If any of you have ever baked bread, you know that you are only supposed to knead the dough for so long before it starts to impact the quality of the final product. Some things aren’t meant to be touched, if at all.  Related to this is the old Vermont proverb, “if it ain’t broke,

A few months ago I attended the first meeting of of the Vermont Ethics Commission and blogged about it here (incidentally if you know how to locate the Commission’s website, please drop me a line, I haven’t been able to find it). During the course of that meeting I engaged in an exchange with the

As previously advertised, yesterday I had the pleasure of observing the inaugural meeting of the Vermont Ethics Commission. As one would expect in a first meeting, most of the discussion was centered around the nuts and bolts of the work that the Commission has before it in the months ahead. Since the Commission, like most

The term transparency has become a hackneyed buzzword as it applies to government.  The natural inference is that a transparent government, means an ethical government.  But that begs the question, why can’t we just trust that government, made up of people with good intentions, will just do the right thing? Ultimately government is made up