A Postcard from Vermont: Sanders Shows Congress How to Avoid Tar & Feathering at August Tea Parties by Steve Early The Green Mountain state used to be a good place for retired union guys to get away from it all in August. Now, thanks to "Obamacare" -- with its threats to the elderly everywhere -- that's not the case this year.
I was sitting on the porch of Richmond's On The Rise bakery last Thursday, lazily contemplating a dip in the nearby Winooski River, when a big headline in the Burlington Free Press caught my eye: "Health-care Fight Comes to Vt."
I looked up and down the main street of this verdant, peaceful hamlet and saw nary a punch being thrown over medical benefits or any other topic. So I read on, just in case this wasn't a false alarm, but an actual call to duty.
In its lead graph, the Gannett-owned Freep reported that labor's most reliable ally in New England (or anywhere), Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was holding "three town meetings on health care legislation this month, even as other public meetings erupt into red-faced shouting matches nationwide." Meanwhile, his two Democratic colleagues (Senator Pat Leahy and Congressman Peter Welch) were timidly avoiding such contentious forums during their August recess.
The first of Bernie's solo events was scheduled for Saturday, August 15 in Rutland, located in the heartland of the state but hardly the epicenter of its greening over the years. "Sanders has held hundreds of town meetings," the newspaper noted, but this one was definitely shaping up to be different. Inspired by events elsewhere, the Vermont Tea Party movement -- a vocal opponent of "out-of-control" government spending -- was targeting him with a major mobilization of its troops.
Continues at link:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/early190809.html
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