Yes, I know that he already had said that he was running for the presidential nomination but in the strange way that American elections are run and dragged out for so long, it makes sense to get the most publicity by first saying you are interested in running, then setting up exploratory committees, then letting it be known that you are definitely running, and then formally kicking off the campaign. In Sander’s case, that last step will be taken today at 5:00 pm in his home town of Burlington, Vermont, where he was first elected to office as mayor.
As part of the run-up to today’s announcement, he was interviewed on CNBC and he sounded his familiar themes, saying that it is wrong that “Ninety-nine percent of all new income generated today goes to the top 1 percent” and that the “Top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much as wealth as the bottom 90 percent.”
He says that what we need is an increase in the marginal tax rates. The interviewer says asks him to comment on the statements by some people in the corporate world and Wall Street that his progressive Democratic agenda is similar to Hitler’s Germany hunting down the Jews. Sanders’ response?
It’s sick. And I think these people are so greedy, they’re so out of touch with reality, that they can come up and say that. They think they own the world.
What a disgusting remark. I’m sorry to have to tell them, they live in the United States, they benefit from the United States, we have kids who are hungry in this country. We have people who are working two, three, four jobs, who can’t send their kids to college. You know what? Sorry, you’re all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes. If my memory is correct, when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.
(You can go to Sanders’s website to join the campaign and contribute and here to see where he stands on the issues.)
Cue all the believers in the two-party system saying that voting for Sanders is throwing away your vote, etc.
To equate being taxed more heavily and hence being a smidge less fantastically wealthy with getting murdured is not only incredibly idiotic, but demonstrates an amazing sense of entitlement.
…when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president…
So Senator Sanders now agrees with the John Birch Society that the 34rd President of the United States was a Soviet secret agent?
Marcus Ranum @ 1
Even though he’s running as a Democrat? 😉
Pierce,
I think he was being sarcastic that the current Republicans would consider Eisenhower to be a socialist.
Mano@5,
I think Pierce knows that and is just pushing the sarcasm along! But for current Republicans, a President who warned about the influence of “the military-industrial complex” was surely a dangerous radical.
If I were American, I’d certainly be supporting Sanders; but it’s a shame there is no-one younger to put the progressive case. However healthy, someone who would be 75 at inauguration (a man particularly, given the sex difference in lifespan) is not a good bet to get through 4 years of an extremely stressful job in a fully functioning state.
Please send a clone of mr. Sanders to Poland, to replace our recently elected right-wing catholic sock puppet of a president…
Nick,
I suspected that Pierce was too politically sophisticated not to know but thought it worthwhile to make the point just in case others missed the sarcasm!
Marcus @1
Well, I’m not a believer in the two-party system. I do, however, think it is a waste of a vote if one waits until the general election to cast their vote. I’m more than fine with people showing up for the primaries or, as I am planning to do here in Iowa, for the caucus. What gets my goat are the people who don’t show up for the primaries/caucuses, don’t show up to their local conventions, etc, and still have the nerve to complain come general elections. Basically, I see them as people who complain while putting in the bare minimum of effort to change things. I’m not a fan of such people.
Mano Singham @ # 9: … thought it worthwhile to make the point just in case others missed the sarcasm!
I do tend to neglect the /sarcasm or “sark off” tags. (What I want for this function: an emoji representing Flash Gordon’s Russian sidekick, Dr. Zarkov.)
Leo, by the time of the presidential primaries in my state, typically there’s hardly anyone left to pick among. All I can do is support Sanders’ campaign to help him stay afloat long enough.
Sanders being 75 at inauguration is a practical consideration. Hillary or sanders is a question of hopes for progress around the edges, tench warfare against an entrenched congress backed by the majority of the big money, versus dreams of a economically righteous society. Do we jump from the tower and risk being dashed on the rocks, losing it all if a republican wins the presidency with codependent congress, or do we stick to the short game hoping to chip around the edges working from within the tower the right has trapped us in with money, power and rhetoric.