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eridani

(51,907 posts)
Sat Feb 20, 2016, 01:50 AM Feb 2016

Hedge Fund Billionaires Fund Super PAC Ad Against Bernie Sanders and Minimum Wage Hike

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/17/hedge-fund-billionaires-fund-super-pac-ad-against-bernie-sanders-and-minimum-wage-hike/

Future 45 is run by Brian O. Walsh, a longtime Republican operative who has in the past served as political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Most recently, he was president of the American Action Network, a dark money group that was the second-largest outside spender in 2010.

Over the last year, Future 45 has been funded primarily by hedge fund managers. Two billionaire Rubio-backers — Paul Singer, who runs Elliott Management, and Ken Griffin, who runs Citadel — have each contributed $250,000.

During his career, Sanders has frequently called attention to the wealth amassed by hedge funds, noting that in 2013, “The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than $24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers. This level of inequality is neither moral or sustainable.”

As part of his plan to make public colleges tuition-free, Sanders proposes to impose a .5 percent speculation fee on hedge funds, something that would take direct aim at Singer’s and Griffin’s primary source of income.

Another large donor, coming in at $200,000, is Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who repeatedly lost races for U.S. Senate from Connecticut.

Future 45 had previously targeted Hillary Clinton with ads taking aim at her policies in Libya. This is its first ad against Bernie Sanders.
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Hedge Fund Billionaires Fund Super PAC Ad Against Bernie Sanders and Minimum Wage Hike (Original Post) eridani Feb 2016 OP
Poor baby is going to feel the Bern. And I can't wait! jillan Feb 2016 #1
Well, it's their money down the drain. Nyan Feb 2016 #2
According to Hillary Supporters, this means they are scared of him because he is a better candidate. Rilgin Feb 2016 #3
The level of inequality in our society IS UNSUSTAINABLE AND IMMORAL. JDPriestly Feb 2016 #4

Rilgin

(787 posts)
3. According to Hillary Supporters, this means they are scared of him because he is a better candidate.
Sat Feb 20, 2016, 03:39 AM
Feb 2016

Please I do not claim this. Over the last few weeks, I have seen a number of posts from Hillary supporters claiming that Karl Rove is spending millions attacking Hillary because he wants to run against Bernie.

I assume that they will reverse their positions immediately because it is no longer a convenient meme. However, I would not count on it because consistency is not one of the strongest parts of their arguments.

This does show that Bernie is being perceived as a possible winner of the Democratic Primary. This is good news. I would think Hillary is still a favorite to come out of the primaries because of her establishment support but this shows that the Republicans at least are seeing Bernie as a possibility and are starting to prepare for a run against him as they are against Hillary.

JDPriestly

(57,936 posts)
4. The level of inequality in our society IS UNSUSTAINABLE AND IMMORAL.
Sat Feb 20, 2016, 06:29 AM
Feb 2016

That is simply true.

It isn't about capitalism vs. socialism.

Capitalism is what makes our economy creative and robust. But surely capitalism does not have to mean that the millions who don't reach as far economically as the very few on the top rungs of the financial ladder should be crushed under the weight of the greed and avarice of those at the top.

Capitalism without a moral sense that values equality, respect for each individual regardless of race, ethnicity and creed and that loves justice and fair play for everyone stinks. It just does.

I left the US in the early 1970s to come back in the mid 1980s to streets with homeless sleeping over the vents on the sidewalks. You know those vents that used to be and maybe in some places still come out from the basements of older commercial buildings and apartments that have/had central heating.

At that time, I got up at 5:00 a.m. to take a bus to a temp job for a stock market brokerage way on the other side of town. And when it was time to transfer from one bus to the other, I had to step over sleeping bodies in downtown Los Angeles. Coming from Europe with its rather modest socialist programs that provided housing for just about everyone (although often very modest housing), it was quite shocking.

I had seen drunks sleeping on the sidewalk outside the church my pastor/social worker father served in an urban slum when I was a child. They were scary.

But what I saw when I came back to America in the Reagan era was not scary. It was just cruel. The numbers of bodies. The lack of horror on the parts of those stepping over them. What had happened to my country?

If THESE homeless were drunk. it was so they wouldn't feel the cold. And at that time, it got really cold in Los Angeles on certain nights. Alcoholics they probably were. But homelessness was the central problem, not the alcoholism it seemed to me.

Inequality has grown since that time. It affects the quality of education that children in poor areas, often those with a lot of children who belong to racial minorities, live. It affects the healthcare resources that people have. A hospital doctor can only do so much for a person who has no or very little access to primary care. It affects the rate of drug addiction in the rural areas of the country in which hoping for a job that pays a livable wage or offers the opportunity to advance is useless.

We can do better.

Again, I understand the value of capitalism. It offers opportunities for creativity. It promotes efficiency (as long as you don't have a lot of monopolies or few firms dominating a business sector -- which we have).

But morality has to come first. Capitalism, no matter how much creativity and efficiency it engenders, will destroy itself if it does not conform and value above all else a moral code, an ethical code that insures opportunity to all.

We cannot live together in harmony as a society without a common moral and ethical code. And Wall Street and Big Business in America have abandoned morality and ethics as a code of conduct in our time. That will end badly.

Especially when it comes to some of the hedge funds, and also other investors when you think about what happened in the dot.com and housing bubbles, we need good governance according to an agreed moral and ethical code.

Let's have some balance, please. Bernie seems to understand the need for that balance.

Let's reset our morality and ethics meters.

I was raised in a Christian home. So were most Americans. I care about treating others as I would have them treat me. Whether you believe in God or not, you have to believe surely in the social value of honesty, of kindness, of caring for others, of encouraging love and compassion in society. We cannot live together as human beings without those values. Any attempt to do so will end in violence and savagery. (I was raised as a Christian. I do not men to suggest that other religions are any less moral.)

I do not believe that the inevitable end of capitalism is violence and savagery. But I realize that it is a possible end of any society regardless of the economic system it adopts that abandons compassion. Some parts of our society are close to that end.

Let's turn things around before it is too late.

Feel the Bern!

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