Bernie Sanders Really Hated All That Fundraising w/Big Banks He Used to Do
Bernie Sanders 2016: There's a Socialist sucker born every minute.
February 8, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
If you listen to one of Bernie Sanders' rants about campaign finance, you get the idea that he's just a little guy raising money from ordinary people. As he likes to yell, "$27 dollars", who is a world away from the high finance world of campaign fundraising and big donors, and wants to tear it all down. But Bernie's authenticity is a scam. Politicians cultivate a particular image. Bernie Sanders is a successful politician who cultivates the image of an eccentric grass roots politician who has nothing to do with big time fundraising. The truth is he has always been a big part of that world.
In recent years, Sanders has been billed as one of the hosts for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's retreats for the "Majority Trust" -- an elite group of top donors who give more than $30,000 per year -- at Martha's Vineyard in the summer and Palm Beach, Florida, in the winter. CNN has obtained invitations that listed Sanders as a host for at least one Majority Trust event in each year since 2011.
The retreats are typically attended by 100 or more donors who have either contributed the annual legal maximum of $33,400 to the DSCC, raised more than $100,000 for the party or both.
Sanders has based his presidential campaign on a fire-and-brimstone critique of a broken campaign finance system -- and of Hillary Clinton for her reliance on big-dollar Wall Street donors. But Sanders is part of that system, and has helped Democrats court many of the same donors.
He is indeed. At the last Dem debate, he admitted that he had considered setting up a SuperPAC. Despite his rants about SuperPACs. (But then again Obama claimed to hate SuperPACs until he literally became one.)
A Democratic lobbyist and donor who has attended the retreats told CNN that about 25% of the attendees there represent the financial sector -- and that Sanders and his wife, Jane, are always present.
"At each of the events all the senators speak. And I don't recall him ever giving a speech attacking us," the donor said. "While progressive, his remarks were always in the mainstream of what you hear from senators."
Of course he did. Bernie Sanders doesn't speak truth to power. He speaks applause lines to audiences. And his wife has certainly benefited from certain financial arrangements back in Vermont.
Sanders' political leanings were well known by the donors who attended the retreats. "Nobody was more surprised that Bernie was there than the donors were," said another Democrat who attended the retreats.
Bernie Gotta Eat.
But Sanders maintains that members of Congress now spend far too much time making calls seeking campaign contributions -- or "dialing for dollars," he said during a speech at the New England Council's "Politics and Eggs" event Friday morning.
"That's what they do. And not only should members who are elected be working for the people, not raising money -- if you think you could simply divide your brain in half, if you're working on unemployment or health care and think, now I've gotta go out and raise money, it affects your entire being," he said.
Yeah, it diverts Bernie Sanders from the two of the three bills he actually cosponsored that got passed, to rename Vermont post offices. But really the fake authenticity that Bernie Sanders brings to the table aids the fundraising.
Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said Sanders has "raised more money for the Senate Democrats than almost any other member of the Senate Democratic caucus" because he sees helping the party regain the majority as critical.
So the Independent thing is also a scam.
In 2006, when Sanders ran for the Senate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pumped $37,300 into his race and included him in fundraising efforts for the party's Senate candidates.
The party also spent $60,000 on ads for Sanders, and contributed $100,000 to the Vermont Democratic Party -- which was behind Sanders even as he ran as an independent.
Among the DSCC's top contributors that year: Goldman Sachs at $685,000, Citigroup at $326,000, Morgan Stanley at $260,000 and JPMorgan Chase & Co. at $207,000.
Sanders was among the senators who met with Sen. Chuck Schumer's "Legacy Circle" donors who had given the legal maximum to the DSCC five years in a row or $500,000 over their lifetimes.
He paid dues to the DSCC, too, with his Progressive Voters of America political action committee cutting checks for $30,000 to the group during the 2014 election cycle.
Oh tell us more.
The 2007 Martha’s Vineyard fundraiser guest list included professional lobbyists, corporate executives, trade association heads, labor union brass and wealthy individual donors.
Some are government relations executives directly employed by corporations such as the financial firms Blackrock and Prudential Financial, or the defense contractor Raytheon. Others represent large Washington law and lobbying firms, such as DLA Piper, Patton Boggs, and Akin Gump.
Some names stand out, like John Breaux, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana turned mega-lobbyist who has worked for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Chevron, ExxonMobil and more. Then there’s former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, who has represented many petrochemical and pipeline companies as well as Stanford Financial, the now defunct financial firm felled by an alleged Ponzi scheme.
Other guests included a lobbyist for the private equity firm Blackstone Group as well as those who have represented pipeline company Kinder Morgan, the American Petroleum Institute, pharmaceutical giants such as Merck and Allergan (now involved in a controversial inversion deal), and the pharmaceutical trade association, among others.
Translation, every word you hear coming out of the Bernie Sanders liehole is a lie. He's not some independent insurgent who is outside the system. He's what the system was built on. And he's lying to his supporters while pumping them for money, telling them what they want to hear, exactly the way he told the big donors what they wanted to hear while pumping them for cash.
Bernie Sanders 2016. Because there's a Socialist sucker born every minute.
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