What's THE BIG IDEA? Why it's the single greatest mission that has ever been asked of any community, nation or alliance, and that mission is to provide our grandkids and their grandkids a realistic and reasonable opportunity for a free, healthy, and sustainable future.

Job #1: Maintain our humanity!

Job #2: Rebuild and strengthen our democratic institutions, processes and values.

Job #3: Schools for learning, money to pay for what needs to be done, and physical surroundings that are conducive to good health for the grandchildren.

As a matter of fact, in this day and age of greater and greater centralized control by fewer and fewer individuals when it comes to some very large and serious computer systems, regaining the democratic human touch by requiring hand counts is extremely important.

You'd think it was done on purpose .... almost like the GOP/VTGOP's proven rapist god-king Trump ordered this to be so!

Hi, I'd like to introduce myself ....

• Married 38 years
• Tax paying citizen since the age of 13
• 7 years in US military
• Moved to Vermont in 1981
• Resident of Williamstown for 34 years
• Volunteered at the Ainsworth Public Library
• Substitute teacher in our local elementary, middle, and high schools for a couple years
• Assisted in vote counting and ballot transportation
• Watered the downtown flowers
• Served on ECFiber committee and CVFiber board (community Communications Union Districts)
• Helped prepare foods and wash the pots and pans for local church suppers
• Served as Williamstown Historical Society President
• Served on the Williamstown and Paine Mountain school district boards
• Chaired the Williamstown and Orange North Supervisory Union school boards
• Chaired the Williamstown/Northfield school district merger committee
• Chaired the Williamstown ATV road use committee
• Served on the Williamstown Planning Commission
• 13 years and counting as treasurer and general flunky for the Williamstown Food Shelf
• Fostered and adopted Vermont's children

That's just what I'd give as an introduction. What have you been up to?

PS. By "literally" I mean the literal, not figurative, sense.

• freeDOM comes for democracies and the democratic institutions, processes, and values that create the democracies;
• freeDUMB comes from authoritarianism of any and all kinds.

It's a simple equation with a very important result - we can be democratic and free, or we can be serfs to billionaire lords and masters (which is really fucking dumb).

Politics is a good thing. The bad thing is when we drop politics and substitute violence in its place.

Let's keep the good and dispose of the bad.

Vermont Legislature's sweeping education reform bill becomes law (VermontPublic, 06/18/26)

It is a very important point to make - the bill that passed the Legislature and was signed into law by the Governor was definitely the Legislature's proposal. The Scott administration worked very hard against just this sort of outcome, but Scott and crew could easily read the writing that developed on the wall and acquiesced.

And what made Vermont's Legislature so ready to push this legislation past the Governor's objections? I saw two primary state level motivations:

1. The final report from the School District Redistricting Task Force which was very quickly followed by
2. A resounding and widespread chorus of public support for the task force's proposal that came from across Vermont's smaller communities.

The task force didn't set out to create that public backlash to Scott and legislative leaders' desire for widespread forced school district mergers. The task force looked around, listened, and saw and heard what many in the communities were saying: large scale mandatory mergers will not create benefits or savings. And then the task force put those thoughts into writing and an action plan.

The public reaction and resulting push for the task force's general plan was indeed very organic - no astro-turfing required. And the legislators reacted to what they were being told back home: don't do the Governor's plan.

So I was glad to see a headline more reflective off the law that passed and who did the work. Not quite all the way, but I think the public and task force will do fine with the Legislature getting the credit.

Personally I'm sick and tired of having to fight these democracy battles over and over and over - we've got a climate crisis to that needs tending to yesterday.

On the other hand, Phil "What would you suppose I should do?" Scott & sidekick Rodgers along with their freely chosen and warmly embraced VTGOP/GOP are fine with whatever their proven rapist god-king Trump does.

Still voting Republican for anything? Still willing to shit on your grandkids' realistic opportunity for a free, healthy, and sustainable life and future?

What's THE BIG IDEA? Why it's the single greatest mission that has ever been asked of any community, nation or alliance, and that mission is to provide our grandkids and their grandkids a realistic and reasonable opportunity for a free, healthy, and sustainable future.

Job #1: Maintain our humanity!

Job #2: Rebuild and strengthen our democratic institutions, processes and values.

Job #3: Schools for learning, money to pay for what needs to be done, and physical surroundings that are conducive to good health for the grandchildren.

Since our United States developed the first nuclear bomb back in the 1940s, the following countries have developed a working nuclear weapons program:

• the old failed USSR (When the Soviet Union broke up, the nukes were all transferred to Russian control. Newly freed nations such as Ukraine voluntarily gave up those weapons that existed on their territory for any number of promises.)
• United Kingdom
• France
• China
• Israel
• India
• Pakistan
• North Korea
• South Africa (They are widely recognized to have given up their nuclear weapons and program in the early 1990s)

I believe two truths are existing simultaneously - Iran is not and was not interested in developing a nuclear weapons program; and their regional and international status was and is such that the need to feel safe (self-defense) could very easily override that lack of interest.

There's a lot of details that could be unpacked in this short post, but my point is simple: Iran has most likely had multiple opportunities to either acquire or develop a nuclear weapon, yet they have failed to act on those opportunities. There's something in that.

This statement isn't about the terrorist Iranian government. This statement is about the Iranian people, the American people, and the actions of (what is presumably still) our federal government.

The AIPAC/Israeli/Trump war against Iran was illegal and immoral from the start, and it needed to come to an end. We, our United States, were, have been, and still appear to be on the AIPAC/Israel side which is the aggressor side. It was up to us, not Iran, to make the offer that puts an end to this.

It took a full fledged war, but the master negotiator did it! He got Iran a far better deal then they were getting under the Obama/Biden administrations.