Do you feel the Bern, Mr Bezos?

John Damellos

There is heavy stench coming out of the Amazon headquarters these days, mingled with sweat, fear, and loathing over what a Bernie Sanders victory could mean for the fortunes of billionaire Bezos and his million-dollar execs. And this stench has a twin odor living in the Washington Post's headquarters which Bezos bought in 2013, for $250 million. Needless to say, had Sanders not criticized Bezos for mistreating his low-wage workers and not paying his fair share in taxes, none of this would have happened. But it goes on, on a regular basis, only proving that Sanders' claim of a Bezos targeted war against him is a fact. 

For those of you who missed the last episode of the Sanders- Bezos feud here is the title of yesterday's article on Bernie (and Senator Warren as well): Are Warren and Sanders ‘100% grassroots-funded’? asks the editor? And goes on by saying that "Sanders and Warren have raised most of their campaign money this year from small-dollar donations. Yet both also have tapped millions of dollars left over from previous campaigns — from a time when they had not yet adopted the strict fundraising practices they currently follow. That complicates their claim to “100 percent” grass-roots purity." 

Sanders' team has admitted that he transferred an extra $2.6 million from his other campaign accounts, explaining that this figure is not included in his reported haul of $25.3 million. So Sanders is not 100% pure. Only 99%. But he cannot be compared with a man who became the richest person in the world (and modern history) last year, a guy who’s worth $150 billion, whose wealth is increasing by $260 million every single day, and whose company’s valuation briefly reached $1 trillion, making it the second US-based company to hit that number. For God's sake, Bezos is subsidized by taxpayers and his Amazon workers’ median annual salary last year was $28,446, close to the poverty line for a family of four.

What complicates your life, Mr. Bezos, is that you know Bernie Sanders raised more than $25 million in the third quarter of his presidential campaign, proving to be a fundraising juggernaut despite the war you have unleashed against him. And just to make your day, Sanders also recently revealed that 1 million people have donated to his bid for the White House — a milestone he reached faster than any Democratic presidential candidate in history.

CNN too

Yet, Bezos's Post is not the only culprit here. According to Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir another systemic media outlet, CNN, often applies the same corporate bias on progressive candidates. On August 11, Shakir appeared on “Reliable Sources,” a Sunday show hosted by Brian Stelter. This is what he said: “In about, you know, a minute or so or two minutes or so you’re going to cut to commercial breaks and you’re going to see some pharmaceutical ads. You’re going to see a lot of ads that are basically paying your bills and the bills of the entire media enterprise,” Shakir said. “And what that ends up doing is incentivizing you and others to make sure that you’re asking the questions and driving the conversations in certain areas and not in certain areas.”

Which is exactly what journalists do nowadays. They think of their future, their wages, their own ideology instead of objectivity and ultimately, drive the conversations in areas predetermined by their corporate bosses. 

A gift for Bezos

Returning to Sanders's campaign contributions, his staffers revealed that the most common profession among his contributors during the quarter was teacher, and the most common employers of his donors were Walmart, Amazon, and Starbucks, that is workers benefited by Sanders's demand for higher wages at these 3 companies. 

Hurts, doesn't it Mr. Bezos? And it should. Because the second-best fundraising day of the year was this Monday, when Sanders announced a plan to tax high-earning CEOs in an effort to reduce the widening gap between the nation's rich and poor.

“Bernie is proud to be the only candidate running to defeat Donald Trump who is 100 percent funded by grassroots donations — both in the primary and in the general,” said Sanders' campaign manager, Faiz Shakir. “Media elites and professional pundits have tried repeatedly to dismiss this campaign, and yet working-class Americans keep saying loudly and clearly that they want a political revolution.”