Welcome once again to $27 Quotes — a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, enjoy some inspiring quotes and good music, and (most importantly) spend time gazing at a picture or two of foresterbob’s cat Noble Fur.
Let’s see how many quotes I can include before the heavy rain we’re having turns into a thunderstorm and I need to turn the computer off...
We Are All Connected
I believe that every person in America deserves to live in dignity and security. That is why we must guarantee health care, decent housing, a living wage and a good education to all our people.
~ Bernie Sanders
The right-wing wants to criticize universal programs like Medicare For All because they are threatened by our solidarity.
They are threatened by a society where we look out for each other. But building solidarity is exactly why I came to Congress.
~Ilhan Omar
If your kids are hurting, my kids are hurting. If you can't afford to see a doctor, that affects me as well. We must remember we are all connected and fight for a nation and a government that is based on human solidarity.
~ Bernie Sanders
Which brings to mind this next quote:
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest.
Come taste the sun sweet berries of the Earth.
Come roll in all the riches all around you,
And for once, never wonder what they're worth.
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers.
The heron and the otter are my friends.
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends.
~ Alan Menken / Stephen Laurence Schwartz — Colors of the Wind
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What’s Fair and Right
I believe you should be able to get cancer treatment even if you are poor.
I believe you should be able to go to a doctor even if you lost your job and insurance.
I believe you should be able to go to the emergency room without receiving an outrageous bill.
~ Bernie Sanders
Access to the internet is a necessity in today's economy, and it should be available for all. It must be treated as the new electricity.
~ Bernie Sanders
No one should lose the roof over their head because they can’t afford a lawyer.
We need to expand federal resources to guarantee a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.
The housing affordability crisis demands urgent action
~ Julian Castro
The ability to hear should not be a luxury for those who can afford it. That is why hearing aids are covered under Medicare for All.
~ Bernie Sanders
Retail, fast food, and other hourly workers deserve some basic fairness when it comes to scheduling shifts. That’s why my Schedules That Work Act with Rosa DeLauro would end some of the very worst abuses that hurt workers and families.
~ Elizabeth Warren
(Click to learn more about the Schedules That Work Act.)
The best way to grow the economy isn't by giving more money to billionaires and corporations already sitting on piles of money, but by helping working families struggling with the costs of health care, child care, housing, and education.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Over 40 years, the richest 0.1% have seen their wages quadruple, leaving everyone — even the top 1% — behind.
Here's how we reverse this trend:
- Ensure every job pays at least a living wage
- Rapidly expand unions
- Make the ultra-rich pay their taxes
- End corporate welfare
~ Bernie Sanders
Guaranteeing healthcare, housing, education, and clean air and water as human rights shouldn’t be a radical concept. It should be a starting point.
~Ilhan Omar
A Rigged Economy
Taxpayers have paid $115 million so Donald Trump could play golf at his own resorts. Amazon got $129 million in tax rebates last year. Meanwhile, the average person in poverty gets just $134 a month in nutrition assistance.
This is what a rigged economy looks like.
~ Bernie Sanders
- 1 in 6 of our children lives in poverty.
- 500,000+ Americans are homeless.
- 87 million are uninsured or underinsured.
- Half live paycheck to paycheck.
But the billionaire class is doing better every day.
This is a rigged economy and we are going to change it.
~ Bernie Sanders
Real freedom isn’t letting big corporations prevent workers from taking a better job.
Real freedom is a government ban on non-compete clauses so workers can choose the job that’s best for them.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Walmart's CEO made 1,076 times their median employee last year.
The Walton family makes $25,000 a minute.
Don't tell me that they can't afford to pay a living wage. They choose not to out of greed. And together, that's the kind of greed we're going to end.
~ Bernie Sanders
I'm a law professor and an activist and I've spent my career studying corruption in Amerian politics and fighting to change it. And we have Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history with a corrupt cabinet who is just stealing from the American people.
But we know that we have a corruption problem that isn't just Trump. Billionaires have far too much power in elections.
As a student of corruption, I gotta tell you that to overcome that is going to take a massive movement. You cannot fight corruption with policy alone. It actually takes a true grassroots movement.
~ Zephyr Teachout
You can hear Zephyr Teachout say that (and more) in this 2 minute video:
Changing Our Priorities
Every time Democrats demand investments in our people, the ritual repeats. They always ask, “How are you going to pay for it? Whose taxes are going up?”
But when the House passed a $738 billion military spending bill this month, no one asked how we were going to pay for it.
It seems like we have unlimited money for bombs, drones, and tanks — but no money to house tens of thousands of homeless children and veterans. No money to afford nutritional assistance for struggling families ahead of the holidays.
We need to fundamentally shift the conversation in Congress and the only way is to elect new progressive leaders...
This fight has never been about what we could or couldn’t afford — it’s always been about our priorities. Until our leaders are willing to stand up to the military industrial complex, we’ll keep leaving working families out in the cold.
~ an e-mail from Team Ocasio-Cortez
And on a similar note, here’s an excerpt from a recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post:
The time is long overdue for us to take a hard look at military spending, including the “war on terror,” and whether it makes sense to spend trillions more on endless wars, wars that often cause more problems than they solve. Call me a radical, but maybe before funding a new space force, we should make sure no American goes bankrupt because of a medical bill or dies because they can’t afford to go to a doctor on time.
The massive unpaid-for defense bill is just one obvious example of the hypocrisy of the deficit hawks in Congress and their corporate enablers. Where were these politicians, many of whom want to cut food stamps and affordable housing, when Congress passed a tax bill that provided more than $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and most profitable U.S. corporations?
As a result of the Trump tax giveaway to the rich, billionaires now pay a lower tax rate than the bottom 90 percent of Americans, and companies such as Amazon, General Motors, FedEx, Eli Lilly and IBM pay nothing in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
I am running for president because it’s time for a new vision for America and a new set of priorities. Instead of massive spending on a bloated military budget, tax breaks for billionaires and huge subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, we need to invest in the working families of this country and protect the most vulnerable. We need a government that represents all of us, not just the corporate elite…
~ Bernie Sanders
And from The Guardian:
Trump’s Holiday Menu: handouts for billionaires, hunger for the poor
Republicans defend cuts to food stamps by saying that keeping people hungry will make them work harder. But we know this is just about cruelty.
When it comes to billionaires benefiting from the generosity of the American taxpayer, the holiday spirit is alive year-round. Taxpayers paid out $115 million to Donald Trump so he could play golf at his own resorts.
And Amazon didn’t just pay zero in federal taxes on $11 billion in profits — taxpayers gifted the corporation $129,000,000 in rebates. That’s enough to pay for CEO Jeff Bezos’s three apartments in Manhattan, including a penthouse, that cost him $80 million.
And what about government generosity for those who actually need help? Tax dollars are somehow much harder to come by when they’re not going to handouts for the rich. The average person in poverty, struggling to put food on the table, gets about $134 a month in nutrition assistance.
Now, just in time for the holidays, Trump has finalized the first of three policies that will make this disparity even more obscene. Two years after passing a $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, the Trump administration plans to strip 3.7 million people of their nutrition benefits…
~ Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders
Quickie Quotes
If you proclaim your innocence and say you have all these witnesses who can clear your name, but you refuse to let any of them testify in the House or Senate...
...You might not be innocent.
~ Mark Pocan
In the fight against climate change we have a choice: protect fossil fuel profits or protect our children. I choose to protect our children.
~ Bernie Sanders
As president, I will shut down the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. They should never have been built in the first place.
~ Bernie Sanders
Young people should not underestimate their power. If they vote as much as older people they can not only transform the country. They can help us save the planet from climate catastrophe.
~ Bernie Sanders
This is a fight for the soul of our country.
~ Zephyr Teachout
Something Bernie Sanders Can’t Do
Bernie Sanders is constitutionally incapable of sucking up. He can't do it. And he especially can't suck up to the wealthy, or the glamorous, or the people who run big companies.
~ Zephyr Teachout
The Political Revolution
A political revolution is underway.
On January 1, thanks to millions of working people engaging at all levels of government, 21 states and 26 localities will raise the minimum wage.
This is the largest number of states, cities and counties raising the wage in American history,
~ Bernie Sanders
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Ultimately, we must make a choice as a society: will we tolerate the insatiable greed and cruelty of the billionaire class, whose control over our political system lets them take food out of the mouths of hungry school kids? Or do we build a humane, equitable society that ends poverty, hunger, and homelessness -- and allows everyone to live with dignity?
~ Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders
We are not just trying to win an election. We are trying to transform the political conversation in America in terms of what is possible and what is not possible.
~ Bernie Sanders
The strength of our campaign is the people who power our movement. Not me. Us. That is the political revolution.
~ Bernie Sanders
Let’s close out with some music. Here’s a holiday song I should have included last week...