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Video of Bernie’s College For All rally can be seen in @Magsview‘s liveblog just under this roundup.(thanks mags!).

Bernie Sanders: One thing needs to change in order to make America ‘great’

In an opinion piece for Vice Impact, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) discusses what he believes America actually needs to become “great”: High-quality higher education delivered to citizens for free.

What would help is “not spending tens of billions more on weapons systems or providing trillions in tax breaks for the rich,” he writes. “It is having a well-educated population that can compete in the global economy, and making it possible that every American, regardless of income, has the opportunity to get the education they need to thrive.”

However, he writes, “we are moving further and further away from that goal,” thanks to the high cost of college.

More than 44 million Americans have taken out student loans to pay for school, with their debt totaling $1.4 trillion. The average debt for 20-year-olds is $22,135. For 30-year-olds, it’s $34,033.

And while wages aren’t rising much, the cost of tuition is. That could explain why the number of loan defaults has reached a new high.blockquote>

Ben Jealous wants tuition-free college in Maryland. His plan is like Sanders’ ‘College For All’ bill

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous wants Maryland to become the second state after New York to provide public higher education free of charge.

Jealous told a group of students and progressive activists gathered Tuesday night at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, that he would help pay for the plan by ending mass incarceration. “College is as important in the 21st century as high school was in the 20th century,” the former NAACP president and tech investor said.

He spoke after the students participated in a virtual town hall hosted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, who endorsed Jealous’s gubernatorial bid in July, outlined his plan for tuition-free college nationwide in a speech that was broadcast to hundreds of campuses.

Jealous has not estimated how much a Maryland tuition-free state program would cost, how many students would benefit or what type of income-eligibility requirements would be required. “We’re still looking at those numbers,” he said.

Still, the proposal is likely to help set the tone on college-affordability issues as the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign gets underway.

Everyone can of course feel as they wish, but I for one am no longer spending any time on Randy Bryce. If an article pops up, I’ll post it, but that’s pretty much it.

Remember this?

Randy Bryce Dodges Forum with Democratic Primary Challenger, Cathy Myers

well @Ironstache who ive tweeted to for weeks about this and have been ignored (but who I mentioned positively in a post yesterday and got a like from) apparently just does not want a forum with his opponent, but has time to tweet about:

Thank you @RubenGallego for having a real public #townhall with me in #WI01
It's one more than @SpeakerRyan has had in over two years.

— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) October 10, 2017

Iron? That stache is made of glass.

A Bernie Sanders campaign veteran advises a surging opposition movement in Russia

Vitali Shkliarov, a 41-year-old political operative born in Belarus, speaks the gospel of Bernie Sanders in the style of a Silicon Valley executive. Technology, he says, is a key to access, and his dream is a “political Uber” designed to pick up potential candidates and get them around the barriers keeping them from office.

The idea got a test drive in Moscow’s recent municipal elections, but the veteran of the Sanders and Barack Obama campaigns sees it as part of a worldwide movement.

“Obama made politics in America — but also worldwide — cool and sexy,” Shkliarov said in energetic, accented English during a recent interview at a Moscow cocktail bar. “Next, and I was part of it, was Sanders making politics like a Woodstock festival. It was about education, not partisanship.”

The next step, he said, is to ensure that anyone can become a candidate.

“This is the new era of politics, not just in Russia, but in America, too,” he said.

Democrats, please primary Dianne Feinstein — just avoid pitfalls of Clinton vs. Sanders

Feinstein should run for re-election — and she should be challenged from the left. Half of likely California voters said Feinstein should not seek a sixth term, according to a poll released late last month. That likely reflects the way the state has changed during her years in politics; a centrist, hawkish Democrat is no longer a perfect fit for California, a deep blue state.

Hillary Clinton carried the state in November by a margin of 3.4 million votes, which was more than her overall national advantage. So Donald Trump’s claim that he won the popular vote would be true, if he could subtract California from the nation.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein did little or nothing to resist Trump’s most significant accomplishment thus far: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. The day before she announced her re-election bid, Feinstein sounded tone deaf on the issue of the moment, refusing to commit to returning contributions she might have received from disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“I don’t know that I’ve received any. I’ll certainly take a look, and then I’ll make a decision,” Feinstein said on “Meet the Press,” after decades’ worth of sexual harassment complaints against Weinstein emerged.

Feinstein shouldn’t get a free ride here. She may well face a challenge from the Democratic left flank, largely on the theory that safe Democratic seats — and California’s are the safest — should be reserved for those who represent the base. Feinstein no longer does. When California’s other veteran female senator, Barbara Boxer, retired in 2015, her exit allowed for the election of the state’s first Asian-American and African-American senator, Kamala Harris. While Harris is herself a controversial figure to many progressives, she is still inarguably representative of the base of her party in the state — women of color. Harris’ immediate endorsement of Feinstein’s re-election bid felt to many like short-order betrayal of the activist spirit that swept the younger senator into the national spotlight.

CA120: Bernie voters stay angry at Dem establishment

Throughout the 2016 election cycle, Capitol Weekly conducted several statewide polls. Two of them, one during the primary and the other during the general election, targeted voters right after they had mailed in their ballots.

In total, more than 80,000 Californians participated in these surveys.

Now, we’ve gone back to some of those same respondents to ask them how they feel about the candidates they backed, about the issues and about their perceptions of the political climate since the election. We also asked them this: Would they like to see their preferred 2016 candidate run again in 2020?

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The survey, which can be seen in a fully-interactive infographic, polled 851 voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary election and who in an exit poll told us they had voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

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–When looking at specifics, Bernie Sanders voters have negative takes on the Democratic Party establishment, with 82% saying the party is too focused on political money and the needs of contributors. Three-fourths say the Democratic Party rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton and two-thirds say that the establishment Democratic Party figures continue to fight Bernie today.

–In looking back at the 2016 general election, Sanders’ voters by a 3-to-1 margin believe that he would have defeated Trump, and 89% of Sanders supporters disagree that Sanders’ primary election attacks on Clinton contributed to her loss to Trump in the General Election.

‘An Inferno Like You’ve Never Seen’: Deadly Wildfires Ravage California

More than ten people have been killed, thousands have been left without power, and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate as more than a dozen wildfires tore through Northern California overnight Monday, forcing Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency in eight counties.

“Presently, these fires continue their path of destruction,” Brown said in a statement late Monday. “Many residents had little time to flee due to the fires’ rapid and erratic rate of spread through the rural terrain. Tragically, these fires have already taken lives and emergency responders anticipate the number of fatalities could grow.”

Brown also asked President Donald Trump—who spent his morning tweeting insults at ESPN host Jemele Hill and the NFL—to issue a disaster declaration.

At least eighteen total wildfires have been counted, and firefighters have struggled to contain the inferno as powerful winds Monday night rapidly pushed the flames from rural areas into cities. As the Wall Street Journal reports, at least 2,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed, along with schools, grocery stores, and community centers.

Puerto Rico: US officials privately acknowledge serious food shortage

Federal officials privately admit there is a massive shortage of meals in Puerto Rico three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say that the government and its partners are only providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8m and 5.8m meals each day.

The scale of the food crisis dwarfs the more widely publicized challenges of restoring power and communications. More than a third of Puerto Ricans are still struggling to live without drinking water.

However, Fema provides no details on food deliveries, keeping its public statements to the most general terms. On its website, Fema says it has provided “millions of meals and millions of liters of water.”

In fact many of those meals are military ready-to-eat meals that civilians find hard to digest if consumed for more than a few days.

Now the biggest provider of cooked meals says Fema is putting its operations at risk of closure.

Harvey Weinstein allegations mount as wife condemns ‘unforgivable actions’

Sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein continue to mount after his wife announced she was leaving him and his most powerful allies, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, expressed disgust at his actions.

Georgina Chapman, co-founder of the Marchesa luxury brand and the mother of two of Weinstein’s children, said she was ending her 10-year marriage to the disgraced producer.

“My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions,” she said after three women accused her husband of rape and more stars including Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow said he had sexually harassed them.

Half of police killings not attributed to officers, says study using Guardian data

Over half of all police killings in 2015 were wrongly classified as not having been the result of interaction with officers, a new Harvard study based on Guardian data has found.

The finding is just the latest to show government databases seriously undercounting the number of people killed by police.

“Right now the data quality is bad and unacceptable,” said lead researcher Justin Feldman. “To effectively address the problem of law enforcement-related deaths, the public needs better data about who is being killed, where, and under what circumstances.”

Feldman used data from the Guardian’s 2015 investigation into police killings, The Counted, and compared it with data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). That dataset, which is kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was found to have misclassified 55.2% of all police killings, with the errors occurring disproportionately in low-income jurisdictions.