Let's Start Somewhere
By Michael Seely, Dorset. 

Unless something changes pretty soon, Vermonters are going to be left with a good view, a big bill and a long drive to see their kids. This state we all love for its pastoral beauty is infected with unrivaled political lunacy. The choice is pretty simple - wait for the inevitable breakdown and the breakthrough that might follow - or make a break with the past now. I like the second choice, and I pick the U.S. Senate race as the best place to start. Turning out of office a demagogue like Bernie Sanders, who would rather ignore the facts than dispute them, would send a big message. 

Someone once noted that if you put enough monkeys at a typewriter, one of them will write the Bible. Through a similar trial-and-error system, as well as constant repetition of his oppositional themes, Congressman Bernie Sanders has figured out how to get re-elected (and get rich in the process). 

With an outstanding new face in the race for U.S. Senate - successful entrepreneur Rich Tarrant - it is time for a change. To turn high tax-low growth Vermont around, we must start somewhere. Why not at the top? 

Senate hopeful Sanders personifies the self-styled Robin Hoods who steal from the rich while professing to "stand up for the little guy." In actual fact, they steal from the young. Look behind his claim that Social Security has reduced poverty among seniors; what he and his co-conspirators don't tell you is that it has done so at the expense of younger people, among whom the poverty rate hasn't budged in many years, while their tax bills have climbed unmercifully higher. 

Wonder why our kids are leaving Vermont? It's not too complicated. The tax burden in Vermont is appallingly high and rising - with scant if any incremental benefit to education, to health care coverage or to our crumbling infrastructure. Bernie and his buddies have erected a big billboard at Vermont's border that says to any intelligent job-creating businessman, "Don't come in." The corrupt paradigm his laughably ineffectual record in Washington exemplifies - the old get, the young give - is unsustainable. It's time to say no. 

Bernie absolutely demonizes two modest innovations - private savings accounts, as an adjunct to Social Security, and health savings accounts to empower health care consumers. Today's average young families, were these options available, could amass more than a million dollars in such accounts over their working lives. And the money would be theirs every step of the way, safe from politicians' greedy grasp. And don't believe him when he tells you that such accounts would jeopardize our kids' financial security; PSAs and HSAs would improve it substantially, with minimal and manageable risk. 

Bernie tells you not to worry about things like Social Security; what he means is, I'm not worried. We can muddle through a few more years until we have to pay out more than we take in - that happens in a little more than a decade - after millionaire Bernie has probably retired. 

What we have, as the authors of "The Coming Generational Storm" say, is "fiscal child abuse" - on an unprecedented scale. 

Bernie and many other politicians commit it every day. And we let them get away with it. I say it's time to say no. I'm voting for Tarrant. 

Michael Seely, is a private investor who lives in Dorset. He is vice chairman of the Bennington Museum and finance chairman of the Vermont Republican Party.