Bernie: The Insanity

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Bernie Sanders ?@SenSanders 6m
The Insanity: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/the-insanity …

House and Senate tax-writing committees on Thursday drafted competing plans to shift funds into the nearly broke Highway Trust Fund. Both plans rely on stopgap accounting tricks. Both fail to keep the trust fund solvent over the long run.

“It’s insanity. It really drives me nuts,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Thursday on Vermont PBS. “We need to fix our infrastructure and create jobs. If you do not invest, it ain’t going to get better.”

Instead, the competing stopgap deals would provide money to fund road, bridge and railroad repair projects through next May. At the very least, this will prevent an immediate shutdown of tens of thousands of projects all over the country, and save some 700,000 jobs. But it doesn’t come close to meeting the need to invest in our nation’s infrastructure, and create millions of new jobs that our economy needs.


Watch Vermont PBS

[agbdf]

1. Bernie Sanders?

Bernie is not a Democrat and is, in fact, an admitted Socialist. He is an Independent.

I would happily support any good, liberal Democrat who would challenge him.

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2. most observers think that he'll run as a Democrat

. . . if he decides to run.

Right now, as Senator from Vermont, he regularly caucuses and frequently votes with Democrats.

[agbdf]

8. Thank you

Yes, I'm aware that he regularly caucuses with Democrats. He's from a dark blue state and it would be zero political risk to change his party affiliation to Democrat. Yet, he hasn't done it.

I too have heard that he intends to enter the Democratic Presidential primaries. However, I am supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

If he wins the the Democratic Party nomination for President, I will vote for him as I hold my nose - only because even he would be better than a Republican.

I am a Democrat and not a Socialist. Democratic policies, in this country, have made America the superpower that it is. Socialist policies have been tried in many countries with terrible results.

[PowerToThePeople]

10. Bernie is what a real "Democrat" should be.

What we have currently are Republicans running under the guise of the Democratic party.

[winter is coming]

11. I don't fixate on labels and find myself wondering why "admitted Socialist"

is a Bad Thing. btw, still waiting for your response here http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5225312 as to which policies Bernie espouses that are too "out there" for Democrats.

[Enthusiast]

16. +1 an entire shit load.

[Babel_17]

17. Not just an admitted Socialist

He does not refute his status as a septuagenarian.

[cali]

12. Vermonter here. Not. Going. To. Happen.

The Vermont Democratic Party (which is a lot more "socialist" than you'd like) supports Bernie. We Vermonters like the guy a whole lot- think 71% approval rating.

Vermont wouldn't appeal to you. Lots of us evil socialists here. btw, this guy will, I think, end up in the Congress.


Zuckerman ran for the Vermont House in 1994 while still enrolled in college, losing by 59 votes. He ran again two years later and become the fourth Progressive Party member to serve in the Vermont State House, a seat that he held through 2010.[1]

Prior to serving in the House, he served on the Burlington Electric Commission. While in the House he served for 6 years on the Natural Resources and Energy Committee as well as 6 years on the Agriculture Committee, including 4 as the Chairperson. He finished his time in the House of Representatives by serving on the Ways and Means Committee. In 2005, Zuckerman considered running for the sole Vermont seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2006 U.S. House election, that was being vacated by Independent Rep. (now Senator) Bernie Sanders, eventually deciding not to run in order to continue serving as Agriculture Chair in the Vermont House of Representatives.

Zuckerman ran for Vermont State Senate in 2012 and won as a Progressive/Democrat. [2][3]

In his time in the General Assembly, Sen. Zuckerman has been involved in the passage of Vermont's civil union and marriage equality laws, workers' rights legislation, increasing the minimum wage, sustainable (economic and environmental) agricultural policy, marijuana policy reform, election law reform, many renewable energy initiatives, progressive taxation policy as well as universal healthcare.

In January of 2014, Sen. Zuckerman introduced legislation that would allow for recreational sale and use of marijuana. If passed it would allow for possession up to 2 ounces of cannabis, and the cultivation of up to 3 plants for anyone that is 21 and over. It would also have the penalty for under-aged consumption of marijuana be the same as the current penalty± for under-aged drinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Zuckerman_%28politician%29

[agbdf]

13. I don't consider socialists evil - just misguided

The Democratic Party is the best hope for the 99 percent, not the Socialists.

[cali]

14. just as there are all kinds of democrats, there are all kinds of socialists

and anyone who considers bernie misguided, is someone who IS misguided.

In any case, you appear to know nothing about socialism. Do you consider the Scandinavian states "misguided"? Do you consider, say, Hillary Clinton, voting for the IWR, well guided?

I wonder about people like you.

[Enthusiast]

15. An admitted Socialist?

You say socialist as if it is some kind of Soviet style communist.

The policies Bernie advocates are mainstream centrist based on polling of the issues. No liberal Democrats that I know of would be an improvement over Bernie. Most DUers share my position. I guess you wouldn't know that.

[Babel_17]

18. I know a bit of labor history

I know that I owe a debt to the work that Socialists did in getting us the eight hour work day and improving workers conditions in general. In my home state of NY, in New York City, Socialists worked hard for those laboring in the garment district. A lot of socialist blood got spilled from fighting for what I enjoy today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Schneiderman

Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972) was a prominent United States labor union leader, socialist, and feminist of the first part of the twentieth century. She is credited with coining the phrase "Bread and Roses", later used as the title of a poem and set to music and interpreted by several performers.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned alive or died jumping from the ninth floor of a factory building, dramatized the conditions that Schneiderman, the WTUL and the union movement were fighting. The WTUL had documented similar unsafe conditions — factories without fire escapes or that had locked the exit doors to keep workers from stealing materials — at dozens of sweatshops in New York City and surrounding communities; twenty-five workers had died in a similar sweatshop fire in Newark, New Jersey shortly before the Triangle disaster. Schneiderman expressed her anger at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911 to an audience largely made up of the well-heeled members of the WTUL:

"I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.
This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.
We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning to us – warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement."
—Rose Schneiderman

In March 2011, almost 100 years to the day after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Maine's Republican Governor Paul LePage, who was inaugurated in January of the same year, has had a three year old 36 foot-wide mural with scenes of Maine workers on the Department of Labor's building in Augusta removed and brought to a secret location.[8] The mural has 11 panels, and has also a picture showing Rose Schneiderman, although she has never lived or worked in Maine.[9] According to the New York Times, "LePage has also ordered that the Labor Department’s seven conference rooms be renamed. One is named after César Chávez, the farmworkers’ leader; one after Rose Schneiderman, a leader of the New York Women’s Trade Union League a century ago; and one after Frances Perkins, who became the nation’s first female labor secretary and is buried in Maine."[10]

On April 1, a lawsuit against the governor was filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor. It was turned down and the judge wrote in his opinion that "the resolution of this vigorous debate must not rest with judicial authority of a federal court. It must rest instead with the ultimate authority of the people of the state of Maine to choose their leaders." The attorneys for both sides will meet with the court to discuss how to move forward with the case.

The battle lines are clear. We should know our allies.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. But..but..where could we get the money??

Any ideas?

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4. priorities

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. One particularly unfortunate and untenable priority stands out.

[bigtree]

6. but..but.. the President completely changed our military posture

What are the 'big changes' in the defense budget?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5421424

Where's the defense related intelligence spending on that graph (a great deal of that spending classified)?

[Aerows]

7. Your priorities

become your reality. If a nation values war, that's what they get.