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(If you didn’t watch Nina Turner, I demand you go back up and get to it!)

Bernie Sanders urges GetUp members to join global ‘resistance’

Bernie Sanders, the former US Democratic presidential hopeful, has called on members of the activist group GetUp to join a global “resistance movement” to fight the rise of intolerant political movements in the US, Europe and Australia.

In a prerecorded video message, played at GetUp’s first national conference at the weekend in Sydney, Sanders encouraged the group to start working globally with like-minded activists, saying its progressive values were similar to his own.

His message was played on Sunday, where 800 GetUp members had gathered to workshop new campaign tactics. “We need a globalised movement towards equality and shared prosperity,” Sanders said in his video.

“We must remind people that they have the power to change public policies but that it requires effort, it requires organising, it requires strategising and, most importantly, it requires commitment.

“All of you at GetUp are fighting for the same values that so many of us have been fighting for here in the United States and around the world.”

GetUp is planning a tenfold increase in the number of activists campaigning at the next federal election, from 3,500 to 35,000 volunteers, in an effort to unseat prominent Coalition conservatives.

Its leadership team is training its members in a new “devolved” model of organising that combines the traditional centralised and staff-dependent model with technology that enables activists to self-organise across the country and take on leadership roles in local action groups.

Bernie Sanders Just Gave His Best Speech in 2 Years

There’s a lot of tsuris all over the place over the fact that Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar will be putting on a show-pony debate next week on CNN with the Clueless Twins, Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, on the subject of healthcare. Most of said tsuris revolves around the fear that the debate will get framed as Dog’s Breakfast vs. Eeek! Socialism! I’m not wholly convinced that these fears are groundless; the elite political press is hungering to turn the Graham-Cassidy calamity into a Both Sides failure—here’s all the evidence you’ll ever need of that—and this might indeed be the vehicle through which they do that.

But what I do know is that Bernie Sanders is better versed on his position than either Graham or Cassidy are on the bill that bears their name. Also, there are more than a few signs that Sanders—who must always be kept separate from the more febrile of his followers—is more with the Democratic program than he’s ever been. On Thursday, he gave a speech in which he set out a progressive approach to foreign policy that was clear, coherent, and was probably the best speech I’ve seen him give in two years.

He called out regime change for its own sake while, at the same time, defending the role of the United States in championing international human rights. (He did this by shrewdly pairing the catastrophic Iraq War with the Iran nuclear deal.) But the most impressive passage was the one in which Sanders pointed out that American foreign policy must now take into account the ongoing international effort to undermine liberal democracy being undertaken by Russia and other transnational oligarchical operations.

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He drew a bright line from the dangers of domestic economic inequality, the rise of oligarchy here, the establishment of kleptocratic oligarchy elsewhere, and the danger all of these present to liberal democracies around the world. If anything, he spoke too little about the domestic strength required to carry out the program he has proposed abroad. Bernie Sanders: liberal internationalist. Damn. I think that guy can handle Lindsey Graham.

BERNIE SANDERS, EYEING 2020 RUN, HEADS TO CALIFORNIA TO COURT SUPPORT

Bernie Sanders appears to be eyeing opportunities to further develop his support base in California ahead of a potential 2020 presidential run.

The Vermont senator, who found support for issues including healthcare from supporters in California, visited the state once again on Friday to meet with the nurses’ union in San Francisco.

Speaking at the California Nurses Association, Sanders, who has not yet confirmed whether he intends to run in 2020, said in comments carried by Mercury News: “Medicare for senior citizens has worked, and we want Medicare to work for every man, woman and child in this country. After decades of talk, now is the time to get it done.”

“We must be honest and acknowledge that with all the gains of the Affordable Care Act, it has not gone far enough. Maintaining the status quo is just not good enough,” he added, receiving a very warm reception from the crowd.

Bernie Sanders: U.S. ‘Complicit’ In Israeli Occupation

Sen. Bernie Sanders said the United States is “complicit” in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

“But that is not to say … that Israel is the only party at fault,” Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, said in an interview with The Intercept news website published on Friday evening.

Sanders also said that “in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations the United States has got to play a much more even-handed role. Clearly that is not the case right now.”

Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president for the 2016 election. He was the first Jewish candidate to win major party nominating contests. It is not known if he will run again for the 2020 elections.

In answer to a specific question from reporter Mehdi Hasan, Sanders said he would consider voting to reduce the United States’ annual at least $3 billion in aid to Israel or reduce U.S. arms sales to the Israeli military.

Read more: undefined/fast-forward/383389/bernie-sanders-us-complicit-in-israel-s-occupation-of-the-palestinians/

Our Bad Foreign Policy

The war in Afghanistan is 16 years old, yet America does not have an anti-war party. Foreign policy is in fact one of the few areas of common ground between Democrats and Republicans: Just last week, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a $700 billion defense policy bill, far more than what President Donald Trump had requested. The foreign policy establishment is remarkably monolithic, which helps explain why the anti-war candidate Barack Obama ended up on the side of that establishment so often during his presidency. The results have not been encouraging.

This is the backdrop for Senator Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy speech to students at Westminster College last week. In keeping with his progressive campaign for president, Sanders attacked the shibboleths of the foreign policy elite, while formulating an alternative way to look at national security that incorporated his egalitarian economic views. “Inequality, corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism are inseparable,” Sanders said. “They must be understood as part of the same system, and fought in the same way.” He added, “Foreign policy must take into account the outrageous income and wealth inequality that exists globally and in our own country.”

He proceeded to criticize historical hallmarks of American foreign policy, like the CIA-backed campaigns against foreign rulers like Salvador Allende in Chile and Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. He defended diplomacy as a superior alternative to military intervention. And, in passages that bore some resemblance to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s speech after the Manchester bombing in May, he condemned the war on terror as a self-defeating exercise. This was a detailed, coherent foreign policy speech from Sanders, and it was overdue: He largely failed to articulate a foreign policy vision during the 2016 Democratic primary, an omission that always felt like an unnecessary capitulation to Hillary Clinton’s touted expertise.

Sanders’s speech, therefore, is best seen as an attempt to break through the calcified ideologies of an elite that has discredited itself time and again in the post-9/11 era, but continues to wield inordinate influence and has barely changed its ways.

Meanwhile… the USA TODAY’s editorial board continues to be about as useful as it’s ever been

Focus on Obamacare, not single-payer pipe dreams

Healthcare is a human right

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has presented a replacement to our nation’s fundamentally flawed health care system that would result in a radical change. Sanders has openly expressed healthcare is a moral and economic issue. In his “Medicare-for-All” proposal, all Americans would be covered by a publicly funded, single-payer health care system. Instead of having thousands of health care payers paying different prices for the same treatment at play, the government as a single-payer entity would be responsible for all medical expenditures.

Under Sanders’ “Medical-For-All” initiative, patients would no longer have to pay rising insurance premiums and would be exempt from being charged co-pays at doctor appointments. Sanders’ all-inclusive health care plan would cover doctor visits with your primary care physician, hospital stays, lab work, medical devices, maternity and newborn care. Theoretically, Sanders’ proposal would depreciate the uninsured rate from 8.8 percent to just over zero. A single-payer system would dramatically decrease administrative and advertising, which would relatively decrease the cost of health care. While the enactment of Sanders’ “Medicare for All” health care legislation is highly unlikely to even pass in the Senate, due to a 52 to 48 political party divide, Sanders has remained resolute that his proposed health care plan would mend our broken system in time by expanding coverage, providing a beyond satisfactory health benefits package and lowering costs.

The United States spends around 18 percent of our total GDP on healthcare- that is about $10,000 per person. As a nation, we spend twice as much of our economic output than any other industrialized country on medical care, and yet we continually yield health outcomes below standard in many metrics including infant mortality, life expectancy and overall efficiency. Our country’s systemic healthcare failures raises the question of how can we continue to invest trillions of dollars into health care and still not provide universal access to premium quality medical treatment?

Is Health Care A Commodity Or Right?

With just a week left before Congress’ budget reconciliation process ends, the Senate is once again peddling a poorly-thought out plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If Senators vote before the September 30 deadline, they only need 50 votes instead of the filibuster-proof 60 votes to pass amendments. And once again, people are rising up in opposition to the plan, making it unpopular and unlikely to pass.

At the same time, support for a National Improved Medicare for All single payer healthcare system is increasing and there are bills in both the House and Senate with record numbers of co-sponsors. Will the United States finally join the long list of countries that provide healthcare to everyone?

Overall, it is a time to be optimistic. The movement for National Improved Medicare for All has made great strides this year. Whether we succeed still hangs in the balance. We discuss what it will take to win and how to proceed.

Join Health Over Profit for Everyone (HOPE) , a campaign for National Improved Medicare for All.

“Medicare for all” could be cheaper than you think

Public support for single-payer health care has been rising in recent months amid failed Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

That’s perhaps why Sen. Bernie Sanders on September 13 introduced a new version of his single-payer plan with the support of 16 Democratic colleagues, a sharp rise from 2013 when none signed on to a similar proposal. It would not only expand Medicare to all Americans but make it more comprehensive by covering more services like mental health, dental care and vision, all without copayments or deductibles.

But Sanders’s plan would come at a steep price: likely more than US$14 trillion over the first decade, based on an estimate I did of a previous version.

There is, however, a simpler and less costly path toward single-payer, and it may have a better chance of success: Simply strike the words “who are age 65 or over” from the 1965 amendments to the Social Security Act that created Medicare and, voila, everyone (who wants) would be covered by the existing Medicare program.

While this wouldn’t be single-payer – in which the government covers all health care costs – and private insurers would continue to operate alongside Medicare, it would be a substantial improvement over the current system.

While Trump Stokes Division, Warnings Against Ignoring Ongoing Crisis in Puerto Rico

“No matter what crazy stuff Trump is up to now let’s keep in mind Puerto Rico really needs our attention and help.”

Those are the words of Mark Ruffalo this weekend as the actor and social justice activist echoed the concerns of many that the president’s incendiary comments over recent days are serving to distract people from the severe crisis in the U.S. island territory, where power remains out for much of the island and residents are growing increasingly worried over the scale of the damage left by Hurricane Maria.

As journalist David Sirota tweeted, “Houston & FL are destroyed, Puerto Rico is in crisis & Trump wants u to be mad not at his climate denialism but instead at NFL players.”

In an interview with the Washington Post on Sunday, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz described the disaster in her city and across Puerto Rico—elsewhere described as “apocalyptic”—by saying, “There is horror in the streets… People are actually becoming prisoners in their own homes.”

With others urging people not to forget the destruction in the U.S. Virgin Islands as well, there was widespread concern that in addition to sowing deeper divisions around the issues of racism and police violence, Trump was actively provoking social discord in order to distract the American people from pressing issues like climate-related disasters left by recent storms and the attempt by Republicans in the U.S. Senate to push through healthcare repeal bill in the days ahead.

#TakeaKnee Sunday as NFL Teams and Players Rebuff President Trump

Sunday is game day for the National Football League and the hashtag #TakeaKnee is going viral as people across the nation see how players and teams respond to calls by President Donald Trump to punish players who do so.

For the earliest round of games that began at 1:00 pm (EST), dozens of players knelt while many teams chose to stand with arms locked together in a show of solidarity (see below).

Despite that the NFL has been a vocal (and official) sponsor of the U.S. military for years—acting mostly as a high-profile promoter and recruitment center for the Pentagon—a wave of protest initiated last year by players trying to draw attention to racism and police violence has swept the league into the political conversation this week after Trump, first at a rally on Friday night and then in a series of weekend tweets, called on team owners to fire or suspend players for voicing their views on social issues.

In the first game of the day, the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars, many players did take a knee during the National Anthem as others stood with arms locked in a show of solidarity. As journalist Shaun King noted, with “27 players and staff” from both teams participating in the protest took, it was the “most ever in one game.”

As the ACLU of New York put it ahead of Sunday’s scheduled games, “If peaceful protests did nothing, the powerful wouldn’t try so hard to silence them.”

Trade Panel Ruling Gives Trump Authority to Cripple Nation’s Solar Industry

Lawmakers and the solar energy industry spoke out Friday against a ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), which voted in favor of two domestic solar power manufacturers that complained low-cost solar panel imports from China had harmed their businesses.

The ITC’s ruling leaves it up to President Donald Trump to decide whether to penalize foreign companies by imposing tariffs on their imports, something that he has already threatened to do, which would increase the cost of installing solar panels.

While Trump and the coal industry have fretted that the advent of solar power is forcing coal companies out of business, foreign countries have moved forward in developing solar energy, with China already surpassing its goal of installing 105 gigawatts of solar power by 2020. China has also exported solar panels “in such increased quantities as to be a substantial cause of serious injury, or threat of serious injury, to the U.S. industry,” according to the ITC.

As the Los Angeles Times points out, “Only a fraction of American solar companies make the panels. Most rely on imports to keep prices competitive with other forms of electricity. More than 90% of solar installations in the U.S. use imported panels.”

Applauding Progressive Champions, Congressional Scorecard Highlights “People’s Platform” Backers

Applauding Democratic members of the U.S. House for their support of a slate of bold and progressive bills, a coalition that mobilized a grassroots campaign is calling their “Summer for Progress” a success in terms of pushing an agenda that goes beyond simply saying “no” to the agenda of President Donald Trump and the Republicans who control Congress.

Releasing a scorecard of congressional “champions” on Friday, the groups behind the “People’s Platform” summer lobbying effort—including Our Revolution, Food & Water Watch, and Progressive Democrats for America—said the 25 lawmakers highlighted, all Democrats, should be commended for co-signing legislation designed to “directly address the needs of working and middle class families.” See if your congressperson made the cut here.

Members of Congress, said Mark Schlosberg, organizing co-director for Food & Water Watch/ Food & Water Action Fund, “must do more than just resist Trump’s reactionary agenda.”

As part of their months-long organizing drive, backers of the People’s Platform declared their support for transformative policies contained in specific pieces of legislation that already exist. Local groups met with nearly two dozen lawmakers and held more than 100 petition delivery events in district offices.

“To really transform our politics and build the society we want to live in,” said Schlasberg, “Members of Congress must support bold progressive policies like Medicare for all, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and measures to stop dirty energy projects and rapidly move America off of fossil fuels. The Summer of Progress moved the ball forward, and we need to continue to urge all Members of Congress to support these priorities.”

Outlets That Scolded Sanders Over Deficits Uniformly Silent on $700B Pentagon Handout

Where did all the concern over deficits go? After two years of the media lamenting, worrying and feigning outrage over the cost of Bernie Sanders’ two big-budget items—free college and single-payer healthcare—the same outlets are uniformly silent, days after the largest military budget increase in history.

Monday, the Senate voted to increase military spending by a whopping $81 billion, from $619 billion to $700 billion—an increase of over 13 percent. (The House passed its own $696 billion Pentagon budget in July—Politico, 7/14/17.) The reaction thus far to this unprecedented handout to military contractors and weapons makers has been one big yawn.

No write-ups worrying about the cost increase in the Washington Post or Vox or NPR. No op-eds expressing concern for “deficits” in the New York Times, Boston Globe or US News. No news segments on Fox News or CNN on the “unaffordable” increase in government spending. All the outlets that spent considerable column inches and airtime stressing over Sanders’ social programs are suddenly indifferent to “how we will afford” this latest military giveaway. The US government votes 89–9 to add $81 billion extra to the balance sheet—the equivalent of the government creating three new Justice Departments, four more NASAs, seven Treasury Departments, ten EPAs or 546 National Endowments for the the Arts—and there’s zero discussion as to “how we will pay for it.”

As FAIR has noted for decades (e.g., 2/23/11, 5/8/16), the media’s deficit discourse has always been a PR scam. A rhetorical bludgeon used to cry poverty any time a left-wing politician wants to help the poor or people of color that somehow is never an issue when it comes to pumping out F-22s and E3 AWACS, which evidently pay for themselves with magic.

The increase alone in military spending—over a budget that was already bigger than the next eight countries combined—is greater than the total amount spent annually on state university tuition by every student in the United States: $81 billion vs. $70 billion. This is to say that if the budget for the US military had just stayed the same for 2018, the US could have paid the tuition for every public college student this year, with $11 billion left over for board and books.