Running for Governor of Vermont
I think about running for governor of Vermont. Why?
Because the state where I have lived for 30 years is at a dangerous fork in the road. We can take one fork toward denial, irrelevance and decay. Or we can take the second fork toward transformation, prosperity, vitality and resilience.
Because the state is stagnating. Our population is shrinking. Our smart people are leaving for better jobs and cultural diversity in cities. This trend will leave us in a Vermont of under-educated dependency on the one hand and wealthy privileged older people.
Because our citizens are increasingly powerless to build lives of prosperity and happiness in the face of the global marketing machine that sells us junk without regard for the health and well-being of its customers. Facebook does not care about your privacy. Coca-Cola and McDonalds don’t care about your health. But they are happy to profit from your hard-earned dollars. We need to change that.
Since World War II, we have created the most powerful economic engine in world history. It has lifted millions out of poverty and created broad opportunity. But we have reached a point where that economic engine is so powerful and creates so much wealth for so few people without regard for the social fabric of the country that we need to take a new approach.
I am not talking about the Burn it Down approach or the nihilistic approach of the Trumps, or the right-wing approach of the congressional Republicans.
I am talking about a return to market capitalism that creates opportunity and prosperity for all - and regulated by a proper referee. It is the job of the referees to bring fairness to the market system.
I admire the power of markets to achieve well-being. And the current debate between socialism and capitalism misses the point. We need to do what works.
Our need in Vermont is to bring more of that prosperity.
HOW?By transforming this state into a modern example of resiliency in an uncertain world.
In 1962, Phil Hoff came to office promising a new approach. Vermont was emerging from the sleepy 50s and needed to move from the poor farm and one-room schoolhouses to a modern economy, a modern government, a state highway system to get goods to market and modern education system.
So Hoff spent months rethinking how Vermont works and he delivered a new style of activist government, unified school districts and a modern welfare system.
We still govern ourselves largely on that model.
The time has come to modernize what Hoff and his generation built.
At the core needs to be resiliency. The climate crisis is real and it is here. In everything we do, we must build in resiliency. Act 250 must screen all projects through a resiliency lens.Our education system needs to get more resilient. Less test-taking, more critical thinking, and team-building. Our government needs to get more resilient so it can make decisions faster and be more responsive to citizen needs. Our transportation system needs to get more resilient. Fewer roads, highways, and cars. More bike lanes and smart-transit to move us around. Our health care system needs to get more resilient - too many hospitals trying to do too many things. Our colleges need to get more resilient. Too many colleges in Vermont vying for student dollars. But more than anything - we need to grow Vermont into a place where people will come to raise families and build productive lives. How do we do that?
Move beyond the era and thinking of no new taxes to one of investment and innovation.
Modernize our tax system to pay for schools, services, and innovation via income - not property wealth. And tell companies that profit off selling us junk food or using our natural resources that they will pay a price for that privilege.
Open the borders to new Vermonters of all backgrounds. These are the next generation of entrepreneurs and job creators.
Execute an economic development plan for Vermont that touts our attributes to the entire world. For too long, we have built development efforts around a monolithic Vermonter, often people wanting to ski. That’s fine. But the world is different now. We must speed up our efforts and reach out directly to all manner of people.
Get healthier. We all know our health care spending is out of control. We must revamp the system to promote health and penalize those who do us harm. Junk food companies like Coke and Pepsi need to pay for the harm they do to our health. Vermonters need to stop enabling this health care crisis by taking a walk, getting off the junk food. We successfully made smoking uncool in the last 20 years. Let’s do the same with the latest killer.
Vermont has all the attributes it needs to become the place where people want to live and prosper. Clean air and water, human-scale communities, an honest government, community-community-minded business leaders and a strong non-profit sector and on and on. Let’s promote what we have using modern tools of communication.Oh - and one more thing. Part 2.