Hillary’s Half-measures are not good enough. Feel the FULL “Bern”.
Details below.
Climate-change:
Fighting climate change has got to be our nation’s and the world’s top priority or our species will not survive long past 2100. It’s not just me saying so. It’s our climate scientists:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
When climate scientists tell us the sky is falling, we should take action instead of patting them on their heads and telling them not to be like Chicken Little.
Though, Hillary has said she would not allow drilling in the Arctic as Obama is doing, her environmental plan involves phasing out fossil fuels gradually, while not ruling out Obama’s all-of-the-above energy policy in the interim, or, for that matter, not ruling out passage of the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, to my knowledge, she’s said nothing about fracking.
Bernie’s more aggressive about the need for a carbon tax, killing the Keystone XL, and banning fracking outright. While I don’t think any politician’s plans to fight climate change are far-reaching enough to protect our species, Bernie goes much further than Hillary.
Election reform:
Hillary’s election reforms include mandating 20 early days to vote, getting dark money out of politics by ensuring full disclosure, requiring candidates for SCOTUS state they would overturn “Citizens’ United” at the earliest opportunity (I believe this was Bernie’s idea originally), and re-formulating the Civil Rights Voting Act.
Bernie’s idea for exclusive public-financing of federal election campaigns would actually solve the problems opened up by “Citizens’ United” without requiring an Amendment to the constitution. It’s the best solution. He also supports re-formulating the Civil Rights Voting Act.
Reining in the Banks:
To my knowledge, Hillary’s only said that the wealthy need to pay more taxes, and that CEO’s of banks need to be held accountable for banks’ bad behavior (nebulous enough for ya?). Her campaign has said she will not promote a new Glass-Steagall. Her biggest donors are leaders of banks.
Bernie wants to break up the big banks and he wants to enact a new Glass-Steagall. Finally, Bernie wants to ban the corporate tax dodge of off-shoring of funds. Bernie wins this one hands down.
Trade Policies
Bill Clinton signed NAFTA with little help from his own party. And, it opened the floodgates for the shipping of factories overseas, continued by other trade agreements CAFTA, WTO, etc. Hillary Clinton has never stated opposition to NAFTA or any of the other disastrous trade policies. And, now she’s refusing to say whether she would support the TPP which she had a hand in negotiating.
Bernie has said we need to reverse our trade policies and that those trade policies are harmful to the American worker, another hands-down win for Bernie.
Education
HRC wants to make the first two years at a public college free and to enable students to re-finance their loans.
Bernie wants to make public colleges tuition free, and enable students to re-finance their loans. And, he’s funding the tuition-free policy by levying a transaction tax on Wall Street. This would discourage banks from treating our federally insured deposits as their personal Wall Street casino stash. This policy needs to be enacted in any case. No peep from HRC about said transaction tax. I wonder why that is? Could it be because banksters are the primary funders of her campaign?
I could go an ad finitum. Most of what Hillary proposes for a progressive agenda, Bernie one-ups, two-ups, or three-ups. What Ray Charles said about Coca-Cola could be said of Bernie’s progressivism vs. Hillary’s: “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby!”
I can hear HRC supporters’ rebuttal now: But, Bernie will never be able to get any of these policies through Congress. Hillary’s just being practical by suggesting only policies that could pass. I’m formulating another diary to obliterate that heaping mess of poppycock!