Nanjeanne
Nanjeanne's JournalWhen Bernie Met Hillary-Long before challenging Clinton, Sanders reached out to her. He got nowhere
Fascinating Read By BEN SCHRECKINGER - about healthcare, NAFTA and more. Recommend reading the whole thing.
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In 1992, the lone socialist in Congress, Rep. Bernard Sanders, as he was then known, wasnt wild about the centrist Arkansas Governor running for president, and he let it be known publicly. Bernie was the founder of the progressive caucus. Clinton was the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, the whole point of which was to exterminate the progressives, said Bill Curry, who served as counselor to the president during Clintons first term. They werent even two ships passing in the night. They were two ships sailing in the opposite direction.
But in May of 1992, Sanders wrote to the First Lady of Arkansas at her Little Rock law firm to tout a bill he had written to provide federal funding for state cancer registries, attaching his testimony on the bills behalf and a Readers Digest article calling registries THE CANCER WEAPON AMERICA NEEDS MOST.
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They got their meeting at the White House that month, and the two doctors laid out the case for single-payer to the first lady. She said, You make a convincing case, but is there any force on the face of the earth that could counter the hundreds of millions of the dollars the insurance industry would spend fighting that? recalled Himmelstein. And I said, How about the president of the United States actually leading the American people? and she said, Tell me something real.
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At the time, Sanders was a vocal opponent of the administration-backed North American Free Trade Agreement, which the House approved in November.
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By the time Sanders arrived in the Senate in 2007, Hillary Clinton was already gearing up for her first presidential run, though the two did find opportunities to join forces during their two-year overlap in the upper chamber. In 2007, they co-authored the Green Jobs Act, which funded renewable energy and energy efficiency programs and passed as part of a larger energy bill. They both served on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, and in July 2008, along with Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy, the pair co-sponsored the Access for All America Act to expand the availability of primary care medicine, which died in committee.
More . . . http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-119082
Adding Up the Costs of Hillary Clinton’s Wars
There is so much in the article by Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, it's really worth the read.
Excerpts:
At a recent rally in Indianola, Iowa, Clinton said that Senator [Bernie] Sanders doesnt talk much about foreign policy, and when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes it can sound like he really hasnt thought things through.
The former secretary of state was certainly correct. Foreign policy for Sanders is pretty much an afterthought to his signature issues of economic inequality and a national health care system.
But the implication of her comment is that she has thought things through. If she has, it isnt evident in her memoir, Hard Choices, or in her campaign speeches.
Hard Choices covers her years as secretary of state and seemingly unconsciously tracks a litany of American foreign policy disasters: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and the Asia pivot thats dangerously increased tensions with China.
At the heart of Hard Choices is the ideology of American exceptionalism, which for Clinton means the right of the U.S. to intervene in other countries at will. As historian Jackson Lears, in the London Review of Books, puts it, Clintons memoir tries to construct a coherent rationale for an interventionist foreign policy and to justify it with reference to her own decisions as Secretary of State. The rationale is rickety: the evidence unconvincing.
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She takes credit for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, for example. But in her campaign speeches shes not said a word about the horrendous bombing campaign being waged by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. She cites R2P for why the U.S. should overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but is silent about Saudi Arabias intervention in Bahrain to crush demands for democracy by its majority Shiite population.
Clinton, along with Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, and Susan Rice, the Obama administrations national security advisor, has pushed for muscular interventions without thinking or caring about the consequences.
And those consequences have been dire.
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Certainly more than Obama Clinton pressed the White House to intervene more deeply in Syria, and was far more hardline on Iran. On virtually every foreign policy issue, in fact, Clinton is said to have led the charge inside the administration for a more belligerent U.S. response.
More than the Republicans? Its hard to say, because most of them sound like theyve gone off their meds. For instance, a number of GOP candidates pledge to cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran. While Clinton wanted to drive a harder bargain than the White House did, in the end she supported it.
However, she did say shes proud to call Iranians enemies, and attacked Sanders for his entirely sensible remark that the U.S. might find common ground with Iran on defeating the Islamic State
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http://fpif.org/adding-costs-hillary-clintons-wars/
A Question I Really Wish Would Be Asked To Clinton At Next Debate
Secretary Clinton,
You have been touting your experience as a significant reason for people to support you as President over Senator Sanders.
We know you have great admiration for Pres. Obama and what he has done as President. But you criticized him quite a bit in 2008 for not having enough experience to be President.
I also assume that you think your husband, Bill Clinton, was a good President. Yet he was a Governor of a medium sized state in the South. Then he became President.
So why do you think that Sen Sanders, who has more experienced than either Pres. Obama or Bill Clinton when they were running, wouldnt be capable of being as good a President as those you admire?
My guess would be we wouldn't get an answer beyond socialism, can't be done, dangerous times and ----- fill in e blank.
Another SC Rep to Endorse Bernie!
?@darrensands
Scoop: South Carolina Rep. Joe Neal to endorse @BernieSanders. His Richland Co. is the second most populous in S.C.
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Little Separates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in Tight Race in Iowa
From NY Times by Patrick Healey
Some excerpts.
But Mr. Sanders proved to be a rigorously disciplined candidate, delivering the same powerful message inveighing against establishment politics, Wall Street and the benefits enjoyed by the wealthy and the well-connected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/us/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democratic-iowa-caucus.html?_r=0
#CaucusForBernie - You May Say I'm A Dreamer . . . But I'm Not The Only One
We've had enough of business as usual & we're ready for a govt that works for the people! #CaucusForBernie
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Football is a spectator sport. Democracy is not a spectator sport. #CaucusForBernie
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@BRios82 @SarahWoodwriter extremely progressive :/ #CaucusForBernie #FeelTheBern 🔥
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#CaucusForBernie because this
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Black Business Leader Makes A Case For Sanders (Waterloo Iowa )
From Burlington Free Press
Its a weird notion that paying people adequately is bad for small business, Hall said of those who believe that Sanders policies would be disastrous for the economy.
Hall, executive director of the Main Street Waterloo that promotes local business, believes Sanders is the Democratic candidate who can help small businesses thrive. Still, the 31-year-old Waterloo-native acknowledged that his idea of a vibrant economy differed from those on Wall Street.
Its not going to be as good for business as crony capitalism, Hall said.
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More in the link http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2016/01/31/black-business-leader-makes-case-sanders/79614998/
Clinton Can't Count on Union Backing in Iowa, Despite Endorsements (report from Patrick Caldwell)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/iowa-unions-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-afl-cioFrom Mother Jones
Bolding Mine
When Bill Clinton swings by the Machinists Union hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sunday night, he'll be flanked by a bevy of national labor leaders. It will be a fitting scene for the final night before the first votes of the Democratic presidential nomination contest, a campaign in which Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the vast majority of national union endorsements. She's received the support of 24 unions, she bragged at an event last week, representing more than 10 million of the 14.6 million unionized workers in the country.
Organized labor has been a major push for her campaign as she closes out Iowa. Last week, Hillary Clinton hosted a "Hard Hats for Hillary" event that included the presidents of the Carpenters, Ironworkers, and Federation of Government Employees, among others. She released a gauzy video on her support for unions, in which she tells their members, "A lot of the work you do may not be as well understood and appreciated as it should be."
On the ground here in Iowa, however, Clinton's labor advantage isn't quite so clear cut. There aren't polls measuring statewide union support for the two candidates, and it's notoriously difficult to forecast caucus results anyway, given how much they come down to turnout and organization. But mounting anecdotal evidence from Iowa suggests that notwithstanding the endorsements of the people atop the unions, Clinton might not be able to count on the same level of support from actual union members in Monday's caucuses.
"I know there's a lot of rank-and-file people that like Bernie Sanders," says Ken Sager, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO. Sager, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has yet to endorse, says he's been getting about equal volumes of pro-Sanders and pro-Clinton mailabout seven piece of mail per day from the campaigns and various unions in the final days of the racedespite the fact that his wife is a member of the pro-Clinton AFSCME.
"The people that I have talked to think that he is very genuine in terms of supporting the issues that are important to workers and their families," Sager says, noting that other local chapters of the electrical union in other parts of the country have endorsed Sanders. "He talks about the things that will work in making a difference. Getting everybody to be involved."
Lance Coles, the communications director for the state's AFL-CIO, predicts that ample union support could propel Sanders to a statewide victory on Monday. "I've said that for a long time," he says. "I think Bernie's going to squeak it out here, I think he's going to pull it."
Coles' union, the American Postal Workers Union, has endorsed Sanders, and he's been active in boosting Sanders' efforts. "Come Monday night, there's going to be a lot of Bernie support," he says. "Probably a lot more than what people think."
"The Bernie [events] are like pep rallies," he adds. "Theyre much more, I don't want to say agitated, but excited, there's a lot more energy in their events. Most of the stuff I see for Hillary is: one, she's always late, which pisses a lot of people off. And I understand that with Secret Service, I get it, I understand that. But a lot of people are really frustrated with that."
Last fall, when Clinton skipped the state's AFL-CIO convention while Sanders and other candidates attended, local labor leaders groused to Bloomberg Businessweek's Josh Eidelson that they were wary of Clinton, primarily over her shifting positions on free trade. "I would love to have her be the first female president," Stacey Andersen, a representative of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union, told Eidelson, "but shes going to have to come out a little bit stronger than what Ive been seeing when it comes to labor-friendly issues." And as the Intercept recently noted, Clinton's union endorsements have been the decisions of the group's leadership, while the handful of unions backing Sanders have done so after directly polling their members.
On Monday afternoon, Sanders appeared at the local hall of the United Steelworkers in Des Moines (showing up on time) to assure the crowdwhose national union has yet to endorsethat he's the better candidate for organized labor. Parked outside was a red campaign bus from the National Nurses United emblazoned with an endorsement for Sanders. "The most trusted profession trusts Bernie," the side of the bus read. The Sanders staff distributed signs to the crowd reading, "Vote Labor Values, Labor for Bernie."
"I like his views and his opinions," Josh Fleenor, a 35-year-old tire builder in the local union, told me before the event. "Bring America back."
Throughout his speech, Sanders touted his record of fighting for low-wage workers, defending efforts to block trade agreementsa veiled dig at Clintonand to expand union membership through measures such as card check. "I don't get any money, and I don't want any money, from corporations," he said. "Never got a nickel. Don't want any money from the billionaire class. But I am very grateful for the support that I've received from the Steelworkers throughout my entire political career. Thank you guys, very, very much."
"Initially I didn't think he could win," said Jerry Addy, a retired operating engineer at the event. "Now I think he can win. I just think Bernie's a better person, a better candidate. Bernie's doing retail. Hillary's doing wholesale."
Bernie Crushing it - "Bernie Sanders' Small Donor Fundraising Continues To Set Records"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-fundraising_us_56ae4f7ee4b0010e80ea7bdbThe numbers weve seen since Jan. 1 put our campaign on pace to beat Secretary Clintons goal of $50 million in the first quarter of 2016, Jeff Weaver, Sanders campaign manager, said in a statement. Working Americans chipping in a few dollars each month are not only challenging but beating the greatest fundraising machine ever assembled.
The vast majority of Sanders' money has come from donors giving under $200. This contrasts with Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has raised the majority of its funds from donors giving maximum contributions of $2,700. Clintons campaign has also raised substantial sums from small donors, but Sanders ability to remain competitive with Clintons fundraising by relying solely on small contributions is unprecedented.
The Sanders camp said that the fourth quarter total will show 70 percent of the campaign's donations came from small donors. Further, the $20 million it reports to have raised in January came almost exclusively from online donations averaging $27 a piece.
Overall, Sanders raised $75 million in 2015 compared to an anticipated $114 million for Clinton.
*bolding mine
This is My Candidate, Bernie Sanders - Consistent and Real for 30 years
This is from an August show of Rachel Maddow's. It was probably posted back then - but now, on the eve of the Iowa caucus - I found it inspiring to watch again. It's over 10 minutes - but worth it to see Bernie back in the 1980s talking with the same passionate honesty about the greatness we could achieve. There's some great clips from national media (young Tom Brokow) about Bernie's success as Mayor of Burlington and the many times he was reelected as Mayor, Congressman and Senator with large margins against Republicans.
Enjoy!
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