[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 12 (Monday, January 23, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S393-S394]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

               STATE OF THE UNION ESSAY CONTEST FINALISTS

 Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the 
Record some of the finalist essays written by Vermont high school 
students as part of the seventh annual State of the Union essay contest 
conducted by my office.
  The material follows:


   FINN ABBEY, MOUNT MANSFIELD UNION HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN (FINALIST)

       Our country has faced many issues in the past, but today we 
     face one of our greatest challenges. Division. We have 
     forgotten to care for each other; forgotten that we are only 
     strong with each other. We are growing too uncompassionate, 
     too distrustful of each other. We can and must remember that 
     we are not enriched by the success of one person, but rather 
     the success of many. We prosper not with the defeat of 
     others, but with their success. And keeping with the 
     philosophy that we must succeed together, we must work 
     together on smaller challenges.
       Our country needs a system that not only doesn't punish the 
     poor for their very existence, but offers every person the 
     chance to better themselves. The hope that your children will 
     have a better life than you has long been a staple of the 
     American dream. To accomplish this, we need to create a 
     liveable wage of $15, and create a progressive tax system 
     that leaves the poor with more and takes fairly from those 
     who can afford it. We cannot be satisfied in the splendor of 
     ourselves and people like us when our fellow Americans are 
     living in the streets.
       We must also institute universal health care. This will 
     involve higher taxes, of course, but, combined with strict 
     laws about pharmaceutical pricing and a fair tax system, will 
     ensure that our country is healthy and our middle class stays 
     strong. No one should ever have to choose between food and 
     medicine. We need change.
       We also must guarantee everyone the right to vote, and that 
     their votes count. Time and time again voter ID laws have 
     suppressed the African-American vote. We cannot say we are 
     equal when we pass laws with the purpose of lowering voter 
     turnout.
       We also have to remove another recent mistake in election 
     law: Citizens United. We cannot accept catering to special 
     interests as a side effect of democracy; we must recognize it 
     as a barrier to a fairer system. We must put the redrawing of 
     congressional districts in the hands of independent 
     commissions to prevent gerrymandering. Anything

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     less is a conflict of interest and a mockery of democracy. We 
     need to replace first past the post with ranked choice 
     voting, allowing for a greater variety of candidates. This 
     will serve as another booth in the marketplace of ideas.
       To many these goals are mountains too tall to climb. But in 
     America, we don't know how to give up. It's what makes us 
     great. The idea that if we want change, we'll fight until we 
     reach it. It's what got African-Americans equality under the 
     law. It's what got women the right to vote. It's what has 
     brought equal love to our entire nation. And it's what led to 
     independence for the plucky colonists who took on the world 
     because they thought it could be better. Throughout our 
     history, all we've needed is an idea, an ideal, and each 
     other. After all, out of many, we are one.


       EMILY BALLOU, SOUTH ROYALTON HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR (FINALIST)

       It is both a privilege and an honor to live in a nation 
     where I have the right to speak my mind without the fear of 
     failure or retribution, where liberty of expression is 
     celebrated, and diverging views, though challenged, are 
     entitled to develop according to their merit.
       The greatest problem we have is that the people of our 
     country lack compassion. We lack empathy. We need to 
     integrate our passions instead of separating them. Love 
     should trump hate, but it seems as of late that that is 
     reversed. We must renew our nation, and to do so, we must 
     stop the ignorance of the public. We must end the bigoted, 
     chauvinistic, and discriminatory ideologies and mindsets of 
     our people.
       What we have in common is more important than the 
     differences used to divide us. Groups of like-minded people 
     acting in a similar fashion are not a new phenomenon, but the 
     engagement of these groups has become dedicated to excluding 
     the expression of other views.
       What makes a country great is not how rich the monetary 
     funds of the upper class is, but how well its most vulnerable 
     citizens are treated. This is why we must start early and 
     teach the next generation to kindness and to love.
       When someone of power misuses his or her status to bully 
     those more vulnerable, their actions are desensitized. This 
     disrespect incites more discord which invites both fear and 
     hatred into the minds of all ages. The very young feel no 
     hatred. Currently, not all adolescents are being taught the 
     importance of tolerance and empathy in their homes, schools, 
     or in public. These lessons must begin in their earliest 
     years of schooling before they acquire biases from around 
     them and their beliefs are negatively impacted.
       The vernacular must include words of kindness, not 
     derogatory terms or racially-charged slurs. No matter what an 
     individual's values are, they should not value the 
     discrimination and hatred associated with these words. 
     Silence is compliance. The cycle of history will continue to 
     repeat itself unless people begin to empathize with all. If 
     one wishes to ``Make America Great Again,'' hate should not 
     be the weapon of choice. We must be more inclusive and 
     accepting of the diversity in which this nation has prided 
     and built itself on, for change begins with ourselves.
       Love does trump hate. Although we adhere to the flaws in 
     society, we must not. We must instill hope into those of the 
     coming generations. There is hope that our world will see 
     peace. There is hope that our world will be preserved. There 
     is hope for change. We are ``a nation of the people, by the 
     people, for the people that shall not perish from the 
     Earth,'' where people, no matter their race, religion, sexual 
     orientation, or gender, should take comfort in. We are the 
     great United States of America, and the day we forget that, 
     we will cease to exist, because despite current 
     circumstances, the world is not entirely lost if everyone 
     resists, together.


         BILLY BENDER, HANOVER HIGH SCHOOL SOPHOMORE (FINALIST)

       Mr Speaker, Mr Vice President, Members of the 115th 
     Congress and Distinguished Guests,
       As Americans we face many difficulties, but two are of 
     particular concern: one is a challenge to our world, the 
     other to our republic. We can and must do more to stop global 
     warming, and we can and must get big money out of politics.
       Climate Change is real. The scientific debate is over. We 
     have already begun to see its effects in the United States. 
     Large sections of the country have experienced severe 
     droughts and wildfires, hurricanes have been more violent, 
     and our summers are becoming dangerously hot in the south. 
     Internationally, long-term droughts are causing malnutrition, 
     threatening coastal cities, and creating climate refugees. 
     This is real, it is urgent, it is a direct result of the 
     actions of humans, and its impact will be felt 
     disproportionately by the most vulnerable peoples on our 
     planet. We caused it, and we can stop it. We have a 
     responsibility toward our children, our grandchildren, and 
     all of the future inhabitants of our planet.
       Our government needs to invest heavily in large scale clean 
     energy infrastructure projects. We need to renew and add to 
     the existing subsidies on renewable energy to make solar or 
     wind a viable financial option for homeowners and businesses. 
     We need to invest heavily in clean energy research and stop 
     subsidizing fossil fuels. When renewables like solar, wind 
     and hydro power are cheaper than oil, then the massive oil 
     companies will have no choice but to become energy companies 
     instead of oil companies and build dams, wind farms and solar 
     fields. We will no longer have to tolerate the risks of 
     nuclear energy.
       However, to achieve the goal of powering our nation with 
     renewable energy, we need to take the influence of huge, 
     anonymous donors out of American politics. Citizens United 
     has allowed huge corporations to funnel millions of dollars 
     into electing politicians who regard them favorably. The 
     fossil fuel industry is hugely profitable, and the 
     millionaires and billionaires who control them want to delay 
     and diminish the impact of renewables on their bottom line. 
     Their huge sums of money give them a massively 
     disproportionate voice in elections, allowing them to create 
     Super PACs which will ensure the continued existence of 
     dangerous, damaging practices like fracking.
       Climate change is a critical problem facing our nation and 
     our world, but it will be difficult to take the bold steps 
     necessary to mitigate its effects without first eliminating 
     the advantage that billionaires have in our elections. It is 
     time to take large scale legislative and judicial steps to 
     eliminate the out sized voice of the extremely wealthy and 
     save our planet for all who come after us.


     SIMON BUPP-CHICKERING, BELLOWS FALLS UNION HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR 
                               (FINALIST)

        ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice 
     everywhere.''--Martin Luther King Jr.
       A nation that neglects to confront and eliminate injustice 
     is no true defender of its people's rights. Due to the death 
     penalty's inherent inability to be more than state sponsored 
     revenge, its exorbitant cost, and the lack of statistical 
     evidence showing it does anything to stop murder, the death 
     penalty is an antiquated and medieval punishment that has no 
     place in a modern democracy.
       One of the most common arguments brought up by proponents 
     of the death penalty is the idea that enforcing the death 
     penalty acts as a deterrent for other criminals. However, 
     this argument fails to account for the fact that the vast 
     majority of murderers aren't executed, less than one percent. 
     In addition, 88 percent of criminologists, experts who study 
     crime for a living, refute the idea that the death penalty 
     works as a deterrent. Furthermore, as the South accounts for 
     80 percent of all executions in the United States, if the 
     death penalty did act as deterrence, then those states would 
     have the lowest rates of murder. However, the South holds the 
     country's highest murder rate, and the North, which accounts 
     for less than 1 percent of the country's executions, has the 
     lowest murder rate.
       The death penalty as it is practiced today is simply a tool 
     for revenge, misguidedly used in an attempt to help grieving 
     families. The finality of the punishment destroys any hope of 
     reflection, apology, or forgiveness, thus eliminating any 
     chance of true healing. Additionally, revenge is an emotional 
     response to tragedy, and the judicial system in America 
     should be about providing just and emotionally unbiased 
     decisions. Instead of perpetuating a cycle of violence, the 
     United States government should promote restorative justice, 
     which promotes rehabilitation and the improvement and 
     bettering society rather than resort to base human emotions 
     in response to tragedy.
       In order to prevent this outdated and pointless practice of 
     state-funded murder from damaging our justice system any 
     further, the death penalty must be abolished nationwide, and 
     those on death role should have their sentences commuted to 
     life in prison without parole. In a modern, civilized 
     society, there is no place for such a horrific punishment. 
     Most other enlightened nations around the world have removed 
     the death penalty from their judicial systems. Instead of 
     remaining among the questionable company of nations such as 
     North Korea, America must prove that it understands the 
     egregious error in killing as punishment for killing.
       Ultimately, the fact that the United States still uses the 
     death penalty reveals a fundamental lack of ethical maturity 
     in our nation, and is a mark of shame to Americans who want 
     to believe that the country they live in has evolved from the 
     barbaric practices of antiquity along with the rest of the 
     civilized world.

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