martial
law and to attack Iran in order to take out the last remaining hurdle
to the successful completion of the Project for a New American Century.
The term “false flag” is a both a common term, and a specific term of

To reference and adapt Barbara Kingsolver's newest book on localvore living...

Animal.

Vegetable.

Pants.

Or underpants.

In her letter to the Editor in this issue of Vermont Commons, Lisa
Nash makes a number of sensible arguments regarding Vermonters and
Americans, Vermont and empire, and the general readiness of Vermonters
to embrace their own independence. In particular I was struck by Ms.
Nash’s assertion that “Vermonters, like most Americans, are far from
coming to terms with the reality that the U.S. is an empire.”

A recent survey by the UVM Center for Rural Studies found that 77.1
percent of the eligible voters in Vermont, up from 74.3 percent a year
earlier, believe that the U.S. government has lost its moral
authority. This is hardly surprising when you consider the fact
that our government is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate
America. National elections are bought and sold to the highest
bidder. It was the loss of moral authority that brought down the
apartheid government of South Africa, the communist regimes in six

(In our “Mud Season” issue, published in March 2008, Vermont Commons presented Part I of
Kirkpatrick Sales’ “Dispersion” column – “You Know Your Empire Is
Collapsing When…” Sales wrote, “Empires usually make the same set of
mistakes,” and observed from his historical reading that there were
four basic reasons that empires collapse. First was environmental
degradation (examples, Sumeria and the Roman Empire). Harvard
biologist E.O. Wilson has written of the U.S. that its “ecological
footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain.” Second was

What would Ethan do? 

Read more here.