Opinion

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced today that a five-year, $305 billion transportation bill agreement reached Tuesday by House and Senate negotiators will deliver nearly $1.1 billion to Vermont to improve the state’s roadways.

“While this legislation does not have everything I would have hoped for, I am pleased it includes more than $1 billion for Vermont’s roads and bridges in the coming years,” Sanders said.

As a member of the committee with primary jurisdiction over federal road and bridge programs, Sanders successfully fought for a funding formula that helps Vermont. The final agreement includes a 5 percent increase in funding for Vermont in the first year and a total increase of 15 percent over five years.

Those of you who like the comedy of Bill Hicks will like this one.

Hicks had a routine about how wide-eyed, good-meaning presidents get elected with all sorts of great plans, then they get led to a little room by a small group of powerful people and shown a film of the Kennedy assassination from another angle . They ask the new president “Any questions? and the new president falls right into line.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has launched his sixth annual State of the Union essay contest, calling upon Vermont’s high school students to address what they view as the major issues facing the United States.

The U.S. Constitution calls for the president to “give to the Congress information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” As President Barack Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress in January, Sanders is again asking Vermont’s high school students to consider writing an essay of 250 to 500 words detailing their own view of the state of the union.

Presidential Candidate Ben Carson sent out a graphic to supporters yesterday that included a map of the United States. Sort of. It’s not THE United States so much as a slightly re-imagined United States.

Look at this detail from the map and you will see a new layout for New England. Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts have been moved north, Connecticut and Rhode Island have been relocated to our east, and Vermont remains where it has stood for at least the last decade.

If Hillary Clinton was wearing a hidden ear piece during the House Select Benghazi Hearing on October 22, 2015, and if someone was giving her answers through the ear piece, so that in effect, the answers were not her own; is that wire fraud?  Is it fraud?  Is it acceptable in this day and age for any person in any type of federal hearing to wear an ear device and have their answers provided to them by someone the person doing the questioning can not see?

Is the American public so used to political candidates who are entirely dependent on others to write their speeches and set up teleprompters for them, so that the candidate is really merely a puppet, that the public just shrugs at the idea that Hillary Clinton might be wearing an ear piece and that her answers are not actually her own ideas, her own thoughts, but someone else’s?

So, Joe Biden is running. I’m somewhat surprised – I thought he might feel that his family couldn’t take the stress and drama of a campaign so soon after the death of his son. I’m sure he and his family were torn about the decision.

I like Biden. Despite him having to constantly remove his foot from his mouth. Or maybe because of it.

Not sure yet where he’ll fall in the Hilary/Bernie dynamic in terms of voter support. I’d vote for him over Hilary.

The race just got a little more interesting.

The recent presidential debate gave us a chance, finally, to see all the Democratic candidates on the same stage, defining their positions and their differences. Although I’m pretty sure already who I’m voting for, I’m not sure it was possible to declare a clear debate winner. If you viewed this as an undecided, which I’ve tried to some extent to do, Hillary was good but clearly well-rehearsed while Sanders was himself but not rock solid. The other three candidates, Chafee, Webb, and O’Malley, had their strengths and weaknesses in varying measure. But there was no big moment, no knockout punch. I came away thinking that adherents of different flavors of “left” would come to different conclusions about who did best.

But although there was no decisive victory for any one candidate, the debate gave us a chance to look at some options, displaying more diversity than might have been expected among five members of the same political party. To our benefit, this played out in some marked differences of opinion and a few strange bedfellows.