WALL STREET is still out of control. Seven years ago, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department bailed out the largest financial institutions in this country because they were considered too big to fail. But almost every one is bigger today than it was before the bailout. If any were to fail again, taxpayers could be on the hook for another bailout, perhaps a larger one this time.
To rein in Wall Street, we should begin by reforming the Federal Reserve, which oversees financial institutions and which uses monetary policy to maintain price stability and full employment. Unfortunately, an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.
The recent decision by the Fed to raise interest rates is the latest example of the rigged economic system. Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner. They have been dead wrong each time. Raising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages. As a rule, the Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent. Raising rates must be done only as a last resort — not to fight phantom inflation.
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Financial reforms must not stop with the central bank. We must reinstate Glass-Steagall and break up the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that threaten our economy. But we need to start with fundamental change. The sad reality is that the Federal Reserve doesn’t regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates the Fed. It’s time to make banking work for the productive economy and for all Americans, not just a handful of wealthy speculators. And it begins by making the Federal Reserve a more democratic institution, one that is responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans rather than the billionaires on Wall Street.
(Video Of The Full Speech Here)
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders ratcheted up his criticism Tuesday of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, calling him a “coward billionaire” and mocking him for talking about Hillary Clinton’s trip to the restroom during the past presidential debate.
“He has discovered that women go to the bathroom, and it’s been very upsetting to him,” the senator from Vermont said of the real-estate mogul during a rally here that drew about 1,800 people. “This is a guy who wants to be president of the United States. He must have a very unusual relationship with women.”
Sanders was referring to Trump’s recounting Monday of Clinton’s late return to the Democratic debate stage following a commercial break Saturday night.
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“Now I’ve got to be honest with you. I’ve got to be honest with you,” Sanders said, speaking in a mocking tone. “I also went to the bathroom. I know, I have to admit it. … This is the pathology. This is the guy who is leading in the Republican polls.”
Earlier in his hour-long remarks, Sanders also took aim at Trump for his hard-line position on immigration and his recent proposal to ban all Muslims temporarily from coming into the country. Sanders also lambasted Trump for his objection to raising the minimum wage and his advocacy of tax breaks for high-income earners.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders took his message to Iowa Western Community and Harlan, Iowa, Tuesday night.
A few thousand people showed up to support him.
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"If we are going to be competitive locally, then we need to make sure that all of our young people who have the desire, who have the ability and are academically minded, are able to get the higher education they need," Sanders said.
While the pillars of his campaign ignite millenial voters, polling data shows they're not attracting senior citizen Democrats. Supporters believe his message will eventually win them over.
"Bernie is believable and I don't believe that Hillary is," Perry, Iowa resident David Cunningham said.
"I feel like if they really listen to what he has to say, they would get that same feeling," Atlantic, Iowa resident Andrew Rothfusz said. "You know what, this guy can do it."
Bernie Sanders spends much of his time on the presidential campaign trail railing against millionaires and billionaires and the economic inequality he says have plagued the nation.
But Vermont's independent senator has different sentiments when speaking about one of the richest men in Burlington, Tony Pomerleau. Sanders entered a tribute to Pomerleau into the U.S. Congressional Record in 2012, and has lauded many times the man who made his first million by age 45.
"He and his family have contributed many many millions of dollars to people in need throughout the state of Vermont," Sanders said of Pomerleau at the Dec. 6 annual Pomerleau Family Holiday Party. "I think today we are honored to have with us a man who is not only a hero here in the city of Burlington, but a hero throughout the state who understands that you can't take it with you."
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The self-declared democratic-socialist politician and the Republican developer are unlikely friends.
In fact, Sanders acknowledged at the holiday party he had few friends in local government when he was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981. Burlington’s political arena was much more conservative in the 1980s, Pomerleau said.
Sanders is scheduled to be at a town meeting December 27 at 4:30PM at the Reno Ballroom at 401 Center Street. Doors open at 3:30PM. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged. (See the attached link.) Admission is first come, first served.
Sanders will be at a public event in Las Vegas Monday.
The campaign is launching a Nevada-wide advertisting blitz, according to Sanders’ senior adviser Tad Devine. “The campaign's movement into Nevada with statewide television advertising is a demonstration of Bernie's potential and strength with voters and our belief that his story and message of American's rigged economy held in place by a corrupt system of campaign finance will resonate powerfully across the nation.”
Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will travel to Chicago Wednesday to meet with supporters and talk about his plan for criminal justice reform.
Sanders is first expected to attend an invitation-only community gathering hosted by Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. The event will be held at 3:30 p.m. at El Pollo Feliz, located at 3132 W. 26th St.
Just before 5 p.m., he is then scheduled to hold a press conference at the Village Leadership Academy, located at 1001 W. Roosevelt.
Chicago’s criminal justice system has been spotlighted in recent weeks following the release of dashcam video showing a white police officer fatally shooting a black teen 16 times. The video has prompted the firing of the city’s police superintendent and sparked an investigation by the Department of Justice into the police department’s practices. The officer involved has also been charged with first-degree murder.
In response to the video, Sanders called for "fundamental reform" in the criminal justice system and asked activists to take action beyond chanting "Black Lives Matter."
For the first time since July, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought his presidential campaign back to Sioux City.
Back then, Sanders had to contend with Siouxland's summer heat. In the last few days the Democrat has taken some heat after members of his campaign improperly accessed voter information compiled by Hillary Clinton. "In your opinion what's the greater sin, that your staffers accessed the information improperly multiple times, or that the DNC failed to protect the information in the first place?" asked Matt Breen. "It's both, said Sen. Bernie Sanders, (D) Presidential Candidate. "The problem would not have happened in the DNC's vendor had done their job properly."
The staffer responsible for the breach has been fired. Two others were suspended. Sanders, himself, has apologized to Hillary Clinton and his supporters. "It's not the way we do a campaign," Sanders said.
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This latest breach certainly hasn't hurt Sanders' numbers. The latest Iowa poll puts Sanders within 5-points of Hillary Clinton. "I want to thank the people of Iowa very much for their support," Sanders said.
Bernie Sanders isn't usually one for public self reflection, so it was noteworthy earlier this month when the Vermont senator candidly admitted he needs to make a change to his campaign.
"We are doing very badly among older people and I want to change that," Sanders said, unprovoked, after a two-day swing through Iowa. "We will change that."
Polls have consistently shown a growing age gap in the fight for the Democratic nomination: Older Democrats have lined up with 68-year old Hillary Clinton, while younger voters are so far choosing to stand behind Sanders, the 74-year old self-described democratic socialist.
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Sanders' campaign, at the spurring of the candidate, plans to tackle its age gap in the coming weeks by courting older voters and focusing on issues like Social Security and Medicare.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, told CNN the campaign will use "every tool of modern campaigning to reach out to older voters." That includes TV and radio advertising aimed squarely at seniors, as well as direct mail campaigns that will largely focus on Sanders' record on prescription drug costs and protecting Medicare.
"It is obvious that older voters need more information about Bernie Sanders, his record and his agenda," Weaver said. "While it is true that many seniors are online, many seniors are also not and this campaign a lot of younger voters have learned about Bernie's campaign on social media and online, so I think it is fair to say that younger voters are more familiar with him."
With the end of the latest fundraising quarter drawing near, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders played the expectations game Tuesday -- with both camps suggesting the other Democratic hopeful very well might raise more money.
In an email blasted to supporters, Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that Sanders was "on track to outraise us this month" and ominously warned that Clinton "might not have the resources we'll need to really compete" in the first two presidential nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Not long afterward, the Sanders campaign responded with a statement proclaiming "we have no idea if we will raise more money this quarter than the Clinton campaign."
But the campaign's guess: "Probably not."
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"While we may or may not raise more money than the Clinton campaign, what is certain is that they will have more total money because they have established super PACs which are raising money from millionaires and billionaires," said the Sanders campaign.
In November of 1989, as the citizens of East Germany broke through, and then demolished, the Berlin Wall, a 48-year-old socialist in the United States was plotting his next move. After losing a campaign for Vermont’s lone congressional seat in 1988, and choosing not to run for re-election as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the following year, Bernie Sanders sought shelter, as so many newly unofficed politicians had before him and have since, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he taught a course on third-party politics. The Sanders family settled into a mellow Cambridge routine: While his wife, Jane, took some courses at Harvard, and their children attended the Cambridge public schools, Sanders recalls in his recently reissued 1998 memoir, Outsider in the House, “I went to more football games that fall than I had in 20 years, and became addicted to the cinnamon raisin buns at Au Bon Pain at Harvard Square.”
But the former mayor wasn’t just cooling his heels. In an op-ed he wrote for The Harvard Crimson that month, Sanders wrote that watching the dramatic events unfolding abroad—“glasnost; perestroika; free speech; open parliamentary debate televised before millions of viewers; the beginning of organized political opposition to the Communist Party; mass strikes and demonstrations by workers and ethnic minorities; serious publications dealing honestly with the nation’s sordid history which had been covered up for decades by officials lies”—prompted him to consider the need for something similar to happen at home
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In the Harvard Crimson piece, Sanders suggested “four issues (out of many) at the heart of our existence as a nation which, within the context of an American Glasnost…need to be discussed vigorously…wherever Americans come together.” These are the four questions he raised:
- Do we need radical changes in our economic system to provide a fairer distribution of wealth and economic decision-making?
- How do we create a real democracy in which the average citizen has the opportunity to vote in elections in which meaningful choices are presented? Further, how do we create a political climate in which citizens play an active role in the affairs of their community?
- Do we need a new political party in this country which represents the interests of working people, poor people, minorities, women, environmentalists, peace activists and all people who are not being adequately represented by the Democratic and Republican parties?
- How can we create a media in this country which allows for a wide diversity of viewpoints, when ownership of the media is currently in the hands of very wealthy and powerful corporations which are primarily concerned with protecting their own economic interests?
The Bernie News Roundup is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders' run for President.
More information about Bernie & The Issues @ feelthebern.org
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