Bernard “Bernie” Sanders is a traitor.
Bernard “Bernie” Sanders is a United States Senator from Vermont, and self-described socialists.
Every committed socialists needs a plan. Karl Marx had one, and so did Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Add to that group socialist senator Bernie Sanders, who is considering running for president (as a Democrat) and has already announced a 12-point plan at the Huffington Post. He writes:
As Vermont’s senator, here are 12 initiatives that I will be fighting for which can restore America’s middle class.
1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools….. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive.
Why does this sound so familiar? Because it is! Remember the Obama stimulus plan? That too was a trillion-dollar investment in our “crumbling infrastructure” (the favorite amorphous buzzword for government spending). How many millions of permanent jobs were created from that? I think the exact number was… zero.
2. The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies…. and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy.
Good news! Our planet is currently habitable for our children and grandchildren. Nothing further needs be done! However, if we move away from fossil fuels to cutting-edge Don Quixote technologies from the 1900s, like windmills, our children and grandchildren will be paying enormous costs for energy and will have no energy at all when the wind isn’t blowing (for windmills) and when the sun isn’t shining (for solar).
3. We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives.
This has been tried in many countries. Israel used to have cooperatives called “Kibbutzes.” I say “used to” because most of them went bankrupt. When people were not rewarded more for working harder, and people were rewarded for not working at all, the system went broke.
4. Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.
Union workers in places like Detroit have good jobs at good wages with good benefits…the ones who still have jobs, that is. Many lost their jobs because the wages unions demanded for unskilled labor caused the auto companies to collapse – not once, but several times.
5. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
Every time you raise the minimum wage, the poor suffer, because more jobs disappear, and the products produced by minimum-wage labor become more expensive. The minimum wage is supposed to be a training wage, where people go to get their first step on the ladder leading upward. Those who learn are promoted and get higher wages. Those who don’t…well…
6. Women [sic] workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country — equal pay for equal work.
Will we start this policy in the White House? In the offices of Democratic Senate and House staffers? Will we hire committees of thousands of bureaucrats to go into every company and judge the work of every employee to decide what is “equal work”? Because that is the only way such a policy could be put into effect.
7. Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.)
I think what Senator Sanders is saying here is that he supports tariffs. It’s funny, though, that he doesn’t say tariffs. Tariffs acquired a bad reputation after they helped lead to the Great Depression.
8. In today’s highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. Quality education in America, from child care to higher education, must be affordable for all.
Is Senator Sanders going to require colleges and universities to make sure that all their professors are working 40-hour work weeks in the classroom? Is he going to audit the costs of universities, find out how much the teaching component costs, and then require universities to lower tuition accordingly? If so, I congratulate Senator Sanders for taking on the liberal college money-making establishment!
9. The function of banking is to facilitate the flow of capital into productive and job-creating activities. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real economy. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product – over $9.8 trillion…. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.
If banks are profit centers, how do they make profits? The only way is by investing in the economy, real estate, industries, and businesses. These activities create jobs.
10. The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all, and not a privilege. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.
Health care is a right in many countries, such as Cuba and North Korea. However, having a right to health care is not the same as receiving health care. In a single-payer system, the incentive to innovate and create medicines is lost, and the demand for medical care will far outstrip supply.
11. Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.
The more we spend, the better off these people will be – so he says. But where will this money come from? We currently have over 18 trillion dollars in debt, and that doesn’t even count unfunded obligations to Social Security and other programs. If we incur more debt, and our economy collapses, as is happening in countries like Greece and Portugal, the poor will suffer even more. The best anti-poverty program is a free-market economy, which creates jobs. A job is the best “safety net.”
12. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay.
Now Senator Sanders is quoting Karl Marx! “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But we already have a progressive tax system in America. If you combine federal and state taxes, in some states, like California and New York, “the rich” pay over 50% in taxes. Does Senator Sanders think an even higher rate will inspire job-creators to work even harder?
Senator Sanders will be 75 years old in 2016. His campaign ideas are only slightly older.
From the senate.gov website, this is the Oath of Office, as it is administered to US Senators:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
On Senator Bernie Sanders own Senate.gov webpage, an article appears which describes Sanders as a socialist:
When Vermonters chose Sanders to replace retired Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., in 2006, some senators doubted whether the impassioned socialist known for his untamed white hair and fiery oratory would fit in with the staid Senate.
The American Constitution is wholly incompatible with socialism. These reasons are mainly because first; the government can never, ever be the purveyor of our rights, and second; our Constitution is a charter of negative rights and negative liberties. These concepts are both diametrically opposed to socialism.
Anyone who swears to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of The United States, but openly identifies themselves as “socialist”, has in fact sworn a false oath. We should all take grievous offence at anyone who pays the oath lip service.
US Senator Bernie Sanders Demands A Federal Reserve Bailout Of Greece
It should hardly come as a surprise when a hard-core US socialist like Senator Bernie Sanders comes out with demands that his socialist peers in Greece be bailed out by none other than the Federal Reserve: in fact, it does show why while so many quasi-socialists hate when the Fed bails out the “loathsome” banks, they love when the Fed bails out everyone else. And yes, socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders are known to demand for bailouts – in fact the more often, and the more frequently, the better.
How many examples of Bernie Sanders hypocrisy can you find in 4 sentences?
We need more games to cheer conservatives in these trying times. Let’s play one now. The name of the game is “How many examples of Bernie Sanders hypocrisy can you find in four sentences?”
Are you ready? Set? Go!
On the stump, Mr. Sanders pledges to take direct aim at the wealthy, diminish their power, expose their tax havens and break up the largest financial institutions in the country. He tells working-class Americans that he would fight for higher wages, guaranteed health care, family and medical leave and paid vacations.
“This grotesque level of [income] inequality is immoral…. It is unsustainable, and it is not what the United States of America is supposed to be about,” Mr. Sanders said in Madison.
1) Diminish the power of the wealthy. The wealthy can’t arrest anyone or confiscate anyone’s money. Who is the real powerful entity that Bernie isn’t talking about? (A hint: he works for them.)
2) Expose their tax havens. Companies don’t repatriate income from other countries because of high corporate tax rates and double-taxation. They are havens only because American tax policies are so punitive.
3) Break up the largest financial institutions. Is Bernie referring to the Federal Reserve? Because that is the largest and most powerful one there is.
4) Bernie will work for higher wages – presumably higher minimum wages, which means that fewer people will have jobs, and the costs of everything produced will become more expensive, impoverishing everyone else.
5) Bernie will fight for guaranteed health care. There is guaranteed health care in Cuba and North Korea as well, but that doesn’t mean anyone gets treatment. Why aren’t Bernie and his staff on Obamacare plans, by the way?
6) Family leave and medical leave laws. Will Bernie be pushing to apply these to the general population, or specifically to his staffers on Capitol Hill?
7) Bernie finds income inequality immoral – the idea that one person with greater ability and who works harder makes more money than another person who doesn’t. In a perfectly moral society, we will all make the same amount of money no matter how hard we work and no matter what we do. Now, isn’t that moral?
8) Bernie says income inequality is unsustainable, but the economy is sustainable because people with money invest in businesses that keep the economy going. How else does the economy keep going, if not by capital investment from the wealthy? Eliminate them, and then the economy becomes unsustainable.
9) Where did it say in the Constitution that everyone should have the same income? Are you sure Bernie is reading the right constitution?
Well, that’s nine examples of blatant hypocracy in four sentences – a new record, even for Bernie.
By the way, thanks to the Wall Street Journal for this fawning piece of journalism. Hard left, corporatists…they are so hard to tell apart anymore.
Report: Bernie Sanders Used Campaign Donations to Pay Family Members Over $150,000
Bernie Sanders constantly says that he wants big money out of politics, it’s one of the central pillars of his presidential campaign.
While it hasn’t been reported by any major media outlets during this election cycle, the fact is that Sanders has used campaign funds to enrich members of his family in the past.
This report appeared in the Vermont Guardian in 2005:
Nepotism crosses party lines WASHINGTON —The news that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-TX, paid his wife and daughter $473,801 as campaign staff members was just the beginning. At least 38 other members of Congress, including Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders, have paid spouses, children, or other relatives out of campaign funds, or have hired companies in which a family member had a financial interest, according to news reports.
Since 2000, Sanders has used campaign donations to pay his wife and stepdaughter more than $150,000, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.
His wife Jane O’Meara Sanders received $91,020 for “consultation” and to negotiate the purchase of television and radio ads. Approximately $61,000 of that was “pass through” money used to pay for the ads, O’Meara Sanders told the Bennington Banner. She kept about $30,000 as pay for her services.
Her daughter Carina Driscoll, Sanders’ stepdaughter, earned $65,002 from the Sanders campaign between 2000 and 2004, records show.
A similar report appeared in the Times Argus of Vermont:
- Sanders campaign paid family members
MONTPELIER — Rep. Bernard Sanders’ wife Jane was paid about $30,000 from 2002 to 2004 for work on his campaigns, while his stepdaughter Carina Driscoll got about $65,000 over a five-year period ending last year, a Sanders aide said Wednesday.
The issue resurfaced in 2006 and was covered by Roll Call:
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GOP Hits Sanders on Wife’s Business
Sanders, who is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), is fighting back, saying that his likely Republican opponent, millionaire businessman Richard Tarrant, is lying.
The Tarrant campaign has resurrected news stories revealing that Sanders’ wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders — a former professional media buyer — was paid $30,000 for working on Sanders’ 2002 and 2004 House campaigns and his step-daughter, Carina Driscoll, had been paid about $65,000 over a five-year period.
It’s astonishing that someone campaigning on the removal of big money in politics used campaign funds to pay large sums of money to members of his own family.
