They’re terrified of Bernie Sanders: Fox News, Hillary surrogates and Wall Street get extra-nervous

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling established what the SCOTUS Blog refers to as “the personhood of corporations.” As a result of equating corporations with people (allowing unlimited donations to PACs), some voters feel the need to compromise their value system in order to win the White House. The game is rigged and ideals become a liability when billions of dollars are at stake; better to jettison cherished principles in the short run and win the presidency in the long run. After all,$2.5 billion doesn’t grow on trees and money trumps sincerity in today’s political climate.

Also, Yahoo News writes that Donald Trump “donated to Clinton’s Senate campaign as well as the Clinton Foundation,” so while poll-driven candidates for president joust over issues only Congress can resolve, mainstream Democrats and Republicans are united under Citizens United.

Income inequality in America is the highest it’s been since 1928, yet Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill wants you to know that some people are just ”too liberal” and “extreme” to be president. Many Americans still aren’t comfortable with confronting Wall Street greed, even if the 2008 financial crisis cost the United States over $12.8 trillion, 2.6 million jobs, and resulted in a Washington Post headline titled “U.S. Forces Nine Major Banks To Accept Partial Nationalization.” According to the Levi Economics Institute, the 2008 financial crisis resulted in “a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.”

His name is Senator Bernie Sanders and he’s filling arenas and surging in Iowa and New Hampshire without the help of a super PAC; money can’t buy enthusiasm. Vermont’s Senator recently drew crowds of 10,000 in Wisconsin, 2,500 people in Iowa, a “packed to capacity” venue in New Hampshire, and a “huge crowd” of 7,500 in Maine. Sanders has been able to create a groundswell of momentum through an energized base of grassroots support.


http://www.salon.com/2015/07/13/theyre_terrified_of_bernie_sanders_fox_news_hillary_surrogates_and_wall_street_get_extra_nervous/

Bernie Sanders: We Need Medicare for All, Not Cutbacks That Will Kill Our Seniors


Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland Representative Donna Edwards joined the rally celebrating the 50th anniversary of Medicare in Washington, D.C. this Thursday with several hundred nurses, health care workers, and labor allies.

Senator Sanders touted the success of the Medicare program and the millions of seniors and disabled patients it has helped. "Before Medicare, If you were poor and old or sick, you had no options, you died or you suffered," he said.

The familiar Sanders crusade to fix financial inequalities is a key reason Sanders says he supports a single-payer system and promised to announce legislation within the next year. "We need to expand Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child," he told the cheering crowd. "Every year, thousands die just because they can't afford to go to the doctor. No one should go into the hospital and have to file for bankruptcy when they come out." The Sanders plan, he said, will provide healthcare through the most "cost effective way, and that is a Medicare for all."


http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/bernie-sanders-draws-line-sand-we-need-medicare-all-not-cutbacks-will-kill-our

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Never Says, 'When I Become President, I Will Answer Your Question'

One attribute shared by Ronald Reagan and Barrack Obama is the ability to communicate a message. While their messages differ politically, the speeches of both two-term presidents seem to hit the core of what voters were looking for during their respective eras. When a person is straightforward and forthright in their words, even a xenophobic and nativist New York billionaire can reach the hearts and minds of his constituency. After so long of being forced to hear vapid talking points and carefully crafted political rhetoric, Americans yearn for honesty and clarity in leadership.

This is why Hillary Clinton's style of communication is not only vague, but lends itself to criticism. A Washington Post article titled "Hilary Clinton's ridiculous hedge on Keystone XL" quotes the former Secretary of State's answer to a simple question about her stance on the pipeline:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders_b_7893228.html

Hillary Clinton's popularity hits a new low as voters say they don't trust her OR Trump and that NEITHER care about people like them


A majority, 57 percent, say she's untrustworthy isn't concerned about people like them, 52 percent.
Just four in 10 Americans have a positive opinion of her, down from a high of 61 percent in February of 2013
Voters don't like Clinton, but they don't think GOP front-runner Donald Trump is trustworthy or down-to-earth, either
They would rather have the former first lady reign the White House again than see the real estate mogul move in


Hillary Clinton's favorability is at a new low as voters increasingly say she can't be trusted and doesn't care about people like them.

But they don't think the GOP's front-runner for president Donald Trump is trustworthy or down-to-earth, either, and would rather have the former first lady reign the White House again than see the real estate mogul move in.

Clinton would handily beat Trump in a head-to-head match-up as would Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden, who has not said whether he's running or not in 2016.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3180104/Hillary-Clinton-s-popularity-hits-new-low-voters-say-don-t-trust-Trump.html#ixzz3hTv3gP4w

Conservative Think Tank: 10 Countries With Universal Health Care Have Freer Economies Than The U.S.

Many American conservatives oppose universal health insurance because they see it as fundamentally antithetical to a free society. “If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price,” wrote a guest editorialist in the ]Wall Street Journal in 2009. But according to the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, ten nations freer than the United States have achieved universal health coverage. It turns out that the right kind of health reform could cover more Americans while increasing economic freedom.

Today, Heritage published its 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual look at economic liberty around the world. The United States stayed put at #12, just below Ireland, Mauritius, and Denmark.

What’s striking about the list is that of the eleven countries ahead of the U.S. in economic freedom, ten have achieved universal coverage. Many Americans on both the right on the left subscribe to the myth that the U.S. has a free-market health care system. It doesn’t. U.S. government entities spend more per-capita on health care than all but two other countries in the world.




Tellingly, on the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, both Switzerland (#5) and Singapore (#2) rank far higher than the U.S. on overall economic freedom. Both countries serve as models for my health reform plan, Transcending Obamacare, which would adapt features of the Swiss and Singaporean health care systems to liberate U.S. health care from onerous regulations and wasteful spending. We’ve modeled the plan as reducing federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 30 years, while increasing the number of people with health insurance by 12 million.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/01/27/conservative-think-tank-10-countries-with-universal-health-care-are-economically-freer-than-the-u-s/

General Electric
From 2008 to 2013, while GE made over $33.9 billion in United States profits, it received a total tax refund of more than $2.9 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.

Boeing
From 2008 to 2013, while Boeing made over $26.4 billion in U.S. profits, it received a total tax refund of $401 million from the IRS. Boeing’s effective U.S. corporate income tax rate over this six-year period was -2 percent.

Verizon
From 2008 to 2013, while Verizon made over $42.4 billion in U.S. profits, it received a total tax refund of $732 million from the IRS.

Bank of America
Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS in 2010, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of more than $1.3 trillion

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/top-10-corporate-tax-avoiders

Effects of a Fifteen Dollar an Hour Minimum Wage in the City of Los Angeles

America has lost ground on the intent declared by Congress when the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938, that workers will receive wages sufficient to maintain “the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being.” The federal minimum wage had the greatest value in 1968. Set at $1.60 an hour, it had a value of $10.51 in 2012 dollars. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 is worth 31 percent less. This wage attrition is part of most people’s every day experience:

◾Three-quarters of the full-time labor force residing in the City of Los Angeles earn less than comparable workers 30 years ago.
◾Wage erosion was greatest for workers in the bottom half of the wage scale. From 1979 to 2011, annual pay dropped 14 percent for workers in the 50th percentile – the median or typical worker, and 26 percent for workers in the 25th percentile – the working poor.
◾The average hourly wage for all workers residing in the City of Los Angeles in 2013 is estimated to be $27.85, yielding estimated annual pay of $58,244 for the average wage and salary worker.
◾Forty-six percent of LA’s wage and salary workers are paid less than $15 an hour. This includes 41 percent of the 1,097,000 full-time employees and 54 percent of the 665,000 part-time employees who live in the City of Los Angeles.




Economic Stimulus

When workers’ households receive additional income, their increased spending stimulates growth in the local economy. Their increased purchases of groceries, clothes, meals out, health care, car repair services, and rental housing stimulates added purchases in the local supply chain. Jobs would be created in the same industries where workers would receive wage increases, including restaurants and retail stores. The increased buying power of workers would make these industries direct beneficiaries of the higher wages they would be paying.

The increased spending translates into added sales for local businesses and their suppliers, as well as added jobs at those businesses and their suppliers, and increased tax revenue for local, state and federal government.


http://economicrt.org/publication/effects-of-a-fifteen-dollar-an-hour-minimum-wage-in-the-city-of-los-angeles/

Here’s Every City in America Getting a $15 Minimum Wage

As New York is set to raise fast food workers' pay

When dozens of New York fast food workers walked off the job in 2013 demanding minimum pay of $15 per hour, their campaign seemed like a longshot. But two years, several nationwide strikes and new rules laws later, a $15 minimum wage is becoming a reality for millions of workers across the United States.

The workers’ campaign, known as Fast Food Forward and backed by the Service Employees International Union, has slowly gained momentum through a series of increasingly large one-day strikes targeting fast food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. At first, the effects of the strikes seemed small, with individual restaurant owners conceding to minuscule wage increases for some of their workers. But even as businesspeople were doing their best to ignore the movement, politicians were paying close attention.

Over the last two years, several cities and now the entire state of New York either have or are in the process of enacting a $15 minimum wage for various workers. Here’s a look at the cities that have enacted huge pay increases, and the ones that could still be to come.

http://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/

Woman charged with killing toddler son, husband

BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — A Whatcom County woman accused of killing her husband and toddler son faces two first-degree murder charges.

The Bellingham Herald reports (http://bit.ly/1MmjebK ) that a real estate agent found 43-year-old Erin Lee Jordan injured with a gunshot wound in the shoulder in her home north of Bellingham.

Charging papers show that Erin Jordan confessed to a Whatcom County sheriff's detective that she shot her husband and their child while they slept. Her husband Michael David Jordan and their 1-year-old son Miles were found with gunshot wounds. Deputies believe they had been dead for at least two days before they were found.


http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-charged-with-killing-toddler-son-husband-6401108.php