Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor

Our store shelves have too many different brands of deodorant and sneakers. Just look at all those horrible, fully stocked aisles at Target and Walgreens and Wal-Mart and Payless and DSW and Dick's Sporting Goods. It's a national nightmare! If only consumers had fewer choices in the free market, fewer entrepreneurs offering a wide variety of products and fewer workers manufacturing goods people wanted, Sanders believes, we could end childhood hunger.

In an interview with financial journalist John Harwood on Tuesday, Sanders detailed his grievances with an overabundance of antiperspirants and footwear. "You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don't think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on."

Try to suppress a snicker: Sanders, Decider of Your Sanitary and Footwear Needs, is casting himself as the Everyman in touch with "ordinary Americans" to contrast his campaign with Hillary "my Beltway lobbyist and foreign agent operator Sid Blumenthal is just a friend I talk to for advice" Clinton.

Blech. By the looks of the 2016 Democratic presidential field, liberals really do practice the anti-choice principles they preach.

At Caracas-on-the-Green Mountains, every business owner's success robs starving babies of vital nutrition. Because some tummies may be grumbling somewhere across the fruited plains, all must suffer. In Sanders' world, it's the "greedy"-- America's real makers, builders and wealth creators -- who must be punished and shamed, specifically with a personal income tax rate hiked to a whopping 90 percent for top earners.

Of course, the wealth redistributors in Washington never bear any of the blame for misspending the billions they confiscate. Nearly 100 million Americans participated in dozens of federal food assistance programs in 2014. The General Accounting Office reported last year that $74.6 billion went to food stamps, $11.3 billion went to the national school lunch program, and $7.1 billion went to the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program, along with $1.9 billion for nutrition assistance for Puerto Rico and $10.7 million for a federal milk program.

But no, it's not the fault of command-and-control bureaucrats and their overseers on Capitol Hill that the War on Poverty and the War on Hunger have failed.

In Sanders' bubble, childhood hunger is the fault of selfish consumers, self-serving entrepreneurs and rapacious retailers who engage in voluntary transactions in a free-market economy. Just as Sanders believes there are "too many" products on the shelves, President Obama recently opined that families of America's top earners in the financial industry "pretty much have more than you'll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use."

We need not speculate about whether the wealth-shamers' recipe of less capitalist consumption, fewer private businesses, stifling of entrepreneurship and more government control over goods and services would result in happier citizens and fuller stomachs. In Venezuela, the shelves are unburdened by "too many" deodorants and shoes and too much soap, milk or coffee. Food distribution is under military control. The currency of the socialist paradise just collapsed on the black market by 30 percent.

Here in America, dozens of private household goods companies make billions of dollars selling scented, unscented, quilted, two-ply, white and colored toilet paper that people want and need. In Sanders' utopia in South America, the government imposed price controls in the name of redistributing basic goods to the poor and seized a toilet paper factory to cure the inevitable shortages. The lines are long. The shelves are empty. The daily battle for subsistence is brutal.

Take it from those who suffer most under the unbridled fulfillment of "you didn't build that" and "you don't need that" radicalism: It stinks.

I'm going to guess the comments I'm receiving ... like yours ... are from people that have never anticipated the SHTF scenerio

I think your original comment was sincere and that you mean no disrespect by it, but let me share where I'm coming from.

First of all, when I was in the military, I understood how to get by on very little. I lived it. Both my income and my lifestyle did not allow for much in the way of choice, nor much in the way of extravvagance. I found that I could live like that, simply, where one can be happy to just have a seat at the end of a long day.

That said, choosing to live simply, and being forced to do so by government edict are two different things. I have anticipated a SHTF scenario, and believe that I could return to more simplicity. But I would not want to live like that for the long term, because I know the taste of freedom.

It's not whether one can live in simplicity, it's a question of whether one should be forced to for an extended period of time.

Thanx ... I appreciate that

My first comment WAS sincere and I was formulating my thoughts from a different perspecftive than from what the comments back at me were coming from

I wasn't going to get into a pissing match ... I've been here too long ... I was going to let the thread die ... but I DO appreciate your comment

Ask the HS grads .... in just a few days .... if they are Republican or democrat

I'll leave all the other questions to your imagination

They have no clue .... but they ARE socialists by indoctrination

"Our store shelves have too many different brands of deodorant and sneakers."

Lately, this is something that capitalists seem to hate as well.

If you want a 24 pack of soda great, but if you want a six pack good luck.

If you want 20 different kinds of Oreo or Dorito, then great, but if you want that one brand of cookie they used to stock but got replaced by double-thick, half-chocolate, half-vanilla Oreos then good luck.

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