RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/cnn-presidential-debate-show-lloyd-billingsley/

The undercard of the Democrat debate kicked off Tuesday morning when previously missing-in-action Hunter Biden gave an interview with ABC News. Joe Biden’s son conceded it was “poor judgment” to be involved in ventures in Ukraine and China that have complicated his father’s situation. On the other hand, Hunter insisted he “did nothing wrong at all.”

Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders had just emerged from Heart Attack Hotel and Elizabeth Warren had not, as she claimed, been fired because she was visible pregnant. Like her false claim to be a Cherokee, that was no obstacle to a continued run for president, at least for Democrats.

The real back story came on Monday, with the revelation from the O’Keefe video that CNN was determined to, as Jeff Zucker said, “stay very focused on impeachment.” When the show started at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, it was a joint production with CNN’s impeachment surge. Anderson Cooper asked the twelve Democrats if it was better to let the voters decide.

“The president obstructed justice and done it repeatedly,” said Sen Elizabeth Warren. “Donald Trump broke the law. Impeachment must go forward.”

Socialist Bernie Sanders called Trump “the most corrupt president in the history of this country.” So Sanders called for a “speedy impeachment process,” and “McConnell must allow a free and fair trial.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warren-and-sanders-policy-mates-11571181041

Bernie Sanders wants voters to know that he—not Elizabeth Warren —is the bona fide socialist running for President in 2020. “There are differences between Elizabeth and myself,” Mr. Sanders said Sunday on ABC. “Elizabeth I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I’m not.”

As he falls in the polls, Mr. Sanders has to do something to reignite that 2016 fire. But the Vermont Senator’s problem is that Ms. Warren has co-opted more or less all of his important policy proposals. True-blue socialists might thus conclude that in Ms. Warren they can get nearly all of Bernie’s agenda from a younger (barely, at age 70) candidate without the socialist label.

Consider the policy list. She and Mr. Sanders both want Medicare for All, including the end of private health insurance. The main difference is that Mr. Sanders admits he’d raise taxes on the middle class, while Ms. Warren ducks the question. They both vilify “the top 0.1%” and promise to make wealthy Americans “pay their fair share.” Her wealth tax would hit the net worth of “ultra-millionaires” at rates up to 3% a year. His would drain “extreme wealth” with a top rate of 8% a year.

It’s almost a vaudeville joke for policy wonks. What’s the difference between a socialist and a capitalist? Five percentage points, apparently. This punch line also holds regarding their respective proposals on “accountable capitalism” (Ms. Warren) and “corporate accountability” (Mr. Sanders). She wants to make big companies give 40% of their board seats to workers. He wants 45%.

They both would force these companies to get a new federal charter requiring them to consider “stakeholders” rather than shareholders in their business decisions. They both want to reimpose the old Glass-Steagall fence between commercial banking and investment banking. “The business model of Wall Street is fraud,” Mr. Sanders likes to say. Ms. Warren also thinks bankers are crooks: “Wall Street is looting the economy.” They agree the U.S. Postal Service should become a bank that offers government checking accounts and would compete with private banks.