10/22 Trumpism at the Center in Debate w/DeSantis & Gillum; News Roundup & Open Thread
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Category Archives: Progressive Media
10/3 News Round-up and OT
Pointing the Finger at Jeff Bezos Worked More news, tweets, analysis, and videos in the comments. See you there! … Continue reading →
What Makes A Person Progressive? TYT Interviews Nina Turner
John Iadarola interviews the President of Our Revolution, Senator Nina Turner:
Bernie Sanders On Trump’s Withdrawal From Iran Nuclear Treaty
Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, interviews Senator Bernie Sanders to get his take on Trump withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. :
Paula Jean Swearengin Discusses Her Campaign For U.S. Senate
Paula Jean Swearengin spoke with TYT’s Cenk Uygur about her campaign against Joe Manchin.
On name recognition and Manchin’s polling numbers:
“A lot of people know Joe Manchin. A man walked up to me the other day and said “Who are you running against?”. I said “Joe Manchin”. He said “I dont want to know anymore I’m voting for you”. A lot of people are going to show up and vote for me whether they know my name or not”
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“He [Manchin] is polling to lose to a generic Republican. What is worrisome to a lot of people here in West Virginia is Don Blankenship is polling second. I don’t think that people are going to get behind Joe Manchin especially because Don Blankenship is in this race because let’s be honest, West Virginia is going to make history when Blankenship gets his butt kicked by a coal miners daughter.”
On how Manchin views her candidacy:
“I’ve seen him a few times, I’ve asked him to debate. I don’t think he’ll have the guts to do it. It’s funny, as an advocate for this state and working for this state for years oftentimes I’ve been called honey, babydoll, darlin’ by Joe Machin. When I announced my candidacy I was called Paula Jean. So finally I have a name. I hope he starts calling more women by their names.”
Watch the entire interview:
Continue reading →4/23 News Roundup – Sanders: “It Is Time To Decriminalize Marijuana”, Bernie Is Building A Digital Media Empire & More
The Vermont senator discusses his bill to change federal marijuana law and why Trump “deserves credit” for addressing U.S. trade policy:
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3/26 Which is More Important Today–Stephanie Clifford, Russia, or Progress?
Last night, TOP had a liveblog going about Anderson Cooper’s Stephanie Clifford interview on 60 Minutes last night. I discovered it on the Recent Story list while looking for the new series, These Revolutionary Times. Also, I found another FP post by GOS himself, who provided a quick transcript from CBS. To me, it is pitiful but TOP is starving for ratings. I’m surprised they didn’t solicit quite the polling that CNN did: Source: CNN Mind one, I did see the interview when it was being broadcasted last evening. The only thing that was particularly interesting was the timing of … Continue reading →
3/20 News Roundup – The #InequalityTownHall Draws 1.7 Million Live Viewers, Myers’ Powerful #MarchForOurLives Ad & More
Bernie Sanders: Russia and Stormy Daniels distract us from real problem of inequality
Enough about Russia and Stormy Daniels, the leaders of the progressive movement want to talk about growing income inequality in the US.
At a live-streamed town hall event on Monday night, Senator Bernie Sanders once again circumvented cable news to host a 90-minute panel discussion on poverty, the decline of the middle class and the consolidation of corporate power.
He was joined in Washington by Senator Elizabeth Warren, director Michael Moore and economist Darrick Hamilton while roughly 1.7 million viewers tuned in to watch online, according to Sanders’ office.
Speaking to the Guardian before the event, Sanders said: “We have to fight Trump every day. But we have to not lose our vision as to where we want to go as a country. We can talk about the disastrous role Russia has played in trying to undermine American democracy. That is enormously important. But we also have to talk about the fact that we have the highest rate of child poverty in any major economy of the world.”
Sanders and Moore both complained about the media’s poor coverage of inequality and working people’s struggles. Moore said: “You turn on the TV and it’s ‘Russia, Russia, Russia!’” Sanders interjected: “And don’t forget Stormy Daniels!”
Moore continued: “These are all shiny keys to distract us … We should know about the West Virginia strike. What an inspiration that would be. But they don’t show this, Bernie, because, what would happen if they did?”
Panelists were not shy to point out who they felt were the culprits fuelling inequality in the United States. Its three wealthiest men – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet – who collectively earn more than the poorest half of Americans, were singled out as contributing to the widening wealth gap. So too were lobbyists like the American Legislative Exchange Council and major political donors such as the Koch brothers. And, of course, representatives in Congress who are beholden to corporate donors.
The event is available for viewing here.
I say to those in the mainstream media: start turning your attention to the millions of people who are in poverty and struggling every day. #InequalityTownHall
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 19, 2018
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Inequality in America: A National Town Hall
We live in the richest country in the history of the world, but that reality means little because much of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals while more than 40 million Americans live in poverty. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time. Tonight, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in partnership with The Guardian, NowThis, The Young Turks and Act.tv, will present a live town hall event on the rise of the … Continue reading →
3/19 News Roundup – Sanders Is Telling The Story Corporate Media Fails To; Indigenous Leaders Begin A Week Of Civil Disobedience & More
Bernie Sanders Wants to Tell the Story That Corporate Media Fails To Tell
For decades, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has objected to the failure of major media outlets to cover the growth of economic inequality in America. As a presidential contender in 2016, he used every opportunity that was afforded him in the media to address poverty, plutocracy and the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of “the billionaire class.”
Now, he’s doing something to tip the balance of the popular discourse away from the agendas of the super rich and toward the real life concerns of working-class Americans. Something big. On Monday, from 7 to 8:30 pm ET, he will host a livestreamed town hall meeting on “Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class.” With Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, filmmaker Michael Moore, economist Darrick Hamilton and others, Sanders will lead a discussion about the “growing power of corporate interests and how we can build economy that works for all Americans.” Livestreamed on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by Sanders, Warren, Moore, The Guardian, NowThis, The Young Turks and Act.tv, the initiative will reach social media sites with a combined following of close to 50 million Americans.
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The Nation: You say there are two fundamental issues with inequality. What’s the first?
Sanders: The first one is that this country is moving into oligarchy. The three wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. The top one-tenth of one percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent. And then, politically, what we have seen since the Citizens United decision (by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010) is billionaires like the Koch brothers and a few of their friends pouring hundreds and millions of dollars into the political process to elect candidates who represent the wealthy and the powerful. That is an issue of huge consequence to the future of America – in terms of the economic life of this country and the collapse of the middle class, and a political system which is being corrupted by big money and Citizens United.
And the second issue has to do with how the first is covered?
The second issue deals with the fact that we have a corporate media, which is not as Donald Trump defines it “fake news.” That’s not the issue. It’s not that you have people on CNN, or writing for The New York Times, who are deliberately lying or trying to destroy politicians – that’s not the case. Everyday there are very good and important articles that appear in The Washington Post and The New York Times, on CBS News and everywhere else.
The problem is that, to a very significant degree, corporate media ignores, or pays very little attention, to the most important issues facing working people. That is the problem with corporate media today.
If you look at just the issue I described to you – the movement in this country toward oligarchy – you will find very, very little discussion about that. Stormy Daniels will get ten times more print and video coverage than will the movement toward oligarchy in this country. You will see very little discussion about poverty in this country. “Poverty” is just not a word that is used on television very often.
Bernie also spoke to Ana Kasparian of TYT about inequality and his upcoming national town hall:
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3/14 News Roundup – Pipeline Protestors Decry State Surveillance, Texas Dems Worry Bigger Rifts Ahead With National Party & More
Via DemocracyNow!: Critics of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana Decry State & Company Surveillance of Protesters In Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the … Continue reading →
1/26 News Roundup – Bernie & de Blasio Discuss Progressive Government, Sanders 2020 Speculation Soars & More
De Blasio Praises Bernie Sanders Amid Reports He’s Mulling 2020 Presidential Bid
Mayor Bill de Blasio heaped praise on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) amid reports that he is considering running for president for the second time in 2020.
Sanders, 76, has not yet made a decision as to whether he is running for president but reportedly assembled his political advisors in Washington, D.C. over the weekend for a meeting in which the topic of a possible 2020 presidential bid was discussed, according to POLITICO.
Sanders, who ran as an outsider candidate, focused on issues such as getting money out of politics, free public college tuition and a single-payer health care system in his presidential campaign platform.
Earlier this month, Sanders swore de Blasio in at his second inauguration ceremony.
“From the bottom of my heart, the American political process will never be the same because of what you started,” de Blasio said on Sanders’ The Bernie Sanders Show on Thursday afternoon.
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During his appearance, de Blasio said being a progressive mayor in the Trump era in 2018 means there’s a “world of possibilities,” which he described as ironic.
“I think the election of Donald Trump was not the essence of what happened in 2015 and 2016,” he said. “I think what was happening already, since the Occupy Wall Street movement and manifesting all over the country locally—including in places like New York City and culminated in your [Sanders’] campaign—was obvious movement for progressive change. I fundamentally believe we’re entering a new progressive era.”
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1/24 News Roundup – Sanders Speaks To A Million+ About Medicare-For-All, NYC Sues Big Pharma For Fueling Opioid Epidemic & More
Bernie Sanders talks universal Medicare, and 1.1 million people click to watch him
With more than one million people watching at home, and hundreds watching from the studio audience, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leaned across his desk with a crucial health-care question.
“What’s the quality of the Norwegian system?” Sanders asked Meetali Kakadi, an Oslo-based health researcher. “Is it good?”
In her view, it was: “Far better than Canada.”
Sanders’s “town hall on Medicare for All,” an event he’d organized after becoming convinced that it would never be produced by the mainstream media, never got more combative than that. Over 100 minutes, Sanders and nine guests — three at a time, taking turns — discussed the need to bring about single-payer health care, its benefits to business, and its implementation around the world. (Kakadi’s Canada joke was aimed at Danyaal Raza, there to defend his country’s system.)
“It’s a discussion you’re not likely to see on the mainstream news,” Sanders said at the outset. “This event will not be interrupted be commercials for the drug companies.”
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On Tuesday night, it was Sanders asking the questions, and getting answers he liked. In the room — the Congressional Auditorium, where in 2010 President Obama revved up House Democrats ahead of their Affordable Care Act vote — Sanders’s audience alternated between rapt attention and grateful applause as experts explained how higher tax rates could replace America’s health-care system with universal Medicare. A mention of Tommy Douglas, the father of Canada’s health-care system who remains somewhat obscure in the United States, inspired loud applause.
“No billboards, no high salaries,” said the former Medicare and Medicaid administrator Donald Berwick. “The complexity of the system just isn’t there. What we’ve got here is insane!”
“Is that a clinical term?” asked Sanders, jokingly.
Thank you to the 1.1 million people who tuned in live to the first-ever national Medicare for All town hall tonight. Together we will successfully move the United States to a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care system and guarantee health care to all.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 24, 2018
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*Live-streamed event with Bill McKibben and Bernie Sanders
*Disaster Capitalism in Action as Puerto Rico Governor Announces Plan to Privatize Power Utility
*With a Shutdown Surrender, Democrats Left Millions of People Behind
*Why Democrats Need to Stand With Working Americans vs. Big Banks
*Montana Just Showed Every Other State How to Protect the Open Internet
*Pipeline news, Water Protector updates & More
The Bernie Sanders Medicare-For-All Town Hall Livestream
1/17 News Roundup – Progressives Push Divided Dems On DREAM Act, Edward Snowden talks to Daniel Ellsberg & More
Democrats Divided Over Forcing a DACA-Shutdown Even After Trump’s ‘Sh*thole’ Saga
With just three days left before the federal government runs out of money, congressional Democrats are divided over whether to risk a shutdown in order to force Republicans to sign on to a bipartisan immigration deal this week.
It’s the same quandary the party faced last month and twice before that. Only now, the stakes are higher and Republicans appear to be handing them some leverage.
At issue is whether to support a measure to keep the government running absent a deal to grant legal protections for the undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. Last month, Democrats punted on the matter. And with a March deadline looming for the formal end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—which protected an estimated 800,000 DREAMers from deportation—they are now facing impassioned demands from their base to take advantage of one of their few remaining pressure points.
“[President Donald Trump] said to the Republican Congress, fix it. Remember that? That’s what he said. Fix it. And it is their job to fix it. So, no, I will not be voting for any [short-term extension] that does not provide legal status to the DREAMers and a path toward citizenship,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told reporters at the Capitol.
But that sentiment is not shared universally across the party, with some lawmakers wary that Democrats would both cede the moral high ground and invite the blame.
“Historically, it’s Republicans that shut the government down and Democrats don’t want to play that,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), a progressive Democrat who is up for re-election in a state Trump won in 2016. “Every time the government shuts down or always shuts down, it’s the Tea-Party talking points and it’s threatening to shut the government down, it’s threatening to not pay our bills, threatening default—it’s what they do. Democrats absolutely don’t want to shut the government down.”
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The party’s slate of aspiring 2020 presidential candidates—notably Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—has encouraged their colleagues to adopt a more united front. And they’ve been joined by more progressive members of the party.
“There’s no reason we can’t get this done. There is one compromise that can get the votes, and it’s just up to [Republican leaders] whether they want to schedule it or not,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said, referring to the bipartisan compromise brokered last week. “And the reason they don’t want to schedule it is not because it can’t get the votes, but because it can. And they would have to do a bipartisan deal, which they are still allergic to.”
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