Bernie Sanders 2016 Feel the Bern!

I've been very critical of Sanders, really more his supporters, but this line of argument is very unfair.

Sanders to his credit has laid out a fairly detailed plan of how he will pay for his proposals. So he's not advocating giving out free stuff.

Of course the problem is how he will pay for them is going to be more controversial than the proposals themselves.

 

Why do you care so much about this? It is not like you are going to be voting from UAE.

 

Dharocks has already pretty much given my answer.

To follow on though in my own words Clinton has a history that is both good and bad but it is one that has been very prominent. In many this is both a great strength and weakness because her failings are very prominent and given how much hate she has engendered from the Right and also her hard fought political battles with rivals on the Left her failings are very magnified.

The appeal of the outsider though is that they don't really have a history. It was one of the big reasons that Obama was so popular because he had very little history and in many ways was a cypher that others could apply their own beliefs. Sanders for someone who has served for so long in Congress is still an outsider because he both wasn't a member of a major party but also because he didn't get a lot passed. Yes he had some important amendments and served as ranking member on some committees. Clinton who only served 8 years in the Senate also got the same amount of bills passed and had some important amendments. Clinton as First Lady also spearheaded a major policy proposal and was also Secretary of State and led important negotiations.

I'm not supporting Clinton because I like her or for ideology. I support her because she is the most qualified candidate.

 

I always find it interesting how people are quick to accuse others of being sheep yet will say stuff like there isn't any difference between the parties. Or Bush and Obama are the same.

Consider that the primary achievement of the Obama presidency was ACA. The primary achievement of GW Bush's, invading Iraq. Obama appointed Sotomayor and Kagan to the USSC. Bush, Roberts and Alito.

As stated in my reply to Glynch yes Sanders hasn't done nothing in Congress but for someone there that long it is a pretty scant record. That said if he had gotten a lot accomplished he wouldn't be an outsider then.

 

This is an interesting article that points out some factors of the German model and why it also might not work in the US. Notably the amount of weeding out that happens for German students before they get to university.

I will state that I disagree though with the criticism of the piece about Sanders' Socialism as he has gone to pains to state he is a Democrat Socialist. Still I do think it is an important question to him about how what he thinks about groups like Baader - Meinhof.

https://medium.com/@annklefstad/ber...d-some-german-reality-292d36f1cb53#.k9hvq2l7z

Bernie Sanders, Fake Socialism, and Some German Reality

Okay, let’s get real. Do you think that Germany has “single-payer” health insurance? No, it doesn’t. It has a kind of turbo-charged version of Obamacare — more similar to what Hillarycare would have been had not everyone lost their **** when it was proposed 24 years ago. Yes, folks, we could have a very German-style health insurance system right now, with all the bugs worked out over a score of years, if not for sexism. Here’s a quote from the Atlantic article that lays out the German system:

“Every German resident must belong to a sickness fund, and in turn the funds must insure all comers. They’re also mandated to cover a standard set of benefits, which includes most procedures and medications. Workers pay half the cost of their sickness fund insurance, and employers pay the rest. The German government foots the bill for the unemployed and for children. There are also limits on out-of-pocket expenses, so it’s rare for a German to go into debt because of medical bills . . . it’s fair to say the U.S. is moving in the direction of systems like Germany’s — multi-payer, compulsory, employer-based, highly regulated, and fee-for-service.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...can-healthcare-can-learn-from-germany/360133/)

More tales of the socialist paradise: Germany has free college! Yes, but the entrants to college are funneled through a school system that is rigorously selective; at around age 10 students are sorted into vocational education tracks or those (perhaps 1/3 of students) who go on to gymnasium, which is essentially high school. (There are virtually no sports programs associated with high school and college btw). About 30% of German college-age youth do go on to university, nowadays. It used to be about 10%. Last year, just over 65% of American high school graduates went on to college.

This “high number” (less than half of that for American students, remember) means that the system cannot afford to educate them all in what they may wish to study: a selection principle, Numerus Clausus, selects which students may go on to study high-demand areas such as medicine, for example. The free part is only tuition; to cover books and living expenses, German students, like American ones, take out loans. Study times are often quite lengthy compared to American students, because German students study much more on their own.

There is no free lunch, people. If you want free college, then you may have to accept more selectivity. Traditionally, in countries that offer this, the selection is done early. Here, in this diverse nation, this would discriminate heavily against first-in-family college goers, against kids from poor backgrounds, etc.

More reality: Do you think that the German system of social benefits is a result of “socialism”? Au contraire — it is a result of Konrad Adenauer’s recognition that, if he wanted to retain any vestige of the old Germany from before (and during) the Nazi years, and if he didn’t want Communist revolution in West Germany, he had to provide social guarantees for the people. (They didn’t call him “Der Alte” for nothing — a cannier, more utterly and perhaps soul-destroyingly pragmatic politician likely never lived. His chilling political realism was one of the factors that propelled the Red Army Faction — we know them as the Baader-Meinhof movement — to rebel against what they saw as the cynical manipulation of their nation’s citizens by Adenauer and his successors. RAF were real socialists. Adenauer, on the other hand, healed Germany and sent it on its brilliantly successful postwar career, complete with good social benefits.)

So Adenauer presided over the “Wirtschaftswunder” — the economic miracle — and produced 8% growth rates every year, using the expertise and knowledge and contacts and surviving wealth of Nazi-era (and before) Germans (which was not nice or even perhaps ethical but was likely wise).

The immense profits of that very capitalist economic miracle were tapped to provide good social benefits (single-payer health care, however, was not among them. See above on the German health-care system). This was true all over postwar Europe, even in England. After the war, governments looked at their Cold War adversaries in the Eastern Bloc and realized that if they did not provide what people actually wanted from socialism — good social benefits — they ran the risk of giving up the goose that laid those golden eggs — control of the means of production. FDR did the same here, in the depths of the thirties, when many people thought a socialist revolution was imminent.

Thus, the strong social benefits that we think of as “socialist” are not socialist at all. They are the opposite — what good capitalist regimes provide to stay alive. This is not a bad thing. It does, however, make nonsense of Bernie Sanders’ current claims to be a socialist of any stripe. He used to be, and that’s why he is obsessed with wealth-sharing as a solution to everything. But he’s not now — no more than Angela Merkel is.

(See a brief account of Germany’s postwar years here: “Adenauer and his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard, oversaw a period during which the economy grew by an average of 8% per year, the fastest in Europe. By the end of the decade unemployment had fallen below 1% and there was a labour shortage. Inflation remained low throughout and West Germany’s share of World exports trebled. (The German Economy in the Twentieth Century. Hans-Joachim Braun, Routledge, London, 1990:168). Erhard’s ‘Social Market Economy’ comprised free market economics regulated by the state as far as necessary to ensure adequate distribution of wealth, and welfare provision for weaker members of society. It represented a third way between American style capitalism and the strictly controlled command economies of the Eastern Bloc. A co-operative approach to industrial relations helped avoid economic disruption. Workers had the right to significant representation on company boards through which they could influence and share responsibility for decisions. Productivity per man hour more than trebled in the two decades after 1950, far outstripping British figures, and highlighting the efficiency of the ‘German model’. An extensive building programme offered millions of Germans the chance of gaining a home of their own. The Equalisation of Burdens Act, 1952, redistributed wealth from those fortunate enough to have survived the War with their property intact, to those who had suffered losses.”)www.internationalschoolhistory.net

If any media person could get their **** together sufficiently to actually ask Bernie first what he thinks of Gramsci nowadays, and then what he has to say about Adenauer, and then pressed on to inquire what his ideas were in the 1960s about the Red Army Faction in Germany, they would find out at least something about Bernie’s relationship to actual socialism. But what’s the chances of that?

Bernie-style fake “socialism” isn’t any kind of answer. Carefully designed policy that works for this country (not Germany and Denmark) is needed. Obviously we need to de-militarize, to shift funds to education, to tax the uber-wealthy, to massively expand student aid, to do more to drive an economy that is truly inclusive — all things that Hillary Clinton has proposed. She is the person who has experience designing that kind of policy on a national basis. Bernie’s a pretender.

 

How much time you got? lol

I feel this way about everyone but I've decided that the one area worth dedicating all my attention to helping people get happier, healthier, wealthier, less fearful is Americans. I feel like a happier American population would have a relatively huge positive effect on the world.

Americans are really being strangled right now, and to be frank almost everyone in the country should be living a MUCH better life given what's at your disposal.

 

judoka,

Serious flaws in that article.

- Why does it have to be a copy of Germany? Why these assumptions? 2 days ago it was Denmark. These are models, examples. Maybe it IS the German model that works, maybe not. Germany has one of the most consumer friendly and restriction free healthcare systems in the world and private health insurers don't even have 1/10th of the sway they have in the United States while the quality of doctors in Germany is also tremendous. Public insurance options can barely factor risk or pre-existing conditions into their packages. Medicine costs a lot less, and co-pay is lower.

- How does that guy have the audacity to ignore the effects of the Marshall Plan and London Debt Agreement on Germany's economy during Adenauer's tenure? Germany is what it is today because of a historic bailout package from American taxpayer money. They got injected with cash, their trading partners got injected with cash, part of their debt was forgiven and the rest restructured over 50 years or something. What in fact has kept Germany booming for so long is the rich socialistic culture. To call Conrad a capitalist is a joke beyond belief. He would be called a radical leftist in today's America.

- Education is not some pure cost center as the article implies. The % of students who go to college is irrelevant as long as you acknowledge that you will proportionally get as much out of 30 students as you would out of 60. The more the merrier in fact, if you believe there are net positive gains, which every Bernie supporter already knows. If anything, Germans are a fantastic example of a professionally well trained populace. Perhaps American kids will discover that college is not necessary in order to get a job in order to be able to afford health insurance and college tuition and then less of them will go to college.

I believe I actually read something the other day which said more American kids went to college when the economy did poorly. Maybe that's not by choice, maybe that's just to get insurance. Maybe if you don't go to college, it's not for you, and you might once in a while invent something worth a million college degrees. You know, like the Germans do.

Apparently, Germany is highly capable of having a productive population/economy even though they get dirt cheap healthcare and college. That's the bottom line.

- About students being funneled through a rigid school system: I'm pretty sure this is false. I have an American friend who is doing college free of charge at the age of 30 in Germany and he's not some genius I assure you. I'm pretty sure any German can go to a college or university or vocational institute free of charge after school. I'll need to look deeper into this, but I'm pretty sure entrance is not restricted except by number of seats available.

- There is absolutely no logical argument for why something working in Germany wouldn't work in the United States except culture and greater big money interests holding the country hostage.

- Bernie is not going to tear up the ACA. We are not talking about having one or the other. What might happen is a Republican gets into office and they tear it up. As of right now, Bernie is outperforming Hillary against every Republican in most polls. Hillary - a known commodity - is actually losing to Rubio right now. That's something you should be worried about. While Bernie would face an onslaught of right wing attacks, the more tangible indicators at the moment point to Bernie being the safer bet against the right.

 

Just curious, thanks for the reply.

 

Don't get me wrong, those are admittedly rosy ideas, I don't have any expectation that it might happen lol So yeah of course I realize that. I just don't believe there's a formal, sit at a table with an agenda kind of conspiracy. I think the powerful work in ways that help power, and that naturally leads things in a certain direction.

I'm just saying it seems odd that there is absolutely no one pushing the other way, not even people in this day and age. Artists, musicians, filmmakers all have their voice hijacked by the establishment. People have a culture of privacy when it comes to their political views. It's a really strange political culture, although much of it common in the industrialized world.

 

I know all of that is possibly true, but I've made a personal decision to ignore the selfish part of it - i.e. how it affects my country - and going forward I'm going to be in selfless relentless pursuit of making a good example as a global citizen through my career.

 

Then what exactly is he bipartisan compromising with?

Obama wasn't owned by corporations or special interests - in fact, he fought exactly the campaign you're arguing Bernie is now. Working with the corporations and special interests was the compromise to get things done.

 

What's your metric for deciding who is owned by corporations or special interests?

 

Potato, potato. Bottom line is he's promising things that cannot realistically happen unless he suspends the constitution and becomes a monarch. How does that get any more credibility than the guy promising to make Mexico pay for a wall?

 

All of one month, all vacation time!

Thanks for the compliment, but man I struggle with some people on the board, such a wealth of knowledge here.

Spoiler

I read a lot, and watch a lot of American media since I was a kid. I had no one to talk to about it but my brothers, which 7 year old in Dubai in the early 80's knew what ZZ Top was haha. That coupled with a very debilitating legal situation that dominated my childhood, as well as being considered of foreign ethnicity in all countries has piqued my interest in why politics are the way they are.

Also, I wanted to be a rights lawyer but was stupidly convinced not to do it for safety reasons. So I studied marketing but ended up in international financial regulation where I learned things about Law that a person would never be taught living here. Amazing stroke of luck, spent 5-6 years with retired British lawyers (they're common law jurisdiction though). Learned a heck of a lot about legal systems in general, though my actual job was to monitor the risks of large financial companies in the jurisdiction. From my religious friends I learned about sharia law, islamic banking. For myself I started reading about regional and US law/politics/history.

I think all of that positioned me nicely to care about this stuff. Couldn't take the fact that I was helping the wrong side, so I quit and now I'm a filmmaker.

As for why I know what's happening on a daily basis, it's because I read over a dozen newspapers a day + reddit + online news + compulsive browsing of reading material. I have a sleeping disorder so I have plenty of time on my hands!