No, Sanders’ Secret Service Detail Isn’t Costing ‘Taxpayers’ $38,000 a Day

[Winston.Smith]

Washington Post political reporter John Wagner (6/19/16) reported on Bernie Sanders’ continuing Secret Service detail, throwing in a too-clever-by-half talking point that has since gone viral. In “An Expensive Reminder That Sanders Still Hasn’t Dropped Out: His Secret Service Detail,” Wagner used an eight-year-old stat to provide urgency to his general thesis that Sanders’ quixotic campaign is draining us, the good American “taxpayer,” of resources:

Such round-the-clock protection can cost taxpayers more than $38,000 a day.

Over the next 48 hours, this tidbit quickly spread across several outlets, providing a good clickbait-friendly fable of Sanders’ egoism run expensively amok:

Snip

http://fair.org/home/no-sanders-secret-service-detail-isnt-costing-taxpayers-38000-a-day/

[Warren Stupidity]

1. And this right-wing talking point, as it is so clearly

analyzed and categorized in this article, was still being regurgitated here after the switch-over.

[roody]

2. So what if it were. Money well spent.

[djean111]

3. This says it all....

The framing ignores this and uses a Grover Norquist–like gimmick of isolating one-off costs as something being taken away from the “taxpayer”—a term with considerable right-wing baggage and whose uniform adoption here by journalists belies their ostensibly neutral motives

[Hiraeth]

4. Money. Well. Spent.

[Else You Are Mad]

5. Oh no!

Even if it is $38,000 a day, that is couch cushion change compared to all the tax moneys the federal government wastes on programs and tax breaks that aren't aimed at protect the lives of politicians.

Honestly, I don't care if that much is spent to protect any public presidential candidate -- be it Democrat or Republican -- from being
assassinated.

It is amazing how some people forget that presidential candidates have been assassinated.

[Plucketeer]

6. The very looniest of those who would angst

about such Secret Service costs are the very ones that make such costs necessary.