Bernie Sanders Has 12-Point Plan To Save America By Eating The Rich

Bernie Sanders, our favorite socialist senator and only socialist senator but still our favorite anyway, has a terrific new economic plan to save America, and it's so crazy it just might work! Except, of course, that it will never work, because sadly, our Senate is filled with a whole bunch of senators who are not Bernie Sanders, and do not ask the kinds of questions he asks, such as, for example:

Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?

Hahahaha, that's an adorable rhetorical question to which we all know the real answer is, "How high would you like us to jump, Mr. Koch?" But Bernie Sanders is the honey badger of the Senate, and he will keep ranting against the billionaire class and the oligarchs, even if Elizabeth Warren is the only other senator cheering him on. (And you know she totally is. )

Here's the so-crazy-it-just-might-work plan from Sen. Sanders:

• Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.

• Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.

• Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.

• Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.

• Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.

• Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.

• Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.

• Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.

• Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.

• Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.

• Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.

• Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.

Pffft! Infrastructure. Living wages. Equal pay. Affordable education. These are the kinds of things we all know will actually destroy jobs and undermine democracy and blah blah blah ... whatever it is senators who are not Bernie Sanders tell themselves to justify not doing every single thing on his list, like, yesterday. It's not an unreasonable wish list -- unless you live in these U.S. States of America, where it's important to break up the unions but protect the too-big-to-fail banks because gosh, if we didn't do that, it would be so unfair to the billionaires who, coincidentally, have the money to buy and sell senators who will make sure their interests are protected. Coincidentally. Which is why the Bernie Sanders 12-point plan to burn it all down and eat the rich (remember, they taste like caviar ), as effective as it might be, will never in a million trillion years happen.

Still, let's enjoy Bernie laying out everything that is wrong with everything and imagine, for just a moment, that there were more people like him in the Senate.

[ Bernie Sanders ]