By Mitch Hall
Wednesday, March 30, 2015
Hot on the heels of his big primary and caucus victories
in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii over the weekend, Bernie Sanders received
another boost for his campaign—an endorsement from comedian Sarah Silverman.
Silverman, who supported Barack Obama in 2012 and has
previously backed Hillary Clinton in this year’s race, took to Facebook in a
video posted on Monday to explain what led her to #FeeltheBern. With her
endorsement, the comic joins an eclectic group of celebrity Sanders supporters,
one that includes actress Susan Sarandon, rapper Killer Mike, and
pro-capitalism UFC star Ronda Rousey.
In a departure from her usual style, Silverman gushes
about the 74-year-old Vermont senator, whom she describes as a “once-in-a-lifetime
candidate who genuinely represents the interests of people.” She goes on to
cite the policies she finds particularly persuasive—namely, Bernie’s universal
health-care promises, promise of free education, and pledge to increase the
federal minimum wage to a “livable” wage.
The essence of Silverman’s message, however, centers
around two main talking points from the Sanders campaign: Campaign finance
reform, and Bernie’s special brand of “democratic socialism.”
We Know
Corporations Are Evil, But What About Unions?
A big selling point for Sanders has been his opposition
to private money in politics, and more specifically his commitment to
overturning the Citizens United
Supreme Court ruling. In fact, this stance is so persuasive with his voting base
that he risks losing support if he doesn’t
denounce them; perhaps that’s why he’s actually sent a cease and desist letter
to a super PAC that supports him.
“This man is running for president on a platform that is
just a giant ‘f*ck you’ to the above-the-law billionaire class,” Silverman says
in her video, sounding positively giddy. “He’s proven that Citizens United is not a necessary evil, it’s just evil.”
Bernie and co. love to paint the picture of the greedy
corporate boogeyman, rigging elections left and right with his millions of
dollars he probably earned unjustly. Indeed, some seem to think Citizens United is just another unfair
loophole for the nation’s richest companies to use to their advantage. But the
Supreme Court’s ruling gave regular individuals and, more importantly, labor
unions the exact same right to give as much as they want to political action
committees.
In fact, as the Seattle
Times reports, nearly half of the top 20 organizational contributors to
super PACs so far in 2016 have been unions or their affiliates, not big
businesses. But this is rarely mentioned by the Sanders campaign. Why? Perhaps
it’s because some of his supporters give to these lesser-known super PACs. In
this year’s primary season, for instance, no union has spent as much as the
National Nurses United, which has dished out over half a million in support of
Sanders.
Interestingly, the group claims they’re not a super PAC
simply because they’re not corrupt — they’re just “nurses who want to get our
support for Bernie out there.” Could it be that these nurses are just
exercising their First Amendment rights, guaranteed to them by the very ruling
they detest?
Don’t Worry Guys,
Socialism Is Totally American
It’s no secret that Bernie’s self-professed socialist
leanings have been a major hindrance to the success of his campaign with
virtually all demographics other than millennials, who have become increasingly
sympathetic to that concept of government. Consequently, Bernie’s celebrity
groupies have been doing their utmost to put your fears to rest.
After telling us not be worried because “under President
Sanders you can still become a super-rich asshole,” Silverman attempts to
explain Sanders’ brand of socialism by putting it this way: “He just believes
that people who don’t have the same advantages as you and me should be given
the same advantages as you and me.” To further illustrate the concept, she says
firefighters are the perfect example of socialism: “That’s a socialized
program—it’s a program the government pays for so that everyone can have it.”
Ah yes, this old line. Proponents of big government often
trot out examples of public services as evidence that socialist programs
already exist in America, and they’re nothing to fear. Yet this is purposefully
misleading, because it ignores the fundamental differences between socialism
and public goods. Socialism is an economic and political system in which a
centralized government owns the means of production of major commercial
industries, and controls the distribution of goods and services.
Public goods tend to be services the private sector can’t
provide effectively. Government tax dollars may pay for institutions like fire
departments or law enforcement, but local entities still retain control over
their management and operations in a way that allows them to reflect their
local community’s needs. This is what makes it not socialism. The social programs Sanders advocates for, on the
other hand—government-paid preK-20 education, universal health care, and
expanded Social Security, to name a few—are big-government programs of a far
different sort.
At the close of her video, Silverman urges viewers not to
get “sucked into a rigged American Dream Ponzi scheme that was never meant to
include you.” But it seems that Bernie and his supporters are trying to sell a
rigged American Dream of their own, one in which the government—not individual
people—has the power.
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