Bernie Sanders and Billionaires: The Internal Contradiction

Bernie Sanders appeared on "60 Minutes" Sunday night and was questioned with softball questions and no follow-ups by Anderson Cooper.

Bernie looked like Muhammed Ali during his "fly like a butterfly sting like a be" period, thanks to Cooper questioning or lack of it.

The whopper was when Bernie defended his support of Castro by saying, "When Fidel Castro came into power he had a massive literacy program."

Say what?

Cuba has some of the most repressive press restrictions in the world and it started when Castro took power. It is literacy to read propaganda and that is about it.

Amnesty International reports:

[W]hile tourists flock to the island to experience its romantic, old-world charm before it “changes”, less romantic is its history of restricting freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, still shown in the authorities’ determination to stifle dissent.

 Freedom of expression can land you in jail in Cuba...The state has a virtual monopoly on print and broadcast media.

The Cuban Constitution recognizes freedom of the press but expressly prohibits private ownership of the mass media. While independent journalists and bloggers have emerged in recent years, the authorities continue to prevent journalists critical of the government from doing their jobs.

Not a peep about any of this from Cooper. He let Bernie slide with his Castro literacy program comment.

And there is more, Giancarlo Sopo writes:

Bernie Sanders is literally repeating communist propaganda on #60Minutes. Cuba already had one of the highest literacy rates in LatAm before Castro and as a Cuban historian explains here, his "literacy program" was actually a Marxist indoctrination effort.

And then things moved on.  Cooper pushed Bernie on his massive statist program advocacy, Bernie's answer was always that he would "tax billionaires."

Toward the end, Bernie went totally Soviet and announced on the show a new plan, "Universal childcare from infancy." There was not a peep from Cooper about the horrific idea of the government getting involved in raising children from infancy!

When Cooper asked him how he was going to pay for it. Bernie responded, "by taxing the billionaires." He then diverted his answer with no follow-up from Cooper.

One thing is certain, with Bernie's nutty view that he can just tax billionaires to pay for everything, Bernie is going to need an economy that creates billionaires like never before.

But at the same time, Bernie has stated, "I don’t think that billionaires should exist."

He has announced plans to tax even the accumulated wealth of all billionaires--to destroy them.

So how is Bernie going to pay for his programs if he needs to tax billionaires to pay for them but eliminates billionaires at the same time?

Taxing billionaire assets is a one time shot, paying for massive government on-going programs is a never-ending expense.

And there is what the communists would call an internal contradiction.

-RW