Playinghardball
Playinghardball's Journal
(Email from Bernie) I had to stop watching the Republican debate..
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Last night, it took nearly two hours for the Republican debate to even briefly touch on an important issue: raising the minimum wage in this country from $7.25 an hour. The American people overwhelmingly want to raise the minimum wage, but not a single candidate embraced the idea with the same enthusiasm.
The truth is, once again, if you are one of the wealthiest people in this country, you had eleven candidates on the stage talking about your needs for almost three and a half hours. The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer, yet for what seemed like an eternity, all they could talk about was not letting women control their own bodies and defunding Planned Parenthood. If you are a veteran or military family member, there was a lot of talk about more money for war and confrontation, but no conversation about how the cost of war continues long after the last service member has returned home from overseas.
I think that’s one of the reasons our campaign is doing so well. We are willing to talk about the issues that matter in the lives of all Americans, and not just a handful of special interests and wealthy campaign contributors.
And all throughout last night’s debate, I kept thinking about some of the people I’ve met and stories I’ve received since our campaign began. Like the young mother from California who wrote me a few weeks ago saying:
"I'm 25 years old and about to have my first daughter. I want her to be able to go to college without going into insane amounts of debt. I want her to be able to get the healthcare she needs to stay happy and healthy."
Or the printing company worker in upstate New York who wrote to me saying:
"I am paid $10.00 an hour for the past 2 years in a customer service role. I have 2 sons and cannot afford the daycare bill for them by myself. I've been forced to move home with my parents as my $650 paychecks after tax are not enough to live on with paying $500 for daycare just to go to work."
Today, we live in the richest country in the history of the world, but that reality means little when people who work 40 hours a week are living in poverty, and hundreds of thousands of young people are forced to give up their dream of going to college because it is too expensive.
The good news is, this is a nation we can rebuild together. And I am asking you to join me in this campaign to build a future for all of us, and not just a few on the top.
Make a contribution to our campaign if you’re ready for a political revolution that creates a country in which children aren’t living in poverty, kids can go to college, and seniors have health care:
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
EXPRESS DONATE: $10
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EXPRESS DONATE: $100
OR, DONATE ANOTHER AMOUNT.
The truth is, I had to give up on the debate after two and a half hours. This country and our planet face enormous problems, and the Republican candidates on that stage last night barely touched upon them.
There was no discussion about racial justice, income inequality, or making college more affordable. Nothing about child poverty, parental leave, or ensuring that every American can retire with dignity. And with virtually every campaign backed by an enormous Super PAC (except Trump who is his own Super PAC), you can be sure there was no discussion of the grotesque amount of spending corrupting our political process.
And when the candidates did touch on actual issues, they were dead wrong on virtually every position they took.
In less than a month, we’ll have our chance at the first Democratic presidential debate. But I’ll need your support to keep growing our political revolution between now and then.
That’s why your contribution is so important.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Media Covers Trump’s Fake Veteran’s Speech and Endorsement: Doesn’t Realize it was a Fraud
Donald Trump stood on the U.S.S. Iowa yesterday giving a speech billed by Corporate Media as a pro-military message in support of veterans. Corporate Media even announced that the group’s sponsor Veterans for a Strong America endorsed him.
There is a big problem. Veterans for a Strong America is a fake organization. It has one member, it’s creator Joel Arends, an attorney from South Dakota. It has $30 in cash on hand, and $318 in debts. Trump claimed at the event that the organization has hundreds of thousands of members, but it appears to be only one person, Arends, its founder. It’s not a Veteran’s organization. It’s a Super PAC fundraising business.
Paul Rieckhoff, the founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, tweeted after the event, “Just learned Trump did an event today announcing he’s been endorsed by a vets group that nobody’s ever heard of. w/out a real vets platform. Are they a 501c3/c19? Have they ever testified on the hill? Do they have any real programs? What have they done? These are questions to ask.”
For more on this story, click Veterans for a Strong America: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
http://heavy.com/news/2015/09/veterans-for-a-strong-america-endorses-donald-trump-endorsement-pac-maddow-joel-arends-charity-donations-members-battleship-video-uss-iowa/
Watch Rachel Maddow discuss this fake organization:
http://ringoffireradio.com/2015/09/corp-media-covers-trumps-fake-veterans-speech-and-endorsement-doesnt-realize-it-was-a-fraud/
Progressive Change against Corporatism is Sweeping the World: Thom Hartmann Explains
In a stunning upset, Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the UK’s Labour Party. The rise of Bernie Sanders and the election of Jeremy Corbyn shows that Americans and Brits are getting sick and tired of corporatists running the show. They want real progressivism and real change, not Reaganism-lite. Thom Hartmann explains this phenomenon.
http://ringoffireradio.com/2015/09/progressive-change-against-corporatism-is-sweeping-the-world-hartmann-explains/
Bernie Sanders just slammed a report that claimed his proposals would cost a monstrous $18 trillion
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is pushing back on the eye-popping estimated price tag of his progressive wish list of proposals he has offered on the campaign trail.
The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page story on Tuesday that Sanders' proposals would total around $18 trillion over 10 years, which the publication said would amount to the "largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history."
That would include an estimated $15 trillion over a decade for a revamping of the federal healthcare system to a government-run, "Medicare for all" single-payer approach.
In an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday, Sanders disputed The Journal's total. He argued that the paper did not take into account the spending reductions that would come with the enactment of a single-payer-type healthcare plan.
"That is not the reality. We will be responding to The Wall Street Journal on that," Sanders told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell of the overall estimate.
"I think most of the expense that they put in there, the expenditures have to do with the single-payer healthcare system," he continued. "They significantly exaggerated the cost of that, and they forgot to tell the American people in that article that that means eliminating the costs that you incur with private health insurance."
Sanders, right now the main Democratic challenger to presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, has not released a detailed healthcare plan as of yet. The Journal relied on an analysis of similar legislation proposed by Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and sponsored by 44 other House Democrats.
The analysis, which was conducted by University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist Gerald Friedman, would "require $15 trillion in federal spending over 10 years, on top of existing federal health spending," according to The Journal.
But the analysis has also been cited favorably by progressive advocates of a single-payer healthcare system, who note that Conyers' bill would purportedly save nearly $600 billion annually by eliminating administrative waste in the private-insurance industry and cutting prices of pharmaceutical medicine.
"In 2014, the savings would be enough to cover all 44 million uninsured and upgrade benefits for everyone else. No other plan can achieve this magnitude of savings on health care," Friedman wrote in his 2013 analysis.
The Washington Post's Paul Waldman backed up Sanders on some of his criticism. As Waldman pointed out, the US currently spends about $3 trillion a year — and will spend close to $42 trillion over the next decade — on healthcare. He argued that Sanders' proposal wouldn't add on to that total, but rather reallocate the way the US spends money on healthcare.
"By the logic of the scary $18 trillion number, you could take a candidate who has proposed nothing on health care, and say, 'So-and-so proposes spending $42 trillion on health care!' It would be accurate, but not particularly informative," Waldman wrote.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bernie-sanders-just-slammed-report-200233459.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=tw
Email from Bernie...
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If you haven’t had a chance to read the email Bernie sent earlier today, please do.
The billionaire class is terrified. No presidential campaign in American history has accomplished what we have in just a few months, and they’ve responded as you’d expect: by activating their Super PACs in an effort to halt our progress.
Now that they’re attacking our campaign directly, we have a choice: we can either stand by and accept business as usual, or we can strike back and send a message that we’ve had ENOUGH of billionaires and corporations buying our elections.
Make a $50 contribution to our campaign today and make the Super PACs pay a price for their attacks.
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/super-pac-attack?refcode=em150915kicker-full
The billionaire class has never dealt with a threat like ours before, and this will not be the last time a Super PAC considers attacking our campaign. If we stand together in this moment, we can make them think twice the next time they do.
In solidarity,
Jeff Weaver
Campaign Manager
Bernie 2016
