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Bernie Is On A Mission:
Independent Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has a plan to kill two birds with one stone.
The first bird? He wants to spend $3 billion to provide solar panels for America’s poor over the next 15 years. The second bird is moving us further away from our dependence on oil, coal, and other dirty fuels—and he’s going to do it not by trusting America’s corporations to do the right thing, but instead by providing for America’s most vulnerable citizens with a common-sense fix for one of life’s most significant expenses: home energy.
Sanders formally introduced this legislation as the Low Income Solar Act, echoing a similar message he’s sent to Congress in past years: empowering our low-wage earners is not a job for a welfare state, but for a country that values equal opportunity.
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But more than that, Bernie Sanders is building on a movement in America that seems a radical departure from the once-popular, Atlas Shrugged-fueled idea that economic opportunity must flow from the top down. We’re beginning to see what happens when we look to the underprivileged around us, whether we’re fighting for proper care for veterans or making sure underprivileged Americans have the tools they need to prosper.
But we’d expect nothing less from Bernie, who seems to be campaigning not for himself, but for the American people. With every step on his campaign trail, he convinces more and more Americans to vote for the truth instead of a particular version of it. As his popularity gains traction, let’s hope his latest piece of legislation does, too.
Gainesville Event:
Gainesville is “feeling the Bern” as Gainesville Wants Bernie, a local group, is hosting a meet-up Wednesday at High Dive bar per request of Democratic Party nominee Bernie Sanders.
The meeting comes as part of Sanders’ pro-grassroots campaign, which has asked Americans nationwide to organize on Wednesday and hold conversations on how to start an “unprecedented grassroots movement.”
In Gainesville, this will culminate at High Dive bar located in downtown Gainesville, 210 SW Second Ave., starting at 7 p.m. and continuing through the night.
At 8 p.m., Sanders will hold a national broadcast that will be played on every TV, but between that, patrons will have access to entertainment in the form of live music and full bar functionality.
Molly Victoria Vise, a 21-year-old UF biology senior and event coordinator, said the event is meant to educate residents and students alike on Sanders’ platform and the issues affecting America. A student coordinator for the political action committee People’s America, Vise said she feels that Sanders is someone she can get behind.
“He speaks to millennials,” Vise said. “He’s the first candidate I’ve ever witnessed that made me feel like he’s putting youth issues at the forefront.”
Vise said she was worried about hosting the event at High Dive, a 450-person capacity venue, because it may have been too big. Now, with more than 600 RSVPs on Facebook and dozens more through the Bernie Sanders campaign website, the issue becomes handling the overflow.
Bernie's strong words on racism:
The stakes were high for the speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the national gathering of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday night. Sanders’ speech to the civil rights organization, whose first president was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., came just one week after Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Netroots Nation event in Phoenix, Arizona, featuring Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, to demand that candidates address police brutality against African American communities, and put racial justice at the center of their campaigns.
If Sanders responded badly to demands of the Black Lives Matter activists, almost immediately afterward he showed an understanding of and willingness to address their concerns with the same forcefulness he brings to populist economic issues. After Phoenix, Sander was the first candidate to speak out against the arrest of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Waller County, Texas, earlier this month. In a statement released last Tuesday, Sanders denounced the “totally outrageous police behavior” recorded in the video of Bland’s arrest, and cited it as evidence of “why we need real police reform.”
His speech to the SCLC showed that Sanders not only heard the message of Black Lives Matter, but took it to heart, and is making it central to his campaign. Indeed Sanders could have been speaking directly to the Black Lives Matter movement when he praised SCLC for understanding, “that real change takes place when millions of people stand up and say ‘enough is enough,’ and when we create a political revolution from the ground up.” Saying, “enough is enough,” and “creating a political revolution from the ground up” is what Black Lives Matter activists are doing.
Sanders in Lousiana is still in the news:
When some 4,500 people venture out to a conservative New Orleans suburb on a sweltering Sunday night to cheer on a self-described socialist, it’s safe to say that something’s going on here.
Bernie Sanders, the New York born, 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont, has emerged as a populist sensation on the Democratic presidential campaign trail, and has drawn similarly large and fired-up crowds at events across the country. Sunday’s rally at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner answered one lingering question about his candidacy: It showed that Sanders’ message, almost singularly focused on growing financial inequality, resonates even in the country’s reddest corners, at least among some people.
As many in the pumped-up audience gleefully noted, it also served as an implicit rebuke to a home-grown presidential candidate, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who kicked off his own campaign for the GOP nomination last month at the same venue. Although Jindal once represented the area in Congress and even lived nearby, his event, held on a weekday afternoon, took place in a smaller room and drew about 1,000 supporters.
But that was just lagniappe for this crowd.
Sanders’ nearly hourlong speech was really a rebuke not just to Republicans but to fellow Democrats who haven’t gone as far as he proposes to tackle “grotesque,” “immoral,” “unsustainable” and “un-American” levels of income inequality.
Polls:
Of all the arguments the Democratic establishment has thrown out against Bernie Sanders’ candidacy, perhaps the most recurring one revolves around electability. “Sure, you agree with him,” they argue, “but he can’t win.”
A just released CNN poll finds Sanders out-polling all of the GOP’s major candidates, though pretty much tied with Jeb Bush. Here’s how Sanders stacks up:
SANDERS: 48%
BUSH: 47%
SANDERS: 48%
WALKER: 42%
SANDERS: 59%
TRUMP: 38%
If you limit the poll sample to just registered voters, Bush defeats Sanders by a single point. Either way, this credible poll suggests that Sanders is not just some pie-in-the-sky general election candidate. His more uphill battle may be the primary. But even there, he has some strengths. Polling out last week shows he’s the only candidate from either side who has a net favorability rating.
Why is Bernie So Favorable?:
I’ve never met Sen. Sanders but my impression, from seeing him on TV a good deal, is that he comes across as neither handsome, funny, warm nor charming. The one thing that comes across is that if you ask him a substantive question, he will give you a substantive answer.
I would like to believe (and I do believe) that Sanders’ relatively good showing on the fav/unfav question reflects the average voter’s deep hunger for straight talk, or the quality which the punditocracy has decided to name “authenticity.”
Given the carefully choreographed dance routine that most of the candidates use when talking about issues compared to the fairly radical (by U.S. standards) but very straight talk from Sanders, I conclude that respondents on the favorable-unfavorable question are reacting mostly to his refreshing candor.
Bernie will be speaking in support of medicare:
Sen. Bernie Sanders will highlight a large Washington, D.C. rally Thursday, July 30 in Upper Senate Park celebrating the 50th anniversary of Medicare, joining with other legislators, registered nurses and community members.
The event is part of a national day of action, in over 25 U.S. cities, that calls on policy makers to protect, improve, and expand Medicare to cover all Americans with a single standard of quality care not based on ability to pay, under a theme of "Medicare is as American as Apple Pie."
What: Rally and Lobby Day for Medicare's 50th Anniversary
When: Thursday, July 30 - 9 a.m. - 11 a.m. Sen. Sanders is scheduled to speak at 9:45 a.m.
Where: Upper Senate Park, 200 New Jersey Ave NW Wash, D.C.
(the event will also be live streamed, at http://www.ustream.tv/...)
In addition to Sen. Sanders, the Washington DC celebration will feature RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United and a national vice-president of the AFL-CIO, U.S. representatives, John Conyers (Ill.), Keith Ellison (Minn.), and Donna Edwards (Md.). other community leaders and entertainment.
In the afternoon nurses will lobby legislators to support legislation that would improve and expand Medicare to all. In other parts of the nation, actions include public forums, rallies, marches, skits, flash mobs and birthday celebration parties, picnics and BBQ's.
Bernie on immigration:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the immigration debate is framed exactly wrong.
Republicans vilify President Barack Obama for supposedly opening the border to ever-increasing multitudes of immigrants, legally or otherwise, but the Democratic presidential candidate said blame is cast in the wrong direction, reported Vox.
“Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” Sanders said in a wide-ranging interview with the website. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.”
Sanders frequently targets the libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch as unhealthy influences on American democracy — but he’s not the first to notice their support for an open borders policy.
The conservative Breitbart and the white supremacist VDARE website each blasted the Koch brothers for sponsoring a “pro-amnesty Buzzfeed event” in 2013, and two writers for the Koch-sponsored Reason — former contributing editor David Weigel and current editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie — have always been supportive of immigration reform.
That’s at odds with what many Republicans believe, and Sanders told Vox that an open border would be disastrous to the American economy.
“It would make everybody in America poorer — you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that,” Sanders said. “If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or (the United Kingdom) or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people.”
He said conservative corporate interests pushed for open borders, not liberals.
“What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy,” Sanders said. “Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour — that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, (and) I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.”
Vermont Media wants in on the Sanders surge:
The emergence of Sanders (I-Vt.) as a major presidential candidate has provided a second act on the national stage for a quirky press corps from one of the country’s smallest states. The last time Vermont reporters had the inside track on a presidential candidate was the summer of 2003, when former Gov. Howard Dean similarly electrified the Democratic base.
This time, said John Dillon, news director for Vermont Public Radio, the job may actually be a bit easier in one critical aspect. Twelve years ago, Dean was known locally as a moderate, perhaps even conservative governor who became a fire-breathing liberal, anti-war populist to a national audience.
“For the Vermont audience in '03, it was amusing to reconcile the Howard Dean they saw battling loudly with his own party over spending with his ultra-liberal image they portrayed in the national press during the primary,” Dillon said in an email to The Huffington Post.
Bernie is, well, Bernie.
"With Bernie, what you've seen and heard for 30 years is the same Bernie you see and hear now in Iowa, N.H. and Wisconsin,” Dillon added. “No change in message at all.”
While Sanders may be a more predictable candidate to cover than Dean, there remain challenges -- mainly whether Vermont's news outlets will have the resources to stay with a campaign on a remarkable rise.
Typically, the national media turns to large metropolitan daily newspapers as the news sources of record on presidential candidates, such as the Chicago Tribune on President Barack Obama or The Boston Globe on Mitt Romney and John Kerry.
The Burlington Free Press, Vermont's largest newspaper, has a page dedicated to Sanders’ candidacy and an interactive timeline. But the 188-year-old outlet has significantly scaled back its newsroom in the past few years, making it less able to pour resources into a lengthy primary contest.
Bernie builds an army:
Every year since 2000, Tyson Manker has voted for the winning presidential candidate. And this year, he’s got his sights set on Bernie Sanders.
Manker, a Marine Corps veteran, co-founded the group Veterans for Bernie and said he’s confident the Vermont senator will make it to the Oval Office.
“You could say I’ve got a pretty good history of picking the president, and my support is enthusiastically 100 percent behind Bernie Sanders,” he said. “I expect him to win the nomination.”
Manker isn’t alone. According to organizers, more than 150,000 people have RSVP’d for house parties Wednesday evening to listen to a simulcast from the Democratic presidential candidate and coordinate their volunteer efforts. And what Sanders lacks in funds—he raised about $15.2 million this quarter, while Hillary Clinton raked in more than three times that figure—he may make up in true believers with experience in grassroots organizing. This is not a fluke; some of the most dogged pro-Bernie volunteers are alums of the Occupy movement, where they honed their activism skills.
“The graduates of Occupy are now skilled organizers,” said Katherine Brezler, a Yonkers schoolteacher and national digital organizer at People for Bernie.
She said some of the core organizers at People For Bernie—a grassroots group unaffiliated with Sanders’ campaign that works to mobilize Sanders volunteers—first met in Zuccotti Park during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests.
“After Occupy, people didn’t just go and sit in a hole,” Brezler said. “After Occupy, people became very involved in their communities and broadened their skill sets, broadened their networks, and now are revisiting a new campaign with revived interest in electoral politics because the candidate is speaking the language of their issues.”
Liam Miller @ The Huffington Post:
The Democratic base is about as excited about Clinton as the Republican base was about Romney (there, I said it); and Democrats are already much, much less inspired about the election than Republicans;
Clinton is so reviled by the Right (almost entirely unfairly, but still), that they will come out in droves to oppose her. It's not hard to see that that plays a role in Republicans being so much more excited about the election; they, like so many, are assuming Clinton will be the nominee, and they can't wait to vote against her.
Sanders speaks to, inspires and motivates people all over the political map -- not just the "far Left" as the simple-minded, when-you're-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-sickle-wielding-socialist media would have us believe.
Sanders is inspiring people to register to vote who have not registered before, and engaging millennials (only 20 percent of whom voted in 2014) in huge numbers.
Beltway insiders do not know how to talk about Sanders; all of the rules they use to frame their conversations don't apply. It really shows just how lazy and formulaic political coverage has become -- how out of touch with real people. I'm reminded of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to Kuhn, scientists will brush off data that call into question accepted theories (and they do that because they have a lot invested in those theories -- published work, research grants, tenure).
Eventually, though, enough information comes in that challenges the established way of looking at things that a crisis point is reached; the inadequacies of the previous way of understanding become impossible to ignore any longer.
Sanders And Climate Change:
Sen. Bernie Sanders sees a big gaping hole in Hillary Clinton’s newly released climate-change proposals: the Keystone pipeline.
“It is hard for me to understand how one can be concerned about climate change but not vigorously oppose the Keystone pipeline,” Sanders, who is challenging Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The statement came in response to Clinton being asked during a town-hall event in New Hampshire about her thoughts on the pipeline. Clinton demurred when asked.
“This is President Obama’s decision and I’m not going to second-guess him because I was in a position to set this in motion and I do not think that would be the right thing to do,” Clinton said.
That response and Sanders’ attack came a day after the former secretary of state and Democratic frontrunner unveiled her ambitious set of goals for the environment. Clinton proposed a goal of producing a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable energy from 2027 as well as installing 500 million solar panels by 2020.
That wasn’t enough for Sanders, who said her proposals were a good idea but “not enough.”
A lengthy article on The Summer of Sanders:
"In case you haven't noticed," he said, "there are a lot of people here." He grinned again.
But Sanders' smile quickly faded. As he launched into an hour-long stump speech, any hint of optimism was supplanted by his dour assessment of modern America.
The economy, he said, was rigged by greedy billionaires more interested in tax breaks than in feeding hungry children. Republicans held a "warped view of family values" and had "gotten away with murder for too many years." His opponents would exploit a corrupt political system to defeat him, while a shallow news media treated the democratic process like a popularity contest.
"The greed of corporate America and the billionaire class has got to end, and we are going to end it for them!" he shouted.
"Ber-nie! Ber-nie! Ber-nie!" the crowd chanted.
No matter how Sanders fares in the nation's never-ending presidential tryouts, this was the moment his campaign became real. No candidate to date had attracted so many supporters under one roof, as the senator himself triumphantly observed.
"It's clear to us that there's something going on out there," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver.