Archive - Jul 8, 2010 - Editorial

In its recent ruling upholding age discrimination for mandatory retirement of state police officers, the Vermont Supreme Court defies logic for political expedience, maintains entrenched bureaucratic preferences and inadvertently does more to place the public safety at risk than not.

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A few months ago I was covering an event at the Bristol Elementary School with photographer Trent Campbell — the sort of story I sometimes offer up self-deprecatingly to friends when I talk about my job. This, I’ll joke, is the bread and butter of community journalists: elementary school assemblies and small town police logs. In Bristol, a handful of students spent all year growing out their hair for Locks of Love, and Trent and I were on hand at the end-of-year assembly to document the big cut: snip!

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Vermont’s tax system will be a major agenda item in this fall’s campaign and in next year’s legislative session. A blue-ribbon commission on the state’s tax structure will report to the governor and the Legislature early in 2011. The commissioners — Kathy Hoyt, Bill Sayre and Bill Schubart — all have long experience with tax and economic policy from both business and government perspectives.

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My friend Ana loves her iPhone. Or maybe she hates it.

“I can’t decide if it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says, “or the worst.”

Twenty-five years after the general availability of fax machines (remember them?), and 15 years after most of us first heard of the Internet, we live in a society dominated by digital technology. And no digital technology is as common as the cell phone.

Except now they’re not just cell phones, or mobile phones. They’re called “smart phones.”

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