Tim Kipp
Haven’t we done enough?
Whoever painted this graffiti on a rock in the West River estuary, please desist.
Haven't we already done enough to the Abenaki lands?...
What would it take for citizens and leaders to mobilize?
As we've moved past yet another grim milestone - 500,000 pandemic deaths - the comparisons to wars in U.S. history reveal another horrific reality. In World Wars I and II, the entire society organized to protect this country. Where is the mobilization today? On the home front, citizens volunteered,
To move forward, we need real democracy
Understanding, expanding, and sustaining democracy might bridge a grand canyon of national divide
The United States is in a crisis of two nations. Economic calamity, racial reckoning, a widening pandemic, and rising authoritarianism divide Americans by a gulf not experienced since the Civil War. Our future may well be charted by how we conceptualize democracy itself. Understanding, expanding, and sustaining democracy can...
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A modest proposal for Trump Doral
Because of his “great and unmatched wisdom,” our real-estate mogul has changed course and withdrawn his decision to host the upcoming G-7 meeting of world leaders at his failing resort in Florida. A modest proposal: He could, instead, host another upcoming set of meetings there: the House impeachment and Senate trial proceeding. To fend off a charge of violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, he could remit all expenses to himself.
Not garden variety
This nation is in a painful and necessary self-evaluation of its political system brought on by the ascendency of the regime of Donald Trump. In her recent column “Trump is just another garden-variety demagogue” [Brattleboro Reformer, March 21], Vermont Senator Becca Balint argues in part that Trump is basically no different from previous demagogues in our history. While her columns are consistently thoughtful, this most recent piece deserves a challenge and a reconsideration from a more historical perspective. She states...
Mugged by democracy
Donald Trump crumbled, and so did his wall. It must be a difficult lesson - doubtless, unlearned. The judicial branch has apprehended another key advisor, Republicans have defected in the Senate, poll numbers have fallen. And probably most painful of all, being bested by a women Speaker of the House, the executive bully just got mugged by democracy.
Extremist Republicans have their way
In 2017, one of President Trump's key advisors, Steve Bannon, said the administration's goal would be the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Years earlier, Republican theorist Grover Norquist said he aimed to shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Given Trump's unprecedented staff turnover rates, estimated at 65 percent, his refusal to fill important positions in the State Department and other agencies, and the ongoing government shutdown, it...
Is it apathy, or could it be alienation?
Voting in the United States has again become a proprietary right, as equal access to the ballot box is not open to all. The history of voting in our country is one of exclusion, inclusion, and suppression. Initially, the Constitution excluded women, slaves, minorities, Native Americans, and white men who did not own property. It remanded the electoral process to the states, thus creating a complex, confusing, and an unequal system vulnerable to local machinations and prejudices. Throughout U.S. history,