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by Don Keelan
On March 26, 2025, the Bennington Banner published the New York Times Jacob Gallagher’s story on how Vermont’s Senior Senator, Bernie Sanders, is crisscrossing the country sounding the alarm on the influence of oligarchy.
It is so reassuring to me that Vermont’s crisis of housing, education funding, homelessness, flood recovery, physical and mental health, and crime is now behind us.
Why else would our State’s senior senator leave Senator Peter Welch and Representative Becca Balint, our other congressional delegates, to continue his work?
In late March, according to Gallagher, the Senator’s speaking trips were far from Vermont: Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. There have been other trips before and more to come, with fair-sized gatherings of spectators at each stop.
Such trips and the advance set-ups are expensive. Who is paying the bills for such costly endeavors?
Next question. When Bernie was electioneering in Vermont for his past two runs for the US Senate, did he inform us that he would be spending much time out-of-state? He had two presidential campaigns to run and the current crusade of the impact of the millionaires and billionaires. Could it be possible for us to get along with just one senator?
According to Gallagher, the message on the stomping trips is “about millionaires and billionaires and the 1% keeping the working class underfoot.”
Based on some internet research, there are about 800 billionaires worldwide and thousands more millionaires (including Senator Sanders).
Further research, noted in the February 28, 2025, WSJ, has revealed a new classification that Senator Sanders has not yet embraced: “The Superbillionaires.”
The piece defines a superbillionaire as someone with a net worth of $55.4 billion. There are 24; seven are not from the US (Prajogo Pangestu #24) up to #1, Elon Musk, at $419 billion.
In between are some well-known names in business/finance/politics: #3 Jeff Bezos (Amazon), #4 Larry Ellison (Oracle), #5 Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), and #8 Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway). Alice Walton of Walmart and Bill Gates of Microsoft are not in the top ten.
The WSJ piece also noted that most, if not all, of the 24 did not inherit their wealth but built it within the tech industry during the past 30 years or so. Unlike the millionaires of a century ago, whose millions came from developing railroads, shipping, and oil, the current cohort’s wealth is in stock investments.
What puzzles me is the Senator’s comment about “keeping the working class underfoot.” Regardless of what one might think of their politics, Gates, Musk, Walton, and Bezos created new industries and millions of jobs, all in non-existent sectors 40 years ago.
Bernie has one thing in common with the above. He, along with his colleagues in Washington, has created millions of jobs in the federal, state, and local governments, to say nothing about the astonishing growth in nongovernment organizations (NGOs). The latter receive taxpayer funds and are administered by battalions of government personnel.
Senator Sanders and his traveling companion, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.NY), should have learned from last November’s election. The working class no longer listens to the Progressive and Democratic parties’ message.
Their message lost its veracity. The so-called working class has no issue with the wealthiest class. It was the “new class,” the highly educated class who got their college and graduate school loans forgiven. Has Bernie or OAC ever mentioned, “let’s forgive the loan a construction worker has on his/her $60,000 pick-up truck? Or forgive the loans needed to acquire the $50,000 for tools in the truck’s equipment chest?”
If Bernie and OAC had the power to extract the cumulative wealth, approximately $2,7 trillion, of all 17 superbillionaires and use it to pay down the federal debt, presently $36 trillion, it would reduce the debt by 7.5%.
The traveling duo will not succeed in the above. For now, the millionaires, billionaires, and superbillionaires are safe. What might be in store for the next decade’s trillionaires?
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.
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Categories: Commentary
Our Senator —- Does the image of a pitiful itinerant clown preaching an archain theology come to mind?
Dennis Morrisseau
Don, Thank you for the article and thank you for your honored service as a US Marine. Semper Fi!
Bernie Marvin
Piermont, NH
Bernie-AOC 2028
a grifter super union…..the party transformation will then be complete, two complete actors running the show. The literal auditions that AOC participated and beat out 10,000 contestants was accurate, Senk Ugar and the crew knew what they were doing, and yes they were former Bernie Bros, when you get a bit of information on what was really going on, it’s interesting. Certainly not what I thought was going on, but there it is, the truth is hard to let go when you see it.
Bernie will be pushing close to ninety years-old in 2028 and be even more irrelevant.
It’s really amazing that Bernie and the rest of the crooks in the democrat party claim to be fighting the rich but refuse To give the poor a tax break
And it’s amazing that the broke school teacher, Becca Balint, It’s already worth 5 million bucks after a couple years in Congress.
We need an investigation into every politician to see where and how they accumulate so much money in such a short time on a pay check they claim they can’t survive on.
And I can understand why the state of Vermont is going down the tubes because I don’t think we have an elected official on either side of the aisle that has a clue about restoring the economy.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/12ABnm2x2rb/
the loonie left is not opposed to oligarchy; they just want their oligarchs
Don’t worry he’s going to stop people from buying a $26 onsie, and instead get them to spend $27 on his latest grift which will get them much less than a onsie, it will get them absolutely nothing.
History will show Vermont had a dark cloud over our state for decades, lead by a dark cloud actor named Bernie Sanders.
He’s got a good schtick that many have fallen for. All starting when out of state voters put him in the Burlington mayors office. It was no accident getting out of state students to vote in Burlington, I remember it well and even at a young college age thought this doesn’t make any sense.
This is how the game of subversion is played and won. We need to be wiser than snakes and more innocent than doves.
Absolutely! He is the worst thing to happen to Vermont and AOC is a freaking liar and a joke! But the more they push the same thing the Socialist Democrats pushed last time we will definitely win again in 2028! I don’t agree with Trump 💯 % but there is nothing in the Democratic agenda I could ever support! I’m 98% with Trump.
I have long thought that Bernie is the most dangerous man in America because he is able to convince voters that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.
I have to agree with all that have written replies, Bernie has lived off the taxes we all pay and has never had to produce anything remotely close to a profit! Welch is just a Bernie follower and stays on the Bernie leash. Balant is our AOC!
Very well put! So True! Welch does nothing and I cringe everytime I get an email about all the things Balint is doing! I always respond to her but I guess she doesn’t like my responses because she never answers anything I ask🤣🤣🤣🤡🤡
A constitutional amendment requiring term limits and another one prohibiting subsidies for all corporations would go along way in establishing a sane and fiscally responsible government.