Bernie Sanders Is Rich

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Kruse’s article contains some snarky quotes from anti-Sanders Democrats. “He became the very thing he criticized others for becoming and at the same time didn’t fix any of the problems he’s been railing about that got him to this point,” Mary Anne Marsh told Kruse. Her fellow Democratic strategist Bob Shrum added that Sanders “almost at times sounds like he thinks it’s inherently evil to be well-off.” But far from being a hypocrite—or damaging his chances—Sanders’s recent success not only doesn’t hurt the “political revolution” he’s championed, it might even help it. Sanders, after all, isn’t advocating (no matter what Fox Business commentators tell you) to impoverish everyone in the country, but to lift them up.

(snip)

Instead, the fixation on Sanders’s wealth seems to have more to do with a general discomfort in talking about his policy positions, and perhaps especially, his democratic socialism. The Beltway media, in particular, have struggled to understand his earnestness, and some of that cynicism often bleeds into coverage of his finances.

It also, of course, speaks to the desire to undercut Sanders’s message. “Bernie is a known quantity in any socialist paradise,” establishment-class Republican consultant Rick Wilson told Kruse, “the party apparatchik with the dacha…” Kruse helpfully notes that everyone who knows Sanders thinks the comparison is absurd. But Wilson’s corny line points to the dig that many have hoped would stick: That Sanders is really just another politician, in it for the money.

Still, the real lesson of Sanders’s millions isn’t that he’s sold out his political revolution. It’s that his political revolution is winning, turning him into one of the most improbable celebrities in recent American history. Far from hurting Sanders’s political success, his new wealth points to just how popular his ideas about inequality and fairness have become.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154008/bernie-sanders-rich

[stonecutter357]

1. Bernie Sanders Is a Millionaire !

[TheCowsCameHome]

9. Good for him.

He makes a good salary, and that should allow him to become one.

[Skya Rhen]

2. And there was no reason for him to be ashamed of it, as evidenced by him being extremely reluctant

to release his tax returns for years...

[SouthernProgressive]

3. He monetized his Presidential run.

It's a somewhat natural occurrence.

"Still, the real lesson of Sanders’s millions isn’t that he’s sold out his political revolution. It’s that his political revolution is winning, turning him into one of the most improbable celebrities in recent American history. Far from hurting Sanders’s political success, his new wealth points to just how popular his ideas about inequality and fairness have become."

This is a bit questionable when looked at in the big picture. While Sanders has become a one percent earner I don't think his pull has garnered what is being reported about Biden and his 8 million dollar book payout or many others like HRC and Obama. All of whom garner a lot more money from book sales. So if they are using that as a measuring point it would seem that the "revolution" isn't winning, it is just making Sanders a bit more comfortable.

[robbedvoter]

40. Exactly. Like Trump and Carson. Selling a book on campaign trail was only a part of it.

[peggysue2]

4. Nice spin!

Unfortunately, the Senator from Vermont has been tangled up in his own hardline positions regarding wealth of any sort. Switching his messaging from 'millionaires and billionaires' to 'multi-millionaires and billionaires' did not go unnoticed. Nor did his reluctance to hand over his tax receipts.

[MineralMan]

5. Well, Senator Sanders has played his presidential aspirations well.

Having made his name a common one among the public, he has managed to sell a bunch of books.

Is he rich? Well, that depends on your definition of rich. He's rich enough to retire and live reasonably comfortably. That's the goal of a lot of upper middle class people. Put a million or two away and you can spend your waning years being comfortable and maybe doing some traveling.

He's not rich, though, in the sense of people who have more money than they can ever actually spend. He's not rich, by that definition.

But, he has done pretty well, thanks to running a couple of times for President. Hat's off to him for that.

[zentrum]

6. Bernie is not against

...the rich!

He's against the rich ripping off everyone else. He's against predatory, unregulated capitalism. He's against the rich not paying their fair share. He's against corporate government.

He's willing to be taxed at much higher rates. I.e. He's willing to pay his fair share. And along the way to continue to work for a more even distribution, a higher share of profits going to workers, not just owners, higher minimum wage, etc.

His money, BTW, came from high book sales since 2016. Oh, the horror!

He's an FDR Democrat, whom, back in the day the Repugs demonized as a socialist, as a Stalinist--because he too was for working people.

FDR of course was a millionare, as is Joe Biden-- and doesn't he campaign as being for workers?

Curious how only Bernie is singled out.

[NurseJackie]

8. No he's not.

He's an FDR Democrat

No he's not.

[zentrum]

10. Yeah, but....

Last edited Tue May 28, 2019, 09:25 PM - Edit history (1)

..FDR was called a socialist back in the day. And because the Democrats of '89 were (and still are ) a different kind of party than Democrats of yore, Bernie decided to own the word.

There's very little daylight between FDR and Bernie.

Neoliberalism started under Carter and that wasn't who FDR was.

[ehrnst]

11. Bernie is no FDR. (nt)

[zentrum]

12. Right. He's not President.

But he has described himself as an FDR-Democrat. Which he is.

As has Warren.

[yardwork]

13. I'm not seeing it.

Bernie's platform is isolationist. FDR was president during WWII. I'm just not seeing a similarity.

[ehrnst]

14. Way more differences than that. (nt)

[lapucelle]

30. Do you have a source for tha? N/T

[Celerity]

16. Bernie is not a 'real' socialist, he is a social democrat who foolishly tries to redefine socialism

into something it is not. Why he does this, I have no clue. It is stupid and hurts any chances for bog standard social democrat programmes being passed, including many that a majority of 'regular' Democrats support.


What socialism is — according to Bernie Sanders

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/what-is-socialism-bernie-sanders

Bernie Sanders explains what socialism is

Luckily for us, Senator Sanders explained his political philosophy in a speech he delivered at Georgetown University in 2015. (The entire speech can be viewed here.)

He begins by referring to the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt and pointing out the good that it did for a country in the depths of the Great Depression:

"He saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. And he acted. Against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists, Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combated cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country. . . . And, by the way, almost everything he proposed was called 'socialist.'"

The senator then muses on several issues facing the United States, income inequality, unemployment, high rates of childhood poverty, the high cost of medical care, and a declining faith in our political system, among others, and decides that the concentration of wealth and power is both the root cause of them and the key reason why we have failed to solve them. His solution, of course, is "socialism." It is then that he gives us his conception of what that is:

"Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy. Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt."

He goes a bit into the particulars of policy and explained that his conception of socialism would require — this is what it would look like — universal health care, total employment, free college education, more public spending, a living wage, environmental regulations, and a robust democratic culture to come into existence. He flatly denied any interest in nationalization, telling the audience:

"So the next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, remember this: I don't believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal."
The contents of this speech were very similar to other statements he has made about socialism across his entire political career. The entire speech could have been summed up neatly in a quote he gave to the Associated Press back in 1997:

"To me, socialism doesn't mean state ownership of everything, by any means, it means creating a nation, and a world, in which all human beings have a decent standard of living."



Wait a moment, praise for the New Deal? No interest in nationalization? That definition sounds a lot like capitalism!

You might have noticed that this program focuses on making capitalism work better and not replacing it with an entirely new system based on social ownership. This has made his definition of socialism a matter of contention.

While "socialism" is a system based around replacing private ownership of the means of production with social ownership, which generally means having the workers own and operate them instead — either through cooperatives or the state — Bernie hasn't shown much of an interest in using the government to promote this change.

Bernie's explanation of "socialism" is, in fact, closer to what political philosophers refer to as "social democracy." This is a capitalist system, since the means of production are still privately owned, where the state heavily regulates the economy and has an active welfare system in place to correct for the worst problems inherent to capitalism like inequality, cyclic instability, or the profit motive encouraging people to do things against the public interest.

snip

[robbedvoter]

41. Thanks for that. Democratic socialism is an oxymoron.

Because no democracy would allow for the confiscation of the means of production or the rationing of benefits "to everyone according to his needs". he may be hiding behind FDR lately, but we know that in the 70s he was talking about nationalizing main industries.

[ehrnst]

31. No, Bernie singles out others.

His money, BTW, came from high book sales since 2016. Oh, the horror!

Imagine what he would have said if HRC's response to comments on her wealth had said "I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

The fur would have flown... and it would have been made an issue that those books were sold at, and profits shared with Amazon and WalMart.

If other career politicians change their talking points, it's called "waffling" or "pivoting." But when Bernie has changes his taxing the wealthy talking points from "millionaires and millionaires" to "the billionaire class" and "multi-millionaires," once he becomes a millionaire it's not an issue at all. Certainly one wouldn't feel a need to do that if there isn't anything appearing inconsistent in delivering the previous talking points while being a millionaire. Bernie seems to require being treated differently than those he criticizes.

He's against the rich ripping off everyone else. He's against predatory, unregulated capitalism. He's against the rich not paying their fair share. He's against corporate government.

So is every Democratic POTUS candidate. Why is Bernie singled out as being somehow 'better' on this than other Democratic POTUS candidates? They also campaign for workers just as much, and thus far, none of their campaign staffs have felt a need to unionize.

[RandiFan1290]

7. I notice right wingers still whining about his tax returns

Sounds like the whining after Obama released his birth certificate. They couldn't find anything wrong so they complain that it 'took too long.'

[ehrnst]

15. They finally stopped whining "What about Kamala's?????!!!!"

Last edited Wed May 29, 2019, 07:49 AM - Edit history (1)

When she produced more years even sooner.

So there's that. The whataboutery was breathtaking.

[Trumpocalypse]

17. So were FDR & JFK

Really doesn’t matter.

[ehrnst]

33. It was considered a deal breaker for Joe Kennedy III by Sanders supporters.

See post #18

[ehrnst]

18. However, many Sanders supporters were trashing Joe Kennedy III for his "net worth"

Last edited Wed May 29, 2019, 10:51 AM - Edit history (1)

with a very professionally designed meme that also listed the policies where he didn't walk lockstep with Sanders, the morning after his well recieved response to SOTU in 2018 - on Twitter and Bernie fan FB pages, as well as right here on DU. I guess his popularity was making some people nervous.

For other politicians, higher than average wealth is suspect, even if inherited. But never, ever for Bernie. It's different for Bernie.

So there's that.

[Baclava]

19. ALL politicians at his level are rich, we are u trying to kid?

These vicious non-stop Bernie attacks are really starting to piss me off, Fuck it, I just dumped Joe, decided I need someone with personality
Bernie is looking better and better

[ehrnst]

20. What is 'vicious' about the post? And why did you "dump Joe?" (nt)

[Baclava]

21. I'm sick of the daily attack threads, I won't be associated with it n/t

[ehrnst]

22. You're posting here, so you must have wanted someone to hear your complaint.

You've already associated yourself with this thread.

[Baclava]

23. I'll post wherever the fuck I want, thank u very much, so there, now I'm done lol

Go gettem Bernie!

[ehrnst]

24. So, you want attention, and to draw attention to these threads lol

No one is telling you where 'the fuck' you can or can't post, so that's attacking a straw man as well.

Gotcha.

Why would one want to go where one feels they are being persecuted?

[Baclava]

25. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows but meeeeeeee

Carry on

[ehrnst]

27. Still hungry for attention?

Carry on...

[Baclava]

28. I take lots of selfies too. I'm so baaaaad

Go Bernie!

[ehrnst]

32. ....

[George II]

36. Bazinga!

[lapucelle]

45. I think I'll lulz.

[ehrnst]

38. Sensitive, too.

[Me.]

26. Really?

are you sure?

[KPN]

29. One of my brothers is a millionaire (don't know

exactly how many times over but it isn’t 10 and probably not 5) and he and his wife are Bernie supporters though open to Buttigieg, Yang and Harris. Enough said.

[at140]

34. Bernie is near bottom compared to other US Senators

in wealth/networth.

Why this obsession about Bernie's networth?
Why is his networth so much less than other senators?
Could it be that he is honest and not greedy, unlike the current president?

[ehrnst]

35. It's not obsession.

Obsession would be fixating about someone being compensated for speaking.

[George II]

37. No he isn't.

[ehrnst]

39. Maybe you're thinking of 2016 - but no longer.

And if it's not a big deal, why is the title of your post "Bernie is near bottom compared to other US Senators?"

As though that's something that makes him 'better' or "more ethical."

Patrick Leahy's net worth is less, if you want to compare... and Ro Khanna is worth 27 million.

Obsessing about someone's income is just as much obsessing if one continually parades their lack of it.

[BeckyDem]

42. Excerpt:I'm very concerned about the New York Times' consistently negative coverage of

of Senator Bernie Sanders.

We expect the newspaper of record to be unbiased. But when it comes to Sen. Sanders, the Times goes after him in snide ways.

First, there was an article that delved into his anti-war views of thirty-five years ago. It was written by Alexander Burns and Sydney Ember and published on May 19. Its overall tone is hypercritical of Sanders for his leftist views, especially his efforts to undermine the Reagan administration’s policies towards the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

A New York Times review of Mr. Sanders’s mayoral papers — including hundreds of speeches, handwritten notes, letters, political pamphlets and domestic and foreign newspaper clippings from a period spanning nearly a decade — revealed that from his earliest days in office Mr. Sanders aimed to execute his own foreign policy, repudiating Mr. Reagan’s approach of aggressively backing anti-Communist governments and resistance forces, while going further than many Democrats in supporting socialist leaders.

Mr. Sanders’s activities during his mayoralty bring into relief the fervently anti-imperialist worldview that continues to guide him. They also underscore his combative ideological persona, which has roiled national Democratic politics as thoroughly as it upended municipal government in Burlington. As mayor, Mr. Sanders denounced decades of American foreign policy that he portrayed as guided by corporate greed, and outlined a vision of international affairs defined by disgust at military spending and sympathy for Marxist-inspired movements in the developing world…

Mr. Sanders’s deep-rooted foreign policy values have the potential to not only earn him support from voters who have grown tired of overseas wars, but also make him vulnerable to attack from rivals in both parties who are eager to depict him as too radical for the presidency.

Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator since 2007, initially declined an interview for this article. But after it was published Friday, he requested a phone interview, during which he described his opposition to the Vietnam War and criticized an American foreign policy in the 1980s that he said had revolved around overthrowing governments and “installing puppet regimes.”

“I plead guilty to, throughout my adult, life doing everything that I can to prevent war and destruction,” he said…

In the interview Friday, Mr. Sanders called the Soviet Union an “authoritarian dictatorship” but said that stopping nuclear war was more important to him in the 1980s.

“I was going to do everything that I could to prevent a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union,” he said.

The article paints Sanders as an ideological extremist and radical who was out of the mainstream. Imagine a mayor who is anti-war! What an outrage!

Is it fair to expect everyone to have exactly the same views over their entire life? Is it fair to judge a person today by what he said and did 35 years ago? I don’t think so. My views have evolved. Some have changed dramatically. Most people supported the war in Vietnam when it happened. I expect many (including me) now see it as a disaster. Maybe the same is true about the war in Iraq, which turned into the war in Afghanistan, which might soon become the war in Iran. Bernie Sanders opposed them all.

Presumably the Times will tear apart Biden for the votes he cast long ago and the views he espoused that he now regrets.

And the Times will do the same to every other Democratic candidate, thus assuring Trump’s re-election, since his rabid base doesn’t care what he has done or said in the past.

Most infuriating recently was the New York Times’ hit job on Sanders’ thoughtful education plan, which was co-written by veteran education journalist Dana Goldstein and Sydney Ember, who to my knowledge has no education knowledge or experience. Ember was also co-writer of the anti-Sanders’ piece on May 19.

The Sanders plan for education is incisive, intelligent, well-informed, and bold.

He proposed a tripling of funding for Title 1, the funding stream that directly affects the neediest children.

He proposed increasing the federal contribution to the cost of special education to 50%. When Congress mandated special education services for children with disabilities, it pledged to pay 40% of the costs. It has never paid more than 10-12%. If Congress were to raise its payment to 50%, it would provide immediate fiscal relief to every school district in the nation.

He made clear that his administration would prioritize desegregation.

He called for a ban on for-profit charter schools and a moratorium on charter schools, echoing the NAACP (and Black Lives Matter), until it could be determined whether they are having a negative fiscal impact on public schools and whether they meet the same standards of accountability as public schools. He noted that “billionaires like DeVos and the Waltons, together with private equity and hedge fund executives, have bankrolled their expansion and poured tens of millions into school board and other local elections with the hope of privatizing public schools.” This statement is a matter of fact, not campaign rhetoric. The millions spent by billionaires like Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, the Waltons, and hedge fund managers (DFER) to influence school board elections and referenda are real.

He committed to rethinking the national reliance on property taxes and to ensuring that all schools are equitably funded.

He promised to work with states to establish a minimum teachers’ salary of $60,000.

Every parent, every educator, every citizen should read his plan.

But consider how the New York Times reported Sanders’ visionary plan.

The article barely mentions Sanders’ historic funding proposals and focus instead on his critique of charter schools, which is a relatively small part of his plan. They write that Sanders’ support for racial integration was “overshadowed by more divisive elements of the proposal: Mr. Sanders’s plan to freeze federal funding for all new charter schools, and the link his plan made between charter schools and segregation.”

It goes on to say that “Many Democrats, most notably Barack Obama, support charters as a way to provide more options to families, especially those that are too poor to move to a higher-quality school district or pay for private school. The impact of charters on school segregation is hotly disputed in education circles, and by linking these elements, Mr. Sanders touched a nerve in a highly charged debate within the party.”

They then quote Amy Wilkins, a paid lobbyist for charter schools (“a vice president at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and a longtime advocate in Washington for racial equity in education”), who finds the linkage of charter schools and segregation to be “galling.” She thinks that the Brown decision gave black parents the right to choose where to send their children, ignoring the fact that racist governors and senators said exactly the same thing and enacted freedom-of-choice plans that were repeatedly struck down by federal courts.

The article balances Wilkins by acknowledging that “The Sanders plan lists a number of causes of school segregation, such as inaction from the courts and federal government. It also cites data from a 2017 Associated Press investigation, which found that 17 percent of charter schools had student populations that were 99 percent nonwhite, compared with 4 percent of traditional public schools.

While no one disputes that charter schools serve high concentrations of black, Hispanic and low-income children, many charters were founded explicitly to serve that population of students, some of whom would otherwise attend segregated district schools with track records of academic failure. Urban charter schools have demonstrated solid performance, but not without drawing critique for harsh discipline practices and for serving fewer students with special needs.

Some integration advocates celebrated the Sanders proposal, and said its focus on charters was fair.

“I am actually one of the people who thought Bernie Sanders really missed the boat on dealing with issues of race in his campaign last time,” said Gary Orfield, a leading researcher on segregation and professor of education at U.C.L.A. “But this is a very forward looking plan and a dramatic break.”

“I hope it is picked up by other campaigns,” he added.

Professor Orfield cited research finding that in cities like New York and Washington, charters are more intensely segregated than district schools. A large body of scholarship shows that nonwhite and poor children perform better academically at integrated schools, and go on to have higher incomes as adults.

But here comes a zinger:

Teachers’ unions, an important constituency to Democrats, have long considered them a boogeyman, arguing that charter schools draw students and funding away from traditional public schools. The issue helped fuel a weeklong teacher strike that roiled Los Angeles in January — one of a wave of educator walkouts that have taken place across the country since 2018.

Ah, so now we see that Sanders is pandering to teachers unions by criticizing charters, because charters are the “boogeyman” of the unions.

There are plenty of parents and others who don’t belong to teachers’ unions who oppose setting up a parallel system of public schools. Do the Times’ writers know that? Do they know that voters in Georgia and Massachusetts overwhelmingly defeated Republican efforts to lift the charter caps in those states in 2016? The teachers union is strong in the latter, but not the former.

Doesn’t the Times have an ethical obligation to determine whether charters have a fiscal impact on public schools? Is it hard to figure out that charter schools draw students and resources away from public schools? Couldn’t they have cited Gordon Lafer’s pathbreaking work on the “stranded costs” that charters impose on public schools?

The real stinker in the Times’ article comes at the end, where the writers quote someone unfamiliar to me. I know many education activists in South Carolina, but I have never run across Jarrod Loadholt.

Jarrod Loadholt, a Democratic strategist who has worked on education policy in South Carolina, said he appreciated many elements of Mr. Sanders’s plan, including its support for expanding funding for schools that serve large numbers of low-income students — “That’s how you break the cycle of poverty,” he said — and a proposal to invest in school infrastructure.

But while the charter-school issue might be relevant in cities, Mr. Loadholt said, it was hardly top-of-mind for voters in the state’s expansive rural areas, where charter schools are rare.

“To a hammer, everything is a nail,” he said. “And to Sanders, everything is an issue created by millionaires and billionaires.”

I googled.

He is a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. who was born in South Carolina. I can find no evidence of any involvement by him in any education issues. His specialty seems to be consumer finance. Why was he called upon to put down Senator Sanders’ factual statement that the Waltons, the DeVos family, and hedge fund managers are behind the push for charter schools? Senator Sanders made his statement in South Carolina, and Loadholt was born there. South Carolina has dreadful education policy. When did Loadholt work on it and with what results? To the naked eye, he was called upon as a Beltway insider to cut Bernie Sanders down with a false statement.

Shameful.

The “New York Times” vs. Senator Bernie Sanders
By diane ravitch
May 29, 2019


https://dianeravitch.net/2019/05/29/the-new-york-times-vs-senator-bernie-sanders/

[Uncle Joe]

43. I believe they believe that it's easier to run or maintain an empire under corporate feudalism.

That's what they're pushing on the American People, corporate feudalism with corporate conglomerates being powerful Dukes and Barons while the government of "we the people" becomes weakened royalty, (mostly for symbolic purposes) the real power; "the string pullers" being behind the throne.

They do not want a strong President unless said executive is pro corporate and pro oligarch.

The New York Times have known that Trump was a fraud for decades and probably dangerous but they kept him front and center during 2016 because they also knew he was co-opting some of Bernie's message and would take votes away from him.

They literally can't see any other image for the U.S. on the world stage except as an empire engaged in perpetual war and coups to stay on top of the hill.

I believe that's eventually a recipe for U.S. collapse and probably World War III.

Humanity must come to grips with a new reality if we are to survive and whether successful or not that's what Bernie's vision is about.


That's an excellent letter.

Thanks for sharing BeckyDem.

[BeckyDem]

44. You're most welcome.

What the NYT is doing doesn't surprise me but it does sadden me because a great deal is at stake. Sanders was never radical, he was always a long time New Dealer. That the NYT fights against that reality only sharpens my resolve to work at registering as many people to vote as possible.

Ravitch is an excellent truth teller. I suspect we'll hear more from her as we approach the debates.

Be well.