IN THE COMMENTS: Fritz said:
As a professional socialist, Sanders has pretty much made a career out of not knowing how things work.ADDED: At ThinkProgress: "Why Bernie Sanders’ Misinformed Supreme Court Tweet Matters."
January 23, 2016
"Bernie Sanders lets us know that he has no idea how the Supreme Court works."
Says Jaltcoh, displaying a tweet where Bernie Sanders said: "Any Supreme Court nominee of mine will make overturning Citizens United one of their first decisions."
IN THE COMMENTS: Fritz said:
IN THE COMMENTS: Fritz said:
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78 comments:
The movie at the core of the Citizens United case is titled, "Hillary:The Movie."
It is now free on You Tube and I watched it. It reminded me of the depth of her corruption. According to the law struck down by SCOTUS, voters could not see such a movie right before an election. So who benefits by Citizens United? Voters or incumbents?
We need more of the First Amendment. Not less.
Sanders is a socialist! Of course he hates free speech!
He hates anything that limits the power of government.
The testimony of the government lawyers in Citizens United was chilling. The claimed the power to ban political speech. Under questioning, they claimed that, if a customer purchased an ebook that the government thought should be banned, the government could order it erased from your ebook reader.
It is the Left that sees your freedom as a barrier to good government.
Not necessarily true. I think he just knows that lefties don't know or don't care how the constitution works.
Well, I hope for Britain's sake that parliament bans entry to anyone from the United Way.
The Clinton people are deliberately misunderstanding this, since their 'Bernie hates black people' attack by TaNahesi Coates and Jamelle Bouie from earlier in the week backfired.
It's not like Hillary has anything she said or tweeted that could be deliberately misunderstood.
It's interesting how on both right and left the establishment is desperate to tear down the insurgent candidacy of Trump and Sanders. On both side the media powerbrokers fear losing their megaphone and influence.
As a professional socialist, Sanders has pretty much made a career out of not knowing how things work.
"On both side the media powerbrokers fear losing their megaphone and influence."
I agree but more important than the media are the lobbyists like the ones who wrote Obamacare.
Power is everything. Law, process, rights-- these are mere tools.
Most people-- almost no people, even on the far right-- do not understand that this is how leftist leaders think.
It would be quite an "innovation" for the Supreme Court to decide subjects to "discuss" assign lawyers to discuss them and then make legally binding decisions, just skipping the whole lower court legal mumbo jumbo.
---The Clinton people are deliberately misunderstanding this,
I note that you offer no alternative understanding to shed light for us. It seems pretty clear to me. Bernie thinks that a new justice can choose one law out of the panoply of laws and simply overturn it.
I also concur with another post that Citizens United promotes free speech and leftists threaten free speech more each day.
Sanders has watched socialism destroy countries from Angola to Venezuela, for 60 years and still supports socialism. Such blindness to reality should be disqualifying for a day pass from the old folks' home, yet he is running for high office.
Unlike Hillary, his entire political philosophy is corrupt. With her, you just get personal corruption of a really amazing kind.
I can't believe he has got this far. I can't believe that people take him this seriously. And when I look around to who are supporting him, it is usually the most emotional, gullible people who want some miracle to make everything right but they don't even know what is right. Just like the people who voted for Obama.
Trump could say the same thing, shamelessly. With Sanders, he will be forced to back down from this absurdity. To explain that he misspoke, but that what he really meant to say is that he'd want to know how any nominees would vote if they were presented with the issue again. (And even that is a formulation of the process that is profoundly wrong, the further it goes. Litmus-test promises run smack into judicial ethics.)
But if Trump said it, it wouldn't make any difference to him, or his supporters. He wouldn't back down, and any pointy-headed critics would be sneered at or, if Trump knew their names, he'd call them out as losers/failures/unsuccessful lawyers, etc. His supporters would love Trump for his determination.
Thing is; substantively, this joke of a comment from Bernie Sanders isn't all that far from what Trump's ever-fluid position might really be. Here's Trump, quoted extensively on his feelings about campaign finance reform and Citizens United:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/14/trump-i-love-the-idea-of-campaign-finance-reform-video/
And substantively, Trump's supporters might be the sorts of people -- indistinguishable from the Sanders left -- who actually like the idea of federal regulation of political spending.
It is so funny; that while the Trumpkins and others opposed to what they think of as "the GOP establishment" regard Mitch McConnell as one of the enemies, there are few people in the party who have done more to fight McCain-Feingold than Mitch McConnell.
Unknown, when limited to 144 characters on Twitter, you have an expectation that the reader understands the character limit.
Taking a single Tweet as a complete position statement is willful misunderstanding.
I bet Hillary made a similar statement about abortion rights and the SC, but these authors ignore that as they shill for Hill!
I've seen a few people assume that it would be easy to "manufacture" a case that would eventually come before the Supreme Court. How would that work, really? Is Sanders suggesting that his administration would deliberately infringe Americans' free speech, with the expectation that his justice in the Supreme Court would ultimately back him up?
Bernie impresses me as the kind of guy who's been working on a perpetual motion machine in his garage for decades.
Dang; I got a tag!
Ick. I clicked on ThinkProgress. I'm going to have to sanitize my iPad.
To further the tone of many who've already commented: "Bernie doesn't want to know--no, better yet, CARE--how the SOCUTS 'works'!"....in the most studious possible way..
There's a reason why socialists (and communists)who are trying to achieve political power in a particular country have little regard for the constitution of that country. Taking their cue from Hegel, they, and they alone, are able to comprehend the machinery that drives human history and so they know, without any doubt, that these constitutions are simply standing in the way of the Force of History.
This post takes me back to the good old days when I thought it was an absurd idea that the government could force me, a free citizen to go into the marketplace and purchase an insurance product based simply on the fact that I am alive, and share the responsibility of being alive with all the other living people.
LOL. I see that the Sanders campaign, in the process of trying to walk back the stupidity of the original Tweet, has now dug itself another hole. Per the "Think Progress" story to which Althouse lnked, they are now saying this:
UPDATE JAN 22, 2016 3:28 PM
A Sanders spokesperson responded to criticism of this tweet with a note to Mother Jones's Pema Levy: "That tweet was worded oddly. The senator often speaks about appointing justices that believe in overturning citizens united and who would do so if the opportunity arose. That is what this was referring to."
Well, okay. Except that the President doesn't "appoint" Article III judges. The President NOMINATES them; they must be confirmed by the Senate. That's not what Think Progress tried to pawn off as "judicial nuance." That's high school civics. And it matters -- or should matter -- in the case of Sanders' wild judicial litmus test. He could apply such a litmus test to his nominations; the Senate might have a very different idea of whether to confirm anti-speech ideologues.
If Bernie were elected, wouldn't it make the citizens united case moot?
He has just said out-loud what all Democrats say in private.
As far as the SC selection process, you mean you didn't know how all the D appointments would vote on specific cases?
The only surprise decisions have come from R appointees.
Remember when Bush was President and the Democrats warned he should not have a litmus test for judicial appointees?
Good times, good times.
Sanders is a moron.
End of story.
Fritz said...
"Dang; I got a tag!"
Tag — you're IT(z)!
Bernie is passionate and authentic about his own cluelessness.
At bottom, he is an aged Hippie, who missed the entire Tech boom.
There's a reason we never elected a black man to the Presidency, before Obama. Our great, but flawed country's worst sin was how we treated black men and women in the past, which stifled their achievement
But this is NOT the same reason we never elected a Socialist to the Presidency. Socialism is simply a flawed, immoral system, that gives incentives to freeloaders, disincentives to hard workers and entrepeneurs, and often leads to evil. See, National Socialists in Germany circa 1939; see Union of Socialist Soviet Republic, circa 1917)
Bernie may be selling socialism, but the American people aren't buying.
It's stupid to say outright that you'll have a litmus test about something specific like that. It will screw up the confirmation process. A longtime Senator like Sanders has to know that. He just somehow doesn't care. I guarantee that if he does become President and gets an opening on the Supreme Court, he'll deny that there was a litmus test and stress the credentials and the judicial demeanor of the nominee and the nominee will say the same thing about himself. That's how it's done, post-Bork, and it's not going to change.
Actually he knows just how it works. But he has eliminated the "wink-wink" part of the process.
Blogger Mark said...
Unknown, when limited to 144 characters on Twitter, you have an expectation that the reader understands the character limit.
Taking a single Tweet as a complete position statement is willful misunderstanding.
That get to the core of my objection to Twitter; it basically forces thoughts to the be length of a wisecrack. Not that I have anything against wisecracks, I probably make too many myself, but it shouldn't be a primary method of discourse.
My hometown paper printed a letter to the editor from a Bernie supporter.
The Bernie supporter wrote that Bernie wanted Medicare for everyone, and if you didn't like that idea, that meant that you wanted old people, the disabled, and the young not to have insurance.
The dude literally did not know that Medicare already covers old people and disabled people. The inclusion of the young was interesting. He thought it was inhumane not to insure the people least likely to need insurance.
And people say Trump supporters are dumb.
"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist...."
George Orwell
Terry I think I'd say that Sanders supporters and Trump supporters are all dumb. I certainly wouldn't limit the stupidity quotient to the Berners.
Coincidentally, all of them together (Trumpkins and Berners) all seem to misunderstand Citizens United, the subject of this very blog post. I'm not even giving them the benefit of the doubt on a notion that they understand Citizens United; they just disagree with it. I frankly don't think they understand the decision or the relevant issues at all. Because to truly understand the case is to have to make the kinds of arguments that then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Seth Waxman had to make in front of the court. Embarrassing arguments like the one in which Kagan had to admit that there was no good answer that Section 441b of the BCRA might actually allow for the banning of certain campaign-related books, if regulators decided to take that action (they never had, of course).
Sanders see the wealth of the country much as he see a cafeteria. It's just there. He goes in and all of that food just appears, it's there. Every day.
He takes some of this and some of that, puts some on this side of the tray, a little on the other, a bit of this and that.
He has no idea how to make the food, how to get the food to the cafeteria, how it's produced. To the left, it just is.
A giant cafeteria to play with.
I guarantee that if he does become President and gets an opening on the Supreme Court, he'll deny that there was a litmus test
How can you "guarantee" that Bernie Sanders will start acting like a liberal Democrat? The man's a socialist. He's not kidding.
"Bernie impresses me as the kind of guy who's been working on a perpetual motion machine in his garage for decades."
And who kept meticulous record for each if his experiment and he wants to share it with the entire nation. Cause it's important.
Again, we miss the forest for the trees. So what if the Constitution says that the Supreme Court has (with irrelevant exceptions) only applellate jurisdiction, and can only rule on "cases and controversies" that come before it? If we need to overrule Citizens United, we can't be stopped by some old document on raggedy parchment that was written way looong ago. After all, the Constitution also says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press, and the reason that Citizens United has to be overruled is so Congress (or perhaps just the President if Congress doesn't cooperate) can pass laws abridging freedom of speech and of the press.
---- when limited to 144 characters on Twitter, you have an expectation that the reader understands the character limit.
If a learned political mastermind like Bernie the socialist can’t make himself understood in 144 characters, then he should remain twitter silence and express his views in the appropriate medium. Since he adheres to the political philosophy that has brought so much death and devastation to the world in the last century that is context enough.
-----This post takes me back to the good old days when I thought it was an absurd idea that the government could force me, a free citizen to go into the marketplace and purchase an insurance product based simply on the fact that I am alive.---
Good times, good times.
It is, to agree with our host, stupid to have a litmus test.
Cue the Hillary quotes in 3...2....1...
@ Terry:
"The inclusion of the young was interesting. He thought it was inhumane not to insure the people least likely to need insurance"
Actually the young do need insurance in its true meaning, which is cover for unaffordable but unlikely eventualities. Reimbursement of predicable affordable costs, no.
It is heartwarming that Althouse believes Sanders cares about the Constitution. Any socialist worth his daily ration of salt cannot in good conscience favor the Constitution.
But we may still pretend otherwise.
The way to do things now is to issue Executive Orders. Is Sanders not paying attention?
"It's stupid to say outright that you'll have a litmus test about something specific like that. It will screw up the confirmation process." It's honest, it's Prog truth, and it will make no difference. If Progs have a majority, Prog candidates will sail through; if Progs are strong enough to prevail with squishy GOPers who care about process and so on and so forth, they will prevail; if there are more than 40 con-nish GOPers, a Sanders nominee could be blocked, regardless of what Bernie or anyone else ever said.
"A longtime Senator like Sanders has to know that. He just somehow doesn't care." He doesn't have to know and we know he doesn't care so even if he knows it makes no difference to what he thinks or does. That's news? To you, a con law professor?
Overturn Citizens United because the People should be taxed and not heard. Treat us like the unplanned children that they hope to change.
MadisonMan said...The way to do things now is to issue Executive Orders.
--
That's what I keep thinking he and his supporters are thinking. I remember listening to an Obamite friend lamenting O's supposed hesitancy to invoke that. Legislatures are moving right..and there would be Bernie in the executive? I guess that's "divided government" taken to the extreme.
But a fair number of folks are eating up what The Candyman is promising.
"The way to do things now is to issue Executive Orders."
Executive orders are anathema to democracy, and are unConstitutional.
As for Sanders' comment, I'm sure he knows as well as most Americans do how the Supreme Court works. (Which is not a testament to the degree or accuracy of Sanders' knowledge.) However, either he is simply pandering--badly--or he is communicating badly that he means he would not select a judge for appointment to the Supreme Court if that judge had not made it known he considered the Citizens United case to have been badly (wrongly) decided, and that judge, for one, if the opportunity ever came to revisit the case, would vote to strike down the previous decision.
In other words, Sanders is making a promise he knows he probably won't ever be able or have to keep, but he is doing so to attract voters.
"...the President doesn't 'appoint' Article III judges. The President NOMINATES them; they must be confirmed by the Senate."
Yes, and this is why Sanders' comment can only be dismissed as pure pandering. He can do as all Presidents do, find a judge to select for nomination whose own views accord with his own and those of his constituents, but Congress can always knock them out of the running. If such happened, Sanders could always say he kept his promise, but Congress blocked him.
"This post takes me back to the good old days when I thought it was an absurd idea that the government could force me, a free citizen to go into the marketplace and purchase an insurance product based simply on the fact that I am alive, and share the responsibility of being alive with all the other living people."
Yep. It illustrates how completely corporate interests have usurped the people's power of self-government. We, the people, have no say in what our government does; the plutocrats call all the shots.
"And when I look around to who are supporting him, it is usually the most emotional, gullible people who want some miracle to make everything right but they don't even know what is right."
This quote, word-for-word, can be applied to those who support Trump.
Pander Bear, indeed. Just recently on msnbc saying how his sec. of Treasury would break up big banks if they don't measure up. Takes a lot more than sec. of Treasury to do that. But the two yapping heads interviewing just nodded along.
He can't dictate a $15/hr minimum wage either. Which is a good thing since he gets pretty animated over youth unemployment.
Of those scrambling now for either major party's nomination to be the Ruling Class's next flunky-in-chief, Sanders is the least objectionable, but this doesn't mean is a desirable candidate. His value, insofar as it exists, lies only in his raising up for discussion by the American people the issue of capitalist predation on the world.
In fact, he would do harm to the socialist principles he claims to support, (and which have a great deal to do with the growing public support for him), as his presidency, if it ever came to be, would not deliver to the American people that which he promises--he remains in thrall to the military/industrial prerogatives in Washington, and to our catastrophic military activities around the world--and his failure would serve to impeach the ideas that Sanders purports to stand for. His failure would not be recognized by most as the inevitable result of his continuing to follow the edicts of Wall Street and the Pentagon--which he would--but would be blamed on that which he promises but which he will not deliver. Any subsequent candidate or political party running on those planks, however serious they actually were, would forever be tainted by Sanders' betrayal.
(Look at Obama as an object case; his failure results from his continuing the policies of the past several administrations spanning decades, but the ignorant and credulous call him a socialist or commie and assume this is the basis of his failure.)
I'll be voting for a third-party candidate...again.
You think his military views would prevent him pursuing his redistribution plans?
"You think his military views would prevent him pursuing his redistribution plans?"
If Sanders is not willing to radically shrink our military budget and to remove our military from many parts of the globe--particularly those parts where we are actively shooting and bombing rather than just hanging out on American bases keeping our eyes on those we mean to keep subordinate to us--he will never have enough in the budget to fulfill his other promises.
As for his "redistribution plans," you mean spending the people's money on the people's needs, don't you? Under its current state, our government serves as a great redistributive vacuum cleaner of the people's money, delivering it to the already wealthy, leaving the people impoverished. Why spend a billion tax dollars on one Air Force bomber, or many billions on fleets of them, when that money could be put directly toward ends that will directly serve the people's needs?
The thing to always keep in mind is that the Citizens United case revolved around Hillary sycophants and minions trying to prevent an anti-Hillary film from being distributed. She is find with the right sort of organizations spending money to get her elected, but is willing to use whatever legal mechanisms that she has available to do so. Sanders? I frankly don't think that he has the background to try to explain why labor unions, liberal PACs, and news media corporations are fine spending money to defeat Republicans, but Citizens United was not fine.
"he will never have enough in the budget to fulfill his other promises."
Ah..so his plans don't add up. Noted.
"As for his "redistribution plans," you mean spending the people's money on the people's needs, don't you? "
Spending the money taken from one group of people at gun point to spend on the interests of other people. Right?
"Under its current state, our government serves as a great redistributive vacuum cleaner of the people's money, delivering it to the already wealthy, leaving the people impoverished. "
Okay. Total federal, state and local spending in USA in 2015 was 6.2 trillion dollars. Military spending is small portion of this. Most of the money goes for social services. But it's never enough, is it?
Robert Cook said...
"Executive orders are anathema to democracy, and are unConstitutional."
This kind of sweeping statement about executive orders is stupid, whether it's the right levying them against Obama or the left against Bush. There are executive orders and executive orders: For example, when President Obama signs an executive order ordering the FBI to hire a a dozen more agents in division x and to transfer thereto a dozen more from division y, no sane person believes that that order is unconstitutional. Can signing statements be used for unconstitutional purposes? Yes, certainly. But the form itself is not unconstitutional. (Remember "signing statements"? Same thing.)
Is that all, Hyphenated? If we could only get those evil rich people to pay their fair share then we'd all be farting through silk! lol
Robert Cook - Could you please give an example of how the government redistributes money from the poor or the working class to the rich? The only one I can think of is the Fed's zero-interest rate policy, which has taken a few hundred billion from those saving for retirement and given it to stock market investors. Those people losing and gaining in this trade may or may not be the same. As for the rest of the government, you may be unhappy that the government doesn't take enough from the affluent to give to the poor, but that's a different point, unless you think that all income and wealth are the "people's money" and whatever the government lets you keep is a gift.
O'Mike,
Sanitizing your iPad is easy!
Hillary Clinton has said the same thing. http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/hillary-clinton-and-citizens-united-b99573513z1-326039051.html
The scary thing is there are 46 Democrats in the Senate, who vote for court nominees and you have to wonder how many of them think like Sanders. I would bet there are more than half of them who think like he does. The Democrats are all about the courts because they can not legislate their agenda. The only way Democrats get to do the things they want to do is through the courts.
Actually he does. Leftists have a long and successful track record of finding the right defendant and the right judge and then the right appeals court for taking their agenda to the scotus.
mikee said...
Sanders has watched socialism destroy countries from Angola to Venezuela, for 60 years and still supports socialism. Such blindness to reality should be disqualifying for a day pass from the old folks' home, yet he is running for high office.
Upvote+1M
"...you mean spending the people's money on the people's needs..."
Yep, that's why I get up and go to work every morning: to earn The People's Money.
I'm just as unhappy paying for another unneeded bomber as I am about subsidizing layabouts and young women who think their birth control is my financial responsibility.
Not much hope for me in Bernie World. It's more of the same - you're a sap if you get up and go to a job to pay for somebody else's ideas about how The People's Money ought to be spent.
"Yep, that's why I get up and go to work every morning: to earn The People's Money.
I'm just as unhappy paying for another unneeded bomber as I am about subsidizing layabouts and young women who think their birth control is my financial responsibility."
That's what we all pay taxes for...to provide funds for allocation by common decision to the needs of the local and national communities...ergo, it is "the people's money." Part of the problem is that these decisions are less and less by common agreement, and are more and more unilateral decisions by those serving their own ends, or the ends of their wealthy pay-masters.
You should be more unhappy about paying for bombers, given that they are meant for purely destructive and murderous ends, and are far more expensive than many of the constructive ends to which our money could be put to serve our needs.
You're not subsidizing layabouts, by the way, but contributing to a fund to help all who fall into difficulty and need help obtaining food or medical care. In a nation where jobs are increasingly disappearing, such a fund is going to be needed by more and more people. I've known people who've been on assistance, and the assistance they get is meager but much needed, just enough to keep them from starvation or from living in the streets. It's always for limited periods, at the end of which, if they still need it, they must start all over in qualifying for it. Obtaining assistance is not easy or automatic, is not a source of plenty, and is not a life-long guarantee. The majority of welfare recipients are not scamming anyone, and, in fact, many of them work. (Wal-Mart encourages many of its employees to seek public assistance, especially Medicaid, if they cannot afford to pay for Wal-Mart's own group health plan...which many of their employees cannot, at the wages they're being paid.)
Does this mean none of them are scamers? No. Anytime there are funds available to be accessed by transfer from one source to another, there will be people figuring out how to get some for themselves. However, in this, again, the poor are pikers. The rich are the biggest benefactors of government largesse, the most ravenous feasters on public riches, while the poor scramble for crumbs.
If elected, Bernie will issue executive orders to treat people the way we now treat banks -- printing trillions of dollars and "loaning" them out without collateral. He will also order Medicare to enroll anyone regardless of age and pay all their medical bills without question, again with freshly-printed money.
Thus America will briefly enjoy a glorious 100% socialist paradise. Then it all collapses, and things get very right-wing very quickly. From the pen of Thomas Carlyle:
"Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, -- with the answer, No effects.
...
Honor to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it."
If elected, Bernie will issue executive orders to treat people the way we now treat banks -- printing trillions of dollars and "loaning" them out without collateral. He will also order Medicare to enroll anyone regardless of age and pay all their medical bills without question, again with freshly-printed money.
Thus America will briefly enjoy a glorious 100% socialist paradise. Then it all collapses, and things get very right-wing very quickly. From the pen of Thomas Carlyle:
"Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, -- with the answer, No effects.
...
Honor to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it."
"That's what we all pay taxes for...to provide funds for allocation by common decision to the needs of the local and national communities...ergo, it is "the people's money.""
I pay taxes because otherwise the government would put me in jail. I am sure Robert Cook, in spite of his claims, pays taxes also because he is forced it.
"Part of the problem is that these decisions are less and less by common agreement, and are more and more unilateral decisions by those serving their own ends, or the ends of their wealthy pay-masters."
The total government budgets in 2015 was 6.2 trillion dollars. No man knows in good detail where all this money is going. Of course, it's stupid to believe the American people decide where to spend this money - since they don't even know how it is spent.
"You should be more unhappy about paying for bombers, given that they are meant for purely destructive and murderous ends, and are far more expensive than many of the constructive ends to which our money could be put to serve our needs. "
Robert, I told you the total government spending is 6.2 trillion dollars. Only small portion of this goes to pay for the bombers. Why can't you respond to the facts, and instead keep repeating same propaganda?
"You're not subsidizing layabouts, by the way, but contributing to a fund to help all who fall into difficulty and need help obtaining food or medical care. "
6.3 trillion dollars. Again, 6.2 trillion dollars. Do you comprehend how much that is? Probably not.
"The majority of welfare recipients are not scamming anyone, and, in fact, many of them work."
What percentage of people who get government handouts work 40 hour weeks? 10%? 5%?
"However, in this, again, the poor are pikers. The rich are the biggest benefactors of government largesse, the most ravenous feasters on public riches, while the poor scramble for crumbs."
Again, total government spending is 6.2 trillion dollars. What percentage of it goes to the rich people? Please, go point by point and explain.
"You're not subsidizing layabouts, by the way..."
Oh, yes I am. Lots and lots of them. I know layabouts. Some are in my family. They have figured out how to live off "the system" for decades, generations. They don't work because they don't like work, don't like the very idea of it. And they have that choice, thanks to politicians like Bernie Sanders, and saps like me.
But enough about my relatives. There are plenty of billionaire welfare recipients. Sports team owners and other crony-socialists come to mind. What they have in common with the non-rich layabouts is that they know how to work a government system. They do it by appealing to the stupidity of politicians. The cheap layabouts have sob-sisters to plead their case, appealing to the naivete of the clowns who take an enormous piece of the nation's income every year and piss it away.
Why spend a billion tax dollars on one Air Force bomber, or many billions on fleets of them, when that money could be put directly toward ends that will directly serve the people's needs?
To defend us from your handlers......
"To defend us from your handlers......"
The inanity of your remark aside, we're not fighting in "defense" of anything; we are the aggressors.
"Robert, I told you the total government spending is 6.2 trillion dollars. Only small portion of this goes to pay for the bombers. Why can't you respond to the facts...."
How do you know what "the facts" are? The government lies about everything with statistics. They talk about how "low" unemployment is now, and how well our economy has rebounded from the 2008 catastrophe. Anyone who believes that must be so lacking in mental acuity as to be dead.
So much of the government's military and intelligence budget is hidden within "black budgets." I think it's very safe to assume--and I do--that our war budget is far greater than the already bloated figure they condescend to make public.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Bernie is displaying that he is a hedgehog; the big thing he knows is that capitalism is evil (and therefore capitalists should not be able to spend their own money on political speech).
Just as he knows unions and progessive organizations should be able to buy as much political speech as they wish.
Sometimes it's hard not to think of that Mencken quote when thinking of hedgehogs, that "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
As a professional socialist, Sanders has pretty much made a career out of not knowing how things work.
That might be better as:
"As a professed socialist...
Although the particular kind of mistake here is more the kind of mistake a liberal Democrat would make.
It may, however, simply be an extension of the kind of thing that politicians, especially those running for president do, where they pretend that if elected to the particular office they seek they could do this, that or the other thing all by themselves.
This is not the first time a claim had been made that it's been mis-stated how electing a president could change a Supreme Court decision.
In the 2012 election, Democrats, and in particular Joe Biden during a debate, pretended that a president not only could cause the reversal of Roe v Wade (he gave a legitimate argument as to how that was possible) but could also make abortion illegal!!
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/transcript-joe-biden-and-paul-ryan-abortion-remarks-at-2012-vp-debate
BIDEN: The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominations. That’s how close Roe v. Wade is. Just ask yourself, with Robert Bork being the chief advisor to the court for Mr. Romney, who do you think he’s likely to appoint? Do you think he’s likely to appoint someone like Scalia or someone else on the court, far right, that would outlaw abortion? I suspect that would happen. I guarantee that will not happen. We picked two people. They’ve been open minded, good justices, so keep your eye on it.
In that debate, Joe Biden also said:
It's a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I'm not going to interfere with that.
Now, actually it did happen once, that the West German Supreme Court declared abortion outright illegal, (around 1972)
After that members of the Baader-Meinhoff gang assassinated a Supreme Court justice, using that as the excuse.
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