Wednesday Mar 16, 2016
Bernie Sanders may go down in history as the most dishonest presidential candidate we’ve ever had.
Every year Sanders hosts a retreat for rich donors and helps Democrats find rich donors. He’s met with the six-figure donors and with the donors from the big banks. During his Senate race he took thousands from a party committee which was funded by more than a million in bank money, including $685,000 from Goldman Sachs. Sanders raised $20 million in donations from corporate America. Sanders got $18,000 in support from the NRA and assured them that he would protect their interests; and the coal and oil industries and the health insurers support him too.
This is one reason why Sanders’ $75 million war chest is three times the size of Donald Trump’s. When the race opened Sanders was spending more campaign money on ads than Hillary was. Bernie is, in fact, spending Wall Street money in his current campaign.
Sanders simultaneously condemns campaign financing and brags that he’s raising more money than Hillary. Not only does Sanders host these big secret meetings with mega-donors, he and his team boast about how much muscle he has in the influence-peddling racket. One of Sanders’ top guys, Michael Briggs, openly boasted that Sanders has "raised more money for the Senate Democrats than almost any other member of the Senate Democratic caucus." His team is BRAGGING about his prowess as a player in the Big Money game. And it’s especially sad since Hillary has outperformed him by 32 million dollars in raising money for OTHER candidates.
And there are two key differences. First, Hillary is honest about the money, while Bernie pretends he’s never heard of the bankers. Second, Hillary's bank money goes to a humanitarian fund for global charity work – she and her campaign don’t get the cash. But Bernie's bank checks go right into his CAMPAIGN BUDGET.
Q. Name four of the biggest donors of the committee that got Bernie his Senate seat.
A. Goldman Sachs. Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Morgan Chase.
It is rather sad. Year after year, Sanders screams that the Democrats and the banks are all corrupt. UNTIL it’s election time, and he goes to the Democrats to get bank money. And then says the Democrats are the hypocrites.
Keep in mind that Sanders didn’t just waffle and say he didn’t have his own PAC – he said he is getting no PAC support at all. “I do not have a Super PAC friend” Sanders said in an e-mail. Which is absolutely untrue. Bernie gets 1.5 million in Super PAC support.
Bernie’s first PAC, the NNU, was caught running sessions to teach white people how to talk to black women, for the Carolina primary. How to talk to black women. And the NNU political director made them look even more foolish by denying they’re a PAC at all, only to be contradicted by the FEC. Ouch!
Bernie has another PAC, Progressive Voters of America, that has already been caught cheating on the campaign finance rules: they had to pay a fine.
Link to second PAC -- www.ibtimes.com/...
What makes this hysterical is that Bernie had a line in his standard stump speech, screeching about the evils of PACs. Right after he was busted for getting PAC help, he swiftly removed the line from his speech.
Almost a thousand other Sanders donors have been busted by the FEC for violating campaign finance laws. The FEC also busted the Sanders campaign itself for not reporting the money properly, threatening an audit. By February, Bernie’s campaign had committed so many violations of campaign law that the FEC was forced to write a 43-page report just to make a PARTIAL list of the crimes. It apparently includes dozens and dozens of foreign donors, a big no-no. But it doesn’t include ALL of the people who violated the law in funneling illegal money to the Sanders campaign, and it doesn’t mention the PAC that illegally funded Sanders either. Read for yourself:
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/988/201602110300034988/201602110300034988.pdf
Bernie campaign itself has been busted by the FEC: $23 million not properly accounted for, donors exceeding donation limits, illegal foreign donors, missing donation information, improper disbursements, improper handling of reimbursements. The paperwork claims that $10 million of it is from $35 donors in Washington DC which would mean that half the population of our capital city donated that amount to Bernie. ALL ON THE SAME DATE.
And if he gets the nomination and is faced with the challenge of raising real money? Going all the way through the general election means a billion-dollar budget. He can only win by going to the big boys for the money, and everyone knows it, whether he chooses to admit it or not.
Bernie also gets big pots of money from American Crystal, who declared war on their own workers, hired scabs, and fired a thousand people who were trying to feed their families. Remember that the next time Bernie waves his pro-union cred in your face.
If Bernie is so hot to nail the big money boys, why is it that Sanders voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which reduces the regulations on bankers regarding over-the-counter trading?
And a man who spends a quarter century in Congress using Democratic party money to get there….is not part of the establishment? This guy is not only a career politician – “politician” is literally the only job he’s ever had.
Meanwhile, the “clean candidate”’s team illegally broke into Clinton data, stole people’s private information, and lied about it. And Team Sanders sending out fake union members to infiltrate meetings. And Sanders sending women to campaign on Tinder, forcing Tinder to chuck them out. Constantly working the referees. Claiming endorsements he never got. And trolling the internet with lies and smear attacks, so abusively that the Sanders campaign had to tell them publicly to tone it down. Attacking and undermining the national party chairman. Sending operatives to disrupt Clinton events. Rigging online polls. Promising a positive campaign and then spending six months implying that Hillary is a criminal. Working hard to get Hillary supporters thrown out of Facebook. Exaggerating his record on the Hill, taking credit for the work of others. And claiming simultaneously that Hillary didn’t win Iowa and that Hillary stole the win in Iowa. The New Hampshire Attorney General is already investigating two Sanders campaign officials for criminal violations.
Bernie Nuts are STILL gang-attacking John Lewis’ Facebook page and Twitter feed. John Lewis, the hero of the civil rights movement, arrested dozens of times, his skull fractured. And now at the age of 75 he is being savagely attacked for the terrible crime of not endorsing Bernie. They called him Uncle Tom. All because Lewis busted Sanders for lying about his record in the civil rights movement.
Recently Team Bernie was caught sending out mailers which imply that the American Legion was endorsing him. Even worse, the ad said “Veterans fought for us: Bernie fought for them.” Which is particularly shocking since, as head of the committee on veterans, Sanders blew off veteran complaints about the service they were getting (he also blew off fighting in Vietnam, by the way). Is anyone surprised that Legion was extremely pissed?
In Nevada, the Sanders campaign actively called registered Republicans and encouraged them to come to the Democratic caucuses; they called Democrats and told them the caucuses start six hours later than they really do; they distributed misleading information about the caucuses even though the state party warned that they were causing chaos; they are pretending to be Clinton campaigners and annoying people at home, sometimes calling in the middle of the night. Sending a Sanders precinct captain to a Clinton town hall, pretending to be an unaffiliated “real estate agent”, so he could ask Hillary a flagrantly leading and insulting question. Sanders sending out fake union members to campaign, forcing the union to stop them. Harrassing Hillary supporters in the streets in Nevada. College Republicans worked tirelessly to push young Republicans into the Democratic caucus to vote for Bernie – and then vote in the Republican caucus too. Bussing people in from California to vote for Bernie in Nevada. A phone bank operator for the Sanders campaign thought it would be funny to submit Hillary’s obituary to the Las Vegas newspaper; the Secret Service warned him he could go to jail.
Screeching “English only” to shout down civil rights leader Dolores Huerta – WHICH FORCED LATINO VOTERS TO VOTE WITHOUT KNOWING THE CAUCUS RULES. There is also video of Susan Sarandon, a hard-core Sanders supporter who also backed Ralph Nader, chasing Huerta down and screeching a bunch of anti-Hillary nonsense in Huerta’s face. Huerta is an 85-year-old civil rights icon who was arrested more than 20 times and beaten so badly she lost her spleen. And Team Bernie is roughing her up in the hallway like street thugs. Watch Sarandon terrorizing this old woman right here --
vid.me/...
Incidentally, when Bernie’s thugs stopped the caucus people from providing Spanish translations, they violated the Voting Rights Act. On camera. The VRA requires that any jurisdiction with more than five percent of voters speaking a foreign language must provide all materials related to an election—voter registration materials, ballots, notices, instructions—in the language of the language minority group. Team Bernie broke the law, in front of cameras.
This stuff isn’t new. Sanders has run push polls and used fake endorsements in previous campaigns.
What’s fascinating is Bernie’s widespread use of con men. Paid liars. Bernie supporters pretending they belong to the unions, or that they belong to Black Lives Matter, or that they belong to the Clinton campaign, or that they are “private citizens” who just happen to want to ambush her in town halls.
Okay, so Bernie is a crook, a liar and a hypocrite in campaign financing and campaign tactics, but I’m sure his personal finances are clean as a whistle, right? Bernie owns stock in Morgan Chase, and in Wells Fargo which ripped off black customers, but there’s no conflict of interest, right? He also has stock in companies which are essentially tax evaders, GE, Apple and Facebook.
When is someone going to ask Bernie why he has accepted help from Republican PACs? Those PACs were doing robo-calls for him in Iowa, smearing Hillary and praising Bernie. Unfortunately for them, a reporter caught it and recorded it. As I said, Bernie is the best friend the GOP has, the only one who can block her path to the White House.
Bernie is openly working with Republicans to distort the results of open primaries and caucuses. New Hampshire was actually a tie if you only count Democratic voters, but Bernie and the Republicans bussed in 50,000 non-Democrats to the polls, which was his entire margin of victory. Now he is openly pushing Nevada Republicans to vote in the Democratic caucuses there too.
Keep in mind, Sanders and the Republicans have the same goal, to rip apart the Democratic party.
nocompromisepac.com -- this is the link to the PAC, they’re publicly proclaiming their intent to keep praising Bernie in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
www.desmoinesregister.com/... -- this is the link to the robo-call smearing Hillary.
Bernie is now getting help from Karl Rove’s Super PAC, American Crossroads. Isn’t that just awesome – getting Sanders, Rove and Super PAC all in the same sentence! Rove is running attack ads for Bernie in Nevada. Sanders is getting help from both American Crossroads, the Super PAC, and Crossroads GPS, the 501c4 “social welfare” organization that Karl Rove uses to evade campaign finance laws and launch attack ads under the guise of charity work. So not only is Sanders getting Republican help, he is complicit in Karl Rove’s efforts to violate tax law.
America Rising, a PAC that focuses on attacking Democratic candidates, has now branched out, and is attacking…Chelsea Clinton.
Charles Koch wrote an editorial in the Washington Post praising Sanders.
Activists connected to the Kochs are trying to herd Republicans into Democratic primaries to vote for Sanders.
The actual Republican party is openly working for Bernie too. The New Hampshire GOP is campaigning to persuade the state’s Democratic superdelegates to switch to Bernie.
The evidence keeps rolling in.
The CEO of Rove’s American Crossroads bragged about working with Sanders to cut down Hillary’s lead in Nevada.
Crossroads ran pro-Sanders, anti-Clinton advertising in Iowa.
Wall Street is spending big money on Sanders.
A dozen arch-conservative Super PACs are helping Sanders.
Most of the Super PAC money that is being spent in Sanders – millions of it – is from conservative groups.
Most of Hillary’s money is coming from progressives.
In his primaries and especially in caucuses, Sanders is using Republican voters, Republican money, Republican ads, Republican robo-calls, Republican support and Republican talking points and attacks. He’s being used as a tool by conservatives who hate everything he stands for, but he’s too stupid to see it.
Why are Republicans helping Bernie? "Wild, socialistic, liberal Bernie Sanders" would be "easy to beat," RNC Chair Reince Priebus said.
© Kos Media, LLC
Site content may be used for any purpose without
explicit permission unless otherwise specified.
“Kos” and “Daily Kos” are registered trademarks of
Kos Media, LLC.
No comments :
Post a Comment