The Pope’s Candidate

Well, Bernie Sanders, pro-abortion Senator from the Peoples Republic of Vermont,  has had his moment at the Vatican, courtesy of the fact that he and the Pope both embrace the pernicious superstition known as socialism:

Someone was listening. On Friday, Mr. Sanders was scheduled to fly to Rome to address the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in effect the Vatican’s in-house think tank on social, economic and environmental issues.

“We invited the candidate who cites the pope the most in his campaign, and that is Senator Bernie Sanders,” said Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the academy’s chancellor.

Monsignor Sánchez Sorondo, an Argentine who is close to the pope, said that Mr. Sanders’s focus on climate change and his attention to poor people on the margins of society were “very analogous to that of the pope.” He said that made the Vermont senator an obvious person to invite to Friday’s conference, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of an encyclical by Pope John Paul II about the potential pitfalls of the market economy after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In his speech Sanders wrapped his socialist politics in a patina of Catholicism, something highly congenial to the powers that be at the Vatican:

But as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have warned us and the world, the consequences have been even direr than the disastrous effects of financial bubbles and falling living standards of working-class families. Our very soul as a nation has suffered as the public lost faith in political and social institutions. As Pope Francis has stated: “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules.” And the Pope has also stated: “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

And further: “While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.”

Pope Francis has called on the world to say: “No to a financial system that rules rather than serves” in Evangeli Gaudium. And he called upon financial executives and political leaders to pursue financial reform that is informed by ethical considerations. He stated plainly and powerfully that the role of wealth and resources in a moral economy must be that of servant, not master.

Go here to read the rest.  After giving this speech, Sanders had a brief meeting with the Pope.  The Pope, with his usual charm, attacked critics who thought it political that he would meet with a presidential candidate during a presidential election year:

Pope Francis says a brief meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just “good manners” and not political interference.

They met early in the lobby of the Pope’s residence before he left to meet migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.

“If anyone thinks that greeting someone is getting involved in politics, I recommend that he look for a psychiatrist,” Pope Francis added.

Like much that has gone on in this Vatican, this type of overt involvement by a Pope in an American presidential election is unprecedented.  It is also hilarious as the economic policies embraced by Sanders, like those of the Pope, would only produce disaster if he managed to get elected.  It is not an accident that the State which sends him to Washington has a very poor economic outlook:

Only New York is worse than Vermont when it comes to tax and regulatory policies that foster economic growth, according to a new report on economic competitiveness between states.

According to the eighth annual Rich States, Poor States, Vermont is 49th out of 50 states on economic outlook due to the state’s ratings on 15 different variables, including tax rates, labor policies and overall regulatory burden.

The Green Mountain State has ranked among “poor states” every year since the report first published in 2008.

For 2015, the top five states with the best economic outlook are Utah, North Dakota, Indiana, North Carolina and Arizona. States making a race to the bottom include New York, Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Jonathan Williams, a former staff economist for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation and coauthor of the report, said 2015 is shaping up to be a year of tax cutting by states.

Go here to read the rest.  Leftist economists have attacked his proposals as being economic never-never land:

Mr. Sanders on “Fox News Sunday” defended his comment in a debate Thursday that critics have assailed: “A family right in the middle of the economy would pay $500 more in taxes and get a reduction in their health costs of $5,000.

By the reckoning of the left-of-center economists, none of whom are working for Mrs. Clinton, the proposals would add $2 trillion to $3 trillion a year on average to federal spending; by comparison, total federal spending is projected to be above $4 trillion in the next president’s first year. “The numbers don’t remotely add up,” said Austan Goolsbee, formerly chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, now at the University of Chicago.

Alluding to one progressive analyst’s criticism of the Sanders agenda as “puppies and rainbows,” Mr. Goolsbee said that after his and others’ further study, “they’ve evolved into magic flying puppies with winning Lotto tickets tied to their collars.”

Go here to read the rest.  Sanders supporters meanwhile, are unwilling, according to a recent survey, to pay much in new taxes to bring Sanders’ unicorn based spending policies to reality:

But even among Clinton and Sanders supporters the amount of money people said they were willing to pay, in the form of additional taxes, was less than what the proposals would likely cost:

About 66 percent of Sanders supporters said they wouldn’t be willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for universal health care. This includes the 8 percent of Sanders supporters who aren’t willing to pay anything at all…

But Sanders’s plan to pay for universal health care coverage would increase taxes on most voters by more than $1,000…

The kicker for all of this? Some analysts believe Sanders’s plan will cost twice as much as his campaign estimates.

Two points: First, I strongly suspect there is a reason Sanders’ supporters are not eager to shell out more than a little more than they are now paying. It’s because they’ve been told endlessly by Sanders, and others, that the problem is other people–corporations, the wealthy, billionaires–are not paying their fair share. So what Sanders’ supporters have been conditioned to expect is more government services that the greedy fat cats will pay for on their behalf.

Second point: Sanders’ supporters really don’t grasp that there is not an endless pool of free money floating around in the form of wealth that can be confiscated from evil corporations, billionaires, etc. If they did, if they understood that they themselves would bear a large share of the burden for these policy proposals almost immediately, Sanders would be a lot less popular. That’s not to say there wouldn’t be some folks making an argument that, long term, single-payer would be more efficient and cheaper. There are lots of people in Sanders’ camp who believe that.

But clearly not enough do or some of those that do have not done the math. Sanders’ poll numbers and the sheer enthusiasm for his campaign are bolstered by a lot of people who believe they’re going to get everything for next to nothing because, again, they’ve been told someone else will foot the bill.

Turning to the issue of “free” tuition for college, Vox found the same thing:

Sanders supporters are far and away the most likely to want free public college tuition. Still, 14 percent said they don’t want to pay additional taxes for it — and another half said they would only pay up to $1,000 a year…

That said, in a theoretical world where every Sanders policy comes true, they might not even have to pay a dime. The way Sanders proposes paying for free public college tuition is by levying a tax on Wall Street speculators.

Again, I think this makes my first point. Sanders is promising “free” tuition with no cost even in terms of additional taxes. But when asked if they would foot the bill themselves, 14% of his supporters say they would pay nothing while 29% would pay up to $500. That’s about what you would pay for a single 3-credit class at a local community college. Another 21% would pay up to $1000 extra in taxes, so that’s two 3-credit community college classes. Two-thirds of Sanders’ supporters want a full year of state college for less than the cost of one semesters of part-time classes at a community college.

Go here to read the rest.  Like the Pope, Bernie Sanders and his acolytes embrace a vision of the State implementing their economic dreams.  Like the Pope, Sanders and his minions believe that  someone else will foot the bill.  Sanders is the perfect presidential candidate for the Papacy of Francis, a pontificate that embraces envy as economic policy and the State as the secular savior to implement a socialist agenda.