By G. E. Shuman Early in the summer my dear wife, who seems to enjoy filling my need for a new toy occasionally, bought me a leaf blower. Mine is not an over the top, gas-powered, blow the lawn furniture away blower; it’s a nice, fairly quiet, lightweight, rechargeable machine. For years I’ve seen other guys around the neighborhood using leaf blowers but have never been interested in having one. I always considered them to be just another gimmicky waste of money that probably worked about half as well as claimed. I mean, how could you go up against a Vermont wind with any device you could carry around? Boy, was I wrong! Truthfully, I have loved the little thing from the first time…

Another series of mass shootings – this time in Dayton, El Paso, Mobile, and Odessa – ushered in the expected “thoughts and prayers” from elected officials across the nation. 40 people were killed and 73 more were injured over the span of just a few weeks in those four shootings alone. The usual, performative hand wringing began, and quickly subsided. Gun violence prevention was discussed only as far as it was politically expedient and not a second longer. Once again, we are burying the dead, nursing the wounded, and trying to comfort the living. Once again we are fully equipped with the solution, yet held hostage by the gun lobby. What is abundantly clear is that we cannot expect leader…

By Don Turner This year, legislators and Governor Scott crafted a budget that is quite reasonable in the aggregate. New taxes and fees are fairly limited; important investments are made in a number of areas (from clean water to broadband deployment); and the budget growth rate is just 2.6%. Over the past five years, spending increases have been reasonable as well, with just 2.2% annual growth. This stands in contrast to the budgets of the Shumlin administration, where spending was growing faster than the underlying economy and well beyond Vermonters’ ability to pay. However, despite the good and bipartisan work to produce a genuinely reasonable budget, there still remain three syste…