One of my brothers, who shall remain nameless, told another sib that he thinks I live
"in fairy land". I believe it's a reference to the fact that my blog posts are mostly fairly sunny and I don't use them to complain much. If you know me, you know I'm always ranting about something, but, on the whole, I like to save this space for stuff I like, not stuff I hate.
And I
LIKE living in Vermont where we have
Senator Bernie Sanders, scourge of the rich, powerful and anti-democartic. Anthony and I (that would be my 30 year old son, not my 7 year old grandson) went to listen to Bernie on Sunday at the Charlotte Senior Center. The place was packed, overflowing with listeners who wanted to hear Bernie address some of the issues we confront, starting with one of the biggest travesties I can remember, the God-awful
Citizens United v. FEC decision that will completely undermine our democracy (from Greek,
demos means people, and
kratia means power), if it is allowed to stand. I'm only pointing out the word origin which I am sure you know because it's obviously lost on five of the US Supreme Court Justices who bought the insane argument that corporations are
"people", etc., etc.
This election year will be the first under this ruling and the spectacle of billionaires and their pet politicians may be waking up a lot of voters who don't pay that much attention most of the time. Bernie calls the obscene amount of money pouring from corporations and the mega-rich because of
Citizens United "the tip of the iceberg". I agree the decision needs to be reversed and have signed his
Saving American Democracy petition.
Some of Bernie's other priorities, of course, are access to health care, security for older Americans, veterans and the unemployed, investment in education and infrastructure, climate change and accountability for financial institutions. It's a lot, but should we say we're not up to it? That it's too hard?
And I
LOVE Bernie's unapologetic liberal and progressive stance and am proud he's representing the small but great state of Vermont where we will soon have
universal health care (a human right in every other modern country on the planet).
