What About Sierra Blanca, Bernie?': From the Rio Grande to Reparations
is Bernie Sanders really calling for revolutionary change, or is he just telling his base what they want to hear?
Bernie Sanders made a cold political calculation in 1998 that affected the lives of hundreds of poor, powerless people half a country away. He did it because it would benefit his affluent, politically engaged constituency, and, in turn, benefit him.
Two decades later, Sanders is making another political calculation. He's choosing to disregard African-American demands for reparations because he believes he can concentrate on empowering his affluent, politically engaged constituency, who will, in turn, empower him.
This is not a "political revolution," and Sanders is no revolutionary.
Back in the early 1990s, the state of Vermont had a problem. The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was generating tons and tons of radioactive waste, but there was nowhere palatable in the state to store it. The only town which was willing to study the possibility, Vernon, was deemed "geologically unstable." No other towns in Vermont, quite reasonably, wanted the waste.
By October of 1998, Vermont had a solution.
A deal had been worked out between Vermont's Congressional representation, Texas Representative Joe Barton, and then-Governor George W. Bush. The legislation, which was cosponsored and championed by then-Representative Bernie Sanders, was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Senator Paul Wellstone, who is often mentioned in the same breath as Sanders among the latter's supporters, was opposed to the legislation.
The people of Vermont didn't have much of a problem with the deal. But Texans and their Mexican neighbors over the Rio Grande were outraged.
A delegation from Texas reached out to Sanders and tried to reason with him, citing the environmental and human degradation the waste site would create. They thought they would get an empathetic response from the nominal socialist.
They were wrong.
Sanders's reply was curt, abrupt, and final:
"My position is unchanged and you're not going to like it." When asked if he would at least visit the proposed site in Sierra Blanca, he said: "Absolutely not. I'm gonna to be running for re-election in the state of Vermont."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eoin-higgins/what-about-sierra-blanca-bernie_b_9233818.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
... his bottom line is, "Not in my back yard." But, maybe in yours.
