i just want to clarify that my comments around sanders accepting pension funds were specifically related to social security, and were explicitly a reference to the solvency of the system. social security should be means tested - perhaps only weakly, but at least partially. it is arguably the case that sanders would be outside of any reasonable cutoff in terms of eligibility for social security, rules i do not know the details of.

further, the comments were generated by explicit references to sanders accepting "social security payments", a term that may or may not have been intended to be interpreted literally, and yet which i did interpret literally, as exactly that. i apologize if i was led to sloppy conclusions by sloppy journalism, if it is indeed the case that i was.

a private pension is a different concern than social security. i don't think that private pensions should be means-tested, i think that the decision is contractual, and to be arrived at either by direct negotiation or, more realistically, through collective bargaining. the fact that the private institution is a government body may bring up a set of interesting questions, but the government body is still a private institution, and these were consequently not the concerns i had in mind.

i will agree that, if pressed on the point, sanders may want to consider donating some money to snow removal in burlington or something. but, my thoughts were on a very different line of thinking than rep. khanna's.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/sen-bernie-sanders-gets-mayoral-pension-while-running-for-president.html