Who Is Marvin Voting for in the New York Primary?
Creative Commons Licensed Image "Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton - Caricatures" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.
The New York Primary is today, as you may have heard, and a lot of people are asking how I’ll be voting?
I didn’t want to say in advance, for fear it might be skewing Nate Silver’s projections. The unexplained error in numbers might be found in a premature telling of where I stand.
The candidates are, as I gather:
- Hillary, a member of the firm of Goldman Sachs Clinton, for whom she is a pro bono adviser who receives $250,000 per afternoon’s work to cover her travel expenses and other sundries. The firm is currently paying a $5 billion fine for its illegal business practices based on her speeches. But it’s worth it.
- Also running is Bernie, the only socialist ever to be considered presidential timber, an achievement not even the revered Eugene V. Debs accomplished. In his last of five efforts in 1920, he was in jail.
Where Hillary might be by the time November rolls around. My right wing friends tell me there is a good chance she will be indicted before Election Day. So why waste your vote on Hillary?
Bernie is also the only Jewish Socialist in the race, an attribute that will not be forgotten by the Republicans in their megamillions TV attack campaign should he get the nomination.
Of the two, I will be voting for Bernie.
I love his William Jennings Bryan Cross of Gold speech. Some people say he doesn’t need to keep repeating himself for voters to get his message. I’m not one of them.
While I don’t agree with my man Bernie on every issue— nobody is perfect—I am thrilled that he is calling the political system corrupt. Big Money should not be deciding who is eligible to be president.
The economy is rigged in favor of the rich. The 1% have enough going for them already just by being in the 1%.
Our big banking system is the most dangerous to health and welfare of the nation since Andrew Jackson’s fight against the second national bank in the 1832 elections.
A pox on every house of Morgan, Citibank, et al., I say.
I believe college tuition should be free. We have created a nation of deadbeats with student debt. Our best and brightest enter the real world post-college burdened by a debt load that in some cases follows them into assisted living homes.
I believe everybody should have affordable health care. We should not be the only civilized nation that doesn’t guarantee health care to its citizens. It’s a right, not a privilege, like safe drinking water.
Okay, Mister Hopeless Idealist, but how will Bernie pay for all of what his opponents would like to think of as luxuries?
If I were Bernie, I would put the cost of his proposals in the defense budget.
Don’t call his universal health insurance plan, for example, by some clunky bureaucratic name like Affordable Care Improvement Part II-A, or whatever. Give it a sexy name, like the B-12, the Death Defyier!
Nobody gets upset, or even notices, when we manage to find the money to spend billions on a military weapon system, like the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, a fifth generation fighter plane with stealth technology, which ultimately would cost taxpayers $1 trillion. Back in 2011, it was estimated each plane would cost about $90 million. The Defense Department intended to buy 2,443 at a price tag of $382 billion. The Government Accountability Office estimated $650 billion was needed to operate and maintain the aircraft, and the total cost a staggering trillion. In other words, the Atlantic magazine suggested, we were spending more on this one plane than Australia’s entire GDP ($924 billillion).
When was the last time anybody asked what the F-35 has done for us lately?
There is never even any outrage about weapon systems that don’t pan out. A 2011 Forbes magazine study of fiscal myopia (“How to Waste $100 Billion: Weapon That Didn’t Work Out”) found the Army the biggest culprit. Who can ever forget the thrilling experiment with the Crusader, the mobile cannon that was too heavy to fit with their plans for a more mobile force? It only cost $2 billion to junk. In 2004 it killed the Comanche, the next generation “armed reconnaissance” chopper, squandering $7 billion. Bloomberg Business News in 2011 reported that the service had wasted $32 billion on doomed weapon projects since 1995.
Economy-minded budget-busting Republicans were too busy slashing billions from programs like early education —in Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s immortal words, “ to save our children from bankruptcy”— to mind Defense Department cock-ups.
Even if Bernie’s programs for health insurance or tuition-free zones don’t work as anticipated, by then they would be considered “too big to fail.”
And if the Pentagon budget can’t handle all of Pres. Bernie’s public service programs for improving the American way of life they could be included in the CIA secret black book budget, which the public never gets to see.
As constructive as all of this is, Mister Smart Guy, there are those who say you’re not even registered to vote in the New York Primary. In that case, consider me one of the 0.004 % of the electorate who the 21 Republican governors are hoping to stamp out voter fraud with by mandating tougher ID laws.
My advice to all, registered or unregistered, is vote early and vote often.
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Marvin Kitman
April 19, 2016