Turns Out I'm Secretly from Vermont

I attended a gubernatorial conversation, the first of the election season, earlier this week in my hometown, sponsored by our local newspaper. Perhaps like your state, Connecticuters, Connecticuteers?, will cast ballots for governor this November; I say 'perhaps' because it will happen in 35 other states. Not sure what, if anything, changes.

Right now there are only the candidates from the two major parties and I'm not clear how many, if any, others will qualify for a place on the ballot. Sometimes I'm tempted to run, not that I have any interest in governance or aptitude and ability for it, but cynic that I am, how much worse might I make it?  Sometimes the answer seems a lot like "not so much that anyone would notice."

I'm starting to enjoy Senator Sanders from Vermont more and more and I'm not even a big Ben & Jerry's fan. Must be a character defect on my part but I do have to worry that so many in my country think the Good Lord gave them two hands so they could take as much as they want and that their tailors put two pockets in their suit trousers so they'd have someplace to put it all.

It's Labor Day, in case you forgot,when we pause to honor working American men and women assuming they are not currently on shift somewhere right now as I type this or you read it. It took a lot of different people to build this nation of ours but (maybe just me) it's taken far fewer to tear it down.

I listened the other night while one candidate for governor, after claiming the other was "anti-business" offered as his proof that Connecticut now has a law requiring businesses of a certain size to offer their employees sick leave. He called this policy "progressive" and said it twice in a tone suggesting he feels it's a four letter word. I could point out his last name is a five letter word but that would make me as mean-spirited and small-minded as he is.

Maybe it's that end of summer root beer float talking, but I'm thinking it's not been that long a journey from E Pluribus Unum to Sorbet esse vos!

I'm not sure how the grafters and greedheads think this ends, but surely not even they can think it turns out just peachy for anyone much less for everyone. (Insert your Shirley joke here because we could certainly use the humor).

If you have today off, and I do and am grateful for it, spare a thought for those who work in emergency medical and public safety professions, and/or for those who wear the uniform of our armed forces. There are a lot of people working so we don't have to and a lot more people who'd like to work on a regular basis for a living wage if we didn't export jobs to Third World nations whose people are so much poorer than we, it feels almost cruel to complain about hard times in America. Except these are those times.
-bill kenny