By M.R. WILSON, TB Reporter

What better time than this weekend to announce a candidacy?

Writing and urban farming, cat-caretaking and cooking are all fine and dandy, but I still have a lot of time on my hands. So I’ve decided to do the most patriotic thing I could do.

What better time to announce I’M RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT than the July 4 weekend?

You may be boggled by this news, taken away from the HOT SUMMER SALES, family picnics, parades and fireworks. But hey, is my candidacy any more absurd than that of a reality-TV show host’s?

Consider my slogan, if you will: “Make America SANE again.”

Let’s start with my platform. It has five planks. (Remember platform planks?) The 5 E’s:

Education

Economy

Environment

Elderly

Energy

Campaign banners will proclaim: “Wilson does it with E’s!”

A little e-laboration, you ask?

This is a 500-word column, so a little is all you get:

Education. This nation has forgotten how to educate its children. I am proud to be a product of public schools, but these institutions have fallen into despair. Instead of fixing the problem by treating teachers as professionals with professional pay and professional respect (for starters), “we” have created charter schools, magnet schools, fundamental schools, experimental schools, Blue Ribbon schools, special education schools, and alternative schools.  Let’s put funding into, um…I’ve got it! Excellent NEIGHBORHOOD schools!

Economy. Stop outsourcing jobs. Anywhere. Bring manufacturing back to the USA. Create jobs in green energy and infrastructure repair, like finishing Ulmerton Road.

Environment. Global warming is happening. Rethink animal agriculture and stop destroying entire ecosystems to sustain it. It is not sustainable. Clean air and water for all! The oceans aren’t garbage dumps.

Elderly. Hands off Social Security and Medicare. Right here is a good place for the national budget reprioritization I’ll outline later. Put heal back in healthcare. For everyone, not just old folks. When the time comes, death with dignity.

Energy. We don’t need fossil fuels. Really. Every technology is available to free us from that dependence—solar, wind, thermal, hydro—but heretofore blocked by … corporate greed … to put it in simplest terms.

My first Cabinet appointee is Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture.

Imagine a lobby-free Washington, D.C. The Center for Responsive Politics reported $3.22 billion in total lobbying spending by 11,520 lobbyists in 2015. www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ Kick the buggers out, says I!

November 8, write in my name on your ballot.

In the meantime, have a happy and safe Independence Day.

Fireworks calamity scares pets and wildlife and children and old people. Most of us have to work the next day. Must you set mini-bombs off in the street until 2 a.m.? Go to a public display that’s over at a respectable hour, where someone who knows how to play with this fire will be lighting the fuses.

Hold dear the self-evident truths of equality and inalienable rights, including alteration or abolishment of any form of government that has become “destructive of these ends” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Columns | The Sassy Sandpiper | Running for President | July 4 | TB Reporter

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