Congressman Alan Grayson on MSNBC Hardball: Is Dick Cheney a Vampire?

“Justice, justice, ye shall seek.”

- Deuteronomy,

chapter 16, verse 20.

Alan Grayson's Biography

There is right, and there is wrong. We in

Central Florida have sent someone to Washington who fights for what’s right.

Our Congressman, Alan Grayson, grew up in

the tenements in the Bronx . It was a hard life. He had to be a fighter to survive.

His parents were teachers. They made

great sacrifices, to make sure that Alan received the best education.

Alan was a sick child. His mother took

him to the hospital four times a week, for treatment. Without health coverage, he would not be alive today. He remembers that.

Alan rode the subway to school each day, and he worked hard. He was the valedictorian of his junior high school. By passing a test, he was admitted to an exclusive public high school. In high school, he achieved the highest test score among almost 50,000 students who took the test. Harvard College saw something in him, and admitted him.

For Alan, life at Harvard wasn’t easy. Alan cleaned toilets, and worked as a night watchman. Yet he earned a bachelor’s degree in only three years, with high honors, and he was Phi Beta Kappa. Alan graduated from Harvard in the top two percent of his class.

Alan took economics classes at Harvard, and he worked as an economist after college. But he felt a calling, to learn more. He returned to Harvard. In only four years, Alan received a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School , and a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Government, and Alan finished all of the course work and passed the general exams for a Ph.D. in Government.

Alan’s master’s thesis was on the

important subject of gerontology – how to improve the health of older people. Alan called for the creation of an organization to support research on the health of seniors. Shortly after he left school, Alan formed such an organization: the Alliance for Aging Research. Alan served as an officer of the Alliance for 22 years. Alan’s Alliance has increased federal support for aging research by 500%, leading to breakthroughs in the treatment of blindness, weak bones, Alzheimer’s disease, and other afflictions of the elderly. The motto of the Alliance is “Living to 100 – and Loving It.”