Here are 16 incisive questions, fairly stated, to put to your candidate for the legislature, Governor and Lt. Governor. Voters deserve to know what they’ll get by giving their votes. That’s what makes democracy work.

As Governor Scott’s mask mandate looms on August 1, a popular question many Vermonters are asking is “how strictly will it be enforced?” Perhaps nothing much will change, as the vast majority of Vermonters already wear masks when out in public. Maybe police will only give warnings. Maybe it will be enforced by social shaming rather than fines and imprisonment. Or maybe Vermont will follow after Florida, where people are being fined $100 for taking off their masks in nearly-empty parking lots after grocery shopping.

If the state views universal mask wearing as the single most important goal for keeping Covid-19 at bay, perhaps we should ask- “has the law been upheld impartially with a lack of personal vindictiveness during the pandemic?” Is the law a line that any self-respecting Vermonter will not cross, because they believe upholding the law is a sacred societal bond, personal beliefs about the mask mandate aside?

The pressure of the pandemic and imminent huge budget deficits require that Vermont launch a thoroughgoing Performance Review, not just to “squeeze out waste”, but to bring state government back to focusing its core functions. Barack Obama can explain to Democrats the need to tackle this task.

The pandemic lockdown is decimating small businesses, many of which will never reopen. Here are four things you can do to help your favorite local small businesses weather the storm.

Vermonters battled their way out of the devastation of the 1927 flood.  But Vermont is now a far more expensive enterprise, that can’t be sustained when state revenues disappear. Spending $17,873 per K-12 pupil in public education is too much for next year’s taxpayers to pay, after the economic disaster of 2020. This hard fact will force us to rethink the whole question of how we educate our children

The coronavirus pandemic alerts us to the depths of our complacency over destructive viruses for which we have no treatment. There are treatments, but official medicine has driven them out of sight. Now we need to put them to the test. One benefit from the pandemic is that senseless regulations are getting brushed aside, and another is that Vermont’s civil society has stepped up to aid the afflicted.