yes. next question? "I favor the public ownership ...

Posted on: February 14, 2020 at 08:25:51 CT

of utilities, banks and major industries," Sanders said in one interview with the Burlington Free Press in 1976

"The oil industry, and the entire energy industry, should be owned by the public and used for the public good -- not for additional profits for billionaires." Sanders wrote in a December 1973 open letter to Vermont Sen. Robert Stafford

In 1976, Sanders went even further: calling for the state to seize ownership of Vermont's private electric companies without compensation to investors.

"I will be campaigning in support of the Liberty Union utility proposal which calls for the public ownership of Vermont's private electric companies without compensation to the banks and wealthy stockholders who own the vast majority of stock in these companies," he said in a July 1976 press release. "I will also be calling for public ownership of the telephone company -- which is probably the single greatest rip-off company in America."

Sanders said in a press release in August 1976.
Sanders' plan would require large businesses attempting to leave cities to get permission from the towns and the workers in them. If the company did not get that approval they would be required by law to pay a guaranteed two years of severance for workers and 10 years of taxes for the town.

"In the long run, the problem of the fleeing corporations must be dealt with on the national level by legislation which will bring about the public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises,"

Campaign literature that year from Sanders, including a 1976 brochure for the party, said, "I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves."

"I believe in socialized medicine, public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on salaries.

During his 1974 Senate run, Sanders said one plan to expand government included making it illegal to gain more wealth than person could spend in a lifetime and have a 100% tax on incomes above this level. (Sanders defined this as $1 million dollars annually).
"Nobody should earn more than a million dollars," Sanders said.

Sanders was in his mid-30's when he said all this. An adult. The leader of a small political party. An officeholder. Did he change his core beliefs since then or has he just hidden them for political expediency?

Edited by blake1771 at 08:29:51 on 02/14/20