May 6, 2016

Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz Democratic National Committee
430 South Capitol Street Southeast Washington, DC 20003


Dear Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz:

I am writing to follow up on our discussion about the composition of the standing committees of the Democratic National Convention. In order to reflect the views and aspirations of the millions who support both my candidacy and Secretary Clinton’s, I believe that the composition of the standing committees must reflect the relative support that has been received by both campaigns.

That was why I was so disappointed to learn that of the over forty people our campaign submitted at your request you chose to select only three of my recommendations for the three standing committees. Moreover, you did not assign even one of the people submitted by our campaign to the very important Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention.

If we are to have a unified party in the fall, no matter who wins the nomination, we cannot have a Democratic National Convention in which the views of millions of people who participated in the Democratic nominating process are unrepresented in the committee membership appointed by you, the Chair. That sends the very real message that the Democratic Party is not open to the millions of new people that our campaign has brought into the political process, does not want to hear new voices, and is unwilling to respect the broader base of people that this party needs to win over in November and beyond. Fairness, inclusion and transparency should be the standard under which we operate.

In our conversation, you told me with respect to the platform Drafting Committee that you would consider allowing each campaign to submit ten names from which you would choose four from each and then you would add an additional seven. While having four members on the Drafting Committee is an improvement, it does not address the fact that up to this point Bernie 2016 has secured some 45% of the pledged delegates awarded. Frankly, we believe that percentage will go up in the coming weeks and, of course, we hope it will end up being a majority.

I believe that each campaign should chose seven members to serve on the Drafting Committee. The fifteenth member would be a chair who would be jointly picked by the two campaigns. This process will ensure that all the standing committees reflect the full range of views of voters who have participated in the Democratic nominating contests.

This process will also ensure that the chairs of the standing committees conduct their proceedings with fairness and transparency. As it stands now, the chairs of the Rules Committee and the Platform Committee are active supporters of Secretary Clinton’s campaign. But even more than that, they both are aggressive attack surrogates on the campaign trail. I do not, and the millions who have supported our campaign will not, have any confidence that either of them will conduct committee proceeding in an even-handed manner. In fact, the suggestion that they would be appropriate chairs in and of itself suggests the standing committees are being established in an overtly partisan way meant to exclude the input of the voters who have supported my candidacy.

As you know, there are already over 9 million voters who, during this nominating process, have indicated that they want to go beyond establishment politics and establishment economics - and want to transform our country with bold initiatives. I will not allow them be silenced at the Democratic National Convention.

It is my hope we can quickly resolve this in a fair way. If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention.


Thank you in advance for your help in establishing standing committees that are fair and inclusive. I look forward to hearing from you.


Sincerely,

Senator Bernie Sanders


P.O. Box 905 • Burlington, Vermont 05402 • 802-862-1505 • www.berniesanders.com




https://berniesanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Sanders-Letter-to-DNC-5.6.16.pdf

PRESS RELEASE


Sanders to DNC: Don’t Stack the Deck at Philly Convention



MAY 6TH, 2016



BURLINGTON, Vt. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday urged Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz not to stack the committees that will draft the rules and lay out the party platform at this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

In a letter to the party chairwoman, Sanders said the makeup of the standing committees should reflect the relative level of support that he and Hillary Clinton received in primaries and caucuses. So far, Sanders has won about 45 percent of the pledged delegates. Both campaigns deserve a say at the convention this July in Philadelphia, the senator said.

Under party rules, Wasserman Schultz recommends 25 at-large appointments to the party’s executive committee for each of the three standing committees; rules, platform and credentials. Wasserman Schultz has forwarded only three of 40 names the Sanders campaign recommended for the key committees while installing Clinton loyalists in leading roles. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy was put in charge of the Platform Committee, for example, and former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was tapped to head the Rules Committee.

Sanders called Malloy and Frank “aggressive attack surrogates” for Clinton. He doubted that either would “conduct committee proceeding in an even-handed manner” and said the appointments of the two Clinton loyalists “suggests the standing committees are being established in an overtly partisan way meant to exclude the input of the voters who have supported my candidacy.”

How the party leadership comports itself at the convention will affect Democrats’ chances of winning the general election this November, the Vermont senator said.

“If we are to have a unified party in the fall, no matter who wins the nomination, we cannot have a Democratic National Convention in which the views of millions of people who participated in the Democratic nominating process are unrepresented in the committee membership. That sends the very real message that the Democratic Party is not open to the millions of new people that our campaign has brought into the political process, does not want to hear new voices and is unwilling to respect the broader base of people that this party needs to win over in November and beyond,” Sanders wrote to Wasserman Schultz.

The letter warned that if committee assignments aren’t fairly allotted one result could be floor fights. Under party rules, minority reports may be brought before the full convention at the request of 25 percent of the platform, credentials and rules committees.

“If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention,” Sanders wrote.

To read Sanders’ letter to Wasserman Schultz, click here.





https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-dnc-dont-stack-deck-philly-convention/

PRESS RELEASE


Sanders to Discuss Poverty in America



MAY 5TH, 2016





KIMBALL, W. Va. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday was in McDowell County, West Virginia, to meet at a food bank with people living in one of the worst pockets of poverty in the United States and to examine why 47 million Americans live in poverty in the richest nation on earth.

He will meet this morning with West Virginians at the Five Loaves & Two Fishes Food Bank, where Linda and Bob McKinney struggle to keep residents of the rural mountain county from going hungry.

The discussion is expected to focus on the urgent need to lift millions of Americans out of poverty and rebuild the middle class. Sanders will focus on how poverty can be a death sentence. In McDowell County, where deaths by suicide and from drug overdoses are among the highest in the state, men live on average to be only 64 years old. Sanders will contrast that to suburban Washington, D.C., just a six-hour drive away, where men in wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia, live on average until the age of 82. The average life expectancy for women in Fairfax County is 85, compared to just 73 for women in McDowell.

To read the senator’s prepared remarks, click here.

To read prepared remarks by panelists, click here.

To read Sanders’ interview on poverty in McDowell County with Steve Inskeep on NPR’s “MorningEdition” today, click here.

To read more in The Atlantic about poverty and mortality, click here.






https://berniesanders.com/press-release/19214/

A federal judge on Wednesday signaled that he may be willing to order Hillary Clinton to testify about the decision to conduct official business on a private email server while she served as secretary of state. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in an order made public Wednesday that it “may be necessary” for Clinton to be deposed in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking unrelated employment records for one of her closest advisers while she was at the Department of State.

The judge said “questions surrounding the creation, purpose and use of the clintonemail.com server must be explored” so that he may assess whether it was put in place to circumvent federal open-records laws. Prior to the revelations that the email server existed, Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, sued the Department of State to seek disclosure of the employment records of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, with an eye toward unearthing potential conflicts with private sector work Abedin engaged in while at the department.

Once some of the records were produced, the parties agreed to dismiss the case in early 2014. But when The New York Times reported on the existence of the email server last March, the watchdog group went back to court and later alleged that Clinton and State “sought to deliberately thwart” the Freedom of Information Act with the setup of the server. In Wednesday’s order, Sullivan seemed to cabin the implications of the case, noting that it involves the “narrow legal question” of whether State acted in good faith when it produced the records under the original request.

“Although the State Department has taken some action to recover federal records related to this case,” Sullivan wrote, “those efforts do not resolve the question of whether the agency’s search in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request was reasonable.”

To get to the bottom of that legal question, Sullivan allowed lawyers for Judicial Watch to seek testimony from Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff in her four years at State, as well as from other State employees who were involved in the deliberations surrounding the setup of the email system. Once that round of depositions and other evidence is collected in the case, for which the court gave an eight-week timeline, Sullivan said the lawyers can ask him for “permission” to also seek Clinton’s testimony.


cont'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/federal-judge-may-order-hillary-clinton-to-testify_us_572a6662e4b016f37894a568

PRESS RELEASE


Politico Exposes Clinton Campaign ‘Money-Laundering’ Scheme



MAY 2ND, 2016





BURLINGTON, Vt. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, on Monday criticized a Hillary Clinton campaign fundraising scheme that state party leaders told Politico has been used as a self-serving “money-laundering” conduit.

Despite Clinton’s pledges to rebuild state parties, Politico found that less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by the Victory Fund has stayed in the state parties’ coffers.

“Secretary Clinton is looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt fundraising limits on her presidential campaign,” Weaver said. “We think the Clinton campaign should let the state parties keep their fair share of the cash.”

Sanders’ and Clinton’s primary campaigns both raised about $26 million in April, but Politico documented how the Hillary Victory Fund, a supposedly joint fundraising committee, has been exploited to inflate her presidential primary campaign.

“Secretary Clinton has exploited the rules in ways that let her high-dollar donors like Alice Walton of Wal-Mart fame and the actor George Clooney and his super-rich Hollywood friends skirt legal limits on campaign contributions,” Weaver added. “If Secretary Clinton can’t raise the funds needed to run in a competitive primary without resorting to laundering, how will she compete against Donald Trump in a general election?”

The Sanders campaign first raised questions about the arrangement in an April 18 letter from Brad Deutsch, the attorney for Sanders’ campaign, to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC.

“Hillary Clinton says that campaign finance reform is one of the most important issues facing our country but her campaign’s use of the Victory Fund to essentially launder money proves otherwise,” Weaver said. “You cannot exploit a broken campaign finance system one day and vow to get big money out of politics the next.”

Sanders last month raised money for three progressive Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. Unlike the Hillary Victory Fund, every dollar went directly to helping the candidates. The senator has also raised significant sums for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.





https://berniesanders.com/press-release/politico-exposes-clinton-campaign-money-laundering-scheme/

The Progressive Mind @Libertea2012

RT: Why the f are lobbyists superdelegates? System is rigged.

#WhatTheyDontWantUsToKnow… #BernieStrong