Bernie Sanders Commits Political Heresy Questioning Military-Industrial Complex

VT Writer Kevin Barrett on PressTV

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Press TV

Leading US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has committed a political heresy by questioning the huge giveaways to the military-industrial complex and wealthy individuals and corporations, American scholar Dr. Kevin Barrett says.

Sanders on Monday criticized the US government for its massive military spending and tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations while eliminating social benefits for low-income and middle-class families.



He proposed spending $1.5 trillion over 10 years to create universal child care and early education system, to be funded by taxing the wealthiest Americans.

The proposal is the latest by the frontrunner Democratic candidate that would vastly expand America’s social welfare system as he seeks the nomination to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November election.

Sanders is proposing massive overhauls of the US economy, including taxing the wealthiest Americans to provide free colleges and ban private health insurance in favor of a government-funded system that guarantees universal health coverage, a system already carried out by many developed countries.

“We have a moral responsibility as a nation to guarantee high-quality care and education for every single child, regardless of background or family income,” the Sanders campaign said in a proposal posted on his website.

During an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night, he was asked how much those programs would cost and how his administration would pay for them.

“I get a little bit tired of hearing my opponents saying how you going to pay for that impacts and helps children or middle-class families, and yet where are people saying how you going to pay for over $750 billion on military spending,” Sanders told Anderson Cooper.

Anderson Cooper asks Bernie how will he pay for his universal childcare plan. Bernie goes off, “I’m getting a little tired … No one ever asks how we pay for $750 billion in new military spending or $1 trillion tax cut for the rich or Wall Street”

Dr. Barrett said that “Sanders is committing what amounts to heresy in the American political religion by questioning the huge giveaways to the military-industrial complex, and to the very richest Americans.”

“Bernie Sanders is being asked how he can finance his social welfare proposals, including free college education, and a huge increase in spending on taking care of small children through early childhood education and care. And his answer is, why would there be a problem finding $1.5 trillion to do that when Trump could with one flick of the pen give away that much money to the rich in tax rebates. And when America can spend 750 billion dollars a year on its military budget, why can’t it find the kinds of money that other countries managed to find to pay for their social welfare services,” said Barrett, an author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D.  in Islamic and Arabic Studies.

“I think Bernie Sanders has a pretty good point; the United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world. And yet, its people, especially its poor people are much less will be taken care of than those in another equivalent, well off nations,” he told Press TV on Tuesday.

“And the reason for that is twofold. That is the United States is throwing money at its billionaires. It doesn’t tax the rich the way most other developed countries do. And it’s throwing money at its military-industrial complex, to the point that the US military budget is larger than the combined budget to the next, six, seven, some say even 10 nations combined, depending on how you add it up,” he said.

‘Sanders talks about a paradigm shift’

“So Bernie Sanders is talking about a paradigm shift. He’s basically talking about making the United States of America, a normal country and that, of course, freaks out the American exceptionalists. They believe America is an exceptional nation, so it has to be exceptionally evil in terms of being pilfered by extremely wealthy people, in terms of murdering people all over the world with its military machine,” he stated.

“Bernie Sanders doesn’t see why the United States needs to be so exceptionally evil. Why can’t the United States spend money to try to make things better for human beings? And I think he has a great point there,” the analyst said.

“I would question his notion that necessarily spending money on daycare is a good thing. Here in the United States, we have a social ethos in which women feel pressured to put their babies in daycare and to pay other women minimum wage to take care of large groups of other people’s babies. This is not optimal. What we need is a system that would help mothers take care of their own children. But because of the feminist revolution, and the other kinds of anti-family ideas that have been pushed through here, that’s probably not going to happen,” the scholar said.

“In any case, Bernie Sanders’ proposal is certainly an improvement on the status quo. And it’ll be very interesting to see him going up against Donald Trump, who is the ultimate in psychopathic, narcissistic billionaires who want to grab everything for themselves. And Sanders represents the exact opposite. So perhaps we US Americans will actually have a meaningful choice in the upcoming presidential elections,” he concluded.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. “We have a moral responsibility as a nation to guarantee high-quality care and education for every single child, regardless of background or family income,”

    who says? is bernie echoing the constitution?

  2. Bernie has hit the nail on the head. However, if he wins, how will he handle the threat that he will certainly receive. the death threat. The only way to change this nation is to arrest those responsible for September 11, 2001, down to the 911 investigation committee members, and I don’t see that ever happening. We are all co-conspirators by our silence. Organized criminals run the show, but they own the judicial system, as evidenced by the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, so until the system is turned upside down and inside out; no one can change it. Certainly not 1 man.

  3. Here in Scandinavia (and all the Nordic countries) we have free health care (after having paid a hundred dollars yourself each year) and university education is free (except for books — but the most important textbooks are all available in the reading rooms). On the other hand, we have very few standing troops in foreign nations — although Jens Stoltenberg et a.. as chief eunuc are hard at work to make us beleieve we should fool ourselves to dream of being like US of north A & the GB ruffians. Bernie Sanders we think is a wee bit to rightist and not leftist enough.

  4. When I came up in the 1950’s-1960’s my dear friend Paul Enterline who owned the local Union76
    Station violated the California Labor Law and permitted me to work 80 hours/week in the Summer at $1.00/hour and save about $1,000 living at home, which would almost get me through the year at UC Berkeley living inexpensively in a Co-op where students did most of the work to keep costs down. I did make a small loan of about $600.00 in my senior year which, although I could have had it waived, I paid off with my first check as a young assistant professor at Georgia. We must move away from this obscenity of students owing hundreds of thousands of dollars upon college graduation. These are the people who are our future. Shame on all the fools who led us down this wrong road.

    • I think for a man of his age Bernie shows amazing intelligence and stamina. We must raise the taxes up to the 99% rates for these obscenely rich billionaires who speculate in the corrupt Stock Market Racket. We must end the obscene military spending racket. America is broke right now. Nobody really knows how much money our government owes or to whom they owe it. Any morning now any American could wake up to find their bank accounts have been looted by government to pay off the massive debts. All H will break loose when this event happens. Chaos and anarchy will ensue. We must end all billions of dollars sent to Israel. Donald Adolph is a lying piece of garbage. He wishes and prays for WWIII. Israel did 9/11/01 with the aid of Bush, Cheney and some four star traitors who should all be in a jail cell for life. 535 whores in Congress passed the unconstitutional Patriot Act gang raping us of our Constitutional Rights.

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