Maybe They Should Leave Vermont

Clueless NY Times affirmative action "columnist" Bob Herbert gets all weepy-eyed today over some alleged letters Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders received from constituents.

This stuff is so over the top, they try and make you think you're living in Bangladesh.

If any of these tales of woe are true, and that's a big if, all I can offer for these folks is this advice: Leave the socialist state of Vermont and move somewhere where they practice capitalism.

A woman who has been trying to sell her house for two years and described herself as “stretched to the breaking point,” told the senator, “I don’t go to church many Sundays because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there.”

Well, whose fault is that? Big Oil? Or maybe the greedy government gouging us with taxes? Herbert, of course, doesn't even consider this. It's all Bush's fault, naturally.

Many of the letters touched on the extremely harsh winter that pounded Vermont and exacerbated the economic distress. With fuel prices sky-high, many residents turned to wood to heat their homes. A woman with a 9-year-old son wrote:

“By February, we ran out of wood and I burned my mother’s dining room furniture. ... I’d like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the Capitol building. ... We are certainly a country in distress.”

Seriously, does anyone believe this? Burning your mother's dining room furniture? OK, so what did she burn after that?

The letters to Senator Sanders offer a glimpse into the real lives of ordinary people in an economic environment that was sculpted to favor the very rich. One of the letters was from a woman in central Vermont who said she and her husband are in their mid-30s, are college-educated and have two young children.

“We are feeling distraught,” she said, “that we may never ‘get ahead’ but will always be pedaling to just keep up.”

Keep voting for Bernie Sanders and reading Bob Herbet, and that's exactly what you'll be doing.