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Bernie Sanders is a refugee from the 1930s

YOU DON'T ACCEPT THE DECLARATION FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE?

Transcript from 4:20

ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC: I want to ask you about Iran. We're seeing increasing tensions. Secretary Pompeo is going to be speaking from CENTCOM. Iran is threatening to break out of the nuclear deal for the first time in 14 months, according to international inspectors, even though the president withdrew from it. We see these hits on the tankers. They say there's intelligence, the Brits agree with the U.S. that this was Iranians or Iranian proxies. There could be an accidental war. What do you, if you're President Bernie Sanders, what do you do right now where Iran is arguably acting aggressively--

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Whoa, whoa, whoa --

MITCHELL: -- even if it is in reaction to the U.S. policymaking.

SANDERS: Just a couple of points. First of all, what is absolutely necessary is an objective investigation as to these incidents. The destruction or the bombing or attacking of oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman is not acceptable. We need to investigate it.

MITCHELL: You don't accept -- let me just ask you don't accept the declaration from the Secretary of State?

SANDERS: No, I don't. It needs to be an objective investigation. As you know the Japanese -- in fact, the owner of the tanker that was attacked disagrees with Trump. But here's the main point I want to make. If you look at the recent history of this country, I think we understand that the two worst foreign policy disasters were based on lies that came from the White House. You remember the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident that led us to increase military involvement in Vietnam. Man, I could speak -- that was my generation. 59,000 brave young men never came home from that war. Tens of thousands more died, committed suicide, got into drugs when they came home. That was based on a lie.

Then you look more recently at the war in Iraq, which I oppose because I did not believe Cheney and I did not believe John Bolton. I did not believe the Bush administration. Again, based on a lie that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Let me just say this, I'll do everything I personally can as a United States Senator to stop the United States attacking Iran. If we go into a war with Iran, this will be an asymmetrical war which will go on and on and on. There will be never-ending wars in the middle east. It will make the war in Iraq look like a cake walk. So we have got to do everything we can to bring the antagonists, Saudi Arabia, which is a brutal dictatorship, together with Iran. Bring them together. Use the power of the united states to work out a diplomatic solution, not a military solution.

me again wrote:Sanders and Warren positions on the prison-industrial complex. On some recent history that the corporate media is ignoring:

1. Bernie Sanders introduced a Senate bill to abolish federal use of private prisons and detention centers in August 2015 (S.2054, "Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015"), at the beginning of his first presidential run. An identical House version was introduced by Rep. Grijalva (HR.3227). At the time this was covered only in a few alternative media platforms (see link). While this means Sanders was first with such legislation on the federal level, he was responding to a popular political movement that also prompted the Obama administration to adopt reforms (see 4-5).

2. Elimination of private prisons and detention centers has always been part of the Sanders campaign's broader program for criminal justice reform (https://www.berniesanders.com/issues/cr ... ce-reform/). The text I am quoting in the comments (below) is from the Sanders campaign's detailed and extensive policy page (https://www.berniesanders.com/issues/).

3. The 2015 Sanders-Grijalva bill included further measures to end immigrant family detention, limit ICE actions, reinstate the federal parole program, and end overcharging prisoners for phone calls by factors of 10 to 100 (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download ... nline=file). The bills predictably were blocked by the Republican majorities in Congress.

4. A groundswell against the mass incarceration system and the prison-industrial complex has grown throughout the past decade. Grassroots movements like #BlackLivesMatter and the efforts to end the war on drugs were and remain at the forefront. They have played an important role in pushing politicians to advocate for decriminalizing drugs and criminal justice reform, including Sanders. The movements are why Stop and Frisk was ended as an official policy in New York City. The success of 13th, the 2016 documentary by Ava Duvernay, was one indicator of the rising public concern. The same movements achieved perhaps their greatest success so far in last year's election, when Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to restore the voting rights of 1.4 million disenfranchised felons who had served their time.

5. In August 2016, the Obama administration announced a policy change to end federal use of for-profit prisons (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/oba ... te-prisons). Stock in private prison companies such as Geo plunged at the time. It was seen as the beginning of the end of the private prison industry, a signal that would lead to abolitions at the state level.

6. The new Obama policy was reversed by the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions in February 2017 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1622NN). Although less-noted, this should rank among the Trump-Pence-GOP regime's objectively most violent acts. Private prison corporations are among the GOP's most reliable big money donors.

7. Any politician who now chooses to support the abolition of private prisons (and the many other needed criminal justice reforms) should be welcomed to a growing fold. But the corporate media response to Elizabeth Warren's campaign roll-out of a proposal to this effect two days ago omitted all of the above background. It was presented almost as though Warren invented the issue. The celebratory news coverage not only ignored the earlier Sanders legislation (which Warren did not co-sponsor) but also omitted the Obama administration's momentous policy change. (Click to see a current search: https://www.google.com/search?&q=warren+private+prisons)

8. For now the corporate media and a number of Democratic establishment pundits and big-money sponsors have discovered and promote Elizabeth Warren, ostensibly because her policy proposals are serious and detailed. These same entities and persons have long ignored and blasted Sanders' earlier and more detailed (and far more serious, in my opinion) policy proposals. These same entities and persons have thrown every possible smear at Sanders, plus the kitchen sink, for four years. After their decades of hard work on behalf of the status quo, their new-found enthusiasm for Warren is fake. It is not coincidental. The intent is to split the progressive vote and to favor a candidate far less likely to attempt real reform. (See Warren's retreat from a full Medicare For All single-payer system, and her support from the charter school movement.)

9. I am not blaming Warren for riding the sudden corporate media PR bonanza. No candidate really gets to control what the news conglomerates choose to do, except maybe by buying ads. But in the end, the sudden promotion of Warren by the corporate media and by some of the Democratic establishment is not aiming to help Warren but to sabotage Sanders, preferably to split and sink all of the progessive candidates. These same entities will later appear to throw their support behind whichever one of the neoliberal center-right fakers (Biden, Harris, Mayor Pete, etc.) prevails as the "ABB" (Anybody But Bernie) candidate. They will also continue to shield the Trump-Pence-GOP regime from substantive criticism of their aggressions, war crimes and other atrocities, focusing on personalized scandals, and even supporting the regime when it wages war.

10. Do you like Warren? It's okay. I have at times also, especially in regard to her work on bankruptcy reform, wealth inequality and private debt, and financial sector crime and regulation. Just be aware of the history and unfolding situation when the corporate media, the professional consultants, and various "philanthropies" and other predators swimming within the waters of the Democratic establishment (like Third Way, Brock, Tanden, Steyer, most of the on-air personalities on MSNBC, et al.) suddenly appear as though they are your friends. They are not. They don't care about you.

Remember that these are not "analysts," as they are usually pimped out. They are rarely university academics, they are usually not reporters. They are hired spokespersons, sophists, bought and sold propagandists, stenographers for the powerful. (Or else they are themselves the super-rich sponsors who expect to run the two-party monopoly as a matter of monied privilege.) They are not "liberals," they are not reformers. They are not intellectuals who struggled to arrive at a philosophy or ideals or principles. They think they already know or pretend to think they know everything that matters. They are actors on television and in the Internet gutter. Like a herd, they instantly recognize and follow predetermined PR lines. They act to please their funders, sponsors, advertisers, and/or the executives who promote them.

And they are individuals. Every one of their stories may be a
bit different, but the collective outcome of the corporate propaganda system is predictable. I am not talking about everyone who produces content for the Jeff Bezos Washington Post, or the Brookings Institution, or the CFR or all of the billionaire foundations. But something like 90 percent or more of those who draw up reporting agendas on politics, especially on foreign policy and elections, and who decide on hirings and promotions, will conform to the center-right ideology that in the United States is sold as "liberal."

I am talking about pretty much 100 percent of the content producers at the major cable networks, and among the big-money Democratic think tanks a la Third Way and CAP, and at most of the new-wave Internet politics outlets a la Politico or Vox. Those among them who play liberals and now uphold Warren while continuing to attack Sanders are not going to help end the endless wars. They will not fight to institute single-payer health care, remove the legal retrictions on labor unions, achieve public campaign finance, redistribute wealth and power, or address the ongoing planetary extinction event with a serious Green New Deal. They will always act within a strategy to prevent all of that, to cut out and discredit the left, to foreclose on alternatives to neoliberal and imperialist politics, to create the image of reform and change while selling the same old status quo. When no other argument works, they will tell you that all that matters is defeating Trump, and they will lie to you that only a corporatist center-right technocratic Democrat has any real chance of defeating Trump (which is the opposite of the truth).

Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6 trillion of student loan debt
CNN Digital Expansion 2017
By Ryan Nobles and Gregory Krieg, CNN

Updated 11:45 PM ET, Sun June 23, 2019

(CNN)Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to stake out uncharted territory in the Democratic presidential primary, offering up a plan to completely eliminate the student loan debt of every American.

On Monday, Sanders will submit legislation that cancels $1.6 trillion of student loan undergraduate and graduate debt for approximately 45 million people. His ambitious plan has no eligibility limitations and would be paid for with a new tax on Wall Street speculation.

The proposal goes further than the plan already unveiled by his Democratic primary rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Warren's debt relief package was subject to income eligibility levels to determine how much relief the average person would receive -- parameters that Warren said were aimed at closing the racial wealth gap. Under the Sanders plan, if you have student debt of any kind it would be canceled the second the legislation is signed into law.

Sanders will announce the legislation alongside Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

This rollout comes at a time when second place in Democratic primary polling, behind former Vice President Joe Biden, seems up for grabs -- with Warren rising in recent voter surveys. With this latest, detailed pitch, Sanders is aiming to solidify his credentials as the most progressive candidate in a field that has largely embraced the priorities he brought to a national audience in 2016. The proposal is sure to invite new criticism from Democratic moderates, who have sought to cast themselves as pragmatic alternatives to Sanders' efforts to fundamentally remake the country's economic system.

On the stump and in interviews, Sanders has long spoken about finding ways to relieve the burden of student debt, but this this is his most specific plan to date. He teased the announcement during an event in South Carolina on Saturday night.

"We are going to forgive student debt in this country," Sanders said. "We have for the first time in the modern history of this country a younger generation that if we don't change it, and we intend to change it, will have a lower standard of living than their parents, more in debt, lower wages than their parents, unable to buy the house that they desire."

The plan is part of a more comprehensive "college for all" program that Sanders has already released in pieces and includes free tuition at all four-year public colleges and universities, as well as community colleges. The broader proposal also includes subsidies to reduce the cost of tuition and fees for low income students at private colleges that historically serve underrepresented communities.

Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

Sanders has already introduced the Wall Street speculation tax, which he calls the Inclusive Prosperity Act. At an event on Sunday in South Carolina he delivered the political argument for using it to help millions of Americans struggling with student debt.

"Congress voted to bail out the crooks on Wall Street, do you remember that?" he asked the crowd to a chorus of boos. "They provided seven hundred billion in federal loans and in addition trillions of dollars in zero or very low interest loans. So I think the time is now for Wall Street to repay that obligation to the American people. If we could bail out Wall Street, we sure as hell can reduce student debt in this country."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics ... index.html

Elvis » Tue Jun 25, 2019 12:30 am wrote:New game! "Where's Bernie??"

SC POLL wheres Bernie.jpg

"The Contenders." Can you believe this shit?!

edit: Actually, it's the same thing Newsweek did in 1992, with the cover title: "THE CHOICE" and picturing Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas, seated together, at a point when Jerry Brown—the Bernie Sanders of '92—had won more primaries and had more delegates than Tsongas. I wrote Newseek a letter of protest and got a very lame reply back in the mail. They did publish a similar letter that said it better than mine, but by then of course the damage was done.