Sanders is volunteering to deflate his bank account and wants the rich to be required to do the same.
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wrote some good books and made some good money from them. Now, a band of filthy rich critics and their media enablers are having a field day questioning his integrity because of his bank account. “Can He Still Speak for Working-Class Americans?” asked a recent Washington Post headline. Bloomberg News “congratulated” Sen. Sanders for his wealth before challenging him to “say something constructive” about wealthy people.
Even well-funded Democratic party-connected outlets like ThinkProgress (which presumably should know better) have gotten into the act with quips like, “The one-percenter hopes no one notices that he’s moved up in the world.” It is difficult to find something more cynical than mainstream liberals co-opting the language of the Occupy movement to falsely denigrate a lifelong progressive activist, but that’s the world we live in now. The filthy rich and their collaborators get the joke: It’s a take-down, not an argument.
I have three words in reply: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR would be a billionaire if he and his money were teleported to the present, yet in his day he shepherded into existence programs that not only served working people, but saved them from the voracious maw of capitalism.
If you allow a ravenous beast like capitalism to have the run of your yard, you accept the premise that there will be winners and losers in the equation. If you are to have an intact soul, accommodations and protections must be in place to protect those who don’t strike it rich or inherit Great-Granddad’s undertaxed bankroll. Those protections include financial industry regulations along with a broad social safety net, and we have sustained this society by investing in some (though not nearly enough) of those protections by way of taxes.
This is not a pro-capitalism argument, but a recognition of the present reality. Hell, even the capitalists are running scared from the monster they have created. The Post ran a remarkable article over the weekend about Silicon Valley billionaires literally living in fear of torches and pitchforks outside their gated manors. “For decades, Democrats and Republicans have hailed America’s business elite, especially in Silicon Valley, as the country’s salvation,” writes Greg Jaffe, the author’s article. “Government’s role was to stay out of the way. Now that consensus is shattering.”
“Realizing people hate your guts has some value,” says Chris Larsen, a billionaire quoted in the article. Rep. Ro Khanna (D – California), co-chairman of the Sanders for President campaign, seeks out people like Larsen; Khanna represents the Silicon Valley district where many of today’s tech billionaires reside. “Without an intervention,” reads the article, “[Khanna] worried that wealth would continue to pile up in Silicon Valley and anger in the country would continue to grow.” Part of that intervention, for Khanna, involves working to make Bernie Sanders president.
Before FDR, protections for working people in the U. S. were thin gruel. Getting old usually meant dying in poverty and pain. Your boss was God, whose absolute power gave him control over whether your family ate and had shelter.
