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This is Ray Mossholder.
Bernie Sanders?
The story is told of a presidential candidate in the 1800s who went by train to give a speech to a Native American tribe. When the train stopped at a reservation, the candidate got off and stood before more than a thousand tribal chiefs. He began his speech by thanking all of them for assembling. Then he said “If I receive your vote for president, I will replace all your horses with the finest of Arabian stallions.” Every chief responded with a loud cry of “Oompa! Oompa!” Next the candidate said “And if you vote for me to be president, I will move you from this reservation with absolutely no cost to you and give you the territory of Wyoming.” Still once again came the crys “Oompa! Oompa!” The candidate was greatly encouraged and continued “And if I receive your vote, I promise to give every one of your children a four-year university education completely paid for by the United States government.” Again he heard “Oompa! Oompa!” But the candidate wasn’t done. He went on and on with promises of everything from turning their teepees into the finest homes, to giving each one of them their own private train that was finer than the train he was riding on. Finally, the candidate’s speech was over and after he again profusely thanked the chiefs and urged them to vote for him, he walked back to the campaign train with the chief who had invited him. Just before the candidate stepped onto the train, that chief looked down on the ground, turned to him and said “Don’t step in the Oompa!”
But now, let’s take that story one step further. Suppose the candidate had been completely sincere. He fully meant every word he said, and he was elected president by 898 votes over the second-place finisher. He had kept in touch with those chiefs and realized that without one exception, they had voted for him. So, he began to give them what he’d promised – a thousand of the finest Arabian stallions; building crews replaced teepees with beautiful homes; every child on every reservation was given a government grant for four years completely free in the University of their choice. He fulfilled all the other promises he’d made – an 1800’s–style Disney World in the Wyoming territory with admission free for all the Native Americans; the most modern fixtures inside their homes; an all expense paid trip to the White House for a conference on Native American needs and desires every year. The list was much longer than that and the president completely fulfilled it. The chiefs were ecstatically happy until one awful day when the United States government went bankrupt.
That candidate in 2016 is Bernie Sanders. I believe he is sincere. But this Independent Virginia Senator only last year joined the Democratic Party so that he could be considered a viable candidate. He well knows third-party candidates can’t win the presidency. So the question is “What does Bernie Sanders mean when he calls himself a ‘Democrat Socialist?"”
It was at a speech he gave at Georgetown University where he directly answered that question. Here are his own words “I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own their means of production. But I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America, deserve a decent standard of living, and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad. When I use the word socialist, and I know some people are uncomfortable with it, I am saying it is imperative that we create a political revolution, that we get millions of people involved in the political process and we create a government that works for the many, not the few.” In many ways that sounds like a speech Donald Trump might make. But let’s look at the specifics. What is Bernie Sander’s platform? It is certainly different than Donald Trump’s or any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, in the current 2016 race. What is Bernie Sanders specifically promising us if he is elected?
Make no mistake, Bernie Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, is both a lover and a fighter. His smile is as big as Texas. Even though he is from Flatbush in the Bronx and sounds like it, he has been a Vermont Independent in Congress for 24 years. He’s been both in the House of Representatives and the Senate and he’s used to winning.
When Bernie Sanders speaks he is like a machine gun rat–tat–tatting out a list of America’s greatest problems. Here are just a few, and these are all facts: “Did you know that 425,000 public new school teachers could be hired by the amount the top 25 hedge–fund managers in this country make?” Or, “Despite the modern gains of the Affordable Care Act, 40 million citizens have no health insurance.” Or, “There are more people in poverty in America right now then at anytime in the history of our country.” “America has 91 million who are unemployed right now.” “America once led the world in building and maintaining a nationwide network of safe and reliable bridges and roads. Today, nearly a quarter of the nations 600,000 bridges have been designated as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Almost 1/3 of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.” Then “Nothing of that is going to change as long as America’s voters stay home. In our last election, 60% of the people didn’t vote; 75% of low income people didn’t vote; 80% of people between eighteen and twenty-one didn’t vote. The American people care more about Tom Brady’s arm than they do about our disastrous trade policies, NAFTA, CAFTA, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. ISIS. Serious issues. And what the government doesn’t want you to think about is what’s happened to the American middle class.”
While in Flatbush, Bernie attended the same high school Chuck Schumer attended. Bernie says “My father was a worker. He came here in 1917 without a penny and didn’t speak English. My mother wanted a house, but he couldn’t provide that. Yet they managed to send me and my brother to college. I suspect that they voted Democrat, but it wasn’t ever anything that they discussed. It was only after leaving Brooklyn family to attend the University of Chicago at the same time the civil rights movement hit, that I became politically aware. I began marching and protesting. And in the mid-60s, I lived on a kibbutz in Israel for six months.
He came to Vermont in 1968. Here’s how he describes himself then: “My hair was long, but not long for the times. I smoked marijuana, but was never part of the drug culture. That wasn’t me. I instantly fell in love with Vermont. To this day, I’ve never once heard anyone cursing in the grocery store.”
In 1971, a friend of his invited him to a meeting of the leftist Liberty Union Party. It was just beginning. Bernie says “I stood up and said a few words. I can’t remember at all what I said. Two hours later, I was a candidate for the United States Senate! I had a $200 car and went out to campaign. The Liberty Union Party was tiny and had no money. Still, I was allowed to be part of the debates. I was on the radio, interviewed in the newspapers, and actually taken seriously. Could you imagine that happening today?” Then in 1989, as the West was on the verge of winning the Cold War, Sanders addressed the national conference of the US Peace Council – a known front for the Communist Party USA, whose members swore an oath not only to the Soviet Union, but to “the triumph of Soviet power in the United States.”
Sanders ran as a socialist and got 2% the first time. The second time he ran, he got 4%. He left the socialist Liberty Union Party to become an Independent. That’s when he ran for mayor of Burlington and won in what the newspapers called “a nasty standoff”. Bernie beat five–term incumbent Gordon Paquette by ten votes! Since then, he’s been a member of Congress for twenty-four years; his first years in the House of Representatives, and the years since in the Senate.
All this time, Bernie Sanders has been enamored with two communist nations. Sanders wrote in 1985 “In 1961, America invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world. America believed all the Cuban people were going to rise up in a rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that it was Castro who educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, and totally transformed society.” In 1989, Bernie and his wife went to Cuba with the hopes of meeting Fidel Castro but Castro was too busy to see them.
Bernie Sanders also loves the Soviet Union. And he loves the memory of Eugene Debs, who was a great believer in communism, though he continued to call what he believed “socialism”. The New York Post’s Paul Sperry wrote “Sanders also adopted a Soviet sister city outside Moscow and honeymooned with his second wife in the USSR. He put up a Soviet flag in his office, shocking even the Birkenstock–wearing local liberals. At that time, the Evil Empire was on the march around the world and threatening the United States with nuclear annihilation.
So, with Bernie’s rags to riches story with quite a bit of red thrown in, everybody in Vermont must love him. Right? A large part of Vermont-ites do, but not everybody does. He has some personal faults that continue to be pointed out by his critics. They say he is inflexible with an attitude of “I–am–right–and–everyone–else–is–wrong” that turns them away. According to New York Magazine, a commonly heard phrase by those who know him best is “Bernie Sanders is a man of the people who doesn’t particularly like people.” He can be a real grump. Still, most people in Vermont would say “He’s our grump!”
When we begin to look at the things that Bernie Sanders advocates, he certainly doesn’t look like the Grinch. Here’s a quick review:
1. Spreading the wealth around: In April 2015, here is what the Associated Press wrote about the problem Bernie Sanders wants to solve – “What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels. This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful. It is not working for ordinary Americans….You know this country shouldn’t just belong to a handful of billionaires.” In July 2015, Sanders introduced legislation that would incrementally increase the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour by the year 2020.
2. Changing the tax structure: Bernie Sanders would repeal some of the tax deductions that benefit hedge funds and corporations, and would raise taxes on capital gains and the wealthiest 1% of Americans. The wealthy would pay a 90% tax rate (a rate that last existed during the years directly following World War II).
3. Breaking up the big banks: Bernie believes our present banking system is in great danger because even one of their collapses would create a global financial earthquake. He wants to prevent any financial institution from acting as both a securities firm and a commercial bank.
4. Medicare For All: Medicare is the American government’s largest budget item, costing 824.8 billion dollars per annum. Even with the limited amount of Americans who are on Medicare today, Medicare is is facing a 43 trillion dollar debt in unfunded liabilities, and it denies healthcare claims at a higher rate than any private insurer. Financial experts say that just that one promise, Medicare to every American, would bankrupt America soon.
5. Four years of college for every student FREE. With student loans hanging on like an embarrassing and terribly unwanted tail year after year until some former students reach the age of fifty or so, Bernie calls student debt “indentured servitude”. But here’s the realistic catch: four years of free college would cost America an estimated 70 billion dollars every year. Remember that when the government says that they will pay for anything, they really mean the taxpayer will pay for it. With the need of 70 billion extra dollars in government coffers every year, how much strain would that put on your taxes?
6. The prosecution of “climate deniers.” Sanders and Al Gore are like Siamese twins. Both have called for the prosecution of climate change skeptics. Here’s what sits on Bernie Sanders website: “Bring climate deniers to justice so we can aggressively tackle climate change. It is an embarrassment that Republican politicians, with few exceptions, refuse to even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone be prepared to do anything about it. The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is to blame for much of the climate change skepticism in America.” With that statement, Bernie has called for the Department of Justice to investigate Exxon Mobil who has spent millions of dollars to spread doubt about the causes and impacts of burning fossil fuels.
Those are just a few of the major stances Bernie Sanders has been taking. To check on his other positions go to berniesanders.com
Super Tuesday is just two days away. 11 states will be voting. Hillary literally wiped Bernie out tonight – 73% to 26%, winning 90% of the black vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Political pundits say it’s not looking good for Bernie heading into Tuesday and that her win tonight will give her great momentum with voters from other states. The polls are saying the same. Nearly half the delegate votes will be decided by Tuesday evening. But Bernie is forever the optimist. He says “That means there are still more than half of the delegates who are yet to decide. I look for a good Tuesday, but I’ll be going strongly after all the of the other delegates from Wednesday on.”
Like having steak, lobster, caviar, and three bottles of eighty-year-old wine at the most elegant restaurant in the world, unless you are already a multimillionaire, you might just faint when the maître d’ brings you the bill. Because it’s time to add up all of the things that Bernie Sanders wants “free” for all Americans. His proposals would cost you, the taxpayer – get ready for this – 19.6 trillion dollars in tax increases over the next ten years. America’s national debt this moment is nearly 20 trillion dollars. So, realistically, America will go bankrupt as a nation long before those ten years under Bernie Sanders plans. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t step in the oompa!
You decide who you are going to vote for.
This is Ray Mossholder from the Reach More Now news desk in Fort Worth, Texas, with Campaign 2016. My next op-ed piece that will be found on Reach More Now.com and Reach More Now YouTube will be “Should Hillary Clinton be the first woman president of the United States?” Watch for it.
Bernie Sanders?
Bernie Sanders?