Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, finally disclosed 10 years of tax returns on Monday, providing a more detailed look at his finances than his half-assed offering (tax return for only one year), when he ran for the White House in 2016. Hillary Clinton pushed him to divulge years of tax returns, as she had done. At the time, Mr. Sanders said his wife did their taxes. “We’ve been a little bit busy lately,” he said, pompously, during a debate. “You’ll excuse us.”
Sanders had repeatedly promised to release those pesky taxes, but has been evasive, prompting speculation that he does not want voters to know what is in them. He has said he and his wife, Jane, who serves as an adviser to his presidential campaign, prepare the returns themselves, he claimed.
As the disclosure of his millionaire status sunk in, Mr. Sanders has come under criticism for his expanding personal wealth. A post on the website ThinkProgress last week called Mr. Sanders’s millionaire status “very off-brand and embarrassing,” and a video suggested he had stopped referring to “millionaires” after he became one himself.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Sanders acknowledged that he had become a millionaire.
“I wrote a best-selling book,” he said. “If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
“I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too”. Ok. Let’s think about that statement. This is endemic of his whole problem. He fails to acknowledge, at the least, or understand at the worst, that he wrote a best selling book because he cashed in on his popularity. That it didn’t matter what he wrote, it was going to be a bestseller. That he didn’t have to put near as much effort into writing it as some Joe Blow off the street would. That his bestseller status was for all intents and purposes handed to him on a platter. Also, I just don’t like Bernie. At all. His old “My way or the highway. I’m a Democrat when I need the money and campaign machine” bullshit does not sit well with me. As other candidates start to overtake him in name recognition and he feels they are taking away “his” issues, he will go full on populist demagogue because I think he feels this is owed to him.
Bernie Sanders is part of the 1%. He has been there for a while now. And, again, it’s not the money he has. It’s how he made it. If he made any of it by writing books and selling them on a book tour which he has called others out on, or getting paid for speaking which he has called others out on, or Wall Street investments which he has called others out on, he’s a hypocrite. He has called his opponents out on so many ways they make their money that he is kind of limited in how he could have amassed his over $2M.
Also: $2 million in net worth, after 25 to 30 years in Congress is some pretty piss poor investing. Lord knows what crazy ass shit he’s blown his money on in the past.