July 20, 2015

Wall St Journal: "In This Money Race, Bernie Sanders WINS"

The Wall Street Journal? Just Wow! Who'd-a thunk?


In This Money Race, Bernie Sanders Wins
July 17, 2015 * Wall St. Journal * by By PETER NICHOLAS

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton won the fundraising competition, but rival Bernie Sanders snagged the award for running the more frugal operation, campaign finance reports filed this week show.

Sen. Sanders of Vermont has been waging a campaign with a fraction of Mrs. Clinton’s overhead.

The Clinton campaign payroll dwarfed that of Mr. Sanders, who is running second in the Democratic field. Mrs. Clinton spent nearly $3.7 million on campaign salaries; Mr. Sanders, $112,000.

Her campaign spent more than $900,000 on polling in the quarter that ended June 30; Mr. Sanders, $0.

And on it goes.

The Clinton campaign, headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., spent about $464,000 on rent – more than 10 times what the Burlington, Vt.-based Sanders campaign laid out in rent payments.

Mr. Sanders, who has been seen traveling through Iowa in a rented Chevy, spent $47,000 on campaign travel; Mrs. Clinton, nearly 10 times that sum.

To Charts and remainder of article: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/07/17/in-this-money-race-bernie-sanders-wins/

July 19, 2015

Woot! Community Moneybomb Explodes And Raises $62,000 For Bernie Sanders In 24 Hours

Whups! Make that more like $75,000. An awesome example of how Bernie's grass-roots fund raising is becoming contagious, and will spread exponentially, as the primaries roll around.


Community Moneybomb Explodes And Raises $62,000 For Bernie Sanders In 24 Hours
By Jason Easleymore from Jason Easley * Politicus * Saturday, July, 18th, 2015, 5:26 pm

A community-based grassroots group that is supporting Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raised at least $62,000 in 24 hours. The group Grassroots for Sanders is an online community of 65,000 people that was originally founded on Reddit.

Before the moneybomb was launched, Aidan King, the founder of the Grassroots for Sanders movement, said, “We will be giving $15 dollars on July 15th to promote a 15-dollar minimum wage. We hoped to get enough people participating to make a real difference, and I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished today.”

Grassroots for Sanders exceeded expectations. Initial estimates are that they raised $62,000 in 24 hours. The average size of the donation was $20. Many people were donating through other methods, so it is possible that the final fundraising total will approach $75,000.

The fundraising for the Sanders campaign comes from individuals. The Senator from Vermont does not have super PAC or big corporate donors. The Sanders campaign is being funded by ordinary Americans. Sen. Sanders is building a movement to fight back against the big banks, corporations, and billionaires. Sanders has seen huge crowds turn out for him in red states and blue states alike.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/18/community-grassroots-moneybomb-explodes-raises-62000-bernie-sanders-24-hours.html

July 19, 2015

Bernie Sanders is making the Democratic Primary 2016 to be NOT ABOUT MONEY

And We The People are thrilled and electrified by that one simple fact:

Bernie in Phoenix AZ


Bernie in Portland MAINE:


Bernie in Madison WI

July 19, 2015

Salon: Hillary can’t escape: Her Bernie Sanders problem is she doesn’t understand ...

The trap Hillary can’t escape: Her Bernie Sanders problem is she doesn’t understand Sanders’ policies are popular, mainstream and the future

SUNDAY, JUL 19, 2015 * Salon * by Bill Curry

The Clinton Express wheezed its way into New York City this week, rolling into Greenwich Village to offload another “big speech,” this time on the economy. Whoever is driving this train must have considered Cooper Union as a possible station stop; a speech Lincoln gave there in 1860 may have made him president. But this speech wasn’t that big, not by a long shot. The campaign settled on a spot a few blocks away, a smallish auditorium over at The New School.

Even that venue was a bit of a reach. The New School has a history of innovative economic inquiry dating to its 1919 founding by such progressive lights as John Dewey and Thorstein Veblen, neither of whom, it’s safe to say, would be backing Clinton today. When the school opened, the New York Times said its announced purpose was “to seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth and present working.”

The country could use a fresh, unbiased analysis of the existing order. Clinton’s speech provided nothing of the sort.

Still, it was well received in some quarters. At Vox, where much of what Clinton says is well received, Matthew Yglesias called her pledge to prosecute financial crimes “the most important words she has spoken thus far in the campaign.” It’s not saying much, as she hardly ever says anything substantive, let alone important. Yglesias likens her rhetoric to Elizabeth Warren’s, but why Warren when so many other politicians now promise the same thing? He notes Clinton’s “trust gap” with “activists focused on the issue” but says those activists can take “succor” knowing that bringing such cases is one of the few ways a “sharply constrained” President Clinton would have of “leaving a mark.”

In other words, count on her doing it because she won’t be able to do much else.

more: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/19/the_trap_hillary_cant_escape_her_bernie_sanders_problem_is_she_doesnt_understand_sanders_policies_are_popular_mainstream_and_the_future/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

July 19, 2015

Bernie actually LISTENED to the BLM/NetRoots disrupters, and within a few hours

He rocks the house in Phoenix before 11,000+ peeps, including many AAs and Latinos, with this;

That's my candidate! Thank you Bernie for actually listening and responding to BLM's passion and adroitly addressing the epidemic of black being murdered by cops. GO BERNIE!!

July 18, 2015

The Troubling Implications of Hillary's Anti-BDS Letter

The Troubling Implications of Hillary's Anti-BDS Letter
Friday, 17 July 2015 * By Stephen Zunes * TruthOut

On July 2, former secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, a strong supporter of the right-wing Netanyahu government, denouncing human rights activists who support boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli occupation.

In the letter, made public a few days later, Clinton made a number of statements which are not only demonstrably false but raise serious concerns regarding what kind of policies she would pursue as president.

She claimed that the BDS movement was working to "malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people." Though some BDS activists target Israel as a whole, most efforts on college campuses and elsewhere focus solely on the Israeli occupation, particularly companies that profit from that occupation and support illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In any case, the BDS campaign does not "malign and undermine" Jews. This cynical effort to depict the movement as anti-Semitic could be an indication of the kind of rhetoric she would use as president to discredit human rights activists who challenge her policies elsewhere.

Clinton claims in the letter that initiatives through the United Nations critical of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law are inherently "anti-Israel," thereby implying that those who raise concerns about a given country's human rights record do so not because of a desire to uphold universally recognized ethical and legal principles, but because of an ideological bias against a particular country. Although some UN agencies have disproportionately targeted Israel for criticism, the vast majority of such reports and resolutions have been consistent with findings and concerns raised by reputable international human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) and Israeli groups (such as the B'tselem human rights group and the veterans' organization Breaking the Silence.)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31930-the-troubling-implications-of-hillary-s-anti-bds-letter

July 18, 2015

Republicans Terrified As Texas Demand For Bernie Sanders Forces Rally To A Bigger Venue

Texas? The Belly of the Beast? GO Bernie!!

Republicans Terrified As Texas Demand For Bernie Sanders Forces Rally To A Bigger Venue
By: Jason Easleymore from Jason Easley * Friday, July, 17th, 2015 * PoliticusUSA

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has a message that is so popular that he was forced to move a rally in Texas to a larger venue to accommodate the growing crowd.

The Sanders campaign announced the change in venue for the Democratic candidate’s Houston, TX rally on July 19, “With turnout projections mounting, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign has shifted the location of Sunday’s town meeting in Houston, Texas, to the Hofheinz Pavilion.”

THIS is what the Hofheinz Pavilion in Houston looks like:


These events were intended to be town hall meetings, but demand is so high that format has been getting changed to a campaign rally. I anticipate that the Houston event will also be more of a rally than a town hall.

Demand has also forced the campaign to move a Saturday rally in Phoenix to a larger venue, as the big crowds are showing no signs of diminishing for Bernie Sanders.

Republicans should be terrified of Bernie Sanders’ popularity because Texas is the heart of the Republican Party. The state is demographically changing, but the reason Republicans should be worried about Sanders is that he is demonstrating the power of a liberal populist economic message in red states.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/17/republicans-terrified-texas-demand-bernie-sanders-forces-rally-bigger-venue.html

July 17, 2015

Just in Time to Elect Bernie Sanders: "The End of Capitalism has begun"

In light of this, anything short of electing Bernie would be folly IMHO

The end of capitalism has begun

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian

July 17, 2015 * by Paul Mason * The Guardian

The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.

Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did.

If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.

As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.

MORE http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun

July 17, 2015

It's Official -- Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats

It's Official -- Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats
07/07/2015 * HuffPo * H. A. Goodman

According to PBS, Bernie Sanders is "gaining against Clinton in early polls." Salon's Bill Curry believes "Hillary Clinton is going lose," primarily because millions of voters longing for a truly progressive candidate will nominate Sanders. POLITICO explained recently that Early-state polls hint at a Bernie Sanders surge, a headline that was unthinkable only several months earlier. Yahoo's Meredith Shiner calls Sanders a "progressive social media star and pragmatic legislator" and states that "Sanders also has a much more substantial legislative history" than any GOP challenger. In Iowa, 1,100 people packed a gym to hear Bernie Sanders speak in May.

In contrast, Team Hillary had an intimate business roundtable discussion with five "ordinary" Iowans. The only problem was that according to The Washington Post, "All five were selected to attend her events." In fact, Clinton's "staged roundtables" were attended by a total of 13 Iowans, picked by either the campaign or the host.

A CLINTON 'TOWN HALL'


Therefore, a paradigm shift has taken place. Many Iowans drove 50 miles to hear Sanders speak in Des Moines, primarily because Bernie Sanders has surpassed Clinton as the ideal choice for Democratic nominee. Regarding electability, Sanders has also surpassed Clinton as the realistic choice for Democratic nominee in the minds of many voters, because as one Salon piece illustrates, Hillary "just doesn't get it." (snip)

BERNIE IN MADISON


According to a POLITICO piece titled The 2016 Results We Can Already Predict, "Assuming the lean, likely, and safe Democratic states remain loyal to the party, the nominee need only win 23 of the 85 toss-up electoral votes." Therefore, there's no need to jettison cherished values for the sake of pragmatism; those days are over. Senator Bernie Sanders, known in Washington and throughout the nation as an advocate for middle class Americans, veterans, the environment, and other cherished causes can win crucial electoral votes just as easily as Hillary Clinton.

Finally, we're all asking a question that we've been too frightened to ask, for fear of seeming unrealistic:"Why Not Bernie?"

MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/its-official-bernie-sande_b_7660226.html

July 17, 2015

Suffragettes, Sanders, and When to Vote ... like, NOW.

Suffragettes, Sanders, and When to Vote
by Mary Petiet * Friday, July 17, 2015 * by Common Dreams

My Aunt Louisa was a suffragette. As a girl she ran away from home and a well-planned future. She secretly took the train from Annapolis to Boston, and enrolled herself at Radcliff College before they noticed her missing. She became a mathematician, a teacher, a Quaker, and a suffragette. At no small risk to herself, she rallied and marched and held signs, and she was there when the right to vote was finally granted.

That right was hard won, and until recently I had never imagined abstaining. The power of electoral input was granted American women, only after years of struggle, in 1919. We have been able to vote for almost one hundred years. That is a mere blip in time in the course of political power, yet within that time we have produced female politicians and even female contenders for the White House. We’ve come a long way, baby.

“How can you even think of not voting?” my mother would demand in my younger, more apolitical days. I would shrug with adolescent non-nonchalance, but in the end I would always turn up at the polls. Other women had suffered to win us this right, and I could not let them down, or myself. This was important.

I did not always vote wisely at first, but my choices improved as I became more informed, until finally my choices began to reflect the world view that I had created. My world view is inclusive and implies a certain degree of freedom, integrity and social responsibility. (snip)

Benito Mussolini is said to have described fascism as “corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." That sounds an awful lot like what we are facing here, now, and today. But recently a solution turned up. On April 20, the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, announced his candidacy for the democratic primaries. Even though he knows he is the underdog, he is getting his message out, and his biggest point is that he is unowned. Nobody owns Bernie Sanders. He has made this very clear. His idea of a super pac is 200 million people with $1 each. He told the corporations that he does not want their support, and advised the 1% to not vote for him because it would be against their own self-interest. The audacity, the bravery, the honesty!

MORE:http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/17/suffragettes-sanders-and-when-vote