I received a copy of these remarks made by Doris "Granny D" Haddock's this weekend in New Hampshire, as part of her campaign for the senate seat currently held by Judd Gregg. I thought they were worthy of a wider audience, so here they are: (in the extended entry)
Thank you very much.
There are many people who are doubtful that a 94 year-old woman can get
from here to the U.S. Senate. A pollster said that my victory would be
the political upset of the century. Well, the century is very new, so
that may not be too much of an accomplishment, but it will indeed be a
sign that times have changed when I unpack my family pictures on my
Senate office desk and put the "No Lobbyists" sign on my door.
It will be a sign that the old order is rapidly fading. The nicely
polished men in blue suits and red ties and so full of themselves and
so full of money from all the people who buy their votes--they will
begin to look like the con men that they are. They are slick operators
indeed, the Yes Men of a President who lied us into a war that is
killing our children and the children of another nation; the Yes Men
who backed this President's looting operation of our national treasury,
sending us deeper into the red than ever in our history--so that
billionaires might have another huge tax break while our people can't
get health services and our schools fall apart. These Yes Men have
backed the President's service to multinational corporations, not only
in their looting and war profiteering, but in the destruction of our
middle class jobs, offering tax breaks to companies that will please
take our best jobs overseas. What kind of representation is this? It is
no representation at all for our taxation, and for the democracy that
so many have given their lives to protect and advance.
Are we to be pleased with the sprinkling of bacon bits of jobs and
federal this and that these fellows pepper our local newspapers with,
while they serve as unswerving Yes Men to the dark administration that
kills our children and exports our jobs and poisons our air and water
and every day damages our global climate?
Are we in New Hampshire to be pleased that one of our senators in
particular backed this president as blindly as any senator from the
most right-wing states? Are we prepared to give the radical elements
behind this administration another six years of New Hampshire's vote in
the Senate? How could I stand by and see it happen--see him unopposed?
I could not, and New Hampshire's values and common sense will sweep him
out.
I am only arriving in Washington as an announcement that others are
coming. Others will run for Congress who, like me, will take no special
interest money. They will run on a shoestring and yet they will win,
for we are the "none of the above" votes that give Americans the power
to say something they have been literally dying to say for some time.
They are saying that we the People have had enough of the selfish,
greedy, destructive careerism and pure baloney that has been passing
for public service for too long in the capitol city of our great
democracy.
So we are sending real people in to clean up the mess and start voting
with common sense and not with selfishness. All the special interest
lobbyists will all have heart attacks when they see us coming, and I
will not be doing any mouth-to-mouth unless it will frighten them
further.
History will say that it began with the unlikely election of a 94-year
old woman from New Hampshire. If it is the upset of the century, it is
because the people are upset beyond belief.
I am happy to be their "none of the above" vote, but I do stand for
positive things, too.
I am for a Canadian-style system of health insurance for all Americans.
Let us finance it the same way we finance the other things that all
people need--we all need the roads and the fire stations and the police
departments and the defense department, and we all need the hospitals,
too. So let's quit beating around the bush and get it done. Do you
think someone who takes nearly a half a million dollars from the health
industry is going to tell you that? I am describing Judd Gregg, of
course.
In the short days of this campaign I will have much to say about how we
can sensibly get out of Iraq, how we can get our jobs back from
overseas, and how we in New Hampshire can get our federal tax dollars
back for our schools and other programs, so that it is not all on the
back of our property owners. I will have many positive things to say,
and not one of these ideas could be said by someone who gets his
campaign dollars from the special interests who pay politicians to shut
up. I am not going to shut up, because the people of New Hampshire
deserve real representation, and, God help them, I am all they have
when it comes to the U.S. Senate.
I am now running for the things I have walked long for: a decent
government that represents the values, the needs, and the highest
aspirations of its people--a government where the people do participate,
and, through their cooperative action as a local, state and national
community, become that government. In this, we send our neighbors and,
yes, our grandmothers to Congress, because the professional politicians
have just not worked out lately.
We thank them for trying their best under the constraints of a corrupt
system. But we the people are going to have to do this ourselves from
now on, because our children, our schools, our health care, our
position in the world and our hearts need better representation, and we
do have the power--you and I--to do whatever we lean our hearts into.
So, let me be your voice. Walk with me, for I am walking for you.
Thank you.