Welcome to the Bernie News Roundup. The BNR is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders run for President. Visit the group page for past editions and don't forget to Sign Up, Donate, Volunteer @ Bernie's official page.
Bernie Sanders writing at the Huffington Post:
Why Not?:
Our job is not to think small. It is to think big.
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. Why are we so far behind so many other countries when it comes to meeting the needs of working families and the American middle class?
Why doesn't every American have access to healthcare as a basic right?
Why can't every American who is qualified get a higher education, regardless of family income?
Why can't we have full employment at a decent living wage?
Why must many older Americans be forced to choose between paying for food, shelter, or medical care?
Why can't working parents have access to affordable, high-quality childcare?
We should be asking questions like these every day. We have more billionaires in this country than any other nation on earth. We also have more child poverty than any other major industrialized nation. We have the highest rate of student debt. We have more prisoners, more homeless people and more economic inequality.
It doesn't have to be this way
More
labor for Bernie:
The longtime leader of one of the country’s most powerful labor unions is joining the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and he says presumed frontrunner Hillary Clinton made it an easy call.
Larry Cohen, outgoing president of the Communications Workers of America, told The Huffington Post he will serve as an unpaid volunteer stumping for Sanders as the Vermont senator seeks the Democratic nomination. One of the main factors in his decision, Cohen said, was Clinton’s equivocation on granting President Barack Obama so-called fast-track authority on his mammoth trade deal.
“I did everything I knew how to do to get Clinton to speak out on fast track, and she wouldn’t,” said Cohen, whose 10 years leading CWA came to an end in June. "We begged her to speak out.
“There was a million ways she could have done it. ... Why was she silent on this?"
And some think I'm an optimist!
Bernie Sanders Could Change The World writes Bernie Quigley at Observer Opinion:
And the evidence is almost irrefutable now that that the Millennials, who communicate constantly via Facebook and other social networks, have chosen Vermont Independent/socialist senator Bernie Sanders to be their man.
This connection between Bernie and the Millennials could bring a sea change to America and to the world. Liberalism has won the day as seen in the Supreme Court’s two rulings recently on gay marriage and Obamacare. Republicans are on the defensive. And they have been on the defensive now for almost eight years and seem unable to offer young voters imagination, awakening and something to fight for, something to be brave about.
Bernie think's the
Overtime Rules Change Long Overdue:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says the Obama administration’s new draft overtime regulations are “long overdue.”
The Labor Department is proposing a new overtime rule that will expand the number of middle-class workers who qualify for time-and-a-half pay. This is the first time the rules are being updated in more than a decade.
“This long overdue change in overtime rules is a step in the right direction and good news for workers,” Sanders said in a statement.
“Businesses no longer will be able to shirk their responsibility to pay fair wages by simply labeling workers earning as little as $24,000-a-year as supervisors,” he added.
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Sanders had been calling for the Obama administration to raise the threshold even higher to $1,090 a week, but said he “welcomed” the new rules.
This editorial @ The Capital Times explores Bernie's fight against plutocracy:
Robert M. La Follette, the great Wisconsin governor and senator, ran for president in 1924 on a progressive platform that declared: “That tyrannical power which the American people denied to a king, they will no longer endure from the monopoly system. The people know they cannot yield to any group the control of the economic life of the nation and preserve their political liberties. They know monopoly has its representatives in the halls of Congress, on the federal bench, and in the executive departments; that these servile agents barter away the nation's natural resources, nullify acts of Congress by judicial veto and administrative favor, invade the people's rights by unlawful arrests and unconstitutional searches and seizures, direct our foreign policy in the interests of predatory wealth, and make wars and conscript the sons of the common people to fight them.”
Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont, is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, with a warning, “If present trends continue, elections will not be decided by one-person, one-vote, but by a small number of very wealthy families who spend huge amounts of money supporting right-wing candidates who protect their interests. This process — a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process — is called ‘oligarchy.’ The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.”
La Follette used the word “monopoly.” Sanders uses the word “oligarchy.” But the message is the same. It is, as La Follette said a century ago, “the old fight” between a privileged few wielding crony capitalist power and the great many who hold true to the American ideal that all men and women are created equal. The robber barons and plutocrats who vexed La Follette may have been beaten back by the New Deal. But they have returned in new guises, as the manipulations of the Koch brothers amply illustrate in Wisconsin and other states that are temporarily governed by errand-boy politicians.
Kathleen Hennessey at the LA Times presents:
Bernie Sanders Is Hot Enough On The Campaign Trail To Be Drawing Attacks
The relative comity of the race for the Democratic nomination for president was interrupted last week with an unexpectedly sharp attack video aimed in an unexpected direction..
“Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns,” said the narrator of a Web video produced by a "super PAC" supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
That the first direct attack of the Democratic primary would focus on guns – a second-tier issue -- and Sanders – a long-shot candidate – would have been hard to predict in a race dominated by front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and the party’s search for an economic message. But as Sanders, the Vermont senator and a self-described socialist, rises in the polls, he’s also emerged as the top target – both for those wanting to supplant him as the liberal alternative to Clinton and those arguing that a liberal alternative isn’t necessary.
“It is clear that Bernie Sanders is the most interesting character in the Democratic nomination play at the moment,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist.
Bernie In Bush-Obama America by David Dent @ The Huffington Post:
The Iowa Caucuses are six months away and, at this comparable moment in the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton's path to the Democratic nomination looked unstoppable. From Politico on June 14, 2007:
"Support from women is propelling Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) ahead of her Democratic challengers and positioning her as the most likely candidate to win the nomination, according to new polling analyses.
"In a show of strength against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Clinton holds a lead even among minority women of more than 25 percentage points, according to surveys by Zogby International and The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press."
At the time, there appeared to be so many odds against the black junior senator from Illinois. A New York Times headline even asked: "Will There Be an Obama Effect? " The article examined if Obama would suffer the fate of many black candidates who appear stronger in polls because whites fear offending telephone poll interviewers by saying they will not vote for a black candidate. "In high-profile contests where one of the major party candidates is black, pre-election telephone polls have often been wrong, overstating the strength of the black candidate. In polling circles this is known as the "Bradley effect" or the "Wilder effect" or the "Dinkins effect." Will it also be known as the Obama effect?"
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Can Sanders truly go Barack on Hillary? To do so, he must avoid the trap of running an electrifying yet losing campaign similar to Jesse Jackson's historic runs. He must bring his campaign beyond a cause and become a candidate that can win.
Lol, in what is probably one of the shortest blockquote to ever appear in this series is Bernie's portion of an article about
where the candidates get their campaign money:
Bernie Sanders. Fundraising tier: Lowest.
Prominent donors: Unions
Advantages: Virtually nothing to lose.
Vulnerabilities: So far to the left many donors may figure he has no chance and write him off.
9500 Expected To Turnout for Bernie in Madison:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says 9,500 people have said they plan to attend his rally on Wednesday night in Madison.
The Vermont senator said during a conference call Tuesday that he will draw on Wisconsin’s long progressive political history during the event. Sanders says he believes the progressive movement that existed for years in Wisconsin is now spreading throughout the country.
Bernie is having to
find a new venue at yet another rally due to size:
A scheduled appearance Monday in Portland by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been moved to the Cross Insurance Arena.
More than 3,000 people had RSVPed to attend the town meeting-style event, which was originally slated for Ocean Gateway.
Jonathan Topaz writing for Politico with:
Bernie Sanders calls rivals' cash dash 'a national disgrace'
Bernie Sanders on Tuesday is knocking his fellow presidential candidates’ last-minute cash dash before the FEC deadline, calling it “a national disgrace.”
“It is a national disgrace that billionaires and other extremely wealthy people are able to heavily influence the political process by making huge contributions,” he said in a statement. “The Koch brothers alone will spend more than the Democratic and Republican parties to influence the outcome of next year’s elections. That’s not democracy, that’s oligarchy.”
The statement from the Vermont independent — an ardent support of campaign finance reform who has rejected the notion of his own affiliated super PAC — said the “mad scramble” for super PAC money from other candidates is appalling.
“Elections should be determined by who has the best ideas, not who can hustle the most money from the rich and powerful,” Sanders said.