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Sanders blasts proposed Medicare cuts: These ‘will kill people’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) berated his Republican colleagues on Thursday over proposed cuts to health spending that he said would “kill people.”

“These are cuts that will kill people, these are cuts that will hurt people, and these are cuts that should not in a humane society be allowed to take place,” Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said during a markup of the Senate budget.

The exchange came over an amendment sponsored by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) that would prevent the budget’s proposed cuts to Medicare.

The Republican-penned budget resolution outlined $473 billion in cuts to Medicare’s current spending path over a decade and about $1 trillion in reductions to Medicaid’s path.

Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) pointed out that the resolution would not enact the cuts or have the force of law, but critics note that Republicans rely on such cuts for their 10-year budget plan to balance.

Did Berniecrats just score their first major victory in Los Angeles?

o how did the Bernie Sanders-style progressive movement fare in Tuesday’s special Assembly election in Los Angeles?

Great. Or, maybe not so great. It all depends on how you look at it.

The question matters in this progressive stronghold of northeast and east-side Los Angeles neighborhoods that strongly favored Sen. Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary last year, yet leaned toward traditional party candidates in a recent special election for Congress.

At the surface, it appears like a straight-up victory for the progressive arm of California’s Democratic party, which has been gaining power since Sanders’ presidential run last year — and came close to winning the chairmanship of the state Democratic Party a few months ago. Both of the top two vote getters in the race for this legislative seat have legitimate progressive claims.

Wendy Carrillo is the front-runner at the moment with 21% of the vote. (Ballots are still being counted, but with such low turnout it is unlikely it will change the projected winners.) She was one of a handful of “Berniecrats” who ran unsuccessfully this spring to replace Xavier Becerra in Congress after he was appointed state attorney general. Coming in second with 19% of the vote is Luis Lopez, a Planned Parenthood board member who also swings progressive, supporting issues such as single-payer healthcare and curbs on corporate money in politics. He also had the distinction of being endorsed by the East Area Progressive Democrats club.

fake news on the internet is a thing and it has always been a thing. Normally fair and balanced news networks have even been known to put out misinformation. Unfortunately people will do stupid things, and stupid things will get spread. But we do not need corporations, the government, etc.. choosing what is ‘real’. Instead we just need better ‘real news’.

YouTube alters search algorithm over fake Las Vegas conspiracy videos

YouTube has made changes to its algorithms after it was strongly condemned for promoting offensive and false conspiracy theory videos about the Las Vegas shooting.

The move to shift the way it delivers search results contradicts YouTube’s earlier statements defending its performance during breaking news.

After a gunman inside the Mandalay Bay hotel fired on a music festival, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more, videos claiming that the shooting was a hoax and a “false flag” spread like wildfire on YouTube, earning millions of views.

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YouTube’s initial statements, followed by its readjusted algorithms, speak to the broader ethical challenges technology companies face regarding their role in providing major platforms for fake news and propaganda. Facebook and Google were both caught promoting rightwing blogs and conspiracy sites hours after the Las Vegas shooting, forcing the corporations to admit that they had made mistakes in spreading misinformation about the identity of the shooter.

Silicon Valley has faced heightened scrutiny over the last year for allowing political propaganda and fake news to reach wide audiences, possibly playing a part in Russia’s efforts to interfere with the US presidential election.

‘We’re walking down a dark path’: Biden hammers Trump in scathing speech

Joe Biden, the former US vice-president, has taken off the gloves with a scathing denunciation of Donald Trump and the existential threat he poses to the post-war international order.

Passionate and pugnacious, his voice sometimes erupting in anger, Biden warned on Thursday that the US was heading down “a very dark path” and urged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to take a stand.

It is rare for ex-presidents or vice-presidents to criticise their successors’ actions. So far Barack Obama has carefully picked his targets, issuing a few pointed remarks or written statements. But Biden, 74, speaking to an invited audience at a thinktank, decided to let rip.

“I really feel incredibly strongly that the women and men sitting before me, who have been the intellectual backbone of the foreign policy establishment in this country for decades, have to start to speak out,” he said. “President Obama and I have been very quiet and respectful, giving the administration time, but some of these roots are being sunk too deeply. I believe it’s time to challenge some of the dangerous assumptions that are attempting to replace that liberal world order.”

Biden, who spent four decades serving in high public office, was receiving the Zbigniew Brzezinski annual prize at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank. The auditorium was packed, with many people standing, and hushed as he offered a damning verdict on the Trump presidency.

Acknowledging that many Americans feel left behind by globalisation, he said: “The appeal to populism and nationalism is a siren song, a way for charlatans to aggrandise their power, raise themselves up, break down those mechanisms that were designed, whether in our constitution or internationally, to limit the abuse of power, and destabilise the world.

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/916102159300567040?s=03

House GOP Passes Budget That ‘Should Not Be Allowed in a Humane Society’

By a vote of 219 to 206, the House on Friday approved a GOP-crafted budget resolution that proposes more than five trillion dollars in cuts to key safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid to pave the way for massive tax cuts for the wealthy and massive corporations.

No Democrats voted for the budget, and 18 Republicans voted against it.

Crucially, the resolution includes parliamentary language that eliminates the possibility of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and will allow the GOP to “fast-track” their tax cuts with only 51 votes instead of the typical 60—the same procedure Republicans utilized in their failed attempt repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), denounced the GOP budget resolution in a statement following Thursday’s vote, arguing it is “the first step toward an immoral tax scheme that will hand trillions of dollars to millionaires and corporations at the expense of America’s working families, many of whom will actually see a tax increase.”

“These tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will ultimately be paid for by cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, education, disability services, and other national priorities,” Clemente added, “while the expansion of the deficit will further threaten Social Security.”

What I Saw in Puerto Rico by Tom Perez

This week, I witnessed the worst devastation I’ve seen in my life. I’ve been to Puerto Rico several times before; I have family there. But this trip was unlike any other.

I spent most of my time on the southern part of the island in Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second-largest city, with Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, Mayor María Meléndez and a delegation of Florida Democrats, bringing supplies to those in need and surveying the destruction. We passed homes that had been wiped clean off their foundations. We saw a queen-sized mattress impaled at the top of a telephone pole. And the lines of communication were so damaged that we couldn’t even use a satellite phone to reach the outside world.

The island I know is gone, washed away by one of the most vicious hurricanes in American history. But one of the few things that wasn’t washed away is Puerto Rico’s American identity. In fact, just above a row of homes that was destroyed by the storm was a flagpole with the stars and stripes still waving in the wind.

The 3.5 million people in Puerto Rico are American citizens. They deserve fair and equal treatment as Americans. Unfortunately, we have a president who has shown a disturbing disregard for their well-being. President Trump waited more than a week after the hurricane to lift the Jones Act, despite issuing a waiver for Florida and Texas before Hurricane Irma even made landfall in the continental U.S. There was no excuse for Trump’s delay, which only caused more unnecessary suffering as ships couldn’t get supplies to the island quickly. What’s more, FEMA has yet to authorize all the disaster relief tools it has at its disposal.

Not my idea of stars… but its definitely the establishment.

Democratic stars to come out for N.J. governor candidate Murphy

Some of the biggest names in the national Democratic Party are headed to New Jersey to campaign for Democrat Phil Murphy in the final few weeks before voters pick who will succeed Chris Christie as governor.

The list includes former vice presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and current Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

But it does not include a planned appearance by former President Barack Obama.

Murphy’s campaign said last month that Obama would host an event sometime this fall for Murphy, who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany under Obama from 2009 to 2013. But details are still not available, said Daniel Bryan, a spokesman for the campaign.

‘Calm before the storm’: Donald Trump set to abandon Iran nuclear deal

Donald Trump has accused Iran of not living up to the “spirit of the agreement” of its nuclear deal amid reports that he plans to withhold endorsement of the landmark agreement with the international community.

At a meeting of military leaders, Trump warned cryptically that those present were witnessing “the calm before the storm”. When asked by reporters what he meant, the president, a former reality TV host, said: “You’ll find out.”

Several media outlets on Friday confirmed what has been suspected in Washington and foreign capitals for some time: that Trump will not certify the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran, on the grounds it does not serve US security interests.

That would trigger a period of 60 days in which it would be up to a delicately balanced Congress whether to reimpose sanctions. A decision to do so could trigger a collapse of the deal and a return to a tense standoff in the Middle East over the Iranian nuclear programme.

Barred From Testifying for ‘Valve Turners,’ Renowned Climate Scientist Speaks Out

A district court judge in North Dakota has barred climate change scientist Dr. James Hansen and other experts from testifying in the landmark trial of Michael Foster, one of the 11 climate activists with the group Climate Direct Action who temporarily halted the flow of tar sands bitumen from Canada into the U.S. in a #ShutItDown action last October.

Working simultaneously in North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, and Washington, five of the activists “entered fenced-off areas and closed the emergency valves” for five pipelines—operated by Enbridge, Spectra Energy, Kinder Morgan, and TransCanada—as Foster, a Seatte-based mental health counselor in his 50s, described in a Newsweek column published Tuesday. The five activists have been nicknamed “valve turners.”

“I shut off the valve on TransCanada’s Keystone 1 pipeline in North Dakota. We called the pipeline companies in advance to notify them, livestreamed our action to prove it wasn’t a hoax, then peacefully waited for arrest,” he wrote. Foster, whose trial started Monday, has been charged with two Class B felonies and two misdemeanors, and faces up to 22 years in jail. He has pleaded “not guilty,” and his team is asking to present what is called a necessity defense.

As Jeremy Brecher explained in a Common Dreams op-ed in March: “To make a necessity defense, the accused must prove that they believed their act was necessary to avoid or minimize a harm; that the harm was greater than the harm resulting from the violation of the law; and that there were no reasonable legal alternatives.” To achieve that, the defense “will have to prove to the court that the harm of climate change is greater than that of shutting a pipeline,” which they planned to do by calling “expert witnesses who will have no difficulty laying out the catastrophic current and future effects of fossil fuel emissions.”

However, they hit a roadblock on Wednesday, when the judge barred Hansen—a former NASA scientist who has been called “the father of modern climate change awareness”—and other key climate witnesses from testifying. The judge, according to Foster’s representatives, claimed “presentation of climate change testimony and evidence would confuse the jury and mislead them.”

Are those my words coming of out Steve Bannon’s mouth? by Thomas Frank

There’s was a moment in Steve Bannon’s recent 60 Minutes interview when the former presidential advisor was asked what he’s done to drain “the swamp,” the Trumpists’ favorite metaphor for everything they hate about Washington DC. Here was Bannon’s reply: “The swamp is 50 years in the making. Let’s talk about the swamp. The swamp is a business model. It’s a successful business model. It’s a donor, consultant, K Street lobbyist, politician … 7 of the 9 wealthiest counties in America ring Washington, DC.”

With a shock of recognition I knew immediately what Bannon meant, because what he was talking about was the subject matter of my 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew – the interconnected eco-system of corruption that makes Washington, DC so rich.

The first chapter of my book had been a description of those wealthy counties that ring Washington, DC: the fine cars, the billowing homes, the expense-account restaurants. The rest of the book was my attempt to explain the system that made possible the earthly paradise of Washington and – just like Steve Bannon – I did it by referring to a business model: the political donors and the K Street lobbyists, who act in combination with politicians of the Tom DeLay variety.

My critique of Washington was distinctly from the left, and it astonished me to hear something very close to my argument coming from the mouth of one of the nation’s most prominent conservatives. But in fact, Bannon has a long history of reaching out to the left – you might say, of swiping its populist language and hijacking its causes.

‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster