BernieSandersPresidential wannabe Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered a blistering stump speech at the University of Denver this weekend condemning rich folks and businesses.

It always strikes us as a bit hypocritical when wealthy politicians who make $167,000 a year and raise millions of dollars from rich people for a living pretend to hate the upper class in order to keep making their six-figure salary.

However, Bernie openly admits his socialist politics, so it’s probably okay for him to earn a big paycheck so long as taxpayers, and not private industry pay it.

We checked his personal finance disclosure report and it turns out Sanders does not hide corporate investments through mutual funds, because these belong to his wife.

Bernie investments

 

That’s a nice chunk of change they have invested in large capitol funds.

Sanders’s own personal wealth jumped dramatically after he was elected to the Senate in 2004 when his average net worth was $140,000. Now it’s just under $500,000.

That’s an annual growth rate of 29 percent, compared to average Americans who have seen a one percent decline in their yearly net worth in the same time period.

As for his campaign contributions, Sanders raised $7 million for his 2012 Senate campaign. Before he announced his presidential bid, he had $4 million in the bank.

Here are the top industries that donate to Sanders:

bernie campaign

During his speech here, Bernie vowed to replace all of this messy campaign fundraising with public election financing, meaning taxpayers should pay for politicians to run for office so they don’t have to do the work themselves.

Sanders danced the line on our hypocrite scale. With the exception of barely mentioned stints as a carpenter, filmmaker, and journalist, he has spent a career in politics that began in the ‘70s so he has lived on the government teat for decades.

That he thinks everyone else should is not surprising. His plans to get rid of Obamacare in favor of all government-paid health care, sounds about right. Breaking the banking system, that figures.

His calls for income equality – let’s be honest, if we could only be equal to Bernie’s wealthy political career finances, that would be awesome. But we suspect that in Bernie’s perfect socialist world of equal wealth distribution, some animals on the farm would still be more equal than others.