Sept 30, 2017
Today, the Republicans in the Senate just introduced a budget that is unusual in its degree of cruelty. Let me take a moment to explain what it does.

https://www.facebook.com/senatorsande...

https://twitter.com/claireevbrown/status/914234119143399424

https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/914193798892154880

''I ran into Bernie Sanders at the Nationals game last night!'' (instagram quote)

September 28, 2017 5:31pm


Excerpt:

(JTA) — In the upcoming season premiere of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” Bernie Sanders does more than look at a printout of his family tree: He gets emotional when he discovers a relative died while standing up to the Nazis during World War II.

In a clip released to JTA, the Jewish lawmaker is visibly moved as the show’s host, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., asks him how he feels after learning about the relative.

“I’m proud of his courage, and willingly going to his own death in order to protect innocent people,” Sanders says. “So I’m very, very proud that I have a family member who showed that type of courage and decency.”

“It’s one of the bravest acts I’ve heard of,” responds Gates, a historian who has hosted the show since it first aired in 2012.


https://www.jta.org/2017/09/28/life-religion/bernie-sanders-gets-choked-up-talking-about-relative-who-died-standing-up-to-the-nazis

SEP. 26, 2017 11:39 AM

Excerpts:

When CNN announced last week that it would hold a debate on health care between Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham and progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, the reaction in some Democratic circles was anxiety. “I’m not sure single payer vs Graham-Cassidy is the debate we want right now,” mused former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. With the Affordable Care Act once more on the ropes, the argument seemed to go, Sanders was choosing to advance his personal politics ahead of the priorities of the moment.

Those fears were unfounded. A Monday night cable news special was never going to be the make-or-break moment for health care reform, but more importantly, Sanders’ skeptics, and his Republican debating opponents, misunderstood his entire approach to health care reform—no one in the Senate has as much riding on Obamacare’s survival as he does.

Sanders and Klobuchar returned again and again to the Congressional Budget Office analysis that showed that Graham-Cassidy would throw millions off health insurance. In defense, Graham and Cassidy couldn’t really say what their bill would do, because the entire point of their proposal is to change Obamacare’s spending into block grants and let governors and state legislators decide for themselves how health funds should be spent. Sanders pointed out that governors and state legislators had all pretty much decided before Obamacare that people with pre-existing conditions were on their own. Graham didn’t have much to say about that. Instead, he and Cassidy frequently tried to make hay out of Sanders’ politics.

Sanders, of course, was happy to defend the principle of a single-payer system, but he never let that get in the way of the task on hand, nor did he reject the incrementalism the Senate sometimes lives and breathes by. Of course Medicare-for-all won’t be passing anytime soon, he said. But in the meantime, there were bipartisan fixes to made to Obamacare, and opportunity to act on prescription drug prices—an area of agreement, Sanders noted, between he and President Trump. They might even consider lowering the age of Medicare or offering a Medicaid or Medicare buy-in option—ideas his Democratic colleagues Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut are currently working on.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/bernie-sanders-health-care-debate-was-a-good-idea-for-a-very-simple-reason/

September 26 at 9:00 AM

Excerpts:

Spintharus berniesandersi, named after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), lives in Cuba. It is small and lemon-yellow and barely a millimeter wide. On the spider's back is an ornate pattern halfway between a distorted smiley face and grimace.

Four University of Vermont undergraduates, with the guidance of biologist Ingi Agnarsson, identified Spintharus berniesandersi.

“We don't mean this to be a political paper. We decided to honor the people who we think are doing the right thing,” Agnarsson, a spider expert at the University of Vermont, told The Washington Post. In picking taxonomic names, Agnarsson said, it was the job of scientists to recognize leaders who drew attention to environmental and social issues.

“We all have tremendous respect for Bernie. He presents a feeling of hope,” said Lily Sargeant, one of the undergraduates who worked on the project, in a news release.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/09/26/meet-bernie-sanderss-new-namesake-a-spider-from-cuba/?utm_term=.cd7b66595ebe

Bernie Sanders Published 3:16 a.m. ET Sept. 25, 2017


Excerpt:

We now have the most wasteful, inefficient and bureaucratic health care system in the world. In fact, we are spending almost twice as much per capita as any other country, while our health care outcomes are often worse. Instead of providing quality care to all in a cost-effective way, our current system is designed to provide hundreds of billions in profits to insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and medical equipment suppliers.

Moving to a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system would eliminate insurance industry profits and reduce waste, saving up to $500 billion a year on administrative costs. Today, about 21 cents of every dollar spent on private health insurance goes to overhead and profit in an incredibly complicated system of hundreds of different plans, each with different deductibles, co-payments and premiums. In contrast, Medicare spends only 2% on administration.

Under Medicare for all, the American people would be able to go to any doctor or hospital they wanted. The major difference is that instead of writing out large checks to private insurance companies, they would be paying substantially less into a Medicare trust fund saving middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.

The truth is that the only reason we, among all major countries, do not have universal health care has everything to do with politics and greed. Now is the time to tell members of Congress that their job is to protect the American people, not the insurance companies and the drug companies. Now is the time for Medicare for all.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/25/medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders-editorials-debates/105971268/

Uploaded on Sep 24, 2017
The US senator Bernie Sanders has called for a global movement to create 'equality and shared prosperity'. Sanders was speaking in a prerecorded message to the Australian activist group GetUp's PowerUp conference. 'Nothing happens or has ever happened unless people on the bottom at the grassroots level stand up and go forward. That is how change always takes place'

~*~

Bernie Sanders urges GetUp members to join global 'resistance'

Monday 25 September 2017 03.44 EDT

Excerpts:

Bernie Sanders, the former US Democratic presidential hopeful, has called on members of the activist group GetUp to join a global “resistance movement” to fight the rise of intolerant political movements in the US, Europe and Australia. In a prerecorded video message, played at GetUp’s first national conference at the weekend in Sydney, Sanders encouraged the group to start working globally with like-minded activists, saying its progressive values were similar to his own. His message was played on Sunday, where 800 GetUp members had gathered to workshop new campaign tactics. “We need a globalised movement towards equality and shared prosperity,” Sanders said in his video.

Paul Oosting, GetUp’s national director, said the weekend conference marked a “significant shift” for the organisation and he welcomed Sanders’ words of encouragement. He said GetUp had been in close contact with key Sanders staff, particularly Becky Bond and Zack Exley – the organisers who pioneered efforts to get tens of thousands of Americans volunteering for Sanders – to learn everything they could about Sanders’ campaigning model.

“We’ve been learning a lot from them because they’re seen as global leaders in the ‘big organising’ model they’ve pioneered,” Oosting said. Sanders used his video message to call on GetUp supporters to be conscious of global political trends, saying progressives must confront the rise of intolerant and authoritarian political movements. He implored GetUp’s supporters to start organising globally.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/25/bernie-sanders-urges-getup-members-to-join-global-resistance

"Nurses are the most trusted profession in the US."

September 21 2017, 12:28 p.m.

Excerpt:

“I consider Saudi Arabia to be an undemocratic country that has supported terrorism around the world, it has funded terrorism. … They are not an ally of the United States.” The Vermont senator accused the “incredibly anti-democratic” Saudis of “continuing to fund madrasas” and spreading “an extremely radical Wahhabi doctrine in many countries around the world.”

In a wide-ranging interview ahead of his set-piece speech on foreign policy in Fulton, Missouri, on Thursday morning, the independent senator said the United States is “complicit” in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and said he would be willing to consider voting to cut U.S. aid to the Jewish state. He also offered tentative support for a “face-to-face” meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un; described U.S. drone strikes against innocent civilians as one of the “root causes” of terrorism; and called for a re-examination of U.S. foreign policy “unilateralism.”

Asked if he agreed with ESPN’s Jemele Hill and The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, who have both called Trump a “white supremacist,” Sanders said he preferred to use the word “racist” to describe the president.

“I think Donald Trump has strong racist tendencies,” he said. “And I say that not just because of his absurd and horrific remarks on Charlottesville, but because … when you lead the effort to try to de-legitimize … the first African-American president in our history, I think that’s racist. When you argue about the Central Park 5, I think that’s racist — so I think it’s fair to say he has strong racist tendencies.”

The Intercept will publish the full interview with Sanders on Friday.


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, is interviewed by The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan, right, in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20, 2017. Sound engineer Rachael London, middle, records the interview.