November 6, 2015

Clinton's Attacks on Sanders' Gun Record Fly in Face of Her Own 2008 Campaign

Clinton's Attacks on Sanders' Gun Record Fly in Face of Her Own 2008 Campaign
Could Clinton's new stance be another example of political opportunism?
By Zaid Jilani * AlterNet * November 6, 2015

One area where Hillary Clinton has been able to present herself as further to the left of her Democratic primary rival is gun control. During the first primary debate, she assailed Bernie Sanders for his moderate pro-gun control record which included a vote against allowing lawsuits against gun manufacturers and gun shops. At one point during the debate, Sanders talked about a rural-urban divide among gun owners, claiming it must be bridged if we are to have sensible reforms. This drew rebukes from his opponents, Clinton and former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley.

But though Clinton may now be a tough advocate of gun control, she wasn't touting the same lines in 2008. That year, she postured as being more of a moderate on gun issues. She highlighted her opponent Barack Obama's past support for handgun bans, and implied he was looking down on gun owners in a direct mail attack sent by her campaign:


At the same time, Clinton touted the same rural-urban divide in gun politics that Sanders talks about today. Here's an excerpt from her debate with Barack Obama where she cites that divide and recommends a state-by-state approach rather than a federal one:

Moderator: Well, with all due respect, I'm not sure I got an answer from Senator Obama, but do you still favor licensing and registration of handguns?

Clinton: What I favor is what works in New York. You know, we have a set of rules in New York City, and we have a totally different set of rules in the rest of the state. What might work in New York City is certainly not going to work in Montana. So for the federal government to be having any kind of, you know, blanket rules that they're going to try to impose I think doesn't make sense.

Moderator: But Senator, you were for that when you ran for Senate in New York.

Clinton: I was for the New York rules; that's right. I was for the New York rules, because they have worked over time. And there isn't a lot of uproar in New York about changing them, because I go to upstate New York, where we have a lot of hunters and people who are collectors and people who are sport shooters. They have every reason to believe that their rights are being respected....You walk down the street with a police officer in Manhattan, he wants to be sure that there is some way of protecting him and protecting the people that are in his charge.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clintons-attacks-sanders-gun-record-fly-face-her-own-2008-campaign

November 6, 2015

TPP "Worse Than We Thought": A Total Corporate Power Grab Nightmare. <--Bernie is NOT the ONLY one.

But Bernie is, was -- and always has been -- unequivocally AGAINST the TPP disaster when others
were silent, or calling it a "gold standard". This cuts to the very heart of what true leadership is, or isn't.

Just in this one Common Dreams article, ALL these environmental and pro-democracy progressive groups
are going public, about how the actual TPP text is even WORSE than anyone ever imagined.
* Friends of the Earth
* Citizen's Global Trade Watch
* Global Justice Now
* Democracy for America
* Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
* Food & Water Watch
* Center for Food Safety
* Fight for the Future
* 350.org
* Sierra Club

~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ *

'Worse Than We Thought': TPP A Total Corporate Power Grab Nightmare
'President Obama has sold the American people a false bill of goods,' says Friends of the Earth
by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer * Common Dreams * Nov. 5, 2015

"Worse than anything we could've imagined."
"An act of climate denial."
"Giveaway to big agribusiness."
"A death warrant for the open Internet."
"Worst nightmare."
"A disaster."

As expert analysis of the long-shrouded, newly publicized TransPacific Partnership (TPP) final text continued to roll out on Thursday, consensus formed around one fundamental assessment of the 12-nation pact: It's worse than we thought. ~snip~

On issues ranging from climate change to food safety, from open Internet to access to medicines, the TPP "is a disaster," declared Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now.

"Now that we’ve seen the full text, it turns out the job-killing TPP is worse than anything we could’ve imagined," added Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. "This agreement would push down wages, flood our nation with unsafe imported food, raise the price of life-saving medicine, all the while trading with countries where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death."

Major climate action groups, including 350.org and the Sierra Club, were quick to point out that the text was notable as much for what it didn't say as what for what it did. "The TPP is an act of climate denial," said 350 policy director Jason Kowalski on Thursday. "While the text is full of handouts to the fossil fuel industry, it doesn’t mention the words climate change once."

What it does do, however, is give "fossil fuel companies the extraordinary ability to sue local governments that try and keep fossil fuels in the ground," Kowalski continued. "If a province puts a moratorium on fracking, corporations can sue; if a community tries to stop a coal mine, corporations can overrule them. In short, these rules undermine countries’ ability to do what scientists say is the single most important thing we can do to combat the climate crisis: keep fossil fuels in the ground."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/worse-we-thought-tpp-total-corporate-power-grab-nightmare

November 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders Now Has More Donors At This Point Than ANY Other Candidate In History

Bernie Sanders Now Has More Donors At This Point Than ANY Other Candidate In History
by Jason Easley * Thursday, November 5th, 2015 * Politicus

During an interview on NPR, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced that he now has more individual donors than any other candidate in history. (audio available at link below)

Sanders said, “When we began this campaign six months ago, I’d say that 80 percent of the American people did not know who Bernie Sanders was, what I stood for. First polls that I saw had us at three percent or five percent. We have come a very, very long way. We have hundreds of thousands of volunteers in fifty states in this country. We have received more individual contributions, 750,000, than any candidate in American history at this point in the campaign.”

The number of donors is impressive by any standard, but Sen. Sanders also addressed the question that will make or break his campaign. Sanders discussed how he planned to attract the support of African-American Democrats.

Sanders said, “If the elections were held today, just among the African-American vote, we would lose. But I think we have a real path to winning the support of the African-American community for two reasons. Number one, I’m just not well known in the African-American community… That’s just simply the truth. We have to do a lot better job in discussing my record which in the United States Congress is the strongest records of any member in terms of civil rights. Number two, I think even more importantly… the African-American community and the Latino community are struggling in a nation in which our middle class is struggling… the issues that we are focusing on, rebuilding the economy and in the process creating UP TO 13 million decent paying jobs, many of those jobs will be for minority communities. Making public colleges and universities tuition free will benefit everyone in America, but even more so, the African-American community.” ~snip~

To understand why it is important that Sanders has inspired over 750,000 people to donate to his campaign, one must view the Sanders campaign as a political movement. The Bernie Sanders movement isn’t going to end if he does not win the Democratic nomination. Even if he loses the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders will return to Washington as one of the most powerful leaders in the country.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/05/bernie-sanders-donors-point-candidate-history.html

November 4, 2015

Who saw Chris Hayes' interview with Bernie tonight?? Re: More USA 45-54 y.o. dying than anywhere

Chris asked Bernie about his upcoming appearance on Rachael's MSNBC Dem. Candidates Forum, and
they discussed how the disappearing middle-class theme of Bernie's campaign relates to this new study,
finding that 45-45 year olds are DYING in the USA at a much more rapid rate than in any other major nation,
and how this in turn relates to USA's obscene degree of income inequality, a central plank in Bernie's bid for
POTUS.

Anyone else see this interview? Anyone remember a guy named James Lardner? He was talking about
this stuff back in the 90's, but then -- for reasons unknown to me -- somehow dropped into total obscurity,
even though he was starting to get attention for findings of a fascinating study he did on income inequality,
and how it strongly correlates to the incidence of cancer and heart disease.

When I google James Lardner, I only get a list of random articles where he is footnoted, and a book of his
called "The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences" which seems to be out
of print. http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/41/4/570.short

Anyone else following this interesting thread? Talk to me. PMs are most welcome

November 3, 2015

Elizabeth Warren Warns Democrats Against Wall Street Defections

Elizabeth Warren Warns Democrats Against Wall Street Defections
The influential senator urged her colleagues to hold the line against big banks.
by Zach Carter * HuffPo * Nov. 2, 2015

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday warned House Democrats to oppose a series of GOP-backed bills designed to roll back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

Warren posted a statement on her official Facebook page calling on Democrats to vote against the Republican proposals, which are scheduled for a vote in the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday.

"Democrats must stand strong and fight back Republican efforts to weaken oversight," Warren wrote. "Rolling back the rules on our largest and riskiest institutions is a terrible idea for just about everyone except a handful of well-connected financial firms – and we weren’t sent here to work for them."

Warren's post is an effort to persuade Wall Street-friendly Democrats, who have defected from the party line to undercut other financial reforms. In 2014, Republicans secured a measure to reinstate federal subsidies for derivatives trades -- the risky contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown. They did so by slipping the measure into a must-pass government funding bill on the grounds that it wasn't terribly controversial, since many Democrats had supported the provision in committee.

The bills that will be under consideration Tuesday deal with large financial firms deemed "systemically important" by key regulators -- essentially firms that are "too big to fail." The legislation would make it harder to designate a firm as "systemically important" by gumming up the process with additional red tape. Republicans also want to bring the Financial Stability Oversight Council under the Congressional appropriations process, which would allow Republicans to defund the agency or hold its budget hostage with demands over specific rules or actions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-democrats-wall-street_5637c0c7e4b0c66bae5d5196

November 2, 2015

T. Hartman - The Sad Truth: It's Turned into a Competition Among Oligarchs to Own EVERY-thing

The Sad Truth of Our Politics: It's Basically Turned into a Competition Among Oligarchs to Own Everything
---- It could still happen here.-----
by Thom Hartman * Alternet * Nov. 1, 2015

Ben Carson’s feeble attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but along with the announcement that Marco Rubio has brought in his second big supporting billionaire, it brings to mind the first American vice-president to point out the “American fascists” among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice-president when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman president), Roosevelt had two previous vice-presidents: John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945).

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”

Vice-President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

“With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public, but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/sad-truth-our-politics-its-basically-turned-competition-among-oligarchs-own

November 2, 2015

In case you missed this, from earlier today ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251757356

November 2, 2015

Oh Boy! "Television News Network Lobbyists Are Fundraising for Hillary Clinton"

Television News Network Lobbyists Are Fundraising for Hillary Clinton
By Lee Fang * Oct. 29, 2015 * The Intercept

Over the last two presidential debates, both Democratic and Republican candidates have asserted that the television news media is biased and has done a poor job informing voters of the most pressing issues in the election.

And while their focus is on things like the type of questions asked by debate moderators, they are overlooking much clearer signs of potential conflicts of interest. Fundraising disclosures released this month and in July reveal that lobbyists for media companies are raising big money for establishment presidential candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton.

The giant media companies that shape much of the coverage of the presidential campaign have a vested stake in the outcome. From campaign finance laws that govern how money is spent on advertising to the regulators who oversee consolidation rules, the media industry has a distinct policy agenda, and with it, a political team to influence the result.

The top fundraisers for Clinton include lobbyists who serve the parent companies of CNN and MSNBC.

The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that represents the television station industry, has lobbyists who are fundraising for both Clinton and Republican candidate Marco Rubio. ~snip~

AIR, a media watchdog group, reported in June that “Meet the Press,” NBC’s marquee political program, mentioned Clinton 16 times in the first 17 episodes of the year while failing to invite or discuss Bernie Sanders once. Sanders has no lobbyist bundlers and no Super PAC supporting his campaign.

“It’s clear that establishment politicians get softer treatment, in general, than outsider candidates,” says Jeff Cohen, an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College. The “coziness of the media industry with elite politicians of both parties,” he adds, “has never been cozier.”

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/29/media-fundraisers-presidential/