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‘Robin Hood’ and other key takeaways from the Ted Cruz-Bernie Sanders tax debate

Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders agree that America’s tax code needs an overhaul. And that’s about it.

The political polar opposites, participating Wednesday in a CNN debate, highlighted the yawning policy divide that confronts conservative and liberal lawmakers of all stripes as they prepare to take on a monumental task that’s stymied Congress for decades.

With these two loquacious senators, however, the split was crystal clear.

Cruz, the Texas Republican, pitches the GOP revamp as a way to streamline the code and “lower taxes for each and every person.” Sanders, the Vermont Independent, sees instead a “massive tax break for the wealthy” that comes at the expense of low- and middle-income earners.

Cruz got Sanders to admit that the GOP’s idea to double the standard deduction was a “good idea.” But just as Cruz cheered the common ground — a “miraculous night,” he joked — Sanders quickly objected to the elimination of the personal exemption and other related tax provisions.

“You have to look at it in a comprehensive way,” Sanders said.

In tax debate, Ted Cruz aims to make Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren the face of Democrats

Ted Cruz spent Wednesday night’s nationally televised tax debate portraying his counterpart Bernie Sanders, along with the Senate’s other top liberal, Elizabeth Warren, as the face of the Democratic Party.

The CNN debate was supposed to be about the Republican tax plan. But, starting with his opening comments, Cruz tried to reframe the conversation to focus on the Vermont senator’s vision of transforming the U.S. into a high-tax country with Nordic-style social democracy.

“Bernie and the Democrats want every one of you watching today to pay more in taxes,” Cruz told the audience in his first comments.

After an early skirmish with Sanders over the estate tax, Cruz informed him that “you and Elizabeth Warren represent the heart of the Democratic Party.”

Later, he mused that “the lesson the Democratic Party took from [the 2016] election was Hillary Clinton was too moderate, and I think the Democratic Party is the party of you and Elizabeth Warren.”

Cash In: Sanders Leads Pack in Fundraising

Thinking about running against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2018?

If so, consider this. According to his latest campaign finance report, submitted to the Federal Election Commission last weekend, his senatorial campaign fund has an astounding $5.86 million in cash on hand.

It would be virtually impossible to spend that much money in Vermont, even if Sanders were to face a real challenge. Last time around, Sanders managed to spend $2.6 million in defeating Republican John MacGovern by a massive 45 percentage points. He couldn’t possibly do much better, even if he spent twice as much this time.

So what’s he doing with all that money? A lot of it goes to fueling the machine: fundraising, strategy and consulting. But a goodly chunk has been spent on his large, enthusiastic campaign-style rallies across the country.

Bernie Sanders leads Joe Biden in 2020 New Hampshire poll

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading former Vice President Joe Biden in a hypothetical matchup of the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary, according to a new survey.

Sanders, who won New Hampshire in his unsuccessful bid to upset Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, maintains stronger support in the state than any other presidential hopeful of his party. That includes party luminaries such as Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, according to the University of New Hampshire’s survey.

Most Democratic primary voters (58 percent) are undecided or could not provide a name when asked in an open-ended question whom they would support,” the Granite State Poll found. “Democratic primary voters most recently mentioned Bernie Sanders (14 percent), Joe Biden (five percent), Hillary Clinton (five percent), Elizabeth Warren (four percent), and Joseph Kennedy III (four percent).”

Sanders’ support rose when the respondents were provided a list of potential candidates. That question revealed 31 percent support for the self-described socialist, compared to 24 percent for Biden and 13 percent for Warren.

Bernie Sanders Is Coming to Somerville

Bernie Sanders is coming to Somerville on Monday, where he will stump for progressive candidates in local elections.

The Vermont Senator says he’ll be at Once Somerville, the music venue, at 9:30 a.m. to rally behind a pack of candidates in Cambridge in Somerville who are running for school board, city council, and board of aldermen. The election for those seats is on November 7.

He will also “be discussing how we can make local government work for ordinary citizens,” Our Revolution says on its website, adding, “Join Bernie and our candidates for local office as we fight for livable wages, affordable housing, and quality public education.”

Candidates backed by Our Revolution include Somerville’s Matt McLaughlin, Will Mbah, Jesse Clingan, JT Scott and Ben Ewen-Campen, and Cambridge’s Vatsady Sivongxay, Sumbul Siddiqui, Quinton Zondervan, Dennis Carlone, Jan Devereux, and Jeff Santos, along with Foxborough state Sen. Paul Feeney.

How Climate Change and Wars Are Increasing World Hunger

Around the globe, about 815 million people—11 percent of the world’s population—went hungry in 2016, according to the latest data from the United Nations. This was the first increase in more than 15 years.

Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion of undernourished people in the world was cut in half. In 2015, UN member countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which doubled down on this success by setting out to end hunger entirely by 2030. But a recent UN report shows that, after years of decline, hunger is on the rise again.

As evidenced by nonstop news coverage of floods, fires, refugees and violence, our planet has become a more unstable and less predictable place over the past few years. As these disasters compete for our attention, they make it harder for people in poor, marginalized and war-torn regions to access adequate food.

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Around the world, social and political instability are on the rise. Since 2010, state-based conflict has increased by 60 percent and armed conflict within countries has increased by 125 percent. More than half of the food-insecure people identified in the UN report (489 million out of 815 million) live in countries with ongoing violence. More than three-quarters of the world’s chronically malnourished children (122 million of 155 million) live in conflict-affected regions.

At the same time, these regions are experiencing increasingly powerful storms, more frequent and persistent drought and more variable rainfall associated with global climate change. These trends are not unrelated. Conflict-torn communities are more vulnerable to climate-related disasters, and crop or livestock failure due to climate can contribute to social unrest.

War hits farmers especially hard. Conflict can evict them from their land, destroy crops and livestock, prevent them from acquiring seed and fertilizer or selling their produce, restrict their access to water and forage, and disrupt planting or harvest cycles. Many conflicts play out in rural areas characterized by smallholder agriculture or pastoralism. These small-scale farmers are some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Supporting them is one of the UN’s key strategies for reaching its food security targets.

Sorry you’ll have to click the link for the charts:

Two Graphs Explain Why California’s Wildfires Will Only Get Worse

The deadly wildfires ripping through Northern California are just the latest in a season of record-defying natural disasters in the U.S. As the death toll passes 40, reports of Californians hiding in pools as their houses burn and scenes of devastated homes and vineyards add to 2017’s apocalyptic picture of how climate change is impacting America today.

As the Trump administration guts environmental protections and undermines science, California is one of the states leading the way on climate action. Ironically, experts agree the state can expect devastating fires like the ones in Napa to become the new normal. Drier and drier conditions and creeping temperatures in the American Southwest, definitively linked to climate change, serve to create tinderbox conditions for massive, catastrophic fires to explode.

A quick look at two sets of data shows exactly how climate change has impacted California’s susceptibility to wildfires—and what the state can expect as the planet continues to warm.

The past 10 years have been among the hottest years on record. It’s no coincidence that 13 of California’s largest 20 fires by acreage burned have occurred since 2000, and 10 of those in the past decade. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014, 2015 and 2016 are the third, second and first hottest years on record to date, and each of these years hosted its own record-breaking fire in the state.

It’s worth noting that this graphic only covers fires through 2016. The fires in Napa have already burned more than 240,000 acres—surpassing all but three of the fires on this infographic. As of Tuesday, firefighters are still working on 12 blazes still burning in the state.

Mnuchin Gives Away the Game: “It’s Very Hard Not to Give Tax Cuts to the Wealthy”

For weeks President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been peddling the demonstrable lie that their tax proposals are primarily geared toward helping the middle class, not the wealthiest Americans. But in an interview with Politico’s Ben White published Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gave away the game, admitting: “It’s very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy.”

“The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do,” the treasury secretary added.

But as The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney notes, the math is not hard at all. In fact, the White House’s own tax framework, released last month, had a useful suggestion: add in a higher top marginal rate.

“An additional top rate may apply to the highest-income taxpayers to ensure that the reformed tax code is at least as progressive as the existing tax code and does not shift the tax burden from high-income to lower- and middle-income taxpayers,” the framework says.

When asked about Mnuchin’s comments during Wednesday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t deny that the rich would benefit enormously from Trump’s tax plan. Instead, she claimed that cutting taxes for the middle class remains “the focus and the priority.”

Leonardo DiCaprio Invests in Plant-Based Food Company

Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector, but eating a burger doesn’t have to come with a side of guilt.

Actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio has invested in Beyond Meat, the makers of the world’s first vegan burger that’s famously known to look, smell and even taste a lot like the real deal.

The company’s staple Beyond Burger is made mostly from pea protein. Beet juice gives it a red meat-like color and allows it to “bleed” like a regular beef burger when cooked.

“Livestock production is a major contributor to carbon emissions,” DiCaprio said in his investment announcement. “Shifting from animal meat to the plant-based meats developed by Beyond Meat is one of the most powerful measures someone can take to reduce their impact on our climate.”

“The company’s ability to create appealing, healthy meat directly from plants will go a long way in helping everyday consumers take action on climate change,” he added.

World’s First Floating Wind Farm Will Power 20,000 Homes

Scotland has officially switched on the Hywind Scotland, the world’s first floating wind farm.

“Hywind will provide clean energy to over twenty thousand homes and will help us meet our ambitious climate change targets,” First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

The 30 megawatt wind farm, operated by Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA and Masdar Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., consists of five turbines and is located 25 kilometers offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.

“This marks an exciting development for renewable energy in Scotland,” the First Minister continued. “Our support for floating offshore wind is testament to this government’s commitment to the development of this technology and, coupled with Statoil’s Battery Storage Project, Batwind, puts us at the forefront of this global race and positions Scotland as a world center for energy innovation.”

Why Are Incarcerated Women Battling California Wildfires for as Little as $1 a Day?

Video @ Link

Warnings of ‘Big Pharma Coup’ as Trump Considers Drug Exec. for Health Secretary

With media reports indicating that President Donald Trump is leaning toward selecting former pharmaceutical industry executive Alex Azar to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen warned in a statement Wednesday that Azar’s appointment would essentially complete “Big Pharma’s coup of the healthcare sphere.”

“Just days after denouncing ‘out-of-control’ drug prices, President Donald Trump appears set to show he doesn’t mean it by naming a former pharmaceutical company executive to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” said Public Citizen president Robert Weissman. “In his public statements, Alex Azar has made clear that he is opposed to measures to restrain drug company profiteering and limit improper marketing and favors weaker drug safety approval standards.”

Azar spent a decade as an executive with the pharma giant Eli Lilly, where he directed the company’s sales operations. Before joining Eli Lilly, Azar served as deputy secretary of the HHS under George W. Bush.

As Politico reports, Azar also happens to be “one of the many drug industry executives” who contributed to Trump’s presidential campaign—a fact that runs counter to the president’s frequent criticism of elected officials who take cash from pharma executives.

Despite Puerto Rico Disaster, Vulture Firms Relentlessly Seeking Billions in Debt Payments

As Puerto Rico continues its struggle to manage $95 billion in Hurricane Maria-related damage stacked atop its $74 billion of pre-existing debt, investigative journalists have revealed the 10 biggest financial firms that “are still fighting to get billions out of the bankrupt island as it tries to rebuild.”

After a months-long investigation by In These Times and Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), the team published their exposé on Tuesday.

“The popular narrative of Puerto Rico’s debt holders is that they are ‘small’ individual bondholders—rookie investors who trusted their savings to financial firms,” they write.

“But our investigation reveals that some of the most aggressive players demanding debt repayment in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy court are so-called ‘vulture firms,'” the report continues. “These hedge funds specialize in high-risk ‘troubled assets’ near default or bankruptcy and cater to millionaire and billionaire investors.”