Unmasking A Mole: Bernie H. Sanders, Capitalist Ideologue
Busted
The headline read Bernie Sanders Runs Into Socialist Reality. The Washington Post set the bait, I clicked and suddenly a portion of the universe’s mysteries spread out before me like an unscrolled Torah on the wildest sabbath since Yahweh determined “It was very good.”
On its face the story contains no intrigue: Facing Increasing Labor Costs, Employer Reduces Hours.
No duh, “employer reduces hours.” That’s not a reaction exclusive to employers, it’s a reaction exclusive to living organisms. Anytime things get more expensive, every living organism tries to reign in consumption of that thing while it seeks out a substitute. But this story isn’t about any old semi-sentient creature. This is the tale of Bernie H. Sanders: Socialist Anti-Hero, Unionist Deity, Living-Wage God. And yet there he was, facing a labor complaint from his own staffers because he wasn’t paying them $15 an hour. To add to my surprise Bernie countered, not by increasing staffer pay but by reducing their hours! The two sides then proceeded to haggle over health care co-pays and finally settled on a compromise that increased the staff’s salary but shrunk their time on the clock, which means Bernie is finally living up to his own campaign promise but doing so has left him with less money to spend on his campaign. I was stunned. Who knew that market forces operated among proletarians? And yet it happened…
On its face the story contains no intrigue: Facing Increasing Labor Costs, Employer Reduces Hours.
No duh, “employer reduces hours.” That’s not a reaction exclusive to employers, it’s a reaction exclusive to living organisms. Anytime things get more expensive, every living organism tries to reign in consumption of that thing while it seeks out a substitute. But this story isn’t about any old semi-sentient creature. This is the tale of Bernie H. Sanders: Socialist Anti-Hero, Unionist Deity, Living-Wage God. And yet there he was, facing a labor complaint from his own staffers because he wasn’t paying them $15 an hour. To add to my surprise Bernie countered, not by increasing staffer pay but by reducing their hours! The two sides then proceeded to haggle over health care co-pays and finally settled on a compromise that increased the staff’s salary but shrunk their time on the clock, which means Bernie is finally living up to his own campaign promise but doing so has left him with less money to spend on his campaign. I was stunned. Who knew that market forces operated among proletarians? And yet it happened…
On the biggest stage in the political universe, Bernie’s cake was being eaten, so it couldn’t be had.
Who would have thought that the Bernie’s-A-Capitalist hypothesis I had joked about a few weeks ago would be confirmed so abruptly? I felt like that ancient Greek dude who, tired of sending his primest rib to Zeus’ altars, decided “I think I’ll climb Mount Olympus and see if I can get the Big Man to agree to a diet of tossed salads.”
So like any good aspiring conspiracy theorist I spent the next week in my basement posting pictures and newspaper clippings to my wall and then pinning and criss-crossing a web of red strings all over said photos and clippings. And though I must admit that the exercise didn’t help clarify my thoughts, I’m glad I did it because I feel like it will bring me tons of street cred with the Truthers, Birthers and assorted Space Nerds, Trekies and D&D fanatics who I’ll need to rally to the cause if my exposé is to have any effect on the next election.
Anywho, the following is a summary of what I discovered while working on my collage. I readily admit that the initial bullet points barely establish a correlation, but keep reading and you’ll see that things get a liiiiiiiiiitle creepy as a pattern of intrigue emerges.
I present: Bernie H. Sanders, Anatomy of a Mole
Who would have thought that the Bernie’s-A-Capitalist hypothesis I had joked about a few weeks ago would be confirmed so abruptly? I felt like that ancient Greek dude who, tired of sending his primest rib to Zeus’ altars, decided “I think I’ll climb Mount Olympus and see if I can get the Big Man to agree to a diet of tossed salads.”
So like any good aspiring conspiracy theorist I spent the next week in my basement posting pictures and newspaper clippings to my wall and then pinning and criss-crossing a web of red strings all over said photos and clippings. And though I must admit that the exercise didn’t help clarify my thoughts, I’m glad I did it because I feel like it will bring me tons of street cred with the Truthers, Birthers and assorted Space Nerds, Trekies and D&D fanatics who I’ll need to rally to the cause if my exposé is to have any effect on the next election.
Anywho, the following is a summary of what I discovered while working on my collage. I readily admit that the initial bullet points barely establish a correlation, but keep reading and you’ll see that things get a liiiiiiiiiitle creepy as a pattern of intrigue emerges.
I present: Bernie H. Sanders, Anatomy of a Mole
The Official Timeline:
So maybe I’m onto something; but if my theory is correct, I have a bit of a Scandinavian dilemma on my hands. Because for decades, even though Bernie has praised the Norse way of doing business, their left-leaning economies and political institutions have consistently remained among the strongest in the world. Despite Bernie’s plaudits the Nordic model shows no sign of faltering, no sign of failing. So if Bernie truly is a socialist black widow, then what’s the deal with the Nords?
The riddle seemed unsolvable, until I came across commentary offered back in 2015 by Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Rasmussen. Amidst Bernie’s incessant cheerleading for Denmark’s “socialist” system, Lars issued this stinging rebuke to candidate Sanders:
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”
- 1985: referencing endemic Nicaraguan bread lines under the Sandinistan government Bernie said, “It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries, people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
- 1988: of his visit to the Soviet Union Bernie said, “There are some things that the Soviet Union does better than we do and which were, in fact, quite impressive. Subway systems in Moscow costs 5 kopecs — or 7 cents. Faster, cleaner, more attractive and more efficient than any in the U.S. — and cheap.”
- 1989: as mayor of Burlington Vermont Bernie lauded the Cuban government for its numerous achievements, “More interesting than their providing their people with free health care, free education, free housing … is that they are in fact creating a very different value system than the one we are familiar with.”
- 2006: Bernie fawns over Nordic style socialism, “In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia and from some of the work, very good work that people have done in Europe. In countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, poverty has almost been eliminated.”
- 2015: Bernie’s campaign to Nordicize America only intensifies as he runs for President, “In countries in Scandinavia like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they are very democratic countries…Voter turnout is a lot higher than it is in the United States. In those countries, health care is the right of all people; college education and graduate school is free; retirement benefits, child care are stronger than the United States of America.”
So maybe I’m onto something; but if my theory is correct, I have a bit of a Scandinavian dilemma on my hands. Because for decades, even though Bernie has praised the Norse way of doing business, their left-leaning economies and political institutions have consistently remained among the strongest in the world. Despite Bernie’s plaudits the Nordic model shows no sign of faltering, no sign of failing. So if Bernie truly is a socialist black widow, then what’s the deal with the Nords?
The riddle seemed unsolvable, until I came across commentary offered back in 2015 by Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Rasmussen. Amidst Bernie’s incessant cheerleading for Denmark’s “socialist” system, Lars issued this stinging rebuke to candidate Sanders:
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”
Lars Løkke Rasmussen
With five simple sentences Lars rescued my theory from folding in on itself. Barring that insight from this great Dane, all of the clippings, thumb tacks and red string in my basement would have gone to waste.
You see, the reason the Scandinavians remain impervious to Bernie’s praise is because Scandinavians… aren’t Socialist!
The Nordic model is able to deploy massive income redistribution schemes throughout its economy because the redistribution schemes are being underwritten by… you guessed it: CAPITALISM! Take Sweden for example, where the average worker across the income spectrum sends 50% of his pay back to the government (a percentage so un-fun that the Swedes invented a word for it — skattetrat — which means “tax tiredness.”) Anyways, the Swedes pay a lot of taxes; but just because the government sends its citizens a hefty bill doesn’t mean that it operates a command economy, centrally planned. For example, there are no minimum wage laws in Sweden (in fact there are no minimum wage laws anywhere in Scandinavia.) In 2015, the year Bernie dialed up his praise for the Northern Europeans, each of the Nordic 4 ranked in the top 25 in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (think of a Tinderish-type rating system but for laissez faire economies.) We should also note that the government hands over school vouchers to parents and then lets them spend those vouchers anywhere: on public, private, charter and even for-profit schools! So when Bernie praises the Swedes it’s not absurd to assume that that’s his coded way of celebrating the fact that in 1991 the government reduced corporate taxes from 57% down to 30%, (and later further reduced them to 22%), then from 1993 to 2000 they trimmed social spending from 22.2% of GDP down to 16.9%, in 2004 they ditched the estate tax and in 2007 they abolished the wealth tax.
So when former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt tweeted out his frustrations with Bernie’s campaign earlier this year, stating “Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures,” what he failed to comprehend was that he and Bernie are not opponents, they’re teammates. I know it sounds crazy but how else do you explain Bernie’s quotes, actions and the suicidal binary he imposed upon the Democratic Party after the last election?
“The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure … The Democratic Party needs fundamental change … The Democratic Party must, finally, understand which side it is on.”
In 2017 Bernie challenged the party to take a side, and since then the leadership of the Democratic party has answered the call in resounding fashion. And by “answer the call,” here’s what I mean.
You see, the reason the Scandinavians remain impervious to Bernie’s praise is because Scandinavians… aren’t Socialist!
The Nordic model is able to deploy massive income redistribution schemes throughout its economy because the redistribution schemes are being underwritten by… you guessed it: CAPITALISM! Take Sweden for example, where the average worker across the income spectrum sends 50% of his pay back to the government (a percentage so un-fun that the Swedes invented a word for it — skattetrat — which means “tax tiredness.”) Anyways, the Swedes pay a lot of taxes; but just because the government sends its citizens a hefty bill doesn’t mean that it operates a command economy, centrally planned. For example, there are no minimum wage laws in Sweden (in fact there are no minimum wage laws anywhere in Scandinavia.) In 2015, the year Bernie dialed up his praise for the Northern Europeans, each of the Nordic 4 ranked in the top 25 in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (think of a Tinderish-type rating system but for laissez faire economies.) We should also note that the government hands over school vouchers to parents and then lets them spend those vouchers anywhere: on public, private, charter and even for-profit schools! So when Bernie praises the Swedes it’s not absurd to assume that that’s his coded way of celebrating the fact that in 1991 the government reduced corporate taxes from 57% down to 30%, (and later further reduced them to 22%), then from 1993 to 2000 they trimmed social spending from 22.2% of GDP down to 16.9%, in 2004 they ditched the estate tax and in 2007 they abolished the wealth tax.
So when former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt tweeted out his frustrations with Bernie’s campaign earlier this year, stating “Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures,” what he failed to comprehend was that he and Bernie are not opponents, they’re teammates. I know it sounds crazy but how else do you explain Bernie’s quotes, actions and the suicidal binary he imposed upon the Democratic Party after the last election?
“The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure … The Democratic Party needs fundamental change … The Democratic Party must, finally, understand which side it is on.”
In 2017 Bernie challenged the party to take a side, and since then the leadership of the Democratic party has answered the call in resounding fashion. And by “answer the call,” here’s what I mean.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Partial Birth Abortions: “Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own personal health.”
Gov. Ralph Northam
Post Birth Abortions: Infants with “severe deformities… would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The Green New Deal, which was described by AOC’s chief of staff, not as “a climate thing at all… we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” would cost over $3 trillion a year and nearly double our current deficits.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Private Insurance (Lester Holt:) “Many people… have health insurance coverage through their employer. Who here would abolish their private health care in favor of a government run plan? Just a show of hands.”
The First Democratic Debate
Universal Coverage (Savannah Guthrie:) “This is a show of hands question and hold them up for a moment so that people can see. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.”
Julian Castro
Open Borders: “For a long time in this country we actually did not treat crossing the border as a criminal act. We treated it as a civil violation. A lot of the problems that we see in the system today flared up after we started treating it as a criminal offense.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler
ICE Detention Centers or Concentration Camps: “One of the lessons from the Holocaust is ‘Never Again’ — not only to mass murder, but also to the dehumanization of people, violations of basic rights, and assaults on our common morality.
Sen. Kamala Harris
Equal Pay: Businesses with 100 or more employees would be required to obtain an equal-pay certification from the government, “There will be penalties if they don’t.” 1% of average daily profits for every 1% gap that exists between the pay of men and women doing the same job.
V.P. Joe Biden
VOTER: Would you commit to cutting incarceration by 50%? BIDEN: More than that. We can do it more than that.
VOTER: But is it a yes or a no? BIDEN: The answer’s yes.
VOTER: But is it a yes or a no? BIDEN: The answer’s yes.
Mayor Bill de Blasio
Charter Schools/Taxes: “I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need — public education… I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.” And “We will tax the hell out of the wealthy.”
Rep. Ayanna Pressley
Minority Candidates: “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
White Privilege: “I can explain it to white women in the suburbs. When their son is walking down the street with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him from not being shot.”
Marianne Williamson
Reparations: “Well, first of all, it’s not $500 billion in financial assistance. It’s a $200 to $500 billion payment of a debt that is owed. That is what reparations is. We need some deep truth-telling.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar
The Need To Boycott Israel: “Americans of conscience have a proud history of participating in boycotts to advocate for human rights abroad including … boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust,”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Climate Change: “Science tells us we have twelve years before we reach the horizon of catastrophe when it comes to our climate.”
In the run up to the 2020 election I think it’s safe to say that today’s party wouldn’t give 1996 Bill Clinton the time of day, it is actively turning it’s back on Barack Obama as it seeks to ban the “Ask not what your country can do for you…” vocabulary from political discourse. In light of these facts, Bernie doesn’t need to win the Democratic nomination in order to govern, he already owns the party. But why should that be a problem for those who lean left, you might wonder? Because he’s not sending the party into the White House, he’s sending it over a cliff. And not because of hubris; believe me, it’s intentional. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist ideologue, he’s a capitalist mole. The only Marx that guy loves is Groucho. He may flaunt Che Guevarra hair in the street, but underneath those work clothes, dude is wearing Adam Smith Underoos.
Democrats Beware! You’re being hoodwinked. I raise that voice of warning, not because I’m rooting for Democrats during this election cycle, I raise it because the other side needs a good debate partner. They need an eloquent antagonist with a keen eye for their blind spots who opposes their every move, not a psycho ex-girlfriend who used to be a boyfriend who… anyways, it’s getting weird out there comrades. Please, you’ve gotta figure out how to lock it down, and fast; because you’re in peril. Think about it, there’s a good chance that you might lose to this guy, again.
Democrats Beware! You’re being hoodwinked. I raise that voice of warning, not because I’m rooting for Democrats during this election cycle, I raise it because the other side needs a good debate partner. They need an eloquent antagonist with a keen eye for their blind spots who opposes their every move, not a psycho ex-girlfriend who used to be a boyfriend who… anyways, it’s getting weird out there comrades. Please, you’ve gotta figure out how to lock it down, and fast; because you’re in peril. Think about it, there’s a good chance that you might lose to this guy, again.
So before you dismiss my Bernie Theory as nonsense and my warning as insincere, please do me a favor and conduct the following experiments on the above listed quotes from the current batch of Democratic thought leaders (the experiments run in reverse order, last quote goes first:)
- Make a list of the accurate predictions in the Nobel Peace Prize winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
- Pretend that you have an unabashedly pro-American son who is also militantly gay and militantly atheistic and who has to move to the Middle East. Find out which country will allow him to safely live out that trifecta?
- Determine if the Egyptians owe reparations to the Hebrews? If not, then when does the statute of limitations expire for slavery?
- Invite Kirsten Gillebrand to your suburb, film her White Women Training Sessions and then send me the film. Please. This has nothing to do with the experiment, I just want to watch every single session.
- Round up all of the non-conforming brown, black, Muslim and queer voices who Rep. Pressley doesn’t want running for office. Find out what they’re like, and then do them a favor and find out what Rep. Pressley will allow them to do.
- Before sending your child to a charter school, consider how your decision affects Mayor de Blasio. And then ask the mayor if he’s ever paid more in taxes than the legal requirement. If so, was it a hell of a lot more?
- Research how many members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for Senator Biden’s 1994 crime bill.
- Write Senator Harris and ask her why her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will only demand compliance from companies with 100 or more employees? Can’t people with 99 employees also be sexist? Also, ask her if she ever came across the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” during her legal career. If so, what does she think it means?
- Find out what type of welfare programs existed in 1922 on the Federal level, as well as on the State and local level where you live (that was the year Julian Castro’s grandmother crossed the southern border.) Then consider the proposition that the need to police our borders might be related to the size of our welfare state. In other words, regarding a borderless America, might someone have a non-racist, how-are-we-going-to-pay-for-health-care-for-everyone-on-planet-earth-who-crosses-the-border concern?
- Wonder if actual concentration camps really have sprung up along our southern border where we dehumanize people, violate their basic rights, make them drink out of toilets, intentionally traumatize their children and torture them. If so, why are hundreds of thousands of immigrants funneling themselves into our concentration camps? In the history of the world, have immigrants ever moved en mass — year in and year out — toward a concentration camp?
- In addition to not being able to secure health insurance on your own, list the other things you should not be allowed to do without Senator Warren’s approval.
- Ask Rep. Ocasio-Cortez why she encouraged members of her own party to vote against The Green New Deal. And while you have her on the phone, when she writes in her proposal that we need to “build charging stations everywhere” for electric cars, what does she mean by “everywhere?”
- Invite Governor Northam to headline a townhall meeting in your neighborhood titled “Safe & Legal Methods To Exterminate People With Severe Deformities.”
- And lastly, invite Governor Cuomo to headline another townhall meeting in your neighborhood titled “How The Birth Canal Confers Human Rights (Except In Virginia) & Why Those Rights Aren’t Activated Until After The Fetus Exits The Canal.”
