Debunking the big ‘Bernie Sanders has a SuperPAC’ lie

[Ferd Berfel]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/debunking-the-big-bernie-sanders-has-a-superpac-lie/

Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a super PAC. At least not in the sense implied by Politico’s Kenneth Vogel, who referred to National Nurses United for Patient Protection as the “super PAC backing anti-super PAC crusader Bernie Sanders.” The thinly veiled charge of hypocrisy is dead wrong.

Sanders says on the stump that “it is unacceptable that we have a corrupt campaign finance system which allows millionaires, billionaires and large corporations to contribute as much as they want to super PACs to elect candidates who will represent their special interests.” According to Open Secrets, the total number of contributors who have given more than $200 to National Nurses United for Patient Protection this election cycle is a big, fat zero. The money comes from nurses’ union dues. According to a survey of 1,100 nurses conducted by the Lippincott Nursing Center, unionized nurses make, on average, $57,000 per year.

Contrast that with Priorities USA, the single-candidate super PAC backing Hillary Clinton. Through the middle of last November, it had received 49 donations of $100,000 or more this cycle, 15 of which were over $1 million. The difference between a PAC funded by middle-income workers and one financed by those who can afford to write a $100,000 check may elude Howard Dean, who last week told MSNBC that “labor unions are super PACs Democrats like,” but it shouldn’t be too difficult for the rest of us to grasp.

More importantly, Michael Lighty, the nurses’ union’s director of public policy, says the nurses’ super PAC functions just the way the Supreme Court’s conservative majority fantasized that they would: with genuine independence from the Sanders’ campaign. “In the case of real super PACs, the independence is a fallacy, and when they talk about us – comparing us to those other super PACs – it’s a false equivalency,” he said.

[HooptieWagon]

1. It only makes them look silly and desperate...

No point in wasting time debunking that obvious lie.

[Ferd Berfel]

2. Except for the low info voters

and those who haven't started paying attention yet