My student had nowhere to sleep.
His parents threw him out at graduation, so I asked Bernie Sanders, a socialist with three houses, to let the kid use one. I’m still waiting. Saturday night in Bangor, Bernie told 600 people the rich are the problem.
I brought a red pen. He gets graded, and so does the man he brought with him.
The Letter Bernie Never Answered
This part isn’t a statistic. It happened to one of my kids.
His parents kicked him out at graduation. Diploma in hand, and no place to live.
So I did what any teacher who reads Bernie’s posts would do. I asked Bernie directly. He has three houses. He has spent half a century telling America that housing is a human right and that nobody needs more than they use. I figured a man who loves socialism that much would jump at the chance to practice it, and let one kid stay in one of the houses he isn’t sleeping in.
No response.
Not a no. Not a “my office will look into it.” Nothing.
And that wasn’t the first time. I’ve written to Bernie, tagged Bernie and replied to Bernie for years, and I have never gotten one answer. Not once. Hold that thought, because in a few minutes you’ll meet the people Bernie won’t stand in line with at United, and I think I finally understand where I rank.
Housing is a human right, apparently, right up until it’s HIS house. Then it’s private property, and the kid can go find a billionaire. Trying to get a straight answer out of Bernie is like trying to hand-feed a shark.
The Assignment
Before the doors opened, @BernieSanders posted that “the billionaire class is getting richer & more powerful” and that @TroyJackson207 “will fight for the working families of Maine because he is part of the working class.”
Then the Solidarity Forever Tour rolled into Bangor. The Bangor Daily News counted more than 600 people in the room.
Nobody has posted a full transcript of the stream yet, so I’m grading what’s on the record: two quotes from the rally, one post from before it, and about 55 years of Bernie’s résumé. That last part is where this gets fun. Some men need a whole speech to contradict themselves. Bernie needs one sentence and a mirror.
Sharpen your pencils.
Here’s Bernie, as quoted by the Bangor Daily News: “If you want to hold Donald Trump and his disastrous policies accountable, the only way we do that is by electing a Democratic Senate.”
Open your pocket Constitution to Article I, Section 3. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present. Two thirds of 100 is 67. Not one serious person in either party thinks Democrats walk out of November with 67 seats, and Bernie has been in the Senate since 2007 and in Congress since 1991. He knows the math. He’s counting on you not knowing it.
So what does “a Democratic Senate” actually buy? The gavels. The calendar. The committee chairs. And we don’t have to guess what Bernie does with a gavel, because he already had one. He chaired the Senate Budget Committee from 2021 to 2023 and the HELP Committee after that.
With the Budget gavel in his hand, he helped write the enhanced Obamacare subsidies into the American Rescue Plan Act (Senate Roll Call 110, March 6, 2021, 50-49). Then he voted to stretch them through 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act (Roll Call 325, August 7, 2022, 51-50). Zero Republican votes on either one. Biden’s Autopen signed both.
Democrats wrote the expiration date. Bernie voted for the expiration date. Then he spent this year holding rallies against the expiration date like somebody else snuck it in while he was napping.
This man is almost always wrong and never once in doubt. Clouds without rain, every one of his promises, and now he wants you to buy him a bigger umbrella. If brains were dynamite, this plan couldn’t blow its own nose.
Question 2: Who Exactly Is “Working Class” Here
Bernie says Troy is working class. Bernie loves to say he’s from the working class too. So let’s check Bernie’s work history, since nobody at the rally did.
After the University of Chicago in 1964, Bernie bounced through a string of odd jobs: aide at a psychiatric hospital, freelance writer, preschool teacher, carpenter. PolitiFact, while knocking down a harsher claim about him, still confirms he did not collect a steady paycheck before he became mayor of Burlington in 1981. He was 39.
Thirty-nine years old before his first steady paycheck, and the paycheck came from taxpayers. It has come from taxpayers ever since.
And then there’s the commune.
In the summer of 1971, a 30-year-old Bernie Sanders showed up at Myrtle Hill Farm, a back-to-the-land hippie commune in northeast Vermont. These were his people. Collective living. Shared labor. Everybody pitches in for the good of the group. If there was one place on planet Earth where Bernie Sanders should have thrived, it was there.
He did not thrive there.
According to Kate Daloz’s book We Are As Gods, Bernie spent his visit in “endless political discussion” while a resident named Craig did the physical work. When Bernie had stayed his allotted three days, Craig politely asked him to move on.
The hippies asked him to leave. For not working. At a COMMUNE.
I’ve been a teacher a long time. I have sent students to the office. I have never once had to remove a grown man from a commune for freeloading off the collective. Bernie couldn’t clear that bar, and he has spent the 55 years since telling you that other people aren’t pulling their weight. Couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel, but he’ll lecture you on fair shares all afternoon.
A few years later he and Jane spent their honeymoon in the Soviet Union, in 1988, on an official trip to Burlington’s sister city of Yaroslavl. Most couples go to Niagara Falls. Bernie went to the bread line’s corporate headquarters.
I’ll add one more data point, and it’s personal. A man from Vermont once told me why Vermonters keep re-electing Bernie. His answer: as long as Bernie’s in Washington, he isn’t in Vermont. I laughed. Then I realized he wasn’t joking.
Question 3: The Capitalist Who Hates Capitalism
Here’s my favorite part of the whole Bernie story, and he told it on himself.
In 2019, when people asked how a socialist became a millionaire, Bernie told the New York Times, “If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
Read it twice. The man got rich SELLING books. To CUSTOMERS. Who paid him with MONEY. In a FREE MARKET. And the books were about how terrible the free market is.
His own tax returns show it. He and Jane reported $1,062,626 in income in 2016 and $1,131,925 in 2017, much of it on the strength of the books. In 2023 he published one called It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Capitalism printed it, shipped it, stocked it, sold it and mailed him the royalty check. That’s the most successful anti-capitalist business model in American history, and the product is a mountebank selling snake oil labeled “Snake Oil Is Bad.” High-IQ stupid, the expensive kind.
What did he buy with the royalties? A third house. In 2016, right after the presidential run, he paid $575,000 for a lakefront place in North Hero on Lake Champlain, to go with the house in Burlington and the one in Washington.
For reference, the Federal Reserve puts the median American household’s net worth at $192,900. That lake house alone costs about three median American households. Some hogs get all four feet and their snout in the trough. Bernie got a dock.
Then there’s how he travels.
- Friends of Bernie Sanders spent $221,723 on private jets in the first quarter of 2025, per FEC filings.
- Nearly $230,000 more in the second quarter.
- Over $550,000 for the year, according to a Fox News review of the filings.
- His 2020 campaign spent more than $1.9 million on private jets.
Some of those flights were on a Bombardier Challenger that rents for up to $15,000 an hour. When Bret Baier asked him about it, Bernie said, “No apologies for that,” and asked if anyone really expects him to sit in a waiting line at United.
Yes, Senator. That’s exactly what the working class does. We sit at the gate. We pay $14 for a sad turkey sandwich. We do not fight the oligarchy from a leather recliner at 41,000 feet burning enough money to burn a wet mule.
And now you know why my letter about a homeless kid never got an answer. I was in the line at United.
I’ve seen people like you before, Bernie. Of course, I had to pay admission.
Question 4: Thirty-Five Years, Three Laws
Bernie has been in Congress since 1991. Thirty-five years. So what has he actually built?
When the Bloomberg campaign checked in 2020,
showed three laws where Bernie was the lead sponsor. Bloomberg counted 421 bills sponsored. Three became law. Here they are.
- 2006: a law naming the postal facility in Fair Haven, Vermont, the Matthew Lyon Post Office Building.
- 2013: the Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act, the inflation bump Congress passes for disabled veterans almost every year like clockwork.
- 2014: a law naming the post office in Danville, Vermont, the Thaddeus Stevens Post Office.
Fairness requires the footnote, so here it is: some counts run as high as seven, and he’s co-sponsored plenty of bills other people got passed. Fine. Seven in 35 years is still one every five years.
Two post offices and a routine veterans’ COLA. That’s the legislative legacy of the man who says he’ll transform America. A middle school student council passes more than that before winter break. I’ve had substitute teachers leave a bigger mark on a building in one afternoon. He has miles to go before he reaches mediocre. I wouldn’t hire his office to run a food truck.
And as a veteran, I’ll say this plainly: putting your name on the annual COLA bill is like taking credit for the sunrise. It was coming anyway.
Thirty-five years on the public payroll. Three houses. Two post offices. A commune that sent him home. If you set out to design a wasted life in public office, you couldn’t draw it up better.
A Note For The No Kings Crowd
To everyone who marched under a No Kings sign: I agree with you. America doesn’t do kings. So start with the people who actually act like one.
A king owns more castles than he can live in. Check.
A king travels by private carriage while the peasants wait in line. Check.
A king never answers a letter from a commoner. Check.
A king lets the peasants into the court only if they pay. In 2023, Bernie’s tour for It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism sold tickets through Ticketmaster, with the best seats at his Washington show going for about $95. You could hear the man denounce capitalism live, as long as you paid capitalism’s going rate to get in the door.
Too exalted to mingle with the peasants unless they buy a ticket. If you want to protest a king, you don’t need to look at the White House. Look at North Hero. He’s the one with the lake view, and he has delusions of adequacy to match.
Question 5: “From The Bottom”
Now to the man on stage with him. Troy Jackson, same Bangor Daily News article: “We’re not from the left, we’re not from the right. We’re from the bottom, and we’re rising. I’ve had the honor of having some power in me for 20 years.”
I’ll give him partial credit, because the first part of his story is real. He grew up in Allagash, way up in Aroostook County, and went to work as a logger at 19. That’s honest, dangerous work, and I respect it. Bernie should take notes. The commune gave him three days of chores and he spent them talking.
But “the bottom” is a strange name for the President of the Maine Senate. That isn’t the bottom of anything. It’s the top chair in the chamber. Twenty years of power and he’s still “rising”? All hat and no cattle. At some point you have to admit you arrived.
Question 6: “Not Left, Not Right”
What’s next, Troy tells us he can’t be pinned down because he’s actually been on both sides… wait, I’m being told. The Associated Press reports Jackson first ran for office as a Republican, and early in his career he opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. Susan Collins brought up the abortion record at their debate.
So maybe he’s telling the truth. He isn’t from the left or the right. He’s from whichever one is winning that year.
Today it’s the left, and not the mild kind. During his run for governor, Maine DSA formally endorsed him, called him a “working class hero,” and said he promised them “a seat at the table.” He ran Bernie’s 2016 Maine campaign and served as a Bernie superdelegate. Hasan Piker cheered his nomination. He wants Medicare for All. He wants to abolish ICE.
That isn’t the bottom. That’s the far end of the cafeteria where the DSA kids sit, and Bernie is the flibbertigibbet at the head of the table, a whited sepulcher in a rumpled suit: clean speeches on the outside, three deeds and a jet invoice on the inside.
A Modest Proposal For A Logger
Since Troy came up through the woods, here’s a bill he can carry to Washington: the Equitable Cordwood Act.
Under my bill, any logger who cuts more than the crew’s median number of cords in a day donates the extra to the fellow who spent the shift sitting in the pickup with the heater running and the radio on. The fast cutter still buys his own saw, his own bar oil and his own fuel. He still takes the risk of a widowmaker coming down on his head. The fellow in the pickup gets an equal pile. If the fast cutter decides to quit, we pass a second law requiring him to keep cutting. And the fellow in the pickup gets to give a speech about greed.
It’s just common sense.
Every logger in Aroostook County already knows how that crew ends. Everybody cuts one cord a day, everybody is cold by January, and Bernie flies in on a jet to blame the guy who used to cut five.
Question 7: Medicare For All
Both men want it. Here’s what happens to it when people hear the details.
In KFF’s 2019 polling, 56 percent of Americans liked the idea. Tell them it eliminates private insurance and support fell to 37 percent. Tell them it could mean delays for some tests and treatments and support fell to 26 percent.
Everybody loves the cake until the bill comes.
And Bernie doesn’t need to guess how single-payer goes, because his own state tried it. Vermont passed a single-payer law in 2011. In December 2014, Vermont’s Democratic governor Peter Shumlin abandoned it, because paying for it took an 11.5 percent payroll tax on businesses plus a premium of up to 9.5 percent of income on individuals. He called it the greatest disappointment of his political life. Bernie’s home state looked at Bernie’s dream, saw the price tag, and walked away. He wants to try it on 340 million people anyway, funded by fairy dust and unicorn urine. That’s a leak in the think tank, and the bill would be a Great Dane-sized whiz down the leg of every taxpayer in America.
Medicare for All doesn’t get rid of the insurance company. It makes Washington the ONLY insurance company, and you can’t switch. I already have that. It’s called the VA, and it took three years to get my shoulder fixed. If the goal is to cut out the middleman, put the money in a Health Savings Account the patient owns and controls. Why are these two so devoted to one giant government insurer instead of the patient?
Question 8: Abolish ICE
At their first debate, Jackson said, “You don’t put more money into an agency that is killing people across this country.”
ICE was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Abolishing it doesn’t repeal one word of immigration law. Congress wrote those laws, and they stay on the books. You’d just fire the people who enforce them in the interior. A fire department with no trucks is still a fire department on paper. Your house still burns.
Telling a rally that federal officers are “killing people across this country” is also how unstable people talk themselves into violence. The gunman who attacked the Dallas ICE office wrote “ANTI-ICE” on a bullet, according to AP. Words land somewhere. Explaining that to this crowd is like trying to baptize a cat, but I’ll keep trying.
Question 9: How Troy Got The Job
Bernie endorsed Graham Platner for this seat. He rallied with him in Bar Harbor this summer. Then an ex-girlfriend accused Platner of rape, and Bernie called on him to step aside. Platner denies the allegation, and he left the race.
So Maine Democrats held an emergency convention. Jackson, who had just finished third in the primary for governor, won the Senate nomination with 566 of 571 delegate votes. Governor Janet Mills has declined to endorse him.
So the man Bernie calls the voice of the people was picked by 571 delegates in a room, not by Maine’s primary voters. I thought this crowd was all about “one person, one vote.” Slight oversight!
Bernie’s judgment on Senate candidates in Maine this year: 0 for 1, with Jackson still pending. A Magic 8-Ball on the fritz would be batting .500.
Extra Credit
Bernie, I’ll make you the same offer I make every rich man who wants to tax other rich men. Next April, take the standard deduction. Figure what the IRS says you owe. Pay double. The Treasury accepts gifts to reduce the public debt on
, and you can post the receipt right here. I’ll share it myself, and I’ll say something nice about you, which would be a first.
Better yet, sell the lake house and give the money to the commune that kicked you out. Call it back rent.
Until then, the Solidarity Forever Tour is a man with three houses and a jet budget telling a room full of working Mainers to be angry at people with houses and jets. He isn’t leading a movement. He’s the hood ornament on a very expensive clown car, and he smiles about as often as a total solar eclipse.
Final Grade
Bernie Sanders: F. Thirty-five years in Congress, three laws, two of them post offices. Got rich selling capitalism to people who hate capitalism. Got bounced from a commune for not working. Owns three houses and never answered a teacher asking for a bed for a homeless kid. Flies private to warn you about the rich. Wrote the deadline he’s now campaigning against. Shows up, talks loud, cites nothing. In my classroom, that grade has a name, and it’s the first letter of “freeloader.”
Troy Jackson: Incomplete. The logging résumé is real. The rest is a DSA worksheet with his name written across the top.
Maine votes November 3. Read the record before you read the yard signs.
My full grade of Bernie from February:
https://x.com/i/article/2019780750850015232
The wealth math he keeps leaving out:
https://x.com/i/article/2070496933265682432
But what do I know, I’m only a teacher who reads the FEC filings, the tax returns and the commune guest book before the rally starts.
Mike Borowski is a medically retired Army combat medic with 23 years of service, including a combat deployment to Iraq, and a high school Anatomy and Physics teacher at a high-need Career Technical district in Northeast Ohio — where he also wrote and published the textbooks for both courses. He runs “Bski’s Classroom,” a platform dedicated to cutting through political noise with data, history, and the kind of blunt honesty that comes from someone who has seen both war and the American classroom up close.
—
X (Twitter): x.com/BskiMike22802
Substack: substack.com/@bskimike22802
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@BskiMike22802
AFNN: https://afnn.us/author/mikeborowski/
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA