ALL BERNIE'S SOCIALISTS

ALL BERNIE'S SOCIALISTS

IN PURSUIT OF TH TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - WED. APR. 10, 2019

 "WALL STREET JOURNAL" EDITORIAL, MON. APRIL 8, 2019

    
"Socialism is cool again, and Bernie Sanders want to reassure voters that there is nothing to worry about. "I think what we have to do, and will be doing it, is to do a better job maybe in explaining what we mean by socialism - democratic socialism," Mr. Sanders said last month. He has also said that conservatives portray his brand of socialism "as authoritarianism and communism and Venezuela, and that's nonsense."

  
  We wish that were true. But we have reading the work of Bernie's senior political advisers, and their words deserve more attention. Take speechwriter David Sirota, who joined the Sanders campaign in March. though he had been attacking the Vermont Senator's Democratic opponents on Twitter for months.

   Mr. Sirota wrote an op-ed for Salon in 2013 titled "Hugo Chavez's Economic Miracle." Mr. Sirota conceded, Chavez "was no saint" and "amassed a troubling record when it came to protecting human rights and basic democratic freedom." Those pesky disclaimers aside, Mr. Sirota suggested that there's plenty to learn from Chavez.

    
"For example, the United States has adamantly rejected the concept of nationalization and instead pursued a bailout/subsidy strategy when it come to rapacious banks and oil companies - and those forms have often gone to wreak economic havoc. Are there any lessons to be learned from Venezuela's decision to avoid that subsidization route and instead pursue full-on nationalization?" Mr. Sirota wrote. "And in the United States that has become more unequal than many Latin American nations, are there an constructive lessons to be learned from Chavez's grand experiment with more aggressive redistribution?"

  
  He wrote this in 2013, nearly 15 years after Chavez took power. Mr. Sirota has also opposed nearly all U.S. military actions abroad, and he blames the U.S. for inciting terrorism. Days after the Boston marathon bombing in 2013, Mr. Zirota wrote that "with America having killed thousands of civilians in its wars, we should be appalled by acts of terrorism but we shouldn't be surprised by them." His disclaimer: "Noting this is not to argue that such attacks are justified  or that we should deserve them.

  
  Mr. Sanders' political director, Analilia Mejia, spend part of her childhood in Venezuela and told the "Atlantic" in 2016 that "it was better to live on poverty-level wages in a shantytown in Venezuela than on a garment-worker's salary in Elizabeth, New Jersey."

  
  Mr. Sanders' senior policy adviser Heather Gautney visited Caracas in 2006 to attend the World Social Forum. The event featured a two-hour speech by Chavez lauding Karl Marx and Fidel Castro and pledging to "bury the U.S. empire." Ms. Gautney admitted the event had " a militarized feel" but wrote about how Chavez had "implemented a serious [sic] of programs to redistribute the wealth of the country and bolster social welfare."

   
 She defended Chavez's nationalization of private industry and efforts to rewrite the Venezuela constitution on grounds that Chavez's "proposals advocated for a system in which the presidency would be decided via popular vote." She also wrote that "today's neoliberal capitalist system has become utterly incompatible with the requisites of democratic freedom." And she says that "as it stands, U.S. representative political and economic institutions are not structured as representative bodies in any real sort of way."... [The candidate's advisers want America to be more like Venezuela.]

   
Redistribution of wealth and property is a major theme among the Bernie brigades. In a column for Intercept this year, Mr. Sanders' national press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, wrote" "There will be no racial equality under capitalism .... voters should be clear that 'recognizing' disparities and doing something about them through aggressive, redistributive policies are not the same thing." ....

    
Mr, Sanders isn't a gadfly on the fringes of the Democratic Party. He's a leading candidate for its presidential nomination, and these are the people who would staff his White House.  Voters need to understand that they don't merely admire Venezuela/ By their words, they want America to emulate it." 

George H. Kubeck 

P.S. For a Republican landslide, everything possible must be done to have Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee for president.  Re-register and vote for him in the primaries.