Disgusting!
Puh-leeeze. This is the narrative that the establishment democrats are going to peddle in order to smear Bernie. I think it’s a terrible mistake both morally, and as a strategy.
Let’s start with the strategic error. They’re pushing the republican narrative that democrats hate people for being rich. Not only is that bullshit, but it sets republicans up to take the opposite position: loving someone simply for being rich (even if they’re not willing to prove they’re rich). Republicans worship wealth and power so much that they don’t care when that wealth and power is made at their expense. It’s a wholly irrational position, just like loathing someone simply for being rich would be. That would not be the position of the vast majority of democrats, although I fear that it will be soon thanks to what the establishment is trying to do to Bernie. I don’t hate rich people just because they’re rich. I hate it when rich people don’t pay their fair share in taxes. I hate it when rich people game the system in order to take our tax dollars (in the form of subsidies) to add to their already obscene wealth. Nobody hates Steve Jobs for being rich because his wealth came from making things that people wanted to buy. I’m still pissed at him for not paying his damned taxes and robbing the social security trust fund by paying himself in capital gains, but I never hated him for being rich. Nobody hates Warren Buffet. He’s a wholly self made billionaire who didn’t make his fortune on the backs of other people.
I’m going to veer off course for a minute to say that I don’t believe that any society should allow billionaires to happen. Billionaires are toxic to a society because they can’t spend a big enough percentage of their money to actually help an economy. Millionaires on the other hand, are great for societies and I’m all for creating more of them. Millionaires are in that sweet spot of having enough money to spend on significant amounts of consumer goods and investing just the right amount to help seed businesses. But millionaires aren’t rich enough to play fast and loose with their investments, since it can all disappear overnight. They are not (for example) rich enough to create mortgage backed securities or naked credit default swaps. I believe that our tax code should be designed to stop anyone from becoming a billionaire, just like it was for nearly forty years. We need a top tax rate of 90% not only to prevent billionaires from happening, but also to force reinvestment in American companies. There’s no point in looting a company if you’re going to have to pay 90% of what you loot back to the government.
Back to Bernie. He made a couple of million dollars by writing books that people want to read. QUELLE HORREUR! You want to know what his tax returns actually show? That he’s an honest politician. Thirty years in congress and until two years ago, he didn’t bring in any money that he didn’t earn in his paycheck. How much is Mitch McConnell worth, and why? How about Dianne Feinstein? Can anyone explain to me how she and her defense industry executive husband are worth $94 million dollars? Bernie doesn’t have any significant income from investments because in thirty years, he didn’t steal enough from you to invest. That’s what his tax returns show, and anyone who tries to spin it another way is a partisan hack.
And the charges of hypocrisy against Bernie are laughable. If Bernie had changed a single one of his positions in order to grow his new found wealth, then he would be a hypocrite and I would be leading the charge in pointing out his hypocrisy. You wanna know who built the middle class in America by betraying his class? FDR. He was a really fucking rich guy who shanked his friends by giving the working class The New Deal.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: I haven’t decided who I’m voting for yet, and probably won’t until after we’ve seen a few debates and some fully formed platforms. I have some hard “NOs” and I’m starting to form a short list, but most of the candidates are on my “maybe” list until I see some detailed agenda items from them. Bernie, who I voted for in the last primary (check my FB or Twitter feeds from July – November 2016 before you get your panties in a bunch) is on my short list. He has a fully baked platform (which includes six different proposals for paying for Medicare For All) that addresses most of my priorities. The fact that he took 43% of the votes in the last primary with no money, no comb, and no tailor demonstrates that he’s very viable, as do his individual contributor numbers from this year. But for some reason (which I’m working out) I find myself looking for reasons to cross him off my short list. I will expand on that when I publish my vetting piece on him in the next week, but that’s where I am right now. So far, no one has come up with anything empirical to help me cross him off my list. And frankly, every nonsense charge that is hurled at him, the more convinced I become that there aren’t any substantive reasons not to support him.
Until that happens, I would be satisfied if democrats could just resist the urge to permanently become the party that hates rich people who earned their money the honest way, just because of how much they earned and not because of how they earned it. This is a position that will stick for decades. It’s short sided, simple minded, and is being created just for political expedience.
