This is my Bernie Sanders news roundup for the week ending in 2/26/16.
Jim Hightower talked about his support for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Moyers & Company
The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy
Economist Gerald Friedman did an analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s plan suggesting it would produce significant growth in the economy — and then a group of left-leaning economists flipped out.
This post first appeared at Campaign for America’s Future.
“When you dare to do big things, big results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, you get a big result.”
– James K. Galbraith
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he wants the American people to join him and “fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all.” His website outlines a number of proposals toward this end, including increasing taxation of corporations and the wealthy and using the money to repair the country’s infrastructure, extending public education four years to cover college, extending Medicare to everyone, expanding Social Security and addressing climate change.
Gerald Friedman, a respected economist (and Clinton supporter by the way) took a look at Sanders’ proposals, ran the revenue and spending numbers through a standard economic model, and suggested that the very high level of spending would provide a “significant stimulus to an economy that continues to underperform, with national income and employment at levels well below capacity.” This stimulus could lead to several positive economic outcomes, including increasing gross domestic product growth to 5.3 percent a year, cutting unemployment to 3.8 percent and increasing wages by 2.5 percent per year. This, combining with the revenue proposals, would bring a budget surplus. Friedman wrote:
Like the New Deal of the 1930s, Senator Sanders’ program is designed to do more than merely increase economic activity: the expenditure, regulatory, and tax programs will increase economic activity and employment and promote a more just prosperity, “broadly-based” with a narrowing of economic inequality.
Read the rest of this article on Moyers & Company
Interrupted By BLM, Hillary Clinton Displays Her Supremacist Swagger: Again | Blog#42
A BLM activist interrupted Hillary Clinton at a meeting with donors on February 24th, and she didn’t handle it well. Maybe not so surprisingly, given media protection of Hillary Clinton thus far, her first encounter with Black Lives Matter last summer received very little written criticism, or any public critiques, really, from media pundits, even though most shared the videos.
So, here we are today, watching a new video of Hillary Clinton being interrupted by a Black Lives Matter activist and giving her that Hillary swagger I wrote about after her first encounter. Watch:
Click here to read the rest on Blog#42
Bernie Sanders’ 1994 Crime Bill Vote And Media’s False Equivalencies | BLOG#42
So, Hillary Clinton has another very awkward encounter with Black Lives Matter, and some attempt to equate her 1994 involvement promoting the Crime Bill with Bernie Sanders’ vote. In the interest of fairness, I would like to examine the equivalence of the two.
First, let’s watch then Congressman Bernie Sanders express his misgivings about the legislation on the House floor:
Click here to read the rest of this post on Blog#42
Robert Reich on private and public morality
How Can Black People Trust Hillary Clinton After the 2008 Campaign?
James Rucker
Hillary Clinton appears to be playing cynical racial politics again, as she did in 2008. It’s just got a different look and feel.
Today, Clinton is wrapping herself in the flag of Obama to appeal to Black voters, arguing that she’s the candidate who will address the needs of Black people. She’s got her surrogates attacking her opponent’s civil rights bonafides, and she’s built a large stable of Black establishment players to support her. Clinton is proclaiming that Black Lives Matter and offering bold promises to fight systemic racism and inequality.
But it’s hard to believe she’s serious about fighting for racial justice unless you pretend her 2008 campaign against Obama never happened. If you remember that period, there’s good reason to believe today’s promises are nothing more than lip-service to a community she sees as key to winning the nomination.
Clinton is now attacking Bernie Sanders for having criticized Obama, trying to take advantage of Black folks’ desire to defend the president. But it was Clinton herself who waged an incredibly nasty campaign of attacks and smears against Obama, going far beyond mere policy disagreements. A quick trip down memory lane reveals that Clinton has a history of employing race in a divisive, cynical manner.
Read the rest of this article on HuffPo.
The flip side of Clinton’s strength among black voters: She’s weaker among whites
Dave Weigel
DULUTH, Minn. — Jennifer Schultz didn’t realize how popular Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) had become here until she didn’t endorse him. In late January, when Sanders brought his presidential campaign to Duluth, Schultz, a Democratic state representative, wrote a quick Facebook post welcoming him to northern Minnesota. Welcoming, not endorsing. Just being nice.
That wasn’t how her constituents read it.
“It was shared, like, 8,000 times,” Schultz said. “I was amazed by that — by thank yous rolling in for something I didn’t even say.”
That, and the subsequent rally of 6,000 cheering voters, convinced Schultz that Sanders had started to conquer Minnesota. “It seems like Bernie’s doing better than Hillary here,” she said. “I think Trump and Bernie are both doing well, because you’ve got a lot of people who are low income and feel left behind.”
Read the rest of this article on WashingtonPost.com
David Brock and Hillary Clinton’s Racist Whisper Campaign
I recently wrote about the game of racial divide and conquer the Clintons engage in. I also wrote about the behind the scenes editorial control by the Clinton campaign over the mainstream media.
Today, a new piece published by the New York Times continues in that vein of racially tinged divide and conquer, in which Joseph Berger, writes:
Mr. Sanders, those who know him say, exemplifies a distinct strain of Jewish identity, a secular offshoot at least 150 years old whose adherents in the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the jostling streets of the Lower East Side were socialists, anarchists, radicals and union organizers focused less on observance than on economic justice and repairing a broken world. Indeed, he seems more comfortable speaking about Pope Francis, whose views on income inequality he admires, than about his own religious beliefs.
Read the rest of my piece on Blog#42
Spike Lee’s right: black people should wake up to ‘Brother Bernie’
Spike Lee is the latest black public intellectual to endorse Bernie Sanders and to question the sanity of black voters and politicians pledging their allegiance to the Clintons, who have done as much harm to black America as any living political couple. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am mystified by robust black support for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing helped me wake up about race in America when I first watched it as a teenager. That’s why I was delighted to read that Spike Leeencouraged South Carolina democrats to “wake up” in a radio ad on Tuesday and to vote for “Brother Bernie”.
Read the rest of this article on the Guardian.com
The Democrats’ Attack on Imagination Is Hurting Us All
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
We must resist those voices who urge us to settle for the world as it is
Presidential campaigns feel more like sporting events than democracy. The candidates pretend they want voters to think and choose by putting forward policies and debating. But stump speeches and motivational slogans often feel like a never-ending commercial aimed at getting us to buy something we don’t really need.
The media covers it like entertainment. You can hear pundits rattling off positions as the horses round the bend: “They are running neck and neck” or “so-and-so is pulling away from the pack.”
But if there’s one feature of the whole circus that sets my teeth on edge, it is the attack on our imaginations. This has been particularly the case this election season—and particularly from the Democratic side. You don’t have to be a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders to see the relentless assault on the “political revolution” he commends.
Read the rest on Time.com
Can Bernie Sanders Breathe New Life Into the Black-Jewish Alliance?
February 24, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s success at edging out Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses and her strong footing going into South Carolina seemed to vindicate her argument that she’s the only serious Democratic primary candidate. Sure, Sanders won big in New Hampshire, but that’s a small, white state that was predisposed to vote for him, the senator from neighboring Vermont. Clinton’s the one, her supporters say, who can win the support of minorities, especially African Americans, and thus unite the party in the general election.
Sanders, a white man from a white state, has had to battle the concept that his focus on class issues is a way to skirt the thorny issues of structural racism and white supremacy. Clinton surely has black allies, including the academic Michael Eric Dyson and the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, to argue this. But Sanders has plenty of prominent black support, from academic Cornel West to former NAACP leader Ben Jealous to writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who criticized Sanders for not supporting reparations for slavery only to later admit that he would, in fact, be voting for him.
If Sanders is more progressive than Clinton on issues like mass incarceration, as civil rights author Michelle Alexander argues, then why do we keep hearing the accusation that Sanders is weak on race and incapable of winning minority voters?
Read the rest of this article on the Jewish Forward.com
TIME Magazine falsely accuses Bernie Sanders of yelling ‘English only’ at Latina activist Dolores Huerta
A TIME magazine article on Wednesday falsely accused Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of yelling “English only” at a Latina civil rights activist.
A bizarre controversy erupted during the Democratic primary in Nevada in which Sen. Sanders (I-VT) supporters were accused of yelling at famed rights hero Huerta to speak in “English only.”
The accusation spread on social media when pro-Hillary celebrity America Ferreratweeted it had happened, but was largely debunked when a video surfaced, which seemed to show that a group did not break into a chant demanding that Huerta, a supporter of Sanders’ rival, Hillary Clinton, speak only in English.
Read the rest of this article on RawStory.com
Robert Reich: Are we witnessing the death of America’s political establishment?
ROBERT REICH, ALTERNET
24 FEB 2016
Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred.
A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, and garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada, of all places.
And a 69-year-old billionaire who has never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party has taken a commanding lead in the Republican primaries.
Something very big has happened, and it’s not due to Bernie Sanders’ magnetism or Donald Trump’s likeability.
It’s a rebellion against the establishment.
The question is why the establishment has been so slow to see this. A year ago – which now seems like an eternity – it proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush shoe-ins.
Read the rest of this article on RawStory.com
Sanders Has a 30-Point Lead Over Clinton in West Virginia. Here’s Why That Matters
Bernie Sanders is almost twice as popular as his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, in West Virginia. Among likely Democratic primary voters, the firebrand senator from Vermont leads Clinton 57% to 29%, according to a new poll.
As far as Sanders’ prospects for snagging the nomination are concerned, his potential landslide there isn’t particularly important. The primary there isn’t until May 10, it’s a small state with a modest share of delegates, and there’s a good chance that the upcoming primaries over the next few weeks will allow Clinton to develop an insurmountable lead in the delegate count over Sanders well before April.
The fact that Sanders is well-liked in West Virginia isn’t something that his nomination odds will ever hinge on, but the phenomenon is still of serious significance for Democratic Party operators. His favorability in that patch of Appalachia is the latest sign of an emerging trend: His consistent ability to capture the imagination of white working class voters — a demographic that has shown relatively little interest in Clinton so far this cycle and shunned President Barack Obama at historic rates in election cycles past.
Read the rest of this article on Mic.com
It’s GroundHog Day When A Winner Proudly Says: “We Won The Uneducated & The Hispanics | Blog#42
Trump won the Nevada caucus. If you follow me, you know I was expecting that.
The real estate magnate’s success has been written on the walls of this nation for quite some time, but the Trump-obsessed media both couldn’t stop giving him all the attention he craves, they also were fooling themselves when, at the same time, they kept talking about a Bush surge, and now, a Rubio surge. To which I say, in my best Dana Carvey impersonation of George H. W. Bush, “Not gonna do it!”
But here we are and the Trump steamroller is gathering momentum. So much so that Trump felt free to let it rip at his victory speech. Watch:
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Black Progressives, It’s Time to Unite Against Establishment Politics
22 February 16
he Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) has endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and by the way in which it did so has demonstrated its propensity to play establishment politics.
An endorsement in itself isn’t a bad thing, but for the CBC PAC to endorse the Clinton campaign by misleading black voters about Bernie Sanders’ record on issues important to black Americans, and neglecting to offer any critique on the impacts the Clinton policies have had on black Americans is not only insulting, it’s dishonest.
According to South Carolina House Democratic Leader J. Todd Rutherford, Bernie Sanders has “only really started talking about issues concerning African Americans in the last 40 days.” Rutherford has also criticized Bernie Sanders for his vote in favor of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and suggested that Bernie Sanders apologize for his vote on the bill.
Perhaps Bernie Sanders should apologize for voting in favor of the crime bill, and if he does he should do so with the 24 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who also voted for the bill in 1994.
A critique can be made about Sanders’ vote in favor of the crime bill; however, that critique must be put into the context of his support for women who are victims of domestic violence, which is part of the reason he voted in favor of the crime bill: The Violence Against Women Act was attached to it.
Read the rest of this article on ReaderSupportedNews
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