Bernie

Staying true to form, the trained hamsters of the main stream media spend hours and hours covering the often idiotic ramblings of Donald Trump, but other than an occasional mention of the large crowds he is drawing, they spend almost no time discussing the more substantive proposals that have been offered by democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. Of course, there's a reason for the asymmetry. Bernie's proposals are best left stealth, at least for the time being. No point in examining them—might raise a few questions and more than a few eyebrows.

To his credit, Bernie Sanders has been relatively specific in what he wants to do as president. In essence, he wants to take the Big Intrusive Government (B.I.G.) that Barack Obama and many Democrats are so fond of and make it much, much bigger. The Wall Street Journal reports:

WASHINGTON—Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose liberal call to action has propelled his long-shot presidential campaign, is proposing an array of new programs that would amount to the largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history.

In all, he backs at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal, a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause. Mr. Sanders sees the money as going to essential government services at a time of increasing strain on the middle class.

His agenda includes an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.

But Sanders also wants to provide "free" college tuition ($750 billion), paid employee leave ($319 billion), bail outs for bankrupt private (and later public) pension funds ($29 billion), universal pre-K child care ($?? billion), social security support ($1.2 trillion), infrastructure repair ($1 trillion).

And where does the money come from? Sanders is a socialist, so the answer is easy—it comes from increased taxes on "billionaires and millionaires." Low information voters (meaning most of the Sanders' left) actually believe that these sums can be raised using what could be called a class warfare tax targeting only those who are "rich." He currently proposes a $6.5 trillion tax increase over 10 years, but like all B.I.G. taxation efforts, that will surely not be enough. The reality is that confiscatory taxes would be required to fund Sanders' uber-B.I.G. and the consequent damage to the economy would be even worse that that caused by Barack Obama's high tax rates.

When Bernie Sanders rails against "the rich" is his class warfare stump speech, he gets cheers from the left. After all, allowing the government to run healthcare is a good idea, right? Look how well Obamacare has worked out for the middle class—they love it—right? Lower rates? Better coverage? More access? Except none of those things happened despite the mendacious promises we all heard. But no matter. It's a triumph for B.I.G., and Sander universal plan would even better, I'm sure.

And "free" college tuition sounds like a great idea as does "paid" employee leave—after all, it's free and paid! No one would abuse a system like that. It would be run really, really efficiently. There would be no waste or abuse. What could go wrong?

Eighty years ago, George Bernard Shaw—a leftist himself—once said: "A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody."

Today, Bernie Sanders is ready and willing to use money we don't have to fund programs we don't need to create a government monstrosity that the vast majority of the people don't want.

UPDATE:
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Bernie Sanders, to his credit, gave a speech in enemy territory, conservative Liberty University. He showed more courage than Barack Obama has in almost seven years of selecting only friendly audiences for his speeches.

However, the content of Bernie's speech leaves a lot to be desired. John Hinderaker provides a harsh fisking of his talk at Liberty University here.