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Bernie Sanders: I want to work with Clinton on trade
Democrats in Congress dealt a blow to President Obama's agenda last week when they blocked a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade deal with Asia he has been negotiating.
But that victory isn't enough for Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic nomination. He also wants his fellow Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to join the coalition of lawmakers who disagree with the president on trade.
"Corporate America and Wall Street are going to bring that bill back to the House next week. I would hope very much that Secretary Clinton will side with every union in this country, virtually every environmental group, many religious groups, and say that this TPP policy is a disaster, that it must be defeated, and that we need to regroup and come up with a trade policy which demands that corporate America start investing in this country rather than in countries all over the world. So I look forward to working with the secretary on this issue," Sanders said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Meanwhile
Vox investigates the candidates donor history:
Want to know what sets Bernie Sanders apart from Hillary Clinton? Look at their donors.
This screenshot from Reddit user Bombed shows the OpenSecrets.org "career profiles" of Clinton and Sanders, summarizing their top contributors from 1989 to the present. That leaves out Sanders's time as mayor of Burlington, but includes both politicians' entire careers in federal politics. "The organizations themselves did not donate," OpenSecrets explains. "Rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families."
The differences could hardly be more striking. Out of Clinton's top 20 organizational donors, only two (EMILY's List and the University of California) aren't corporate. There are seven mega-banks, five corporate law/lobbying firms, and three big entertainment companies. Now, to be fair to Clinton, the vast majority of these donations came from individuals rather than corporate PACs, and as a senator from New York it's understandable that finance and media interests (not to mention New York ceramics giant Corning) would give to her heavily. But it's still a very corporate-heavy list.
By contrast, 19 of Sanders's top 20 donors are unions.
While on the subject of money (or lack of),
Bernie Discloses Credit Card Debt:
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has at least one thing in common with many Americans: credit card debt.
The Vermont independent, who's running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a total of between $25,002 and $65,000 in revolving debt on his Visa cards last year, according to his latest financial disclosure report. The report also shows no stock in his name.
Sanders' spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Sanders' credit card debt rises and falls with expenses, which included weddings for his daughter and niece in the past year. As of a few months ago, he said, the balance was down to zero again.
"He's a regular American who has credit card bills," Briggs said. "To that extent, he's living the life that a lot of people are living."
Bernie is
'within striking distance' in New Hampshire:
Bernie Sanders, the independent Democratic senator from Vermont, is within striking distance of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in a new poll of likely New Hampshire presidential primary voters. A new survey from the Morning Consult finds 44 percent of New Hampshire voters who say they will vote in the Democratic primary support Clinton with 32 percent supporting Sanders.
Eight percent say they would vote for Vice President Joe Biden, who is not currently a candidate, with two percent supporting former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and one percent supporting former Virginia governor Jim Webb. Eleven percent say they are undecided.
A tweet from Bernie for those who don't know Bernie's record:
Sanders is already changing the conversation of the country as Chris Christie is having to discuss college access:
Chris Christie slams Bernie Sanders’ debt-free college: Let ‘market forces’ set tuition so kids ‘earn’ education
Likely Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said on Sunday that he supported using “market forces” to bring down the price of college instead of proposals that would make education free.
During an interview with Christie on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos noted Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders had called to tax wall street speculation in order to eliminate college tuition.
“What’s your alternative?” the host asked the New Jersey governor.
“My alternative is we have to start to put market forces on these college costs,” Christie replied. “I pay for two college tuitions right now, one at Princeton and one at Notre Dame. And I can tell you that they’re the most opaque bills you’ll ever see in your life.”
“If you got that bill for dinner with that little of that detail, you wouldn’t pay it,” he insisted. “And secondly, we need to start to say unbundle that. So if a child doesn’t want to pay for all of these different things in college, they should be able to select it.”
Stephanopoulos pointed out that the G.I. Bill had paid for Christie’s father’s education.
“You talked about your dad and what he got on the G.I. Bill. Studies show that there’s a seven to one return on that kind of an investment,” Stephanopoulos reminded the likely candidate. “Why not for all Americans?”
Politico tells us that
Sanders is after the Warren vote:
Bernie Sanders gave Elizabeth Warren a virtual bear hug Saturday during an open house at his campaign headquarters here, a nod to a progressive leader whose supporters failed to coax her to run for president and are now looking for a standard-bearer.
“Senator Warren is a good friend of mine and her views and mine are pretty close on most of the major issues, so we’ll be bringing in some of those people into our organization,” said the Vermont senator, who is competing for the Democratic presidential nomination.
As Sanders described his Iowa campaign operation, he acknowledged that his staff was seeking support from Warren backers in his quest to be the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, who was officially launching her presidential campaign in New York City as Sanders spoke.
His comments came on the heels of news that Sanders had hired a former operative from the “Run Warren Run” organization – Blair Lawton – to act as his Iowa field director.
And finally
Salon examines an issue they say Bernie could win on. Corruption:
We live amidst a global pandemic of corruption. It ravages Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and devours Africa. It was the issue at the heart of every uprising of the Arab Spring. It has spurred riots in India and Brazil, struck fear into the hearts of China’s leaders and contributed mightily to the warping of Russia’s politics as well as its economy. It tops liberal agendas everywhere in the world — everywhere, that is, but here.
America has not had a full-throated debate of political corruption since Watergate. In that scandal’s immediate aftermath Congress enacted sweeping campaign finance reforms (struck down by the Supreme Court in its vile Buckley v. Valeo decision). In the mid ’70s, states passed a flurry of reforms, establishing what were often their first ethics, campaign finance and freedom-of-information commissions. But politicians have chipped away at those reforms ever since. Few commissions have anything like adequate enforcement staff. Most states lack the civic self-respect to enforce their ethics laws, preferring to leave the job to overburdened federal prosecutors.
Some say the reason our politicians talk less about corruption is that we have less of it, but it’s a hard point to prove. How much money do we lose to corruption each year? Our government goes out of its way not to know. All major retailers itemize “inventory shrinkage” in their annual reports; 2013 losses were pegged at $37 billion. No public-sector budget itemizes the cost of corruption, but here’s a safe bet: America loses more to corruption than to shoplifting.
Some say voters don’t care about ethics. Political consultants tell their clients that nobody cares except old “goo-goos” — good government types — and even they don’t care much. It’s just a “process issue,” they say; too abstract, too far removed from people’s lives to matter. For the consultants who pocket millions from corporate and political clients alike, it’s a convenient theory, but it’s a lie, proven to be such again and again by election results and, yes, even by polling data.
Every election year major news organizations conduct nationwide exit polls to ask, among other things, what issues brought voters out. Ethics is never even on the list. In 2009 and 2010 pollster Scott Rasmussen posed the same question but included “government ethics and corruption” as a possible response. Both times over 80 percent of voters called it very important and both times it topped the list, edging out even the economy — this in the teeth of a protracted recession.
Volunteer & Donate!
2:57 AM PT: Bernie Is Building An Army:
It’ll take an army to change Washington, says the insurgent senator—and with the crowds he’s been drawing, he just might be building one.
Bernie Sanders is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. That’s why he's running for president. He’s filled with righteous anger about a lot of things, and lots of people agree with him. Close to a thousand people turned out to see him in New Hampshire; 750 in Iowa, one of the largest crowds for any of the candidates. He’s “bulking up” now in terms of his campaign staff and he’s doing pretty well fundraising, too: With 200,000 contributors at 40 bucks a piece, that's $8 million dollars.
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Sanders has never played party politics. He's the great disrupter. He's there to break the rules and regulations, and the voters are cheering him on.
4:24 AM PT: Please visit Eileen B's diary Tips on how to go to Bernie events. Next up - Vegas, Denver & Charleston, SC for a schedule of upcoming Bernie events as well as handy tips for having the best experience possible.