campaign 2016
Bernie Sanders and his wife honeymooned in the USSR
Of the many interesting details in The Guardian's big profile of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist running a dark horse presidential primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, this one stuck out: Sanders' 1988 honeymoon with his wife Jane in the former Soviet Union. The honeymoon doubled as a diplomatic trip that Sanders made to the city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northwest of Moscow, when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. According to audio that survived the trip:
After receiving a rundown of central planning, Soviet-style, from Yaroslavl's mayor, Alexander Riabkov, Sanders notes how the quality of both housing and healthcare in America appeared to be "significantly better" than in the communist state. "However," he added, "the cost of both services is much, much, higher in the United States." [The Guardian]
Another highlight of Sanders' mayoralty was the ode to socialism that was written for him by poet Allen Ginsberg.
Entitled Burlington Snow, it begins with lines about “Socialist snow on the streets" and "Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops" and ends: "Isn't this poem socialist? It doesn't belong to me anymore." [The Guardian]