Senator Bernie Sanders Calls People who Don't Worry about our Economy "Pollyanna's"

Senator Bernie Sanders has called the people who don't worry about our economy "pollyanna's." Others might say out of touch, but one thing for certain, the letters that Sanders (one of two Independents in the U.S. Senate), has shared from his rural Vermont constituents make real the financial difficulties that high gasoline prices, escalating heating costs and the economy in general are causing. They also make the case that things very much need to change. The constituent letters also underline Sanders' point that the ...

"Conservatives' assertion that the economy was strong and getting stronger, repeated with the frequency of a mantra, hid the reality that working Americans have taken a real beating."

Bob Herbert in the New York Times brings more perspective, including criticism of the media for failing to report how really, really squeezed middle class citizens have become.

Sanders' constituents' stories include how a couple age 65 only eats two meals a day; how a family keeps it heat just above 30 degrees so that the pipes don't freeze; how one mother reports her family doesn't go to church any more because of the cost of gasoline; how someone else burned their mother's dining room furniture just to keep warm. There is more. Read it here.