My open letter to Bernie Sanders: I expected better of you
Dear Bernie —
I expected better of you.
I know it’s not your fault. It’s this monster of a bad system we have created. It’s turned you into a liar.
That’s no excuse. A lie is a lie. Even if a voracious monster of a system makes you do it. It’s a system we are all part of. We made it.
Yes, we made it. We voters of the baby boom generation. We shirked our responsibilities as citizens, and didn’t pay attention. For decades. We didn’t take our jobs as owners of the country seriously. Didn’t appreciate what we had. Didn’t see the brilliance of the system that had worked to create a thriving middle class for over 200 years. We left the door open. We voted unworthy leaders into office, repeatedly. Thieves who dismantled a good system, turned it into a monster.
A monster that makes liars out of good people like you.
Emails by the dozens per day and per hour flood our inboxes because elections have gotten so expensive. All politicians have to fundraise constantly to compete with the billionaires and corporations.
You and your team email a beautiful, heart wrenching and motivating invitation to join you in protest the closing of an urban hospital that serves thousands of poor people, so that a billionaire buyer can destroy it, to amass more money.
I am 100% on board with you on that, Bernie.
You are so right. It is a vampire monster who will bulldoze a hospital and turn tens of thousands of poor sick people out on the street, so he can suck more resources into his bloated maw.
It’s that same giant sucking sound, H. Ross Perot warmed us of. Its like the invasion of Thanos. It’s roar is deafening.
You are so right and I am ready with my pen, my pitchfork and my torch, to drive out the monster. Let me sign my name to that petition!
But when I answer your invitation to sign a petition — to participate in a legitimate responsible civic action, a duty, a right guaranteed by the first amendment — the truth reveals itself.
You are lying. There is no petition at all. All you are doing is phishing for donations. You don’t want really want my voice, my civic action. You only want my money, and my email address, to spam me.
It was a lie. As are all those bloody surveys I get in the mail from the DNC and this organization and that organization.
All lies. They don’t want my civic action; they just are wanting to put their straw into my wallet and siphon out my dwindling cash.
I don’t blame you, Bernie. You who I know beyond doubt loves us, as brothers and sisters.
I read your new book. I am so glad to see all the great work you have done the past 3 years. Great idea for a book, by the way. Well done.
You who so beautifully reached out an olive branch to your opponent, Hillary, who stole the nomination from you in 2016. You invited her to join you, along with a coalition of other leaders, to get rid of the superdelegate system that had evolved in the DNC. A little monster in that system, that cost us our voices in the primaries. And you followed through in 2017. You all succeeded in getting rid of the superdelegate system. Working together, you gave power back to us citizens. You fixed that one little piece of the monstrous broken system.
You are a true American patriot. And I applaud you. And I support you.
Now I ask you: put the wall back up which Reagan tore down in the 1980s. The good wall. The wall that separates editorial from business functions. The news room from advertising. The wall that kills yellow journalism.
A boundary that keeps you honest.
And I ask the same of all candidates.
If you’re giving news, speaking to issues, sharing your opinion, and inviting activism, then do that separate from fundraising. If you’re creating a survey — then actually use the survey and report its results. If you’re inviting to sign a petition, make it a real legitimate petition.
When you’re done with the petition, when you’re done sharing the news, and you want to ask for a donation, fine.
Do that separately.
This is how to stop lying to the people. To fix the system. Tame the monster.
Laurel Kashinn
Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Sent from my iPhone.
On Jul 16, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Bernie Sanders <info@berniesanders.com> wrote:
A vulture investment banker has decided to close a hospital and turn the land into condos so he can become even richer. That is unacceptable.
Add your name to mine to say the billionaire class should no longer profit off of health care.
ADD YOUR NAME
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends -
If you want to know exactly what is wrong with health care in America, look no further than what vulture investment banker and CEO Joel Freedman is doing in Philadelphia.
Hahnemann University Hospital largely serves low-income patients and people of color. Tens of thousands of people go to the Hahnemann ER each year and thousands of doctors, nurses and hospital workers are on the verge of losing their jobs.
I do not believe that vulture capital firms should be allowed to buy hospitals. But Mr. Freedman, ever the investment banker he is, has positioned himself to sell off the hospital’s land for a fortune to real-estate interests while allowing the hospital itself to wither away.
Yesterday I rallied with nurses, patients, and community members of the hospital to protest its closing. Now I want to know if I have your support to say wealthy bankers should not profit off of health care. This will be a message from all of us.
Add your name if you agree: investment bankers and real estate tycoons should not profit off of health care. CEO Joel Freedman must stop his plans to close Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University Hospital.
ADD YOUR NAME
If we are serious about providing high-quality and affordable health care to every man, woman, and child in this country, the only real solution is a Medicare for All, single-payer system that provides health care to ALL Americans.
It has never made sense to me that our health care system is primarily designed to make huge profits for multibillion-dollar insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, and medical equipment suppliers.
Health care is not a commodity. It is a human right. And the goal of a sane health care system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich.
Investors closing a community hospital for their own profits — without regard for the patients or workers — is exactly why profit should not be a part of health care. While this is happening in Philadelphia right now, it is a story that plays out in city after city all over this country.
I want to send a message from all of us to the wealthy CEO closing the hospital: stop profiting off of health care, and keep Hahnemann University Hospital open.
Can I have your support?
Please add your name to mine to say that health care is a human right, that the wealthy should not get richer by closing hospitals, and that it is time to end the business of profiting off of health care.
Thank you.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
ADD YOUR NAME
Paid for by Bernie 2020
(not the billionaires)
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
This email was sent to …@laurelkashinn.com. If you need to, unsubscribe here. You can also sign up to receive fewer emails. We hope you’ll stay, because emails are such an important part of how we organize and how we raise money. In fact, there is no single greater source for our campaign’s fundraising than emails like this one. And that’s important, because no one person, not even Bernie Sanders, can take on Trump and the billionaire class alone.
Before you go about the rest of your day, help power our fight against the billionaire class by making a contribution today.
Submit this form to update your contact information.