To sell socialism and communism, you cannot get specific. You have to speak in platitudes.
I mean, after all, who can argue with “justice”? Who can argue with “fairness”? Don’t let them figure out that what your campaign is really about is anger and envy and hatred and control. That is what’s propelling Bernie’s supporters. You take a look at ’em. They think Bernie is all about getting even with somebody and making somebody pay for having more, for doing more, for being better, what have you.
But you must, above all things, stay away from details. You have to stay away from how much your “fairness” will cost. You have to stay away from the things like the rights that you will lose in the process of the government gaining control. You stay away from the fact that you’re gonna be taking people’s private property away from ’em. That’s not feel-good rhetoric. So you avoid all details — like calling indoctrination “a literacy program,” propaganda “a literacy program.” – Rush Limbaugh, 2/24/2020
FoxNews.com reports that
Bernie Sanders released a fact sheet Monday night explaining that he’d pay for his sweeping new government programs through new taxes and massive lawsuits, as well as by slashing spending on the military, among other methods.
The effort sought to head off complaints from Republicans and some rival Democrats that his plans were economically unrealistic, especially after a head-turning CBS News Interview in which the frustrated Vermont senator said he couldn’t “rattle off to you every nickle and every dime” about his proposed expenditures.
He released his plan on his website just minutes after promising to do so during a CNN town hall.
However, the fact-sheet highlighted for the first time that many of Sanders’ expected cost-saving measures relied heavily on conjecture. For example, Sanders’ document asserts matter-of-factly that a “modest tax on Wall Street speculation … will raise an estimated $2.4 trillion over ten years” and, in one fell swoop, make all “public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition-free … and cancel all student debt over the next decade.”
Sanders’ projections also stated without providing details that his Green New Deal plan would create “20 million new jobs,” thus ensuring $2.3 trillion in “new income tax revenue.”
Additionally, Sanders promised that by “averting climate catastrophe we will save: $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over 30 years and $70.4 trillion over 80 years.” No information was provided to validate that assertion, although the Trump administration’s National Climate Assessment found that it was possible climate change could reduce the size of the U.S. economy by 10 percent by the end of the century, assuming no substantial changes in technology or policy occur.
Sanders claimed to be able to raise “$3.085 trillion by making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies.” He has repeatedly suggested on the campaign trail that he would direct the Justice Department to pursue the fossil fuel industry, although it was unclear how successful that legal strategy would be.
On health care, although some nonpartisan estimates have put the cost of Sanders’ “Medicare-for-all” proposal at over $32 trillion, Sanders’ fact-sheet doubled down on a “proposed a menu of financing options that would more than pay” for the program.
Among the available options: “creating a 4 percent income-based premium paid by employees, exempting the first $29,000 in income for a family of four,” as well as imposing a 7.5 percent “income-based premium paid by employers, exempting the first $1 million in payroll to protect small businesses.”
Other savings would come from eliminating “health tax expenditures, which would no longer be needed under Medicare for All,” and “raising the top marginal income tax rate to 52% on income over $10 million.”
Reducing defense spending by “$1.215 trillion” would be achievable by “scaling back military operations on protecting the global oil supply,” Sanders’ fact-sheet continued. Defense spending is slated to total $934 billion from Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021.
Oh, wow.
He’s shoveling it with both hands, isn’t he?
Politicians, especially Liberal ones have always made Campaign Promises which they had no intentions of keeping…because they couldn’t.
Bernie is pulling ideas out of his hindquarters and expecting gullible Americans to believe him.
Just like other Communists before him, he is relying on “useful idiots” to achieve his dream of a huge Nanny-State Central Government, running the proletariat’s lives from cradle to grave.
If you believe that somehow Bernie Sanders could control the Earth’s climate resulting in savings over “$2.9 trillion”, then I have an autographed Harvey Weinstein Walker to sell you, used only to get in and out of the courtroom.
And, if you believe that a “Green New Deal” would create “20 million jobs”, then you were not paying attention during the Solyndra and GreenTech Automotive fiascos.
Bernie Sanders has no clue as to how to be the leader of the greatest country on God’s green Earth because his loyalty is not to the American people…it is to the tenets of a failed political ideology.
And that, as confirmed by his illogical “fact sheet”, makes him a very dangerous man.
Bernie has made his living off of American Taxpayers for several decades now, sitting on Capitol Hill and not accomplishing a darn thing except taking up space…and raking in money.
Reading his proposals as reported by Fox News made me think of the old sitcom “Family Matters and Steve Urkel. Immediately after Urkel screwed something up, causing a disaster, he would say,
“Oh, did I do that?”
If somehow Bernie became President and implemented some of his ludicrous proposals, leading to an invasion by foreign forces or America resembling Socialism-scavenged Venezuela, I can envision Bernie saying the same thing.
Only, no one would be laughing.
Until He Comes,
KJ