PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

I have heard of duplicity on the part of public officials, but actions lately by Senator Bernie Sanders take the cake. Thus, the headline on this blog.

As Andy Puzder wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, Sanders, “by his actions, shows he disagrees with the socialist policies he advocates.”

Or, this from Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post, which I quote in detail because it serves as a telling indictment of Sander’s duplicity:

“Sanders proudly announced this year that his presidential campaign would be the first in history to have a unionized workforce. Well, he just became the first presidential candidate in history to face a labor revolt from his unionized workforce.

“According to The Post, the Sanders campaign workers union, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400, complained that field organizers are ‘making poverty wages’ and that ‘many field staffers are barely managing to survive financially.’ Because field organizers are working 60 hours a week, according to the union, their annual salary of $36,000 works out to $13 an hour — well below the $15-an-hour federal minimum wage Sanders has called for.

“It gets worse. When the Sanders campaign offered to raise salaries to that level, the union rejected the offer. Why? Because, The Post reports, ‘the raise would have elevated field staff to a pay level responsible for paying more of their own health-care costs.’

“It turns out that Sanders pays only 85 per cent of health-care premiums for campaign staff making more than $36,000 — despite campaigning on a promise of free health care for all with ‘no premiums, no deductibles, no co-payments, no out-of-pocket expenses.’”

During his campaign – both of them, the last time around and this one — Sanders has promised to cover the cost of prescription drugs and make sure “no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need.” He has promised to pay for “universal childcare and pre-kindergarten.” He has promised free college, because “you are not truly free when the vast majority of good-paying jobs require a degree that requires taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to obtain.”

He has promised to “free generations of Americans from the outrageous burden of student loans by canceling all existing student debt.”

Is Sanders setting an example by providing all these benefits to workers on his campaign?

Of course, the answer is no.”

Because, if he did, his campaign would quickly run out of cash.

There’s the rub.

Soon-to-be former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously put it this way: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Unfortunately, Sanders is practicing two kinds of duplicity as he hopes Americans will vote for him as president. The first is that he cannot even run his campaign according to the socialist values he says he espouses.

Worse, he wants to expose the rest of us to his goofy proposals, which no one in their right mind can afford.