Boost from Bernie Sanders plays into Seattle race for Congress
In a Seattle-area congressional race pitting progressive Democrats against each other, Bernie Sanders could be a difference-maker. The Vermont senator has been helping Pramila Jayapal with her bid to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott. [….]
The national spotlight on the 7th District already is affecting the race in at least one major way, however: Sanders raised about $180,000 for Jayapal in five days and doubled the number of contributors to her campaign when he endorsed her in April. [….]
Jayapal had endorsed Sanders before the caucuses, having connected with him personally and politically during an earlier trip the candidate made to Seattle.
Their meeting of minds was in August, when Sanders was scheduled to speak at a Social Security rally in downtown Seattle and Jayapal appeared just ahead of him.
“I came off stage and he said, ‘You said everything I was going to say,’ ” she recalled.
Video link: Bernie Booed by Congressional Democrats (The Young Turks)
Democrats are booing Bernie Sanders. But his movement is succeeding.
Politico reports that Bernie Sanders was booed by House Democrats in a private meeting today on Capitol Hill. Apparently they were irked with Sanders for withholding his endorsement of Clinton, and reacted badly after he said this: “The goal isn’t to win elections. The goal is to transform America.” One Dem even accused Sanders of “squandering” his movement.
But if Sanders is squandering his movement, it is odd that he continues to rack up meaningful victories in the battle to transform the Democratic agenda, if not the country. [….]
Clinton’s new college plan is actually a meaningful concession in the direction of Sanders’s broader ideological vision. As Libby Nelson explains, it moves from making tuition affordable to making tuition free, which represents a more expansive view of government’s role in creating opportunity:
Until very recently, the consensus in the Democratic Party was that students should pay for part of their own education, even if they needed loans to do so, because they’d reap the lifelong benefits of earning a college degree. The role of the federal government was to help them afford it, through grants to the poorest students and loans to everyone else.
Sanders upended that consensus. Instead of viewing a college degree as something that ultimately benefits individuals, and that the federal government should help to finance, he saw higher education as something that should be free and accessible to everyone — just as K-12 education is today.
Read Nelson’s piece for the details, but the bottom line is this: Sanders “offered a simple but bold idea: that college should be free. The fact that Clinton has embraced it shows just how far the party has moved.”
In other words, Clinton, and the Democratic Party overall, have moved substantially towards Sanders’ vision that higher education — and the opportunities it affords — should be a matter of right. As Sanders himself put it in hailing her decision: “The dream of higher education will become a reality for all, regardless of the economic circumstances of their family.” [….]
Again, it’s too early to say what all this will yield. But these stirrings are meaningful. Michael Kazin, the historian of the American left and co-editor of Dissent Magazine, suggested in an interview that the Sanders movement is showing nascent success at incorporating itself into Democratic establishment politics in ways reminiscent of lefty movements (populists, progressives, socialists, early organized labor) at the turn of the last century and the Civil Rights movement in the mid-20th century.
The Democratic Platform Feels the Bern
On the subject of Wall Street reform, the draft platform released by the Democratic Party reads much more like a Bernie Sanders stadium speech than a Hillary Clinton policy memo. "Democrats will fight against the greed and recklessness of Wall Street," they pledge.
This tough talk is clearly intended to draw in voters who are still feeling the Bern. But it could also be a sign that Wall Street's aversion to Donald Trump has strengthened the Democrats' hand.
Sanders makes Wall Streeters' hair stand on end because of what he wants to do to them directly: break up the big banks, hike their taxes and jail the executives who caused the 2008 crash. [….]
The platform draft shows Democrats are willing to bite the hand that feeds them – or at least to say they will. The difference is particularly stark if you compare the Wall Street language in the current draft to the 2012 platform. Back then, the Dems did little more than pat themselves on the back for having passed the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.
Today, they're candidly acknowledging that we still have a long way to go to fix our financial system. And they're quite specific about how they plan to do that.
Video link: [Full Interview] Bernie Sanders on CNN’s “Wolf Blitzer” (7/6/2016)
Sanders Defends Vermont’s GMO Labeling Law
WASHINGTON, July 6 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday said legislation that could soon come to the floor of the U.S. Senate would undermine efforts in states around the country to help Americans stay informed about what goes into their food.
“The American people have a right to know what they’re eating,” Sanders said during a press conference on Capitol Hill. “That is why states like Vermont, Maine, Connecticut and Alaska have adopted laws to label goods containing GMOs and why many other states are interested and on the path to do that.”
In 2014, Vermont became the first state in the country to mandate labeling for food that contains genetically modified ingredients. The law went into effect last Friday. Due in part to the state’s bold action, many large companies such as Campbell’s, Frito-Lay, Kellogg, and ConAgra are already labeling their products nationwide.
But legislation recently introduced by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) creates a confusing, misleading and unenforceable national standard for labeling genetically modified food.
Instead of a uniform labeling standard like Vermont’s law, the bill allows text, symbols or an electronic quick response code to be used. The bill also contains huge loopholes and imposes no federal penalties whatsoever for violating the labeling requirement. If it becomes law, the legislation will preempt Vermont’s standard and create chaos for other states that have passed similar bills.
“The timing of this legislation is not an accident,” Sanders said. “Its goal is to overturn and rescind the very significant legislation passed in the state of Vermont. I will do everything that I can to see that it’s defeated.”
The leaders of Earthjustice, Greenpeace USA, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Fund and the Sierra Club on Tuesday sent a letter to senators in opposition to the Stabenow and Roberts’ bill. “We urge senators to heed the call for greater transparency, equitable access to information and protecting our right to know whether the foods we are eating and feeding our families contain genetically modified ingredients by opposing this bill,” the organizations wrote. Consumers Union, Just Label It, Center for Food Safety and Food & Water Watch also oppose the bill.
The Environmental Working Group has calculated that food and biotech companies and trade associations have spent nearly $200 million to oppose state GMO labeling ballot initiatives such as Vermont's. When combined with Washington lobbying expenditures that mention GMO labeling, the total amount spent by labeling opponents is close to $400 million.
Sanders was joined at the press conference by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
Bernie Sanders carries Sonoma County in final results
With all the votes finally counted, it turns out Sonoma County is Bernie Sanders country after all.
The Brooklyn-born Vermont senator overtook Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, in official results released Wednesday by the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters Office.
The results — with 52 percent of the local vote for Sanders compared to 47 percent for Clinton — handed Sanders a late and largely symbolic local win, erasing the 54 percent to 45 percent advantage Clinton had on election night [...].
The turnaround, fueled by late returns in vote-by-mail ballots, reflected Sanders’ strength in fundraising and grassroots organization in Sonoma County, where he far outpaced Clinton in campaign donations. [….]
Just three days before the June 6 election, Sanders drew 6,000 enthusiastic North Coast supporters to a Cloverdale rally, where he repeated his call for a political revolution to transform American government, the economy and civil society.
Petition: Stop Another Trade Deal ‘Disaster’
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.
The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.
Let’s be clear: the TPP is much more than a “free trade” agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system. If TPP was such a good deal for America, the administration should have the courage to show the American people exactly what is in this deal, instead of keeping the content of the TPP a secret.
Sign the petition to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership
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