Commentary

Commentary: Global Warming Solutions Act Needs a Scott Veto

July 15, 2020 By John McClaughry Six weeks from now the Global Warming Solutions Act will likely be on Gov. Scott’s desk. There are five compelling reasons for him to veto it. The bill declares that to deal with a “climate emergency” Vermont must observe the carbon dioxide emissions limits prescribed by the UN’s Paris […]

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Commentary: Founders Didn’t Invent Slavery, They Helped End It

By Rob Roper Slavery was and is a horrible, dehumanizing institution, but to call it the United States’ “original sin” and to tear down statues and deface memorials to our founders (not to be confused with Confederate generals) is historically ignorant and dangerous. Slavery was hardly an original concept in the late 18th and 19th […]

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Qualified Immunity and Police Unionization

by John McClaughry The pressure is on, in Washington and Montpelier, to take far-reaching (and long overdue) action to insofar as possible prevent future police-citizen interactions of the sort that led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  Last Wednesday in Washington, Senate Democrats mustered 45 votes to prevent even consideration of a reform […]

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Commentary: Final Push for GWSA (June, 2020)

By John McClaughry It’s crunch time for the Climate Action Network’s most urgently sought legislation: The Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA). The House passed this bill (H.688) – that I earlier described as the “worst democracy-shredding bill of the past 50 years” – back in January. The Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee has been […]

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Commentary: Vermont Better Become Business Friendly ASAP (June, 2020)

By Rob Roper Due to the COVID-19 shutdown, Vermont has gone from one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country to one of the highest. According to the Vermont Commissioner on Labor, 90,000 Vermonters have applied for unemployment insurance. That’s out of a total workforce of about 340,000. As we come out the other […]

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Commentary: After Covid-19, How Much Government? (June, 2020)

By John McClaughry A year from now Vermont state government will almost certainly look quite a bit different than it does now. We will hopefully have worked through much of the economic destruction of the COVID- 19 pandemic. State government will have pocketed and allocated $1.25 billion in Federal funds to cushion the pandemic’s impact, […]

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Commentary: Help Our Small Businesses Weather the Storm (May, 2020)

by John McClaughry             A major and depressing casualty of the COVID-19 economic lockdown is the calamitous effect it is having on small business, especially retail, entertainment, and restaurant firms and the service market of electricians, plumbers, and other skilled tradespeople. Massive Federal aid spending, such as unemployment payments and the Paycheck Protection Program,  provide  […]

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Commentary: The Future of Vermont’s State Colleges

May 4, 2020 By John McClaughry A year ago Vermont State Colleges Chancellor Jeb Spaulding circulated a white paper on the future of Vermont’s five-college system (not including the University of Vermont). A month ago he reinforced the worsening facts spelled out in the white paper in a letter to the governor and key legislators. […]

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Commentary: Recovery Moving Forward (May, 2020)

By John McClaughry On November 3, 1927 Vermont took a hell of a shellacking. October had been extremely rainy. Then in two days nearly a foot of torrential rain fell on most of Vermont. The soggy mountain forests couldn’t hold it.  Down it came in gushing brooks and wild brown rivers, sweeping away nearly two […]

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Commentary: Voting By Mail Needs to Be More Secure (April, 2020)

by Rob Roper Given the potential COVID-19 health risks associated with standing in line at polling places there are understandably more calls for a move to voting by mail. This may turn out to be necessary, but, if we are going to change the way we vote, we also have to ensure that the new […]

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The Ethan Allen Institute is Vermont’s free-market public policy research and education organization. Founded in 1993, we are one of fifty-plus similar but independent state-level, public policy organizations around the country which exchange ideas and information through the State Policy Network.
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Latest News

VT Left Wing Media Bias Unmasks Itself

July 24, 2020 By Rob Roper Dave Gram was a long time reporter for the Associated Press, is currently the host of what’s billed on WDEV as a...

Using Guns for Self Defense – 3 Recent Examples

July 24, 2020 By John McClaughry  The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal last week published eleven news stories about citizens using a firearm to stop a crime. Here are...

FERC ruling on solar subsidies could help Vermont ratepayers

July 21, 2020 By John McClaughry Last Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission finalized its updates to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), in what the majority...

The Moderate Left’s Stand for Free Speech

July 17, 2020 By David Flemming Harper’s Magazine, a long-running monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, is hardly what you would call a ‘politically...

Trump’s Regulatory Bill of Rights

July 16, 2020 by John McClaughry “President Trump [last May] issued an executive order entitled  ‘Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery.’ The executive order includes a regulatory bill...

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