April 16, 2016

20 Foreign Policy Experts Sign Letter Backing Sanders And Questioning Hillary Clinton's Record

Press Release

Foreign Policy Experts Back Sanders
April 14, 2016


NEW YORK – Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign on Thursday released a letter signed by 20 foreign policy experts backing Sanders’ judgment and questioning Secretary Hillary Clinton’s record on some of the biggest foreign policy questions of the last 15 years.

“Senator Sanders’ judgment is consistent with President Obama’s warning against the ‘Washington playbook’ of the ‘foreign policy establishment’ that overemphasizes military responses and leads to bad decisions,” the experts write. “Bernie Sanders is by far the most credible candidate to repair the economic and human foundations of American power.”

Citing her support of President Bush’s war in Iraq and her advocacy for intervention in Libya, the experts express concerns about Secretary Clinton’s judgment. “We are deeply concerned that Secretary Clinton has not fully learned the lessons from her mistaken support for the invasion of Iraq: dictators can be toppled, but unintended and often disastrous consequences must be fully considered before deciding to act,” the authors write.

To read the letter, click here:
https://go.berniesanders.com/page/-/website/FP%20Experts%20Suport%20Bernie-min.pdf

Signers of the Letter:

Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan
Joseph Cirincione, Ploughshares Fund, President
James Zogby, American Arab Institute, President
Gordon Adams, American University, School of International Service (emeritus), and former Associate Director of National Security and International Affairs, Office of Management and Budget
Ian Hurd, Northwestern University, Department of Political Science
Sean Kay, Ohio Wesleyan University, Department of Politics and Government
Charlie Martel, former Counsel, U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee
Joseph Young, American University, School of International Service
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University, Department of Political Science
Bruce Blair, Princeton University, Program on Science and Global Security, and Co-Founder, Global Zero
Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Department of Political Science
Jeffery Sachs, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director
David Kang, University of Southern California, Center for International Studies
Daniel Nexon, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service
Maria Repnikova, Georgia State University, Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication
Amanda Murdie, University of Missouri, Department of Political Science
Nadiya Kravets, Harvard University, Ukrainian Research Institute
Jeremy Menchik, Boston University, Pardee School of Global Studies
Stanley R. Sloan, Middlebury College, Department of Political Science, and former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Western Europe, Central Intelligence Agency
Robert English, University of Southern California, School of International Relations

April 15, 2016

Big Money Influences Hillary Clinton, a huge beneficiary of the Citizens United court decision

Money Influences Everybody. That Includes Hillary Clinton
Democrats were quick to criticize Republicans who flirted with banks and big oil. Why won’t they admit that Hillary’s links are a problem too?
by Trevor Timm
April 14, 2016

The Clinton campaign has spent the last few weeks furiously pushing back at the criticism that she is influenced by the vast donations her campaign receives from backers in the oil and financial industries. Her supporters have been vigorously arguing there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo.

How quickly they forget. As journalist David Sirota reported earlier this week, in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Clinton harshly criticized then senator Obama for accepting donations from oil and gas executives – and even cut a campaign commercial about it. The kicker? It was less money than Clinton has accepted from people working for fossil fuel companies so far this campaign season.

Then there are the closed-door speeches that Clinton gave for Goldman Sachs and other big banks after she left her role as secretary of state. While she has steadfastly refused to release the transcripts, she’s claimed it has never affected her position on the banks one iota. Which is fine, if that’s the principled stance you want to take, but it’s not one her party has had in the past. Mitt Romney was hit hard in the 2012 presidential campaign by Democrats for the speeches he gave to financial institutions.

The president of Citizens United even told the Center for Public Integrity last week: “Wouldn’t you know that Hillary Clinton has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Citizens United supreme court decision. It is an irony that is not lost on me.”

Sure, even hardcore Sanders supporters will admit there is no evidence of direct quid pro quo when talking about large donations various parties made to the Clinton Foundation when Clinton was secretary of state. But it would be difficult not to worry about at least the potential for a conflict of interest, when weapons manufacturers and Saudi Arabia were making donations to the Clinton Foundation while their weapons deals were approved by the State Department, oil companies were doing the same before the State Department approved the oil sands pipeline project, and other fossil fuels donated at around the same time the secretary was advocating increased fracking abroad.

Clinton supporters are essentially adopting the reasoning of the Roberts court that they claim to abhor – that unless there is direct evidence of overtly trading money for votes, corruption doesn’t exist. As Lawrence Lessig has written, Democrats have been slowly embracing this stance for years, but the Clinton campaign seems to cementing it as the party’s policy.

No one has made this point better than Clinton surrogate and former representative Barney Frank – or should I say, the 2012 version of him. .... Frank sang an altogether different tune about the influence of campaign contributions when he was leaving Congress in 2012.

“People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have any effect on me,’” Frank told NPR at the time about the constant need to continually raise money as a congressman. “Well if that were the case, we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior.”

I guess we can assume Clinton is the first person in the history of the world to avoid this problem altogether then.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/money-hillary-clinton-banks-oil-links-presidential-campaign

HILLARY CLINTON; THE FORMER SENATOR FROM WALL STREET





Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

April 14, 2016

Join Bernie's Phone Bank! Call New York Voters Now! Here's A Link To The Phone Bank Website

The New York primary is coming up very soon on April 19th — and with your help, we know that Bernie can win. The more voters we talk to, the better chance Bernie will have. So let's keep calling and help Bernie win New York!

Here's the link:

https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/nyphonebank/

April 14, 2016

Join Bernie's Phone Bank! Call New York Voters Now! Here's A Link To The Phone Bank Website

The New York primary is coming up very soon on April 19th — and with your help, we know that Bernie can win. The more voters we talk to, the better chance Bernie will have. So let's keep calling and help Bernie win New York!


Here's the link:

https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/nyphonebank/

April 14, 2016

NBC NEWS VIDEO OF HUGE NYC RALLY "Sanders Tells Corporate America: You Can't Have It All"

Sanders Tells Corporate America: You Can't Have It All
Wenesday, April 13, 2016
Sen. Bernie Sanders restated his support for striking CWA workers and also urged supporters in New York to stand up against corporate America.

See the NBC NEWS Video at:

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/sanders-tells-corporate-america-you-can-t-have-it-all-665530435643

April 13, 2016

The idea that southern "red" states could decide the Democratic presidential candidate is outrageous

The Story about Democratic Convention Pledged Delegates that Nobody Talks About
Clinton's only ahead of Sanders thanks to 6 Deep South states irrelevant in November
by: Dave Lindorff
April 12, 2016


Many critics -- including people who aren't even Sanders' supporters -- have denounced the devious and biased way major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and most of the major television networks, have followed the Clinton campaign's lead in including so-called Superdelegates in the totals (Clinton has over 400 of these unelected delegates, whose positions are allocated to the various states and other primary jurisdictions, and who are mostly elected officials, party officials and lobbyists supportive of the Democratic Party leadership, and Sanders has just 38). This distorted count has been used for months now to insist, falsely, that Clinton "has a lock" on the nomination. But this has always been deceptive counting, because those delegates, while claimed by Clinton and to a far lesser lesser extent Sanders, are not pledged at all but are free to change their minds.

It may be that the strategy of front-loading states in the deep south (South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi) will work to deny Sanders a majority of pledged delegates going into the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia this July, but that overlooks the reality that his popularity among Democratic and independent voters has surged dramatically over the intervening months, while Clinton’s has plummeted.

Certainly the Superdelegates, if they The Democrats want to win the election this November, and to have a shot at winning back at least the Senate, need to consider that reality. Imagine if California, with its 475 pledged delegate total, were to go for Sanders on June 7, scarcely a month before the Convention, and then Clinton were to win the nomination? It would spell disaster! What if Sanders were to win the pledged delegates, but Superdelegate votes were to hand her the nomination. Even worse disaster!

Remember that the states that have handed Hillary Clinton her continuing if shrinking pledged delegate lead are all Red states that have no chance of voting Democratic this year, or of contributing a single electoral vote to the Electoral College tally at the end of the day. The idea that those states’ primaries could determine the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate is simply outrageous, and also suicidal.

At the least this should be a part of the discussion in any reporting on the Democratic race for the nomination. So far it’s a topic that is deemed not fit for public discourse in the national corporate media

http://thiscantbehappening.net/sites/default/files/images/Clinton:Sanders.jpg

Read the full article at:
http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/3124?page=2

April 13, 2016

Hillary claims she's pro-union and anti-Uber. That's why the owner of Uber is funding her campaign!

"Clinton's first event with the Clooneys will be hosted by Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist who is the founder of Sherpa Ventures and is a special adviser to Uber.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/12/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraisers/index.html

"Shervin Pishevar is an entrepreneur, super angel, and venture capitalist of Iranian descent currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. He is a partner at SherpaVentures along with Scott Stanford, and a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Hyperloop Technologies. He is most famous for being an early major investor in Uber, an on-demand transportation company."

"Pishevar has publicly defended and praised Uber, going so far as to get a haircut to spell out the letters of Uber with his hair on the back of his head.'



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





Shervin Pishevar

April 13, 2016

Who Do You Think Bernie Should Pick As His Vice-Presidential Candidate?

I tend to like Elizabeth Warren the most.

April 13, 2016

Bernie Sanders is the Most Liked Candidate, and His Popularity is Growing: Poll

Sanders is the Most Liked Candidate, and His Popularity is Growing: Poll
Survey finds 48 percent of Americans have favorable view of Sanders, contrasting with 55 percent who hold unfavorable view of rival Hillary Clinton
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
April 12, 2016

Bernie Sanders is the most-liked presidential candidate in the race—and the more people get to know him, the more they like him, according to a new poll out Tuesday.

The Associated Press-GfK survey found that 48 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Sanders, compared with 39 percent who view him unfavorably, giving him the best "net-positive" rating in the field, and that his likeability score has increased since previous polls.

Sixty-one percent of registered voters said they would consider voting for him in November. Among Democrats alone, he has a 72 percent favorability rating.

Meanwhile, Sanders' Democratic rival Hillary Clinton got 55 percent unfavorability versus 40 percent favorability ratings among all survey respondents, and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump scored 69 unfavorability to 29 favorability. In addition, 51 percent of respondents said they would never vote for Clinton and 63 percent said the same of Trump.

"I just like everything that he talks about and that he wants to do," Brian Cane, 54, of Spokane, Washington, told the AP about Sanders. "I think Hillary, she's too mainstream government. Bernie Sanders is fresh and new and the Republicans are freaking idiots."


Bernie Sanders addresses one of his signature overflow rallies in Madison, Wisconsin

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/12/sanders-most-liked-candidate-and-his-popularity-growing-poll

April 13, 2016

Senator Jeff Merkley Oregon: Why I’m Supporting Bernie Sanders

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Why I’m Supporting Bernie Sanders
By JEFF MERKLEY
APRIL 13, 2016

Jeff Merkley is a Democratic senator from Oregon.


NO decision we make as Americans more dramatically affects the direction of our country than our choice for president. He or she is more than the manager of the executive branch, commander in chief or appointer of judges. The president reflects, but also helps define, our national values, priorities and direction.

After considering the biggest challenges facing our nation and the future I want for my children and our country, I have decided to become the first member of the Senate to support my colleague Bernie Sanders for president.

I grew up in working-class Oregon. On a single income, my parents could buy a home, take a vacation and help pay for college. My father worked with his hands as a millwright and built a middle-class life for us.

My parents believed in education and they believed in the United States. When I was young, my father took me to the grade school and told me that if I went through those doors, and worked hard, I could do just about anything because we lived in America. My dad was right.

Years later, my family and I still live in the same working-class community I grew up in. But America has gone off track, and the outlook for the kids growing up there is a lot gloomier today than 40 years ago.

Many middle-class Americans are working longer for less income than decades ago, even while big-ticket expenses like housing, health care and college have relentlessly pushed higher.

It is not that America is less wealthy than 40 years ago — quite the contrary. The problem is that our economy, both by accident and design, has become rigged to make a fortunate few very well off while leaving most Americans struggling to keep up.

And as economic power has become more concentrated, so too has political power. Special interests, aided by their political and judicial allies, have exercised an ever-tighter grip on our political system, from the rise of unlimited, secret campaign spending to a voter suppression movement.

Under President Obama’s leadership, our country is fairer and more prosperous for all than it was seven years ago. But as we look toward the next administration, there is far more work to do. We need urgency. We need big ideas. We need to rethink the status quo.

Unlike the Republican primary circus, Democrats have a choice between two candidates with lifelong track records of fighting for economic opportunity and who are committed to America’s being a force for peace and stability and who are eager to meet today’s challenges and move our country forward for all its citizens, together.

From her time advocating for children as a young lawyer to her work as first lady of Arkansas and the United States, and as a senator and secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has a remarkable record. She would be a strong and capable president.

But Bernie Sanders is boldly and fiercely addressing the biggest challenges facing our country.

He has opposed trade deals with nations that pay their workers as little as a dollar an hour. Such deals have caused good jobs to move overseas and undermined the leverage of American workers to bargain for a fair share of the wealth they create in our remaining factories.

He has passionately advocated for pivoting from fossil fuels to renewable energy to save our planet from global warming — the greatest threat facing humanity. He recognizes that to accomplish this we must keep the vast bulk of the world’s fossil fuels in the ground.

Bernie is a determined leader in taking on the concentration of campaign cash from the mega-wealthy that is corrupting the vision of opportunity embedded in our Constitution.

And he has been unflinching in taking on predatory lending, as well as the threats to our economy from high-risk strategies at our biggest banks.

It has been noted that Bernie has an uphill battle ahead of him to win the Democratic nomination. But his leadership on these issues and his willingness to fearlessly stand up to the powers that be have galvanized a grass-roots movement. People know that we don’t just need better policies, we need a wholesale rethinking of how our economy and our politics work, and for whom they work.

The first three words of the Constitution, in bold script, are “We the People.” The American story is a journey of continuous striving to more fully realize our founding principles of hope and opportunity for all.

It is time to recommit ourselves to that vision of a country that measures our nation’s success not at the boardroom table, but at kitchen tables across America. Bernie Sanders stands for that America, and so I stand with Bernie Sanders for president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/opinion/why-im-supporting-bernie-sanders.html?ref=opinion&_r=0