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11/29 News Roundup – Bernie Debuts A ‘Marshall Plan’ For Puerto Rico, Sanders Clashes With Cruz On Taxes & More

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Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren Propose $146 Billion “Marshall Plan” for Puerto Rico

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday unveiled a massive $146 billion “Marshall plan” for Puerto Rico with several other senators. The plan includes immediate relief for the island’s cash-strapped government, billions more for economic development and renewable energy and Medicaid and Medicare parity, a key priority for the island.

“More than two months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, half of the people there—American citizens all—still have no electricity,” Sanders said at a press conference Tuesday morning.

“Many are struggling to get clean drinking water, and more than 100,000 people have left Puerto Rico alone. This is not acceptable, and we are here today to tell the people of Puerto Rico and tell the people of the Virgin Islands that they are not forgotten, they are not alone, and that we intend to do everything possible to rebuild those beautiful islands.”

The far-reaching legislation would grant $62 billion to the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, $27 billion to renovate infrastructure, and $13 billion in additional FEMA funding to rebuild the electric grid “with more modern, resilient technologies,” instead of the Stafford Act’s requirements that the grid be restored to its condition before the storms, according to a summary of the bill from Sanders’s office.

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“The bill that Senator Sanders has introduced in the United States Congress is a comprehensive plan that provides the blueprint for the transformation of Puerto Rico,” Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, said in a statement. “Senator Sanders also shows a great deal of respect and faith in us when claiming that the recovery or Puerto Rico must be in Puerto Rican hands.”

More news/video/etc. in the comments, including:

*Jealous names Susan Turnbull, a former vice chair of the DNC, as his running mate
*FEMA forced to cancel $30 million contract to another newly formed two-man firm
*Nina Turner On 2020 and the Fight Within the Democratic Party
*In ‘Blow to American Consumers,’ Trump-Appointed Judge Sides With Trump on CFPB
*Study Shows Corporate Cable Networks Largely Ignoring FCC Plan to Kill Net Neutrality
*Pipeline updates, Water Protector News & More

(Still fighting a bug in the comments, so if they do not load try clicking the ‘sort by newest/oldest’ option and they should pop-up)

Saturday Summary & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Happy Saturday friends! Some things I learned today: For Now, Trump to Keep Ban on Importing Elephant Trophies Okay, good. Now keep it that way!! Vox Media’s editorial employees are seeking to unionize I used to be dumb and afraid of unions. But now I'm less dumb! Proud to be #VoxUnion buddies with so many talented nerds. https://t.co/PIqKFW9m2a — Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) November 17, 2017 More good. Can we get some more ‘good’? Michigan students pass call to probe Israel investments The student government at the University of Michigan passed a resolution recommending the university’s governing body investigate its investments … Continue reading →

11/1 News Roundup – Sanders’ Sponsored College Fairs, UN Experts Slam US Emergency Response to Puerto Rico & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

A look inside a Bernie sponsored college fair:

More news, videos, etc. in the comments, including:

*Systemic Failure’: Study Details Black Americans’ Experiences of Discrimination
*AFL-CIO calls for a break with “lesser of two evils” politics
*Echoes of Whitefish surface in $200M Puerto Rico grid deal
*US nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2tn over next 30 years
*Osama Bin Laden’s America: Niger, 9/11, and Apocalyptic Humiliation
*Lancet Study Warns of Global Health Crisis and 1 Billion Climate Refugees by 2050
*Pipeline news, Water Protector Updates & More

Puerto Rico cancels Whitefish Energy contract, Manafort told to surrender, Bernie in NYC for de Blasio & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Good Morning Friends! I was surprised to hear that Puerto Rico canceled their contract with Whitefish, perhaps interestingly just two days after Bernie visited PR and said that the contract should be “nullified”. Puerto Rico Cancels Whitefish Energy Contract to Rebuild Power Lines Facing withering criticism from members of Congress and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the governor of Puerto Rico moved on Sunday to cancel a $300 million contract awarded to a small Montana company to rebuild part of the island’s battered power grid. While government officials in Washington and San Juan have argued over how a company from … Continue reading →

10/28 News – Sanders Visits Puerto Rico & More

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Sanders visits Puerto Rico, meets with governor and San Juan mayor

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) visited the storm-swept territory of Puerto Rico on Friday, where he met with Gov. Ricardo Rossello and other elected officials to discuss plans to rebuild the island in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

“The reason I am here today is to listen, and to hear from the people of Puerto Rico about how we address the immediate set of crises that the island faces short-term,” Sanders said in a press conference with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, pointing to the many residents still without access to basic necessities.

Many Puerto Ricans remain without electricity and clean water nearly one month after the island lost power following Hurricane Maria. Rossello announced on Oct. 16 that 72 percent of islanders had clean water, while 75 percent were reported to be without reliable electricity.

Sanders pointed to upcoming debate in Congress on a bill to provide more recovery funds for U.S. states and territories affected by a series of massive hurricanes this summer, which he said “will include substantially more money for Puerto Rico, for Florida, for Texas and for the the Virgin Islands.”

President Trump signed a $36.5 billion disaster relief package on Thursday that was designed to aid victims of a string of devastating hurricanes and wildfires.

Sanders called on Friday for long-term development of Puerto Rico, putting in place storm-resistant housing and structures, and a sturdy energy grid that makes use of the island’s ample renewable resources.

More of past 24 hours happenings in the comments. See you there!

TPW News Roundup – Sanders To View Relief Efforts In Puerto Rico Instead of Women’s Convention Appearance, The GOP’s ‘Horrific’ Tax Vote & More

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Bernie Sanders will not attend the women’s convention, but instead will travel to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose selection as a major speaker at the upcoming Women’s Convention set off a heated debate among feminists, said he won’t attend the event, but will instead visit Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to recover from the extensive damage left by back-to-back hurricanes.

In a statement issued by his office Thursday, Sanders said: “I want to apologize to the organizers of the Women’s Convention for not being able to attend your conference next Friday in Detroit. Given the emergency situation in Puerto Rico, I will be traveling there to visit with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and other officials to determine the best way forward to deal with the devastation the island is experiencing. The U.S. Congress cannot turn its back on the millions of people in Puerto Rico who, four weeks after the hurricane, are still without electricity, food and running water.

The convention, scheduled for Oct. 27-29, is the first major event since last January’s Women’s March, in which millions of women across the country took to the streets to protest the election of President Trump, and vowed to fight policies that they said would hurt women and families, including repealing the Affordable Care Act, cracking down on undocumented immigrants and curbing abortion rights.

When organizers announced last week that Sanders would speak on the opening day of the convention, some women criticized the choice. Some were still angry at Sanders, who they say ran a negative primary campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton in her bid to become the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination. Others simply argued that it was an insult for a man to be the opening speaker at a national gathering of women.

Organizers noted that Sanders was one of only two male speakers at the gathering and that he was not the headliner. That honor went to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), whose unrelenting criticism of the president has made her the most popular figure of the opposition to the Trump administration.

Via twitter from@WomensMarch:

I’d of course love to hear your thoughts and reactions in the comments section where I’ll also have more of the days news, including:

*”People Are Dying’ But Trump Gives Himself Perfect ’10’ for Puerto Rico Response”
*Who Profits from the Opioid Crisis? Meet the Secretive Sackler Family Making Billions from OxyContin
*’Ecological Armageddon’: Warnings From Scientists as Flying Insects Disappear
*Concern of Progressive Purge as Bernie Wing ‘Left in the Cold’ at DNC
*A month after Stockley verdict, demonstrators stay in the streets
*Water Protector News, Pipeline Updates & More

10/6 News Roundup – Sanders to Trump: End Insulting Tweets and Start Rebuilding Puerto Rico & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Happy Friday friends!

Starting the day off with Sanders to Trump: End Insulting Tweets and Start Rebuilding Puerto Rico:

In an op-ed directed at President Donald Trump on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders called on the president to quit with the insulting tweets and start doing a better job to help rebuild the storm-ravaged and economically-devastated island of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that’s home to millions of American citizens.

In the guest column for the local El Nueva Dia newspaper—titled “Trump: Less Tweets, More Help”—Sanders declares that the people of Puerto Rico “are entitled to the same kind of response as the people of Texas, Florida, Vermont and other regions of the country that have been hit hard by natural disasters. President Donald Trump should be focusing his energies on helping to rebuild Puerto Rico, not attacking San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.”

Sanders excoriates the president—who during his visit to the island earlier this week said the disaster was throwing the federal “budget out of whack” and “costing a lot of money”—for being so grossly insensitive to the dire situation in Puerto Rico while at home pushing a budget that adds tens of billions of dollars to already bloated Pentagon spending and proposing massive giveaways in tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.

“When Congress just passed an almost $700 billion defense bill and is now debating a Republican proposal to give up to $5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations,” writes Sanders, “we have the resources to provide the help to Puerto Rico that we always do when states and communities are hard hit by hurricanes.”

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As a growing chorus of renewable energy experts and climate advocates are urging, Sanders also called for the island to be built back with a strict focus on green technologies that make more sense for the island’s long-term economic health and resilience.

“As an island with extraordinary solar and wind capabilities, a new distributed energy system must be built which is based on sustainable energy, not expensive fossil fuel,” Sanders argues. “Not only will this provide less expensive electricity, but it will enable Puerto Rico to better withstand future natural disasters.”

More news, videos, etc. in the comments, including:

*Sanders blasts proposed Medicare cuts: These ‘will kill people’
*‘We’re walking down a dark path’: Biden hammers Trump in scathing speech
*House GOP Passes Budget That ‘Should Not Be Allowed in a Humane Society’
*What I Saw in Puerto Rico by Tom Perez
*Barred From Testifying for ‘Valve Turners,’ Renowned Climate Scientist Speaks Out
*New wave of protest leaders emerged after Ferguson
+ Water Protector news, pipeline updates, candidate news and more!

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9/27 News Roundup – Why Bernie’s CNN Debate Was A Good Idea, Maria As Trump’s Katrina & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Happy Wednesday all!

Starting off with the Bernie being right and the establishment being wrong (as usual), and then will put everything else in the comments.

Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Debate Was a Good Idea for a Very Simple Reason

When CNN announced last week that it would hold a debate on health care between Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham and progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, the reaction in some Democratic circles was anxiety. “I’m not sure single payer vs Graham-Cassidy is the debate we want right now,” mused former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. With the Affordable Care Act once more on the ropes, the argument seemed to go, Sanders was choosing to advance his personal politics ahead of the priorities of the moment.

Those fears were unfounded. A Monday night cable news special was never going to be the make-or-break moment for health care reform, but more importantly, Sanders’ skeptics, and his Republican debating opponents, misunderstood his entire approach to health care reform—no one in the Senate has as much riding on Obamacare’s survival as he does.

Both Cassidy and Graham, who learned shortly before the broadcast that they were at least one vote shy of passage, hoped to frame the conversation as a choice between their bill and the Medicare-for-all proposal Sanders unveiled last week. For the Republicans, it was a contrast of the free-market vs. crippling Canadian bureaucracy. If America only knew Bernie Sanders is a socialist.

But Sanders needed all of 10 seconds to make clear that his purpose at the debate was different. “These gentlemen have on five occasions tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, throw tens and tens of millions of Americans off of the health insurance they currently have, and make it impossible or very difficult for people with pre-existing conditions to get the health care that they can afford,” he said.

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Sanders, of course, was happy to defend the principle of a single-payer system, but he never let that get in the way of the task on hand, nor did he reject the incrementalism the Senate sometimes lives and breathes by. Of course Medicare-for-all won’t be passing anytime soon, he said. But in the meantime, there were bipartisan fixes to made to Obamacare, and opportunity to act on prescription drug prices—an area of agreement, Sanders noted, between he and President Trump.

David Doel of ‘The Rational National’ has more to say on the subject:

Also in this post:

*Meet Bernie Sanders’s new namesake: A spider from Cuba
*Bernie Sanders Leans Into Planned Parenthood at the CNN Health Care Debate
*Trump Tax “Hoax” Would Blow $5 Trillion Hole In Budget Over Next Decade: Analysis
*Fenceline Communities on Gulf Coast Face Mass Displacement & Toxic Pollution One Month After Harvey
*Water Protector/Pipeline updates
*Democratic Candidate for Governor Says He’d Shut Down Enbridge Line 5
& Much more

9/26 News Roundup – Puerto Rico In Crisis, Target Announces A $15 Min Wage & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Happy Tuesday friends, thanks for visiting TPW! If you are not currently a member and would like to be, please email the tpwhelpdesk@gmail.com and I’ll get you set up (or you can try your luck with the automated system…).

Starting off with some good news:

‘Our Momentum Is Unstoppable’: Workers Celebrate as Target Announces $15 Minimum Wage

In what is being described as a huge victory for the tens of thousands of workers across the country who have for years organized, rallied, and gone on strike for higher wages, Target on Monday announced that it plans to raise the company-wide minimum hourly wage to $11 by next month and $15 by 2020.

“Five years ago, when 200 New York City fast-food workers first walked off the job for $15 an hour and union rights, nobody gave us a shot. Since then, we’ve spread this movement to every corner of the country and beyond fast-food. We did what they said we couldn’t: we won. We won in the states, in the cities, with the big politicians and with the big corporations,” Steven Suffridge, a Minneapolis McDonald’s Worker and Fight for $15 organizer, wrote in an email reacting to the news. “And today, we won $15 an hour for all Target employees.”

In celebration, Fight for $15 and other groups began circulating a graphic that echoes Suffridge’s message: “When we fight, we win!”

Immediately upon seeing the news of the Target wage boost—which will affect over 320,000 workers throughout the U.S—activists and lawmakers immediately began raising the question: if Target can pay its workers a decent wage, why can’t Walmart, McDonald’s, and other profitable low-wage corporate giants?

“C’mon McDonalds, Walmart, and everybody else,” wrote Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who recently celebrated Minneapolis lawmakers for overwhelmingly voting to raise the city minimum wage to $15 by 2024. “Pay your workers right!”

The rest of the days news/videos/etc will be in the comments, including:

*Voting machine concerns have states eyeing return to paper ballots
*Tony Blair Says Bernie Doesn’t Have the Answers (Public Opinion Says Otherwise)
*Bernie Sanders’ Graham-Cassidy Debate Quotes Will Inspire You To Fight For Health Care
*National park ban saved 2m plastic bottles – and still Trump reversed it
*Candidate Updates (Stephen Jaffe, Joe Cunningham, Jack Love, Abdul El-Sayed, Cathy Myers & more)
*Corbyn is a changed man – and he’s forging a path to power
& much more.

Puerto Rico’s Payday Loans: The Shocking Story Behind Wall Street’s Role in Debt Crisis

http://democracynow.org – On June 30, President Obama signed into law the PROMESA bill, which will establish a federally appointed control board with sweeping powers to run Puerto Rico’s economy. While the legislation’s supporters say the bill will help the island cope with its debt crisis by allowing an orderly restructuring of its $72 billion in bond debt, critics say it is a reversion to old-style colonialism that removes democratic control from the people of Puerto Rico. But does Puerto Rico really owe $72 billion in bond debt—and to whom? A stunning new report by ReFund America Project reveals nearly half the debt owed by Puerto Rico is not actually money that the island borrowed, but instead interest owed to investors on bonds underwritten by Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. While the Puerto Rican people are facing massive austerity cuts, bondholders are set to make mind-boggling profits in what has been compared to a payday lending scheme. For more, we speak in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with Carlos Gallisá, an attorney, politician and independence movement leader. And in New York, we speak with Saqib Bhatti, director of the ReFund America Project and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is co-author of the new report, “Puerto Rico’s Payday Loans.”

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org

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Video: Puerto Rico Is Being Left Voiceless – San Juan Mayor Condemns Bill to Create “Colonial Control Board”

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

The Senate is set to consider a bill to create a federally appointed control board with sweeping powers to run Puerto Rico’s economy to help the island cope with its crippling debt crisis. The bill, known as PROMESA, passed the House last week by a bipartisan vote of 297 to 127, but opponents have decried the measure as antidemocratic. “We’re engaged today in a wholly undemocratic activity in the world’s greatest democracy,” said Rep. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez. In the Senate, Robert Menendez, Dick Durbin and Bernie Sanders have come out against the bill, and any one of them could filibuster … Continue reading →

BNR – ‘Sanders Spends Time With California Voters’ & ‘What Americans Abroad Know About Bernie’

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Raids are not the answer. We cannot continue to employ inhumane tactics involving rounding up and deporting thousands of immigrant families. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 6, 2016 .@BernieSanders then ends the Santa Monica Pier stop with a carousel ride with his wife and grandkids. pic.twitter.com/8HEeEMKZhI — Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) June 5, 2016 https://twitter.com/LivingOnChi/status/739655098981318656 The Campaign’s Press Release Over The PR Chaos U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign issued the following statement Sunday on long lines at polling places in Puerto Rico’s Democratic Party presidential primary election: “Some Puerto Rico Democratic officials are claiming that the Sanders campaign requested fewer polling … Continue reading →

Some Sanders News In Regards To Puerto Rico

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

An endorsement from Anibal Acevedo Vila: Some background: Aníbal Salvador Acevedo Vilá (born 13 February 1962) is a Puerto Rican politician and lawyer. He served as the ninth Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. He is a Harvard University alumnus (LL.M. 1987) and a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, where he obtained his Juris Doctor degree. Acevedo Vilá has held various public service positions in the Puerto Rico government under the Popular Democratic Party, serving as a member of the House of Representatives of … Continue reading →

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