https://deadline.com/2023/03/bill-mahers-real-time-sees-russell-brand-senator-bernie-sanders-take-aim-at-status-quo-1235278645/amp/

Russell Brand and Sen. Bernie Sanders are mad as hell, and they don’t want you to take it anymore. That sums up Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, as the actor/comedian and the politician railed against the machine and said the system has to be changed to give a voice to the working class.

Maher, for once, largely let them have at it. He took issue with a few things Brand said, and questioned what Sanders is proposing. But neither he nor panel guest John Heilemann from Showtime’s “The Circus” could mount a strong attack on the fire hose of information both guests were spewing.

Sanders is out promoting his new book, It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism. He said that we need “the right mix” in our economic system, since we “have more income inequality in wealth than we’ve ever had.” That is causing the US to be “moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society,” he contended.

Maher claimed to be “philosophically with you” on taxing the rich. “But the government is taking more than half and you want more?”

Sanders fired back, citing the large number of people living paycheck to paycheck, a child care system that is an “absolute disgrace,” and added homelessness and student debt.

How can raising taxes on the rich solve that, Maher asked. Sanders said that education was the key, making colleges free and “taking on the greed of the insurance companies. “Do Medicare for all,” he thundered. He also called for training more electricians, sheet metal workers and plumbers

But more than that, we need to combat the “diseases of despair,” he said.

“We have to restore hope to the American people,” Sanders concluded.

Russell Brand was equally fierce in his passion for the little guy. Whether it was the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, the role of Big Pharmacy in society, or the media biases exhibited by certain networks, he kept coming back to one theme – we have to change the way things are done and stop focusing on trivial matters like the political leanings of talking heads.

After Maher and Heilemann tried the “on the one hand this/on the other hand that” argument in defense of the pharmaceutical industry, Brand pounced. “Out of respect to you and your show, I’ve brought some facts,” he said. He then rattled off a laundry list of how the pandemic made new pharmceutical billionaires, how Congress received funding from Big Pharm, and how Pfizer profited.

“All I’m querying is if pharmaceutical companies benefit from emergencies, you will generate states of perpetual crisis.”

Brand ended his night by stamping Maher with a challenge. “You’re telling the American people that it’s impossible to improve,” he said. “And you’re better than that, Bill.”

The author’s tone leaves something to be desired but the article does give a good snapshot about these Bernie tour events.

https://time.com/6260024/bernie-sanders-book-tour/

Bernie Sanders is here to answer a question nobody in this room was asking: Is it okay to be angry about capitalism?

It’s late on a weeknight at The Anthem, a 3,000-seat concert hall on the trendy, upscale D.C. waterfront that recently hosted Bush and the Disco Biscuits. The bar is open, but the venue’s floor is full of orderly rows of chairs, the air is uncharacteristically free of pot smoke, and the merch tables feature no T-shirts or posters, only stacks of the 81-year-old left-wing senator’s latest book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Still, to the overwhelmingly young crowd that has paid $55 to $95 per ticket, they might as well be seeing a rock star—the Mick Jagger of Medicare-for-All.

Callie Whicker, an 18-year-old student at American University, arrived an hour early and settled into her front-row seat, wearing a BERNIE sweatshirt and clutching a knit Bernie doll she got on Etsy. He’s her only source of hope in a coming-of-age that has otherwise been unrelentingly dark: “For Gen Z, coming up through Covid and Trump, we’ve given up,” she says. “Everything’s really bad. But knowing that there are people like him, people with decent hearts fighting for everybody, it’s so inspiring.”

Whicker has pink-dyed hair and wears a mask. Her homemade earrings dangle the words GENDER IS A CONSTRUCT from each lobe. When I ask her if it’s okay to be angry about capitalism, she looks at me like I might have the wrong number of heads. Isn’t it obvious? “Oh yes,” she says with conviction. “Of course, always.”

Sanders’s previous books were titled Our Revolution and Where We Go From Here—hopeful titles that looked to the future. The current one, with its combination of radicalism and neurosis, seems to signal a shift, not just in Sanders but in the ardent following he’s built over the last eight years and two near-miss presidential primary campaigns. His young followers are angry, yes, but they need to be reassured that it’s okay; they want to be comforted, to be affirmed in their feelings.

“We are very, very screwed,” says Farah T., a 30-year-old economist at the World Bank who declines to give her last name. “Angry is a nice word. It’s outrageous. It’s fucked up.” She paid $95 for her primo seat, which, yes, is capitalism—but why are people attacking Sanders for selling tickets when capitalism is responsible for so much worse? Sanders has been her lodestar for as long as she’s been politically conscious. Yet things have only seemed to get worse and worse. “He represents an America I would like to see, but probably never will, unfortunately,” she says.

Sanders’ fans have long admired his consistency, the way he’s been fighting for the same principles since he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. But it has perhaps started to dawn on them that that’s another way of saying he hasn’t made much headway in all that time.

“I first got involved in climate activism in eighth grade,” says 19-year-old sociology student Jackie Wells. “Nothing significant has happened since then, and I’m going to another climate rally on Friday. Radical change is absolutely necessary, but I don’t know if our generation is up to it.” She worries that her peers are too complacent, too willing to mistake social-media posturing for activism. But Wells, who considers herself an anarcho-socialist, views the whole political system as a distracting spectacle. “I haven’t posted, like, ‘I’m at the Bernie thing,’ because it’s kind of embarrassing to like a politician,” she says.

“It’s not okay to not be angry about capitalism,” says Nicole Wilder, a 26-year-old editorial assistant. “If you’re not angry, I think you’re just not paying attention, or you’re a selfish person.” Older people, she says, shouldn’t disdain young people’s idealism and fervor for change: “Maybe that’s because a lot of young people actually give a s–t about things other than themselves.”

Chelsea Ihnacik, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom, has been organizing a new Democratic Socialists of America chapter in her rural southern Maryland town. She worries that a Democratic Party that snubs Sanders in favor of milquetoast centrists like Joe Biden is destined to continue losing white working-class voters to Trumpism. “As much as Bernie woke us up to political engagement, the larger system is a monolith that’s not moving,” she says. “Biden betrayed the rail workers and undermined the solidarity of the working class. We’re going to lose those voters to fascism as a result.”

When Sanders comes on, the lights go all the way down, and he stands at the front of the stage in his usual hunched posture, gesturing with his right hand as he holds the microphone with his left. His rap has many of the same themes I remember from his 2016 campaign—the evils of oligarchy and super PACs, the billionaires robbing us blind and never paying a price. But there’s a new emphasis on capitalism’s emotionally taxing nature. “The bottom line, and we don’t talk about this at all, is that the working class of this country is under enormous emotional stress,” he says. “And stress kills.”

Gone, too, is Sanders’ onetime call for “political revolution,” perhaps because he’s become more enmeshed in the system he once sought to overthrow. After 16 years in the Senate, Sanders’ status as the pied piper of the resurgent young left has earned him real credibility—and power—in Washington. This year, he became the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, a position he intends to make the most of, hauling in pharmaceutical CEOs to testify about high drug prices, holding hearings on the plight of the working class. Next Tuesday, he tells the crowd, he plans to have the committee vote to subpoena Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for his efforts to suppress unionization—a move that, if successful, would be the committee’s first-ever subpoena of a witness, according to Punchbowl News.

“The American people are standing up, and if I have anything to say about it—and as chairman of the relevant committee, I do have something to say about it—this is just going to be the start,” Sanders says to cheers. Audience members hold up their phones and record snippets of him speaking, like they would at a concert.

At the end, Sanders takes questions. The first one comes from a high schooler named Max who volunteered for his 2020 campaign. “What is your advice to the young people in this progressive movement on how we can keep the momentum of the movement you helped start alive?” Max wants to know.

Sanders looks out at the sea of eager faces, and I wonder if he’s thinking of his legacy—the ideals he’s seeded that will surely outlive him, the fresh-faced students who will keep fighting these fights long after he’s gone. “People often ask the question, what keeps me going?” he says, turning uncharacteristically sentimental. He recalls the millions of people he’s met, the places he’s been, the massive crowd of young people who turned out to see him as the sun set over a small town in rural California, hungry for a message of change.

“So I want to say that, as somebody who gets around the country and has the opportunity to meet with so many people, I don’t want you to become depressed about this country,” Sanders says. “There are millions of wonderful people who are trying to do the right thing. And our job is to educate and organize and create the kind of movement that will breed the kind of transformational change this country desperately needs.”

The lights come back on and Sanders departs, trailed by a lengthy standing ovation. And then the next generation trickles out of the theater, out into the night, out into the despair of the broken world they can’t escape.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159367349/sen-bernie-sanders-and-malcolm-harris-take-a-closer-look-at-wealth-and-capitalis

Today’s episode features interviews with two people who’ve given a lot of thought to capitalism’s role in modern society. First, Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about his new book, It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism, and how he views the way politicians appeal to the working class – oftentimes, he says, without addressing the root of the problems they’re facing. Then, NPR’s Michel Martin talks to author Malcolm Harris about his new book, Palo Alto, which details the origins of the California city, the birth of Silicon Valley and the power that’s concentrated in the industries that are based there.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3881888-house-democrats-blindsided-as-biden-changes-tune-on-dc-crime-bill/

House Democrats were infuriated and taken aback by President Biden’s announcement on Thursday that he will sign a resolution to nix the District of Columbia’s crime bill.

The crime bill has come under heavy criticism from Republicans and centrist Democrats. But last month, 173 House Democrats voted along with what they thought was the White House’s stance that Biden would veto the resolution in an attempt to stand up for the District’s “home rule.”

Instead, Biden made the revelation to Senate Democrats during lunch on Thursday and, in the process, angered their colleagues across the Capitol complex.

“The White House f***** this up royally,” one House Democrat told The Hill via text message, noting the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing the resolution and backing D.C., and that House Democratic leadership told lawmakers that Biden was prepared to veto the measure.

The declaration from the Office of Management and Budget called on Congress to “respect the District of Columbia’s autonomy to govern its own local affairs.”

“So a lot of us who are allies voted no in order to support what the White House wanted. And now we are being hung out to dry,” the lawmaker continued. “F****** AMATEUR HOUR. HEADS SHOULD ROLL OVER AT THE WHITE HOUSE OVER THIS.”

The House Democrat added multiple other lawmakers were “EXTREMELY pissed” about the situation.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the No. 3 House Democrat, issued a rare rebuke of the White House during a Punchbowl News event at the caucus’s retreat in Baltimore, saying that Biden’s move was “disappointing.”

“It’s disappointing for me and anybody who believes in home rule, honestly. I’m a former mayor of a city of 70,000 and I wouldn’t want the federal government coming in and telling me what city ordinances to pass. … So I think it’s disappointing in that context,” Aguilar said.

“I voted against it, but I understand and respect the president’s position here,” Aguilar, the former mayor of Redlands, Calif., continued. “We’ll see, the Senate has to pass that, and I know that they’ve said they have the votes but all of those things have to happen. But it’s disappointing for those of us who believe in home rule.”

An aide to a House Democrat who opposed the measure texted that the caucus is “a little shocked” by the move.

The crime bill passed the D.C. City Council unanimously in January. After Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed it, the city council overrode it 12-1. Among other things, the bill would eliminate most mandatory sentences and lower penalties for a number of violent offenses, including carjackings and robberies. It would also expand the requirement for jury trials in most misdemeanor cases.

In a tweet, Biden specifically mentioned the issue of carjackings. As of Thursday, there have been 94 carjackings in D.C. in 2023 alone.

“One thing that the president believes in is making sure that the streets in America and communities across the country are safe, that includes in D.C. That does not change,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday.

“When it comes to what this proposal brings forth, which is really lowering penalties for car-jacking, he doesn’t believe that’s going to keep our communities safe,” she added.

Nevertheless, the move still left Democrats with a sour taste in their mouths.

“Today has been a sad day for D.C. home rule and D.C. residents’ right to self-governance,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said in a statement. “We had hoped that with more Senate support, we would have been able to ensure that neither disapproval resolution pending before the Senate would reach the president’s desk, but with the nationwide increase in crime, most senators do not want to be seen as supporting criminal justice reform.”

Holmes Norton added that she will still try to convince Biden that absent a veto, the resolution “would empower the paternalistic, anti-democratic Republican opposition to the principle of local control over local affairs.”

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.), both of whom are up for reelection in 2024, have said in recent days they plan to side with Republicans on the resolution, giving those backing it enough daylight to put it over the finish line even with the hospitalizations of Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The news is also expected to push more Democrats to side with Biden and the centrists.

“I’m reviewing the actual provisions of the D.C. crime bill, talking to colleagues. And the president obviously said he will not veto the measure, which I think may weigh with my colleagues,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is also up for reelection in 2024, told reporters following Biden’s news that he still is undecided on the resolution and has not been briefed on it yet.

From a political standpoint, Biden’s decision to block the D.C. crime bill could come back to haunt the House Democrats who opposed the disapproval resolution. Some Republicans are already characterizing the revised code as soft-on-crime, which they could eventually extend to those 173 liberal lawmakers.

“By rejecting D.C.‘s law, President Biden acknowledged the basic fact that soft-on-crime policies endanger the public,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote on Twitter.

Democrats are already worrying that they played into the GOP’s hands.

Why concerns are rising about drug-resistant Shigella infections On FISA reauthorization, intel leaders combat growing mistrust in Congress

“Frankly, it’s a clear signal to those criticizing POTUS on being soft on crime amid the increased focus on the issue going into 2024 — and on the heels of Lightfoot’s ouster,” the aide said, referring to the Chicago mayor’s re-election defeat this week.

Aguilar, for his part, brushed off that notion on Thursday, pointing to legislation the caucus has passed and efforts it backed that support public safety.

“Democrats believe in strong public safety,” he said. “That’s what we’re demonstrating in our bills and demonstrated time and time again.”

Let’s have a little Saturday night disco. Here’s two versions of a classic