Their greed, their recklessness, their illegal behavior has destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Frankly, if I were a hedge fund manager, I would not vote for Bernie Sanders. And I would contribute money to my opponents to try to defeat him.
That’s Bernie Sanders as quoted in Bloomberg Business. The public library where I work subscribes so I read Bloomberg’s Sanders profile on my break yesterday. My heart is aflutter! Fortunately the article is also online.
I’ve known of Bernie Sanders for a long time, but I’ll have to admit I didn’t delve into his details much because, out here in California, Sanders’ redoubt of Vermont has had only limited relevance to me. I mean, I’ve been glad he’s there and I would vote for him if I had the opportunity, but when would that ever happen?
The Bloomberg article is a fun read, quippy anecdotes, the essence of Bernie’s message boiled down to: “The rich are screwing you,” and a few snarky bits for Bloomberg’s conservative readers. Have to say I loved it.
His favorite tactic with a hostile audience is to declare that they won’t agree on some crucial issue such as abortion or gay rights but can come together on a far more important problem: The rich are screwing us.
In Plymouth, Sanders is asked about his interests other than wealth inequality. “History,” he says. “How communities thrive. How they flourish. How people don’t get left behind. How social change takes place.” In other words: the history of wealth inequality. When the New York Times once had him pick a question from a reader out of a hat, and Sanders had to describe the U.S. to a Martian, it took him only four sentences to get to the phrase “income and wealth inequality.”
Note the “Carter Age” snark in this quote:
When asked before a speech in Keene, N.H., what he would say to reassure the Bloomberg Businessweek readers who work on Wall Street, or have millions of dollars, or run a hedge fund, and might be afraid he wants to tax them back to the Carter Age, Sanders puts down the manila folder containing his talk, which he delivers without a TelePrompTer. “I’m not going to reassure them,” he says. “Their greed, their recklessness, their illegal behavior has destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Frankly, if I were a hedge fund manager, I would not vote for Bernie Sanders. And I would contribute money to my opponents to try to defeat him.”
Bloomberg likes to imagine its readers can barely afford Bud:
“This would all be paid for by “a tax on Wall Street speculation,” a tax on the rich, and a higher business tax. In the Bernie Sanders drinking game, every time he mentions a free government program, you drink someone else’s beer.”
Or, more apropos perhaps, sip delicately at someone else’s 100 year old malt whiskey.
And just to conclude with a little reassurance, because, c’mon:
Wade Black, who runs Scarsdale Equities, a boutique investment firm in New York, and donates to Sanders, [says,] “There’s not going to be a Kristallnacht in Lower Manhattan. He’s talking about regulation, not shutting down the stock exchange. People turn their logic circuits off as soon as they hear the word ‘socialism.’ ”
