Bernie Sanders wants to get rid of billionaires. All of them.

[sheshe2]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/bernie-sanders-ultra-wealth-tax-billionaires/index.html

………………………………...

Welp, this is a Billionaire. I am loving him. He is trying to make us all safer and he will keep my niece safer as well. She is on the front line.

This is a Billionaire.

Eric Smidt

Born
Los Angeles, California, US
Occupation
Chairman & CEO Harbor Freight Tools
Net worth
US$3.1 billion (2018)[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Smidt

Today, TODAY he announced this:

Harbor Freight is donating their ENTIRE supply of PPE to hospitals:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213151585

Dear Harbor Freight Community,

As we’ve been following the news over the last few days, we’ve heard about the severe shortage of protective gear for hospitals, healthcare workers and first responders as the impact of COVID-19 is being felt across the country. America depends on these heroes every day and in the days ahead we will depend on them even more. At Harbor Freight, we want them to know that they can depend on us too.

So we’ve decided to donate our entire supply of the personal protective equipment items listed below to front line hospitals with 24 hour emergency rooms in the communities served by our stores.

• N95 Masks
• Face Shields
• 5 and 7 mil Nitrile Gloves
If you work at a hospital with a 24 hour emergency room in need of these items, please ask the office in charge of procurement at your hospital to click here so they can provide us with the information we’ll need to determine if we can make a donation. If you’re not with a hospital, but would like to give us the name of a hospital with a 24 hour emergency room in your community that might need our help, please email us at [e-mail], identify the hospital’s city and state in the subject line, and our team will follow-up.


snip

For hospitals we’re able to help, we’ll email them a voucher when the supplies are available for pick up at their local Harbor Freight Tools store.

Although we certainly won’t have enough of these supplies to fill everyone’s needs, we’re going to donate everything we’ve got. We also recognize that there are so many other critically important people responding to this crisis and that there is need everywhere. We’ve chosen to focus our efforts on hospitals with a 24 hour emergency room with the hope that we can help as many people as possible right now.

Thank you and God Bless,

Eric Smidt
Owner and Founder
Harbor Freight Tools

...................................

What are you doing to make us safer Senator? You are in VT and not in Washington where our Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to protect us any way they can. A billionaire is giving our front line workers protections so they can continue to save lives and not die for doing so. I applaud him.

PS...……...He started his career at the age of 17.

[murielm99]

1. That is wonderful.

If Bloomberg helps us, that is great work by a billionaire as well.

My governor, JB Pritzker, is a billionaire. He is helping my state, and he is standing up to the orange madman.

[sheshe2]

6. I have no issues with billionaires...

Many actually do good for us.

Yes, there is a huge income disparity, however to call them all evil is just not right.

[questionseverything]

29. i just want them to pay their fair share in taxes

[The Magistrate]

2. The Man Is A Tiresome Loudmouth, Ma'am

Nobody cares what he wants, particularly since he does nothing of consequence. With the possible exception of aiding Trump by attaking the 'Democratic Establishment' wih might and main....




"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[sheshe2]

4. You are correct, Sir.

He talks the talk, yet never walked the walk. My Senator Elizabeth Warren accomplished more before she ever won her Senate seat. CFPB was her baby and she made it happen.

[Happy Hoosier]

21. Quite so! NT

[Cha]

3. Looks lilke the Biillionaires with hearts of Gold are

doing more for the World than those who want to get rid of them.

Thanks, she.

[sheshe2]

5. I passed it on to my sister.

She passed on to her hospital. She is retired, yet my niece works in ICU.

[emmaverybo]

7. Bernie demonizes. How else could he appear righteous? Not very original and means he can be

in a perpetual state of protest against what and whom he opposes while offering Zilch hope, optimism, elbow grease.

[littlemissmartypants]

12. I think some call it "othering" like creating a demon to be feared.

It certainly doesn’t bring people together and nobody wins when we play the blame game. It makes me sad when there is so much need but little good will. I'm sad he seems to have lost most of his effectiveness. Becoming just a low pitched droning refrain void of any real effect or influence.

[emmaverybo]

14. Well said. He "others" a lot. Seems a tactic almost--sets himself in opposition to "the other" and

voila. Doesn’t have to do much else. Just rile up crowds against the other using the magic words, establishment, billionaire, DNC...True, he does offer policies but so joylessly, with such insistent anger.

[msongs]

8. one wonders how much PPE bernie is donating. is he paying salaries of laid off arena workers too?

[sheshe2]

9. Lol.

Not.

[Skittles]

10. I know who I'd like to get rid of

[sheshe2]

11. I am with ya on that, Skittles.

Stay safe.

[BidenBacker]

13. With the market dropping almost 40% in a short time

seems to me that Trump is doing a helluva lot more than Sanders ever could to eliminate some billionaires. And the stock futures right now are looking like there will be a few less after today.

Generally speaking, Harbor Freight sells a lot of junk...low quality stuff that doesn't last very long. But it's great for those folks who don't have a lot of money or only need a specific tool to use once or twice before it breaks or falls apart. We have one in town and will have to drop in to buy something to show my appreciation for what they're doing...once it's safe to go back out in 3 weeks or 3 months.

For the sake of our healthcare workers, sure hope HF's PPE is better than most of their tools.

[ucrdem]

15. K'n'R

What a contrast!



Thanks sheshe!

[sheshe2]

27. ucrdem...

[TwilightZone]

16. Here's a list of billionaires and their actions re: CV

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2020/03/17/billionaire-tracker-covid-19/#52ff922a7e69

[BidenBacker]

17. Looked over your list a little

I question this dude's sanity sometimes...

Elon Musk: On Wednesday, March 18, Musk defied a sheriff’s order to “shelter-in-place” by keeping Tesla’s Fremont, California factory open, with employees being told the factory was “critical infrastructure.” After Tesla was confronted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department that same day, the factory cut its onsite staff from 10,000 to 2,500. On Wednesday evening, Musk, who has previously dismissed the coronavirus panic as “dumb,” tweeted that Tesla would “make ventilators if there is a shortage.” He added on Friday, March 20, that he thinks the ventilators “probably won’t be needed.” Musk has since talked to ventilator manufacturer Medtronic.

Worrying about coronavirus is "dumb"...uh, okay Elon. Same guy who came up with his idiotic submarine idea when those kids were trapped in a cave in Thailand and when they politely declined he went off on them...

https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pedophile-twitter-fight-20180715-story.html

His erratic behavior has also raised a few eyebrows with NASA and the USAF...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/air-force-is-looking-into-elon-musks-pot-smoking-source.html

Think he's spreading himself a little too thin running too many companies and his workload and stress gets to him. Got a coupla buddies and former workmates now at SpaceX and if they're as busy as they are then his schedule must be crushing.

Nice that all these rich folks are donating but IMO would be better for the government just to raise their taxes and put it where they thought it was best utilized. Not a big fan of relying on charity or the good will of a few individuals (some of them borderline batshit crazy like Musk) to decide where funds should go. Still better than nothing, I guess. But there are too many Carnegies and Rockefellers out there who think they can reap enormous wealth by whatever means including treating their workers like dirt and then clear their names by tossing a few bucks around to good causes.

[George II]

18. Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire, last week he gave $40 million toward...

... solving this crisis, with a promise of a lot more. He's also given more than $5 billion to various good causes in recent years.

Elon Musk contributed millions of masks and hundreds of ventilators this week.

Other billionaires have been doing likewise.

They're not hunkered down in their living rooms complaining about others. They're DOING something to help.

[sheshe2]

24. Thank you George.

There are good peeps out there. Donating and never asking for anything in exchange. They donate because they love their country and the people above profit or political gain.

[Kerrycrat]

19. What about the owner of the Intercept

A left wing progressive news source that is pretty obvious in their support of Bernie.

The owner of the publication is the founder of EBay I believe.

Or are the billionaires who agree with Bernie going to be the last to go?

[we can do it]

20. And Bloomberg is helping defeat tangerines. BS is home pondering his next divisive action.

[quakerboy]

22. Lets talk numbers

Harbor freight apparently has 1000 stores. Id bet money at least half were bought out of the items in question before this decision was made. To come up with a number, maybe 20 boxes of 10 masks at each remaining store, plus enough to restock each store from distribution centers. 300,000 masks. I figure this is probably a generous estimate, given the way things have been sold out over the past couple weeks.

That would be one mask per $10,000 of his fortune.

I donated more PPE, as compared by means. Far more.

Its nice that Eric is doing this. Its impressive compared to the very low bar set by companies such as Hobby Lobby or Goodwill. But its not all that impressive when I compare it to the sacrifices and efforts I see daily among people of extremely modest means within my community as we fall into this disaster Trump shoved the country into.

[sheshe2]

25. You don't know that.

You don't know his inventory or what else he can get his hands on.

You are dissing a man that is doing something to protect the lives of our caregivers. Everything helps. I see generosity, he did not need to do anything. I am appalled by your post.

He in fact is doing something that the 'resident of the US is refusing to do, keeping our care givers safe. I have a caregiver in my family. She works in the ICU. She has children that are dear to me, she brings it home then they to may suffer.

[quakerboy]

32. Educated guess.

Given that 3m, a main maker of the masks was apparently only able to donate 500k.. 300k seems like a generous estimate for a discount hardware chain. Especially given reports locally are that the store are still selling ppe to private parties, not holding them for donation. But even if it were somehow double, or even triple what I calculated.. It wouldnt change the basic math of the situation.

I am not dissing him. Im glad he is doing what he is doing. I just find it much more impressive when I see on my local face book group that a pair of disabled seniors on SSI are donating their stocks of PPE to the local hospital rather than keeping them for their own personal quite justified needs. The (in this case literal) widows pittance will always impress me more than a donation by a rich person, especially when the latter is in amounts that are pocket money for the rich person in question.

We need what everyone has to give. But I'm not going to give inflated high marks to billionaires who are doing what is for them comparatively equivalent having some pennies fall out of their pockets. Even at their best, they are not doing more than other people.

Its the People of this nation that will save us from this disaster Trump has shoved us into. Its your daughter and the rest of us in "essential" jobs that are throwing ourselves in the way of danger to make sure that people have the care and necessities that they need to try and survive this disease and the Trumpheaval surrounding it.

[William769]

23. That would put him at the top of the food chain then wouldn't it?

[empedocles]

26. Billionaires aside, strong progress could be made, if traitotrump & BS would just STFU!

[sheshe2]

28. Bazinga.

[NCProgressive]

30. Sanders' hatred of billionaires was always silly

He suffers from an extreme case of plutophobia and he riles up some like-minded supporters.

Memes like "no one should be a billionaire" make me

Many of his supporters don't understand the concept of "paper money" - most billionaires are billionaires because of the value of the stock they own in the companies they started. If they sold it all at once , it won't be worth even 30 cents on the dollar.

The stock market crash eliminated about 29% of the world's billionaires as the value of their stock dropped below $1 billion.

Silly

[sheshe2]

31. Hey.

[Hortensis]

33. Well, he should start by not saving the billionaire class from liberals.

Surely he can't be so deluded that he doesn't know it was the Democrats our new kleptocrat class feared and that they used him to stop the Democrats from getting power?

AND that they've been trying to repeat that great victory in 2020?

Or can he?

Again, just what IS the truth about a person when his actions consistently sabotage what he claims to support?

It may be that Sanders literally cannot make the connection between his actions and their consequences. There are people like that, and they're not even all that uncommon.