Category Archives: Policy

Bernie Sanders at ISNA

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Bernie Sanders talks tough in well-received address to US Muslims

On subjects such as Uighurs and the Saudi war in Yemen, presidential candidate makes an impression at the Islamic Society of North America convention

Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the leading candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, received a rousing welcome at a special event at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention, where he was given a standing ovation and made his presidential pitch to Muslims of America.

Organisers said some 6,000 people attended the event on Saturday evening, which also saw fellow Democrat candidate Julian Castro address the close-to-capacity crowd at the George R Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

 

US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with Debbie Almontaser, founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, at the Islamic Society of North America’s Convention in Houston, Texas, on Saturday (Reuters)

 

Sanders and Castro were the only two Democratic candidates to accept ISNA’s invitation to attend the event for a community that has felt increasingly marginalised under the presidency of Donald Trump. Attendees made no bones as to who they had come to see.

“I feel strongly that the divisiveness and bigotry that Trump has introduced in the country can only be counteracted by a person like Bernie Sanders,” said Moosa Khan, who stood up to applaud the Vermont senator a number of times during his address.

 

“He made an effort to come here and talk and listen. He is showing his support for our community and he definitely has my vote.”

 

In contrast to Castro, Sanders’ address and policy talking points seemed to have been tailored to appeal to some of the pressing concerns of the American Muslim community.

 

Sanders also said that, as US president, he would hold China to account for its persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province. He also described India’s unilateral decision in August to revoke the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir and impose a communication blockade and military siege on the valley as “unacceptable”.
He then chastised “political elites in both the Republican and Democratic parties” for pursuing “endless wars and interventions”.

Sanders said that, unlike Trump, who has “an affection for authoritarian regimes around the world,” he “would make democracy and human rights a priority for the United States of America”.

Castro, Harris, Warren declare support for reparations. What does that mean in policy terms?

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Here’s America’s first black president talking about reparations for slavery and systematic discrimination. Obama: Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is … Continue reading →

Capitalism + Socialism = Democratic Socialism

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I’m going to try and make this somewhat succinct so it can be shared as a primer if needed since the establishment is trying to confuse everyone by forcing a binary view between Capitalism and Socialism. In reality they are the two sides of the same spectrum and except in the extreme cases are always blended to some degree, so by trying to pick one or the other, the Overton Window is being pushed to the two endpoints and ignoring the entire spectrum between. The reason this is being done is because we aren’t choosing between the two end points, … Continue reading →

Feb 1 Open Thread

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Hello my friends! Can’t have the first day of the month that includes Valentine’s Day go by without a thread, can we? 😉 Lots going on today, wow. I’m going to pop in a story in a min – gotta go for just a few, but wanted to say hello. Back. Some positive news. My bill to explore single-payer universal healthcare in Hawaii is moving forward. #SinglePayer pic.twitter.com/iwohusU8Jw — Kaniela Ing (@KanielaIng) January 31, 2018 It always makes me happy to see stories of people pushing forward, especially on “single-payer universal healthcare”. Honestly? I just want what Canada has. Here … Continue reading →

The progressive quest for better healthcare & education gets ally from an unexpected place – the AEI, sort of

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Former Military Leaders Want to Expand and Improve Child Care — to Increase Future Recruitment The American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., organized an event this week with the provocative title, “Military readiness and early childhood: What is the link?” (“right-leaning”, lol, the AEI is very much hard-right. ‘During the George W. Bush administration, AEI was regarded “as the intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq,” Vanity Fair noted.’) It turns out that it’s hard to keep a huge military going when: the Department of Defense estimates that 71 percent of … Continue reading →

GOP Tax Bill & Thanksgiving Open Thread

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Frankly, I would hope that the GOP tax bill doesn’t come up around your Thanksgiving table. Personally, I prefer just enjoying each other’s company, catching up, good food, and as much laughter as possible. But, if talk around the table does turn to the tax bill, here are some talking points/facts to counter the misinformation and perhaps give someone pause who is buying the GOP’s selling of it. Although corporate tax cuts are frequently touted as a good thing, something that would ‘Benefit Ordinary Americans’. That just doesn’t pan out in real life. Sure, the corporations COULD use their windfall to raise … Continue reading →

Would Medicare For All cause millions of people to lose their jobs?

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And would those lost jobs disproportionately affect women? Even worse, low-income women? From Bernie’s Sept. 13, 2017, editorial in the New York Times titled, ‘Why We Need Medicare For All’: The reason that our health care system is so outrageously expensive is that it is not designed to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way, but to provide huge profits to the medical-industrial complex. Layers of bureaucracy associated with the administration of hundreds of individual and complicated insurance plans is stunningly wasteful, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. As the only major country not to … Continue reading →

Repatriation

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One of the pieces of Trump’s tax plan will ‘offer’ repatriation to companies with offshore cash to entice them to bring home some of the moolah they’re been hoarding. The tax rate being floated is 10%. Another official said Trump would propose a repatriation tax on offshore earnings of 10 percent, compared with the current 35 percent, the report said. What would those tax-dodging..I mean qualifying companies do with all of that incoming money? They have choices. They could: -invest in their core businesses (talk about vague wording! major wiggle room) -give out dividends to stockholders (the taxes on which … Continue reading →

Warren says Democrats should campaign on Single-Payer healthcare.

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Elizabeth Warren has been on a campaign footing to push back against Republican efforts to bestow enormous tax breaks on millionaires and billionaires by decimating health-care coverage for ordinary Americans. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is traveling to Trump-friendly areas of her state hoping to connect with his backers and provide a road map for her party to win back working-class voters. […] Democrats, she said, would do better if they campaigned on that progressive platform rather than blurring the lines between themselves and Republicans. — WSJ Warren highlighted the lengths to which President Obama and Democrats had gone in 2009-2010 to garner Republican support … Continue reading →

5/23 Sanders Plows into Trump about Disastrous Budget Proposal and Open Thread

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While TPW has two new excellent posts up by Subir (please read them and make comments!), I’m creating an open thread. Bernie slammed Trump on his budget proposal this afternoon and had the ranking Budget member from Congress, John Yarmuth, join him in the presser. Spoiler warning: the Minority leaders also give remarks but they are the last two. [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVwk45H9qQ[/embedyt] Sanders highlighted the tax savings the wealthiest Americans will see and the cuts to welfare programs. “This is a budget that says if you are a member of the Trump family, you will get a tax break of up … Continue reading →

Jared Kushner uses lawfare to extort money from poor tenants in Baltimore

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While much of the discussion of Kushner’s real-estate empire has focused on glitzy high-rises in New York City, Kushner also owns far more modest low-rise residential rental complexes across the country. The NY Times has a superb exposé of shoddy conditions and exploitative, extortionate tactics used in Baltimore housing complexes owned by a company called “JK2 Westminster”. The JK stands for Jared Kushner’s initials. The article describes the travails of one young woman who terminated her lease early, with permission from the landlord, a few months before Kushner bought the property. Kushner’s lawyers filed a court-case to extract several thousand dollars … Continue reading →

5/15 TPW Evening Thread: DNC Gets Another Lawsuit; Trump May Have Blabbed Intel to the Russians & Bernie Weighs In Local LA Races

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April Showers bring May Flowers on the month’s ides.  Let’s get to it as some of this news is not making the media conglomerates due to revelations of Trump’s continued incompetence as the commander-in-chief.

Stolen Democracy: How the Democratic Party Lost the Election and Lost its Soul

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Hello everyone..I’m taking a day off from planting my gardens , catching up on my neglected emails and just relaxing.  I hope you are having a lovely Mother’s Day weekend in your neck of the woods.  🙂 While reading my email notifications I came across an interesting and revealing new documentary that’s being talked about on Twitter.  It details how Democratic Party DNC Political Strategists influenced, planned and eventually set-up the election of the Orange One.  I learned a lot of new stuff watching it.  It’s a citizen journalism documentary film showing the terrible corruption that comes when big money … Continue reading →

5/5 News Roundup & Open Thread – Sanders On Trumpcare: “Thousands Of Americans Will Die”, The DNC Digs Itself Into A Hole & More

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https://youtu.be/nThd9ahNG1Y

Thousands will die if House bill becomes law, Bernie Sanders says

Sen. Bernie Sanders did not hold anything back Thursday when he condemned the House passage of the Republican-backed bill to replace Obamacare.

“If the bill passed today in the House became law, thousands of Americans would die, because they would no longer have access to health care,” Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”

The Vermont lawmaker and former presidential candidate claimed the Obamacare replacement provides billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 2%.

“What kind of health care bill are we talking about when you throw 24 million people off of health insurance,” Sanders said.

Cooper asked Sanders to weigh in on health care giant Aetna pulling out of Obamacare in Virginia, citing major losses.

“What (Republicans) are doing now is consciously sabotaging the Affordable Care Act,” Sanders said. “For example, not enforce the individual mandate — many billions of dollars are not coming into the system and then rates are going up. And then they say, ‘Oh look, it’s a terrible situation rates are going up’.”