Before There Was Bernie, There Was Henry George... In 1886

I'm a lifelong lefty, born and raised in New York and I admit I don't recall having ever heard of Henry George. But the other night I watched the PBS documentary, The Gilded Age, and was struck by how much the movement around this guy reminded me of Bernie.

Contrasting fundraisers in Hollywood-- Bernie and Mayo Pete-- last week illustrated the kind of movement that pushed Henry George to the forefront. Gene Maddaus, reporting for Variety, compared the grassroots event Bernie did at the Montalban Theatre with the big bucks gathering of elites at the mansion of Kevin MacLellan (chairman of NBCUniversal international) and Brian Curran, featuring celebtities Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Chelsea Handler and Sean Hayes. "The events, just a few miles away from each other," wrote Maddaus, "offered a contrast between two of the top fundraisers in the Democratic field. Sanders has received 2 million donations-- often in increments of $2.70 or less-- and has raised more than any other Democrat in total. Buttigieg, meanwhile, has mixed grassroots fundraising events with more traditional high-dollar events, where many attendees give the maximum $2,800... Buttigieg’s fundraiser was one of four in a whirlwind Thursday in Los Angeles, none of which were open to the press." I wonder what he's trying to hide from the public? Don't candidates usually beg the press to cover their events?

And by the way, last week another Democratic politician who caters almost entirely to wealthy elites to underwrite his repulsive 5 decades long conservative career, Status Quo Joe, was sucking up money at at the Bel Air mansion of Sony Pictures’ multimillionaire chairman Tom Rothman.

It was a contrast that Sanders was happy to draw, as attendees at his fundraiser were treated to music acts and asked to make a text donation of $27 to the campaign.

“Some politicians go to wealthy people’s homes and they sit around in a fancy living room, and people contribute thousands and thousands of dollars and they walk out with a few hundred thousand bucks or whatever,” Sanders said. “We don’t do that… To me, an $18 check or a $27 check from a working person is worth more than all the money in the world from millionaires.”

...Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., has become a star in Hollywood, raising money from actors and studio executives at a startling clip for someone new to the national scene.

Sanders, meanwhile, has ripped Disney CEO Bob Iger for drawing a $66 million salary, and highlighted the low wages of Disneyland workers. He has attracted scant support-- if not outright loathin-- from Hollywood’s elite, which he and his supporters wear as a badge of honor.

“Who has an anti-endorsement list?” asked Nina Turner, the former Ohio state senator who opened for Sanders on Thursday night. “There is no other candidate that has a list of folks who don’t want to see him become president of the United States.”

Sanders did not hold back in his remarks, going after the “incredibly greedy” people who donate to campaigns and seek to slash the social safety net.

“These people have incredible power and they have unlimited sums of money to buy elections, to buy politicians, to buy the media-- they own the media,” he said. “We are gonna tell the ruling class of this country that they cannot and will not have it all.”

On Friday, Bernie sat down with Pod Save America host Jon Favreau for a nearly hour long interview, Early in the interview, Favreau basically asked him about how he wound up the way he is politically. Bernie drew contrasts between himself and Trump and his response was simple and clear:

My political consciousness was raised as a kid and it was raised in two fundamental ways. Number one, I grew up in a working-class family. The son of a Polish immigrant-- Polish Jewish immigrant. We lived in a rent-controlled apartment.

So what I learned is a young person is what lack of money does to a family. So I grew up in a good house-hold. We were not poor but we were struggling low middle class. And all kinds of fights would take place in my-- among my-- between my parents because of the lack of money and that I remember very distinctly and of course that is a reality that impacts tens of millions of families today and I’ve never forgotten it. Unlike Donald Trump, I didn’t get $200,000 a year allowance. I got 25 cents a week. Second of all, I’m Jewish and as a kid, I remember very very well hearing from my parents about the Holocaust and remember getting a phone call that came in the middle of the night, which never happened at our household from some cousin of my father’s I guess who was discovered in Europe at a displaced persons camp.

So, if you lose your your parents-- your father’s family-- to the Holocaust to a lunatic named Hitler, you become aware, as I think African-American families understand, that politics is not something abstract. It impacts whether you live or you die, whether you’re treated with dignity or not. Those are the two factors that shaped I think my willingness to engage in politics.

Favreau: I thought your speech on Democratic socialism made one of the most compelling economic arguments I’ve heard in the race. I love the inclusion of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. My question is FDR is a proud Democratic capitalist. Your critique and your solutions are in rough agreement with other progressive Democrats, so what is valuable or important to you about the label Democratic socialist?

Bernie: Good. Fair question. And the answer is-- and to a large degree what our campaign is about-- it’s not just fighting for Medicare for All. It’s not just about raising the minimum wage to a living wage. It’s not just about combating climate change. It’s not just about making public colleges and universities tuition-free. What it is about-- and I think we are unique and I think that’s where the word Democratic socialist comes in-- is understanding the we do not accomplish any of that unless we have the courage to do what has not been done. And that is to stand up to an incredibly powerful and wealthy ruling class in this country whose greed has wrecked havoc on the working class of this country. So I can sit here and tell you “Jon, look, I want to do this and I want to do that. You’ll have an idea and you’ll say 'that’s great Bernie.'” But at the end of the day, this is what I will tell you. And we have to-- we have to we have to deal with this and if you disagree with me tell me, but at the end of the day, why are we the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people? Why do we have three people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of America? Why are we a country unlike many others that doesn’t guarantee our kids the ability to get a higher education? Why do we allow the fossil fuel industry to make billions a year while they destroy the planet? And what’s the answer to that? The answer to that is these guys have incredible power and if you don’t recognize the power structure in America, which I do, and the need to take them on frontally than a lot of the other ideas don’t really mean a whole lot.

...Favreau: Do you think it was the Democratic agenda in 2016 that ignored those people or is it a message issue?... Because Hillary’s agenda was pretty pretty progressive.

Bernie: But it’s not just an agenda-- it is the perception that the Democratic party was hanging out with the rich and the powerful, all these wonderful fundraisers, and Hollywood stars-- no offense to Hollywood stars. I’m in California-- you know... Southampton and Los Angeles are not necessarily all that there is to America. Maybe we got to get into-- into Kansas and into Mississippi and into rural Wisconsin and to talk to family farmers who were being driven off of the land and to talk to the kids who are making $11 an hour and trying to pay off their student debt. All right. So this is what I’m saying: we need a candidate who speaks to what people are feeling in their guts and they you’re–getting back to the very first question you asked me-- they understand that there is something wrong when over the last thirty years the top 1% have seen a 21 trillion dollar increase in their wealth or the bottom half of America have seen a nine hundred billion dollar decline in their wealth. They know it. They may not be have PhDs in economics. They know the system is thoroughly rigged. They want a presidential candidate who doesn’t hobnob at fancy mansions with the rich in the powerful, but it’s prepared to take them on and I think I am that candidate by the way... [Y]ou’ve got over 80 million people uninsured or underinsured and we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. And in a couple of days-- Sunday, actually-- I’m going to be going to Windsor, Ontario with a busload of folks who are dealing with diabetes. We’re going to buy insulin there for one tenth of the price that has been charged in America.

  The current function of the health care system is not to provide quality care to all people. It is to make billions in profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies. That is the fact. So you can talk about well, I want health care for all but if I have a large co-payment and a large deductible and I have to pay out of my own pocket, I may still not be able to get to a doctor. So let me be clear. I don’t want to be disingenuous with folks. What our plan says is-- kind of similar to a Canada is about-- is you walk into the doctor’s office, any doctor you want and, by the way, there’s some confusion about this. And that is: under Medicare for All, you have absolute freedom of choice regarding the doctor or the hospital that you go to. You walk into that doctor’s office, you come out of the hospital after heart surgery, you don’t have to take out your wallet. It is covered through public funding. And that is an essential difference to what we’re trying to do and what others are trying to do and I talk about health care for all-- it means no deductibles. No co-payments. It means, by the way, expanding Medicare for seniors to cover dental care, hearing aids, and eyeglasses. And we can do this because we eliminate all of the waste and bureaucracy. You know this is an incredibly complicated system-- hundreds and hundreds of different insurance companies doctors are going crazy, hospitals are going crazy. We eliminate all that–we have a simple system expanding Medicare over a four year period to cover everybody.

It's a great interview. You can listen to the whole thing below. And if you like what you hear... that thermometer above will allow you to contribute to Bernie and to some candidates running for Congress who will help Bernie implement his programs-- because those programs sure aren't going to get through with the current crop of corrupt elitist conservatives.