email from the Bern: ========= Xxxx - In the United States today, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, 47 million Americans are living in poverty. Almost 22 percent of American children are poor and we have the highest child poverty rate of almost any major country on earth. Let’s be clear. Living in poverty doesn’t just mean you don’t have enough money to buy a big screen TV, a fancy laptop, or the latest iPhone. It goes much deeper than that. Living in poverty means you are less likely to have a good grocery store in your community selling healthy food. Far too often it means you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from. Living in poverty means you are less likely to have access to a doctor, dentist or mental health care provider. It means you have less access to public transportation, which makes it harder to find a job. It means you are less likely to have access to child care. In the United States of America, poverty is often a death sentence. Yesterday, I spoke about poverty in McDowell County, West Virginia — one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in America. In 2014, over 35 percent of the residents in McDowell lived in poverty, including nearly half of the children. The roads are crumbling and only 6 percent of adults have a college education. Less than two-thirds have graduated high school. It has the lowest life expectancy for men in the entire nation. I hope you’ll watch part of my speech on poverty and share it with friends and family on social media. Bernie Sanders Speaks on Poverty in McDowell County, West Virginia Poverty is an issue we must address. In 2011, the American Journal of Public Health found that 130,000 people died in just one year alone as a result of poverty. This is not an issue we can just sweep under the rug and hope it will go away. Because it won’t. And when I talk about it being too late for establishment politics and economics, this is what I mean. When I talk about thinking big and outside the box, about rejecting incremental change, I am talking about the millions of Americans who live in poverty who have been tossed out, left behind, and abandoned by the rich and powerful. We need to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. Here’s what we need to do: Rebuild our country’s crumbling infrastructure. A $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure will create at least 13 million jobs all over America - jobs that cannot be outsourced. We must rewrite our disastrous trade policies that enable corporate America to shut down plans in places like West Virginia and move them to Mexico, China, and other low-wage countries. We can create 1 million jobs for disadvantaged youths through legislation I introduced with Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. We need to increase the wages of at least 53 million American workers by raising the minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. At a time when women workers earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, we need to sign the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. Equal pay for equal work. We need to make health care a right for every man, woman, and child through a Medicare for All single-payer system. We need to treat drug addiction like a mental health issue, not a criminal issue. We need to ensure every worker in this country has at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, two weeks of paid vacation, and one week of paid sick days. We need to impose a tax on Wall Street to make public colleges and universities tuition free while substantially reducing student debt. At a time when half of older workers have no retirement savings, we’re not going to cut Social Security, we’re going to expand it so people can retire with dignity and respect. No president can do all of these things alone. We need millions of Americans to begin to stand up and fight back and demand a government that represents all of us. That is the political revolution. In solidarity, Bernie Sanders
Government as the answer to anything is just about a dead idea.... except among the Bern crowd. Socialism is, in general, a dead idea, politicians will keep on with it of course, it's good for them but bad most of the rest of the human race. Central Banking is a dead idea actually also... Thinking that Wall Street will regulate itself because people are basically good is a dead idea. Greenspan actually claims that's what he thought... Keynes' ideas appeal to politicians, all that money goes through their sticky fingers so yeah, they love it and they don't have to repay the loans either... Building government on the assumption that people are evil and self serving is the way to go. That's how we got our Constitution. The idea of progressive taxation via income taxing should be a dead idea. Most people nowadays don't care how large government gets because they don't pay for it. That should be a dead idea just on the idea that it's bad networking: If you take out of your network then you put in equally.
Apart from how he'd pay for some of it, I don't have problems with most of this. In fact, I support a good deal of it.
Afraid that Trump has a chance in the swing states, the establishment is beginning to rethink Hilary Clinton. The Bern will have to think of a VP, Hilary as VP and I choose Elizabeth Warren for Secretary of the Treasury. Sanders campaign: Dems 'court disaster' in Clinton Washington (CNN)Bernie Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent a sharply worded fundraising appeal on Wednesday, saying that Democrats "court disaster" by nominating Hillary Clinton. He also insisted -- despite the fact that Sanders trails Clinton in both pledged delegates and superdelegates and faces a nearly impossible path to the nomination -- that there will be a contested Democratic National Convention. "The Democratic Party must decide if they want the candidate with the momentum who is best positioned to beat (Donald) Trump or if they are willing to roll the dice and court disaster simply to protect the status quo for the political and financial establishment of this country," Weaver wrote. He cited a "scary" Quinnipiac University poll of swing states Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania showing tight races between Clinton and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump -- races that Sanders performed slightly better in, though within the poll's margin of error. "Because we must do everything we can to defeat Trump in November, our mission is to win as many pledged delegates as we can between now and June 14," Weaver wrote. "Then we're going to have a contested convention." The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment on Weaver's statements. Weaver addressed blowback to the fundraising email in an interview on CNN Thursday. He said the "disaster" he was referencing in the pitch was a Trump victory, and was not meant as a criticism of Hillary Clinton. "The disaster is not Hillary Clinton. The disaster is the election of Donald Trump," Weaver said. "Look, electing Trump to the presidency of the United States would be an unmitigated disaster. " Weaver also defended the campaign's decision to continue its long-shot White House bid and argued that Sanders' presence in the race would not harm Clinton, but would keep progressive issues at the fore of the national political debate. "Believe me, as soon as this nominating process is over, regardless of who is the nominee, I can guarantee the media coverage will be about name-calling and finger pointing, and we're not going to have any more discussion about the issues. As long as there is a democratic process going on, issues of importance to Democrats are being discussed," Weaver said. The Sanders campaign has said it will continue to fight on in the remaining primary states as well as trying to flip Clinton superdelegates -- who are unbound until they vote during the convention -- while also planning efforts to shape the party platform. "I will continue to run an issue-oriented campaign. Will I be taking on Donald Trump? Absolutely. Will I be discussing the differences of opinion Secretary Clinton and I have? Yes, I will," Sanders told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. But just as Sanders' supporters clamor for their candidate to continue his long-shot bid, party leaders -- including members of the Obama administration -- have signaled they think that extending the primary contest does more harm than good. "I think everybody knows what that math is," Obama told reporters last week, referring to the delegate count that shows scant opportunity for Sanders to overcome Clinton. "At some point there's going to be a conversation between Secretary Clinton and Bernie Sanders about how we move towards the convention." And Vice President Joe Biden went even further, saying in an ABC interview this week that he felt "confident that Hillary will be the nominee and I feel confident she'll be the next president."... http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-disaster/index.html
Both sides say that either Hilary or Trump is an indisputable disaster for the country. I doubt it. Neither is a disaster. But both are heavily flawed candidates. But no one would question Hilarys' patriotism nor Trumps'. We can definitely question their judgement, but not their heart. The choices we will be left with, either way, are about things we have been living in this country for decades if not a century. Deal with it.
Obama praises likeminded Nordic nations "Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama has hosted plenty of confrontational foreign leaders at the White House, haggling over military aggression, trade disputes and any other irritant that brings a head of state into the Oval Office. When Obama convened the leaders of the Nordic bloc on Friday, it was not one of those meetings. "This was a very useful and important conversation, although there was probably too much agreement to make for as exciting a multilateral meeting as I sometimes participate in," Obama joked after a 90-minute session with the leaders of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark Friday. Amid turmoil in the Middle East, cross-border aggression in Eastern Europe, maritime disputes in Asia and restive governments in South America, the northern European nations remain an oasis of liberal cool for a president who has sometimes been described in similar terms. It's no wonder Obama is fond of musing to his aides, "Why can't all countries be like the Nordic countries?" "We are usually dealing with a lot of difficult parts of the world," said Charles Kupchan, Obama's top adviser for European affairs. "Suddenly, you go up to the Nordic region of the world, and not only do you have a part of the world that is extremely stable, and Democratic, and liberal, you have a part of the world that is peaceful and is contributing to peace and to the humanitarian agenda and many of the interests the United States cares about in a way that is consistent and reliable." Those attributes were toasted in top Washington fashion Friday during a state visit, replete with a pomp-filled Grand Foyer welcoming ceremony and evening state dinner. It's rare for nations to be honored that way as a group -- the official list of Obama's state visits contains only individual countries -- but officials say it made sense for the tightly-coordinated Nordic bloc. The President greeted each country's leader in their native language Friday morning, which prompted good-natured chuckles as he tripped over some of the words. In brief remarks, Obama said the U.S.'s Nordic allies are "extraordinary countries" and "extraordinary friends," noting many shared values, including a commitment to democracy and a belief in creating opportunity for all people. The leaders arrived at a contentious political moment in the United States that has many allies wondering where they'll stand on a post-Obama global stage. The Nordic nations are monitoring the U.S. presidential election anxiously as presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump casts doubt about his commitment to the NATO alliance, particularly as Russia continues its military build-up along its western borders. And they watched with amusement as Sen. Bernie Sanders, his rival Hillary Clinton and former GOP contender Sen. Marco Rubio debated various aspects of their countries' social and economic structures -- deriding Rubio when he joked Sanders would make a good president of Sweden (the constitutional monarchy has a prime minister, not a president). After their meeting, Sweden's prime minster praised Obama's attempts to install Nordic-style programs in the United States, including expanding health care coverage and bolstering social safety net programs. "Seeing the U.S. advance on these issues will create new ripples of hope for all of us who believe in social justice and individual freedom," Stefan Löfven said..." http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/13/politics/obama-nordic-leaders-summit/index.html