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At least Bernie Sanders is being honest — 23 Comments

  1. To paraphrase Mark Twain, “the problem is the known-knowns which are wrong”.

    Bernie is sincere, and sincerely wrong, about “socialism”. But in his mind, he knows he knows it.

    America actually CAN afford it — with very low paid doctors (NOT allowed to leave to other countries), dirty hospitals, and often long waits; and similar for colleges and very low paid (but “high status”! ??) professors and teachers. Along with highly taxed workers who become low paid in after-tax income.

    Unbelievable to me that there’s so little talk about Venezuela, and the descent from richest to poorest Latin America country in just 20 years, from the 1999 Chavez democratic socialist victory.

  2. I have come up with a condensed paradoxic version of Rumsfeld:
    “I need to learn what I don’t know, but will never know what I don’t know.” A great paradox.
    What student would be bold enough to ask a teacher: “What is it I don’t know, you are going to teach me?” Or perhaps more accurately; “What is it you don’t know, you will try to teach me?”

    I have a 1910 college physics textbook used at UC Berkeley. What they don’t know is interesting.

  3. Well should he become the nominee there is plenty of video and written word of his that will be exposed by the Trump campaign that will put the fear of G-d in any hard working citizen whose pension plan assets or life savings would be destroyed by enactment of his policies.

  4. Think how much better off everyone would be if Rumsfeld had actually listened to himself and took it seriously, rather than just fobbing off a statement he thought sounded clever. Someone who really cared about the “known unknowns” might not have so spectacularly screwed up post-invasion Iraq.

    As for Bernie, his real problem isn’t socialism, as hard as that might be to believe. His real problem is he’s never EVER had to deal with a major league political fastball thrown at his head or a curveball where the count is 3-2. He’s essentially been a “mascot of the annointed” his whole political life.

    Mike

  5. MBunge

    As for Bernie, his real problem isn’t socialism, as hard as that might be to believe. His real problem is he’s never EVER had to deal with a major league political fastball thrown at his head or a curveball where the count is 3-2. He’s essentially been a “mascot of the annointed” his whole political life.

    Having read or listened to a lot of what Bernie has pontificated on Latin America, I would love to get the opportunity to question him on Latin America.

    For example, in 1989 Bernie went to Cuba. Upon his return he informed us

    “The people we met had an almost religious affection for [Fidel Castro].

    Did Bernie ever consider the possibility- probability- that in a totalitarian state, people are not going to give a translator- most likely a government employee- a candid opinion of Fearless Leader?

  6. I think the core of our problem with the finance of medical care and l/t care has been an unwillingness to acknowledge that these services are commodities. Whatever we may think of medicine, nursing, and peri-medical occupations as callings and however much they’ve been enmeshed with philanthropy and ministry, providing the services uses real productive resources and our aspiration to consume the service will always exceed the capacity to supply it. You can ration with prices, you can ration with cues, you can ration with administrative command, but you must always ration. Various parties (and not just B. Sanders) promote the idea you should be able to see on demand a medical professional who has had 11 years worth of instruction and training for the price of a minor co-pay. And in order to give you a simulation of this, we’ve been engaged in a 77 year long game of hide the cost.

    We might be able to have public financing of medical care which captures the entire population (bar travelers and illegal aliens) in its actuarial pools. At current prices, the premiums your household will pay will be something on the order of a 16% assessment on your total income, topping out at around $40,000; the annual deductible on your plan will be around $9,000 per household, and service providers are going to have to be compelled by law to publish their prices in a standard format and you are going to have to commit to paying those prices out of pocket until your deductible kicks in. The willingness of Sanders, Warren, Rob Portman, Susan Collins, & c. to sell such a plan approaches nil.

  7. Washington may have problems paying for new free and discounted college plan

    https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/washington-may-have-problems-paying-for-new-free-and-discounted-college-plan/

    Washington lawmakers made national headlines when they promised to use a new business tax to make tuition at public colleges significantly more affordable — or free — for students across the state, starting in the 2020-2021 school year.

    But now, after 31,000 students have submitted financial-aid forms, lawmakers and government officials are questioning whether the tax raises enough money to keep their promise.

    The bottom line: Without changes to the law, the government could be several million dollars short of meeting its promise each school year. The state didn’t take into account how students would use the Washington College Grant, and overlooked issues with collection of the tax.

    State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said last year’s law “didn’t have a lot of time for development, either on the policy side or the funding side.”

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Pedersen and Democratic Rep. Drew Hansen, of Bainbridge Island, a lead sponsor of last year’s financial-aid bill, offered fixes this week. Hansen’s bill makes tweaks that ease the government’s ability to collect the tax that covers the benefit’s cost, and the Department of Revenue estimates it will raise just under an additional $110 million by fiscal year 2023.

    Pedersen’s bill offers a more drastic overhaul, by making all Washington service businesses that gross more than $1 million a year subject to the surcharge, regardless of whether they rely primarily on highly skilled workers. The legislation would reduce the number of taxed businesses to about 15,000, he said. But the mix of companies would include more high-grossing businesses than the original law, he said, which would make up the difference and add additional revenue. The Department of Revenue expects Pedersen’s bill will raise an additional $230 million or so by fiscal year 2023.

  8. The military medical system is similar to what the “Medicare for all” proponents envision. The medical personnel, doctors, nurses, and administrative people are all on salary, work 40 hour weeks, take annual vacations, and are not responsible for the outcomes of the care rendered. I can tell several horror stories from my own experience as an active duty sailor in that medical system. Military medicine offers excellent battlefield care and treatment for serious wounds, but the more conventional medical care is mediocre to poor.

    Also, consider the tragedy of the VA system. Another medical care system like military medicine. It became an administrative bureaucracy that existed to care for the employees of the bureaucracy and not so much for veterans. Hopefully, Trump has changed some of that. Nonetheless, it’s a cautionary tale about how bureaucracies tend to serve their own needs and not those of their customers.

    The best argument to counter big government programs that entail huge unknown expenditures of government money is to point out to the voters that the government has no money. Every dollar they spend has to come from the pockets of a citizens or businesses or is borrowed in the name of the citizens. When people, especially those who have been thrifty, hard-working, and responsible; realize that the government is planning to take their money and share it with those who have not been responsible, it should create some pushback against lavish government pending plans. You cannot lift the poor by confiscating the wealth of those who have earned their money. You lift the poor by creating more wealth – a bigger pie that creates more opportunity.

    Bernie and his Communist friends will never accept that. They are driven by envy and sloth. And the idea that humans are all equally willing to work.

  9. “When people, especially those who have been thrifty, hard-working, and responsible; realize that the government is planning to take their money and share it with those who have not been responsible, it should create some pushback against lavish government pending plans. ” – JJ

    Elizabeth Warren has one constituent who got that message.
    Sadly, I doubt his criticism has made any in-roads in MSM-land,
    but other people have seen it, and the gate-keepers don’t have total control anymore.

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/24/voter-to-warren-on-her-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-those-of-us-who-did-the-right-thing-get-screwed/

    However, no one seems to be connecting Warren’s ideology with that of Sanders, in that both mandate the intrinsic failure-ness of socialism.
    SMH

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/28/sanders-takes-lead-in-california-primary-polls/

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/28/a-week-before-iowa-sanders-surges-while-warren-wanes/

  10. PowerLine says Bernie is surging in CA and state rules will benefit him

    “Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is now the outright leader in voter preferences in California’s upcoming March 3rd Democratic presidential primary. The latest Berkeley IGS Poll completed last week finds Sanders to be the choice of 26% of likely voters in the Democratic primary. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is second at 20%, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 15%. No other Democrat is in double digits. . “

  11. He’s essentially been a “mascot of the annointed” his whole political life.

    The term ‘mascot group’ was coined by Thos. Sowell to refer to client populations. Elderly Jews who spent the first 20 years of their adult life as downwardly mobile ne’r-do-well’s are not a Democratic Party client.

  12. Bernie is a decent guy.

    Bernie has some fixed principles that he actually wishes to see translated into policy, isn’t demonstrably contrived, does not present blatantly pathological power drives, hasn’t generated any domestic scandals in the last 40 years, and limits his lying to the common-and-garden artifice that is omnipresent in public life.

    FIFY

  13. “At least [he’s] being honest….”

    Um, no, he’s not.

    He’s lying.

    By omission.

    The words he (conveniently?) left out:
    “…but it doesn’t matter.”

    To paraphrase Hobsbawm: To achieve paradise on earth, we are prepared to sacrifice millions. Willingly. Lovingly. Justifiedly.

    File under: No true Dialectician…

  14. Alan on January 29, 2020 at 5:09 am said:
    Bernie is a decent guy. He’s wrong about everything but he’s a decent guy.
    * * *
    As Ray says, Bernie just thinks the money’s in the wrong hands, and he want to get his hands on more of it — even if just so he can pass it along to someone else.
    He may or may not be a decent guy (praising Cuba and the USSR is prima facie indecent in my book), but at least he has not profited from elected office to the degree of most of the rest of Congress.
    So, there is that.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/17/what-is-bernie-sanders-net-worth.aspx

    https://www.thestreet.com/lifestyle/bernie-sanders-net-worth-14678955

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-socialist-bernie-sanders-has-3-houses-makes-millions

  15. JJ is almost right about the poor:
    You lift the poor by creating more wealth – a bigger pie that creates more opportunity.

    But very wrong about who does the lifting.
    Only the poor individuals, by their own actions, can lift themselves out of poverty. They take advantage of the opportunities. It’s their actions of making money, creating wealth, which create the bigger pie. Good gov’t makes it easier with more ways to lift yourself up. And bad gov’t makes it harder, including the wrong rewards of giving tax dollars to those who don’t work, where the taxes are taken from those who do work. Punishing the workers for the benefit of the non-workers.

    The promise of socialism is exactly that “lifting” mistake – that society, thru gov’t, will lift you up out of poverty.
    It won’t. It can’t. Nor can it give you self-respect.
    You have to earn the self-respect yourself, by respecting yourself, by being respectable. Taking the actions, doing the work.
    One person at a time.

  16. Tom Grey:

    The Dershowitz quotes are basically his entire speech. But here are some:

    …This return to the days of yesteryear is necessary because the issue today is not what the criteria of impeachment should be, not what a legislative body or a constitutional body might today decide are the proper criteria for impeachment of a president, but what the framers of our constitution actually chose and what they expressively and implicitly rejected. I will ask whether the framers would have accepted such vague and open-ended terms as abuse of power and obstruction of Congress as governing criteria…

    I will show by a close review of the history that they did not and would not accept such criteria for fear that these criteria would turn our new republic into a British style parliamentary democracy in which the chief’s executives tenure would be in the words of James Madison, the father of our constitution, “At the pleasure of the legislature.” …

    …[Justice Benjamin Curtis] argued and I quote, “There can be no crime, there can be no misdemeanor without a law written or unwritten, express or implied.” In so arguing, he was echoing the conclusion reached by Dean Theodore Dwight of the Columbia Law School who wrote in 1867 just before the impeachment, “Unless a crime is specifically named in the constitution, treason and bribery, impeachments like indictments can only be instituted for crimes committed against the statutory law of the United States.” As Judge Starr said earlier today, he described that as “The weight of authority being on the side of that proposition at a time, much closer to the framing than we are today.”

    The main thrust of my argument, however, and the one most relevant to these proceedings is that even if that position is not accepted, even if criminal conduct were not required, the framers of our constitution implicitly rejected, and if it had been presented to them, would have explicitly rejected such vague terms as abuse of power and obstruction of Congress as among the enumerated and defined criteria for impeaching a president.

    Note the careful attention to what the charges must be, and at no time does Dershowitz indicate that “anything goes” if a person thinks it’s for the country’s good or his/her own political good. Dershowitz goes on and on after these quotes, continuing to discuss what crimes are necessary. It is crystal clear – and I mean utterly utterly clear – he is saying the opposite of what the left is saying he’s saying.

    Later, but only after this very lengthy discussion of what sorts of crimes are necessary for impeachment (and there are quite a few), does Dershowitz go into the motive aspect. What he says about that involves the “abuse of power” charge, a charge he thinks does not justify impeachment because it’s not one of the required high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution requires, and in any case cannot be defined in terms of thoughtcrime:

    Such a subjective probing of motives cannot be the legal basis for a serious accusation of abuse of power that could result in the removal of an elected president. Yet this is precisely what the managers are claiming. Here’s what they say, quote, “Whether the president’s real reason, the ones actually in his mind are at the time legitimate.” What a standard. What was in the president’s mind? Actually in his mind? What was the real reason? Would you want your actions to be probe for what was the real reason why you acted? Even if a president were… It clearly shows in my mind that the framers could not have intended this psychoanalytic approach to presidential motives to determine the distinction between what is impeachable and what is not.

    Here I come to a relevant and contemporaneous issue. Even if a president, any president, were to demand a quid pro quo as a condition to sending aid to a foreign country, obviously-

    Alan Dershowitz: (46:03)
    As a condition to sending aid to a foreign country, obviously a highly disputed matter in this case that would not by itself constitute an abuse of power. Consider the following hypothetical case that is in our news today as the Israeli prime minister comes to the United States for meetings. Let’s assume a Democratic president tells Israel that foreign aid authorized by Congress will not be sent or an Oval Office meeting will not be scheduled unless the Israelis stop building settlements. Quid pro quo. I might disapprove of such a quid pro quo demand on policy grounds, but it would not constitute an abuse of power. Quid pro quo alone is not a basis for abusive power. It’s part of the way foreign policy has been operated by presidents since the beginning of time. The claim that foreign policy decisions can be deemed abuses of power based on subjective opinions about mixed or sole motives that the President was interested only in helping himself demonstrate the dangers of employing the vague subjective and politically malleable phrase, abusive power, as a constitutionally permissible criteria for the removal of a president.

    Much more at the link. But it’s clear Dershowitz’s motive discussion isn’t even remotely as the left says it was.

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