Tag Archives: Vermont

Civil Liberties, Writ Small (No Spitting!)

6/13/2013 – 8:26 am

Hey folks, why not come on up to Burlington this summer?  We’ve got a lovely waterfront, one festival every other weekend and heck, we do the little things well, things you might not notice, but enhance your tourism experience all the same. For example, our collection of quaint street people – vagrants and vagabonds, wanderers, […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Keep Language Meaningful

8/16/2012 – 9:31 pm

Car owners in Vermont are required to have license plates on the front of their car(s).  There are exceptions.  In 2009, drivers could display a Lake Champlain 400th anniversary plate.  (The lake is actually much older, but it’s been 403 years since the white folks showed up and we tend only to celebrate ourselves.) Now […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Global Warming | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Cops Gone Wild

8/9/2012 – 1:04 pm

There are police departments, I’m sad to say, that you just don’t want to associate with.  I travel around a good bit and I really want nothing to do with the NYPD, Metro DC, LAPD, San Francisco PD (don’t be gulled by the city’s peace and love reputation) and NOPD (which officially stands for New […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

Syrup on Jambalaya

6/28/2012 – 2:36 pm

Strange as it seems, Vermont has much in common with Louisiana.  Both states have a relatively large city (Burlington/New Orleans) which in many ways dominates the state’s profile, but folks who live outside that city take pains to disassociate themselves from it.  (“Burlington is close to Vermont,” is the refrain here.) Each state has a […]

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Orwell was an Optimist

9/8/2011 – 4:18 pm

Quick quiz, two questions: 1 – What percentage of scientists think global warming is occurring?  2 – What percentage of scientists think global warming is caused by human activities?  Read those again carefully; it’s not the same question twice. The answers (I won’t make you wait) are 100 and 98.  No statistically significant number of […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Electoral Politics, Global Warming | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Mafia States

1/27/2011 – 2:47 pm

This week’s paper edition of Newsweek (I can’t find it online) has a story about Tunisia and carries this subhead: “Ben Ali’s fall has exposed the rotten truth of every regime in the Arab world: they’re all, in effect, mafia states, each operating as a lucrative family business.” Pretty harsh, but a) probably true b) […]

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Nice to be Important, Important to be Nice

8/26/2010 – 12:07 pm

Not that you’d know it by the national media, but we had a primary election in Vermont Tuesday. Pretty exciting, but lacking in tea parties, billionaires trying to buy their way into office, wrestling executives and so forth. What we had was a five-way contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Our four-term (two-year terms) Republican […]

By floegel | Posted in Electoral Politics | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)