BRATTLEBORO — More than once now, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has lumped together the millionaire and billionaire candidates on the debate stage, proudly claiming that he is the only person on the stage who is neither.
Let us look at the real difference between millionaires and billionaires.
Here is one example: A house in San Francisco costs an average of $1 million. Bernie Sanders has roughly $2.5 million. Michael Bloomberg has roughly $64 billion.
Q. How many houses could each buy with his money?
A. Sanders could purchase two houses in San Francisco, whereas Bloomberg could purchase 64,000 of those same houses.
Bloomberg is roughly 25,600 times richer than Sanders. Buttigieg is a smart guy and knows math, so I can only conclude that he purposely misleads us.
Can anyone become a self-earned billionaire unless they value making money above all else? It takes a lot of work to accumulate all that green. On the other hand, Sanders happened to become a millionaire (not billionaire) recently because he wrote a book. He values helping people above all else.
It's one thing to be clear about policy differences. It's another to purposely distort things and confuse people.
Bloomberg has criticized Sanders for having a couple of million dollars while promoting socialist programs - as if you can't do both. Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a rich guy, and he created Social Security and the New Deal, bringing the country out of the Great Depression.
Speaking of distorting things, it is easy to do so when you have $64 billion to buy ads promoting yourself, or endless millions to donate to the projects of people who are then beholden to you and must endorse you. You have to use only a minuscule amount of your money to have undue influence, while the rest of us donate $10 here and there to the candidates of our choice.
Let's take money out of politics, and let's make sure we don't get duped by Buttigieg or Bloomberg.
And let's vote for someone who is honest and has spent his life working hard to help others - Bernie Sanders, of course. Please vote March 3, or go to your town offices for early voting.
Note: In a race such as this primary, each vote truly counts. If Sanders does not get the required majority of delegates at the convention, there will be a second vote and a brokered convention, where superdelegates have undue influence.
The current statistics (fivethirtyeight.com) say that Sanders has a 1-in-2 chance of getting the required majority of delegates, whereas other candidates are way behind (Warren has a 1-in-100 chance).
Please consider voting for Sanders even if he is not your first choice. Otherwise, you may end up with Bloomberg, who could buy the election - or even our current occupant of the White House.