How I came to support Bernie Sanders

How I came to support Bernie Sanders

By Dan Riker

I grew up during the golden years of the 50s and 60s when one income supported families. College education was financially feasible. Life seemed to be improving for almost everyone. It certainly was for me. I am a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Baltimore School of Law. I've had several careers - in journalism, in the big corporation, and as an entrepreneur. I was the CEO of a wireless company, a bookseller and I have written four books.

Like many in my generation, I focused most of my time and energy on my various careers and business activities as well as my family. For much of our lives we lived the American Dream - something that seems mythical to today's young people.

While I was not paying attention, that "Shining City on a Hill" that Ronald Reagan talked about was looted by some of his powerful supporters. Our country was hijacked, and along with it, the futures of our children and grandchildren. I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to find a solution to our economic and political problems. There is no better way to learn about something than to write a book about it. And that's what I did. In so doing I discovered that the solution – like Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story about the Purloined Letter - was hidden in plain sight - in our case, in our history.

Not counting wars, we have had three major crises in America since 1900 - all the result of Republican policies. Progressive leaders and policies brought America safely out of two of them.

Fearing there would be a revolution in the United States over the enormous abuses of the Gilded Age robber barons and Republican Party laissez-faire policies, Theodore Roosevelt embraced Progressive ideas. He saw them as taming the worst features of capitalism and saving capitalism from itself.

Franklin Roosevelt’s progressive New Deal saved America from the second great crisis, the Great Depression.

We now are living through the third crisis. Even though Democrats have held the White House for 15 of the last 23 years, neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama reversed the devastating trickle-down, supply-side, economic policies implemented by Ronald Reagan. We have the worst economic inequality in our history. Nearly all income and wealth are going to the wealthy. The middle class now is less than 50% of the population. Half of all wage-workers are not making enough money from their fulltime jobs to support their families. 30% of children live in poverty. We are the only developed nation that has these problems – and there is no reason we should have them.

My principal conclusion in my book, reached long before Bernie Sanders decided to run for President, is that to overcome our current crisis we have to have a new progressive movement. For that movement to be successful, there has to be national progressive leadership and a following by millions of people over an extended period of time - maybe several elections. Bernie repeatedly has said he cannot do it by himself, that what he is trying to do is lead a progressive movement to take control of governments across the country.

Bernie is one of the leaders I was looking for. Elizabeth Warren is another. They have the right vision for America. Even though Bernie calls himself a democratic socialist, most of his platform comes straight from the progressive platforms and programs of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt.

Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt both supported bank regulation and FDR imposed restrictions on Wall Street. FDR said education was a human right, Both Roosevelts supported health care as a right. Both supported a living wage. FDR’s investments in infrastructure helped the recovery from the Depression. Bernie wants to make massive investments in infrastructure now. Bernie wants to end our current Prohibition – the war on drugs. FDR ended the last one. Bernie wants to tax corporate profits hidden offshore. Corporate tax revenues as a percentage of all taxes were three times higher under FDR than they are now.

Bernie’s program is not radical, or even socialist. It is “as American as apple pie.”

Bernie Sanders has proven he is a great leader by inspiring the massive movement we need. He has thousands of volunteers across the country - hundreds of Bernie groups that spontaneously sprung up. He has overwhelming support among younger voters - particularly the millennials and even younger voters. They are our future. If they are with Bernie - and with his progressive ideas - and if they have the patience and fortitude it will take to bring those ideas to life - I think we can win.

And, I believe we have to succeed. We cannot say it cannot be done. It has to be done. We must fix America. We, the people, can do it. Let's do what must be done so that we carry out our duty to our heritage and to those who will come after us. Let's make America work for everyone.

And if we achieve this, if we elect Bernie Sanders, and with him a whole lot of other progressive Democrats, we will do just what progressives always have done, we will save the country by saving capitalism from itself.

Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights

On January 11, 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt's State of the Union Message to Congress set out his vision of what a post-war America should look like. He called it an "Second Bill of Rights." The "Democratic Socialist" platform of Bernie Sanders is remarkably similar to FDR's plan.

President Roosevelt said:

"This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security."

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Bernie's Platform Is Designed to Reduce Economic Inequality while Increasing Opportunity, Economic Security and Personal Health.

- Provides greater support to unions so that there can be more collective bargaining to gain higher wages.

- A trillion dollar infrastructure program that will create 13-million good-paying jobs.

- A $15 "Living" minimum wage.

- Guaranteed vacation and sick time, maternity leave and equal pay for equal work.

- Health Care as a right, not a privilege with Medicare for all, eliminating the need for employer or personally financed health insurance. Lower prescription drug prices.

- Strengthening Social Security and increasing payments to the elderly and disabled.

- Cancellation and/or revisions of trade deals to provide greater protection of American jobs from imported low-wage products.

- Free public education through four years of college.

- An extensive program for improving rural life and to increasing the incomes of family farms. Included is use of the anti-trust laws against dominant agribusiness and food corporations and revisions in farm subsidies, nearly all of which go to big corporations.

- Programs paid for with a tax on Wall Street transactions, elimination of corporate tax breaks, tax reform, restoring the progressive income tax with higher rates for higher income families and individuals, increasing the Inheritance tax for large estates, lifting the cap on Social Security, increasing employer medicare payments as well as employee withholding.

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