This morning’s Times Argus also features a Darren Allen front-page piece on the beginning of the Sanders/Welch congressional era. It’s little more than the same warmed over fluff about their victories and the beginning of the new Congress. And, as is always the case with the Vermont media, Allen allows crap like this quote from Bernie go completely unchallenged: “As I went around the state during the campaign, I heard people say, ‘You go down there and give them hell, you shake that system up.’ That’s precisely what I intend to do.”
Well, Bernie, that’s what you said you were going to do 16 years ago when you first went to Congress as a member of the House. And how did that work out? I don’t recall any major system shake-up while you were there. In fact, it seems as though you drifted to the right – straight into the Democratic fold – and were most ineffective in a Congress that slashed at our civil rights, gave repeated approvals – funding and otherwise -- for an illegal war, and continued the policies of social and economic inequality that you love to rail against.
Darren Allen and the rest of the Vermont media have to get over their hero-worship of our elected leaders and start muckraking for crying out loud. Otherwise, Bernie’s just gonna keep bullshitting us into believing the “shake things up” hype. Mark my words, Bernie ain’t shakin’ up anything. He’ll do what he did in the House: Play the good soldier, avoid anything truly controversial, and say the some old stuff about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor while doing nothing about it but getting richer. I guess that makes him an expert on the disparity, huh?
Come on, Darren, the Press Bureau sent you to DC to cover Sanders and Welch, not flack for them. Dig, my boy, dig. Find something other than the words from their press releases to report. You can do it. I know you can.
