Bernie Sanders explodes a right-wing myth: ‘Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the immigration debate is framed exactly wrong.

Republicans vilify President Barack Obama for supposedly opening the border to ever-increasing multitudes of immigrants, legally or otherwise, but the Democratic presidential candidate said blame is cast in the wrong direction, reported Vox.

“Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” Sanders said in a wide-ranging interview with the website. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.”

Sanders frequently targets the libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch as unhealthy influences on American democracy — but he’s not the first to notice their support for an open borders policy.

The conservative Breitbart and the white supremacist VDARE website each blasted the Koch brothers for sponsoring a “pro-amnesty Buzzfeed event” in 2013, and two writers for the Koch-sponsored Reason — former contributing editor David Weigel and current editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie — have always been supportive of immigration reform.

That’s at odds with what many Republicans believe, and Sanders told Vox that an open border would be disastrous to the American economy.

“It would make everybody in America poorer — you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that,” Sanders said. “If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or (the United Kingdom) or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people.”

He said conservative corporate interests pushed for open borders, not liberals.

“What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy,” Sanders said. “Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour — that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, (and) I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.”

The senator said flooding the job market with foreign candidates willing to work for low pay would be especially harmful to younger Americans trying to enter the workforce.

“You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today?” he said. “If you’re a white high school graduate, it’s 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?”

“I think from a moral responsibility we’ve got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer,” Sanders said.

Via: Raw Story

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Bernie Sanders inadvertently makes the case against a $15 minimum wage

This is why socialists are economic ignoramuses. Even while they promote their income redistribution schemes, they inevitably run afoul of basic economic laws that any freshman in college learns in Econ 101.

Forbes Tim Worstall shows how Senator Bernie Sanders actually proves the case against a $15 an hour minimum wage on his own webpage:

This isn’t, perhaps, quite what Bernie Sanders thinks he is saying over on his Senate page but it is indeed what he is saying. He’s providing us with the proof perfect that a rise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour will costs jobs. For he’s telling us that the rise in the minimum wage will be paid for by a combination of three things. Firstly, a rise in prices of goods made by minimum wage labour. This will reduce the volume of such goods purchased (no, really, demand curves do slope downwards) and thus lead to less minimum wage labour being employed. Part of it will be paid for by lower profits. And yes, demand curves really do slope downwards meaning that fewer people will be interested in the profits that can be earned by employing minimum wage labour: thus less minimum wage labour will be employed. Finally, he tells us that there will be a forced rise in the productivity with which labour is used: and a rise in productivity is the same thing as stating that less labour will be used.

The problem with socialist/Marxist economics has always been that they attempt to create an alternate universe where up is down, black is white, and because they mean so well, the normal laws of economics simply do not apply. Seattle, which began to phase in a $15 minimum wage in May, is already reaping the whirlwind.

Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don’t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.

Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.

“If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn’t actually help get them out of poverty, all you’ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people,” said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.

The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.

The notion that employees are intentionally working less to preserve their welfare has been a hot topic on talk radio. While the claims are difficult to track, state stats indeed suggest few are moving off welfare programs under the new wage.

Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state’s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376.

Prices are going up and those businesses most sensitive to labor costs are closing. 

Looks like Bernie was right.

Via: American Thinker

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[VIDEO] LEFTWARD LURCH IMPERILS DEMOCRAT PARTY

At the annual NetRoots Nation gathering, two leading progressive candidates for the Democrat nomination were booed and heckled by protesters. The event could easily be remembered as a water-shed moment that confines the Democrat Party, at least in the near-term, to a weak national party that is only competitive in certain regions of the country.

NetRoots Nation is a conference of the Democrat Party’s most progressive and left-wing activists and bloggers. As part of its meeting, NetRoots hosted a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring socialist Vermont 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%

 and progressive former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Few national political figures have embraced the full kaleidoscope of leftist policy proposals as eagerly as Sanders and O’Malley. The panel was even moderated by a celebrated leftist journalist who is also famously an illegal immigrant. Only a drum-circle and piped-in scents of patchouli were missing from what ought to have been a leftist dream-team of Presidential politics.

For the NetRoots activist crowd, though, it wasn’t enough. The event was loudly interrupted by a throng of activist from #BlackLivesMatter who challenged the panels’ commitment to progressive change. Both O’Malley and Sanders were flummoxed, with Sanders, at one point, asking the illegal immigrant moderator if he had “control” of the event.

O’Malley tried to address the activists by assuring them that, of course, “black lives matter.” He went on to make the equally true statement that “all lives matter.” For this “gaffe,” he had to make an awkward apology tour.

In the aftermath of the debacle, both the Sanders and O’Malley campaigns sought one-on-one meetings with the organizers of the #BlackLivesMatter protest group.

The entire episode could have been a farce out of a Tom Wolfe novel, but is, in fact, a sad reality facing today’s Democrat Party.

After more than a decade of cynically manipulating class and race rhetoric for short-term political gain, the Democrat Party faces a growing cadre of activists who bought into the rhetoric. For them, only the most extreme leftist or progressive policies will satisfy their political blood-lust.

In this brave new world, all lives matter, but some matter more than others.

For the past six years, the media have been obsessed with concern-trolling over whether a resurgent conservative movement would push the Republican Party “too far to the right.” The Establishment Republican class, fueled by its donors at the US Chamber and other corporate groups, have bought into this narrative.

While this silly debate has played out in the salons of 6th Avenue, K Street and Capital Hill, a far more dramatic political story has unfolded.

Since Obama won the Presidency, the Democrat party has been eliminated from large swathes of the country. When Obama was sworn in in 2009, Democrats controlled over 30 Governors’ mansions. After the 2014 elections, they hold just 18. They have been wiped out in the South and most of the Midwest.

The current political make-up of Congressional and state legislative seats is even more dramatic. Outside of the coasts and urban areas, the Democrat party is simply not competitive in most of the country.

“The national Democratic Party’s brand makes it challenging for Democrats in red states oftentimes and I hope that going forward, the leaders at the national level will be mindful of that and they will understand that they can’t govern the country without Democrats being able to win races in red states,” Paul Davis, who lost a close race against Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback last year, told Politico.

Obama won office largely on the strength of historic levels of voter turnout by minorities and very young voters. Even with those high levels of turnout, he would have lost if the GOP hadn’t failed to motivate working class white voters to support its candidates.

The GOP presently has at least a decent chance of nominating a candidate conservative enough to attract working class voters. If it does, the Democrats will again need historic turnouts from minorities and college-age voters to be competitive nationally. It is not at all clear that any candidate other than Obama has that electoral power.

It isn’t even clear that Obama himself still has that draw. Obama’s last-minute campaign push for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in his political home base wasn’t enough to save Rahm from an historic run-off. Rahm was crushed in the very same minority precincts where Obama campaigned.

Rahm ultimately survived his run-off with a deluge of campaign spending and strong support from Republican voters, but, for Democrats, it was a clear warning shot that their activist and minority base wants far more change than the party is willing to deliver. Even attempting to deliver than change will further alienate the party from a large majority of the voting public.

Vincent Sheehan, who lost the South Carolina Governor’s race to Republican Nikki Haley, worries that recent party rhetoric reflects an “antagonism toward or a hostility toward the moderate elements of the Democratic Party.”

If self-described socialist, former activist organizer, Bernie Sanders is deemed to passive or even moderate for this new breed of progressive activists, then the long-nightmare of the Democrat Party is just beginning.

Via: Breitbart

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Commentary on the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders

We think that it is a good thing that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is running for president. Senator Sanders has attracted some of the largest crowds of any presidential candidate by hammering away at the growing income and wealth inequality in the U.S. He supports the $15 per hour minimum wage, a government single-payer health care program and has been a consistent opponent of so-called ‘free trade’ agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP.

Senator Sanders has also been a critic of Wall Street and the most blatant displays of the richest 1%’s domination of elections. He wants to overturn the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that ended restrictions on corporate donations to political candidates. Sanders has also fought hard against the right wing and oil and gas industry’s opposition to any action on climate change.

That said, we cannot support the candidacy of Mr. Sanders. As senator, Sanders supported the 2010 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that included more militarization of the border, more temporary workers, cutting legal immigration from Africa in half by the elimination of the so-called diversity visa, and cutting back on family reunification visas. Sanders has said almost nothing about the ongoing police occupation of oppressed nationality communities, and the plague of police killings that target young Black and brown men.

While Sanders has been a critic of the Pentagon, he does so from the perspective of pinching pennies, not from an opposition to U.S. intervention in countries around the world. Sanders has supported sanctions on Russia that are part of the U.S. strategy for ‘regime change’ in former soviet countries to isolate Russia. Even worse, he has been a supporter of the brutal Israeli attack on Gaza, which massacred over a thousand Palestinian civilians and hundreds of children.

For those of our readers who see change coming through elections, there is (unfortunately) no major candidate to the left of Senator Sanders. He is certainly better than Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party mainstream, having opposed President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform and having endorsed the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s campaign for president in 1988. But for those of us who see that “change is in the streets,” we will be putting our time, energy and meager amount of money into organizing on campus, in the community and at our workplaces, not into the election campaign of Senator Sanders. We invite you to join us.

Via: Fight Back News

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Report: 3 million more children in poverty under Obama, 22% of all kids

Ever since President Obama took office, the poverty rate among children has soared to 22 percent, with three million more children living in poor conditions, according to an authoritative new report released Tuesday.

The 2015 "KIDS COUNT" report from the Annie E. Casey Foundationsaid that the percentage of children living in poverty jumped from 18 percent in 2008, the year Obama was elected, to 22 percent in 2013. It added that the rate dropped from 2012 to 2013, in line with the improving economy.

RELATED: Pew: 84% of world population lives at or below U.S. poverty line

Among minority children and in some states, especially the South, however, the situation is dire. The report said, for example:

The rate of child poverty for 2013 ranged from a low of 10 percent in New Hampshire, to a high of 34 percent in Mississippi.

• The child poverty rate among African Americans (39 percent) was more than double the rate for non-Hispanic whites (14 percent) in 2013.

RELATED: Bernie Sanders wants to spend $3 billion on solar panels for the poor

The report also explained that a lack of jobs or good income above the poverty rate of $23,624 was the reason more children have grown up in poor families.

• In 2013, three in 10 children (22.8 million) lived in families where no parent had full-time, year-round employment. Since 2008, the number of such children climbed by nearly 2.7 million

• Roughly half of all American Indian children (50 percent) and African-American children (48 percent) had no parent with full-time, year-round employment in 2013, compared with 37 percent of Latino children, 24 percent of non-Hispanic white children and 23 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander children.

Via: Washington Examiner

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POLITICS Sanders And O’Malley Shouted Off Stage At Progressive Conference

NOTHIN LIKE EATING THERE OWN!!!  GOTTA LOVE IT!!!

Netroots Nation, the annual conference of ultra-left-wing activists, had two Democratic Party presidential candidates in attendance at their event in Phoenix, Ariz., this year… And shouted them both off stage.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley participated separately in a candidate discussion moderated by journalist and illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas. Both speakers were interrupted by shouting protesters from the #BlackLivesMatter movement and were unable to continue.

O’Malley was being interrupted by protesters and, after pleas from the stage and event organizers, was allowed to continue. He went on to say, “I know, I know…Let me talk a little bit…Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter,” which the crowd did not appreciate. The chants and boos got louder and the candidate left the stage.

 

daveweigelVerified account‏@daveweigel

O'Malley gaffes with this crowd: "Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter." Huge groans and boos. #NN15

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Via: Daily Caller

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Sanders Battles Boehner on Min. Wage: ‘Who’s Out of the Mainstream?’

2016 Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders responded on Face the Nation Sunday morning to criticism from House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) that he was “out of the mainstream” with his desire to raise taxes to pay for his policies.

“Well, let me respond to that issue by issue, and you determine who’s out of the mainstream,” Sanders said.

“I want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. A recent Wall Street Journal poll said majority of the American people want to do that. John Boehner is not going to bring up any legislation in the house to raise minimum wage. Many want to get rid of the concept of minimum wage.”

Sanders repeated the formula with Social Security and infrastructure.

“In terms of who’s out of touch with the American people, I’d say Republican party is,” he concluded. “They want to give tax breaks to billionaires, not help the middle class.”

Via: Mediaite

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[VIDEO] The Bernie Sanders bubble: Get set for a flameout, analysts say

A former chief strategist for Howard Dean, whose 2004 presidential hopes plummeted from rock star status to also-ran,
 predicts a similar fate for the Democratic darling of the 
moment, Vermont U.S. Sen. 
Bernie Sanders.

“There’s a big difference 
between 10,000 at a rally and turning out 3,500 caucus 
attenders on a cold winter night in Iowa. I suspect Bernie Sanders will learn the difference in February,” said Steve McMahon, Dean’s one-time top strategist. “His crowds are enthusiastic and large and fun to watch, but the question is whether they will be effective in the long run.”

Large crowds don’t necessarily translate into delegate support, McMahon said.

“Bernie Sanders needs to move the crowds into action and organize grass-roots support in the early states and so far, I haven’t seen any evidence that that’s occurring,” he said. “He doesn’t seem to be running a grass-roots campaign. It’s a campaign based on big crowds.”

The Summer of Sanders has seen the self-described socialist surge from nearly 50 points 
behind the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to within 15 points, 
according to Real Clear Politics’ average of polls.

Sanders’ aides had to scramble to find a new venue to accommodate more than 7,500 screaming supporters Monday as a planned town hall morphed into a roaring rally in Portland, Maine.

Sanders also recently played to 10,000 fans in Madison, Wis.

“He is drawing massive crowds in all sorts of places,” said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics. “In an Internet age, there’s a segment that increasingly values authenticity. You saw that with Ron Paul. I think Sanders taps into that.”

Sanders has earned the backing of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s anti-Wall Street wing of the Democratic party — mostly young, white progressives — but faces a challenge courting black voters, who have supported Clinton in the past, Trende said.

The 73-year-old Sanders does well in neighboring New Hampshire as a folk hero firebrand, but he likely will run out of steam, said Peter Hoe Burling, a former New Hampshire delegate for 
the Democratic National Committee.

“People talk about Howard Dean’s yowl, but the fact of the matter is, that campaign had peaked at a certain point,” Burling said. “It went as far as it was going to go and there’s the chance Bernie’s campaign is 
going to peak as well. In my mind, his campaign will peak at some point prior to the New Hampshire primary.”

Sanders can’t win in big states with deep reserves of delegates such as New York and California, said Matt Bennett, a veteran Democratic campaign strategist and Clinton supporter.

“He may do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, but he runs into a brick wall after that,” Bennett said.

“He’s not going to have the money or organization to challenge Secretary Clinton in multiple states at the same time on Super Tuesday,” Bennett said.

Sanders also could face high hurdles in the south, said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina-based Republican strategist not aligned with a presidential campaign.

“He’s been very impressive with what he’s been able to do crowd-wise and enthusiasm-wise,” he said. “I think that would carry over some in South Carolina, but he might be just plain too liberal for some of the Democrats around here.

“We’re just generally, even by national standards, more conservative in this state,” Felkel said.

“If he comes to South Carolina and has an impressive crowd, we’ll have to rethink that equation, but right now, I just don’t see it,” he said.

Via: Boston Herald

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Union Members Support Bernie Sanders

Report: 'Hillary Clinton has a union problem'

Bernie Sanders has turned Hillary Clinton’s parade to the White House into a competitive race for the Democratic nomination, as unions prefer Clintons’ socialist opponent.

LaborUnionReport.com organized an informal poll in mid-June 2015 and the results showed that union support for Hillary Clinton was lacking significantly.

Seventy-six percent of union members favor Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. Only 11 percent of union members favored Hillary Clinton.

The report said, “due to her time spent with the employer-friendly Rose law firm (which helps employers fight unions), as well as her stint on the board of directors for Wal-Mart, many union members believe Clinton cannot be trusted.”

Unions distrust Hillary Clinton’s intimacy with Wall Street, according to the report. In addition to that concern, Clinton declined to weigh in on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Labor leaders are opposed to the TPP.

“Hillary Clinton has a union problem,” the report said. “Since no Democrat can win the White House without union support, it is the union problem that may pose a bigger problem than all the others … and it has her campaign very worried.”

Via: WFB

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In Bernie Sanders, an unlikely — but real — threat to Hillary Clinton

ROCHESTER, N.H. — At the first glimpse of the rumpled 73-year-old senator from Vermont, the standing-room-only crowd at a historic inn here Sunday morning erupted — leaping up, waving signs and breaking into chants of “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie!”

The scene has become a familiar one as Bernie Sanders makes a most unexpected surge in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders — a self-described democratic socialist — has seen his crowds swell and is gaining ground in the polls on the formidable Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In New Hampshire, where Sanders was on yet another weekend swing, one survey last week showed him within 8 percentage points of Clinton.

Sanders’s emerging strength has exposed continued misgivings among the party’s progressive base about Clinton, whose team is treading carefully in its public statements. Supporters have acknowledged privately the potential for Sanders to damage her — perhaps winning an early state or two — even if he can’t win the nomination.

“He’s connecting in a way that Hillary Clinton is not,” said Burt Cohen, a former New Hampshire state senator and Sanders supporter who attended Sunday morning’s event, where a nasty rain didn’t seem to deter many people from coming. “He’s talking about things people want to hear. People are used to candidates who are calculated, produced and measured, and they see through that. Bernie’s different.”

Via: Washington Post

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[VIDEO] Sanders Calls for Single Payer Health Care: ‘We Need to Join Rest of Industrialized World’

Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning that he would move for a “Medicare-for-all, single payer” health care system, though he acknowledged that this was not an immediately practical goal.

“We need to join the rest of the industrialized world,” Sanders said. “We are the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right, and yet we end up spending much more than they do.”

“So I do believe that we have to move toward a Medicare for all, single-payer system,” Sanders said, adding that he had “certainly voted for” the ACA. “It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but that certainly should be the goal.”

 

Sanders’ comments come after the Supreme Court “saved” Obamacare by ruling in favor of its federal subsidies last week, the latest and perhaps last of the law’s major existential threats.

The socialist senator from Vermont is enjoying a mini-surge in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, making him the only Democratic figure to currently pose a plausible challenge to prohibitive frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Via: Mediaite

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Hillary Clinton is going to lose: She doesn’t even see the frustrated progressive wave that will nominate Bernie Sanders

EnlargeIn this photo taken May 20, 2015, Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press in Washington. For Democrats who had hoped to lure Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into a presidential campaign, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders might be the next best thing. Sanders, who is opening his official presidential campaign Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont, aims to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and compatible with Warren's platform _ reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)(Credit: AP)

Hillary Clinton went to New York’s Roosevelt Island earlier this month to relaunch her campaign for president. Her first kickoff fell flat, perhaps because she herself didn’t attend, opting instead to send a video greeting card in which people she still insists on calling ‘everyday Americans’ shared their life plans. (To go to school! Plant a garden! Get married!) She came on at the end to say she had plans of her own that include being president, and that she does it all for us.

She delivered a 45-minute speech that told us little more than that three-minute video. She still won’t say where she’d peg the minimum wage or if she’d ever rein in the surveillance state or get us out of Iraq. Most amazing is how she finesses the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Obama so covets. It’s the biggest deal in the history of commerce; its investor tribunals would substitute corporate for democratic will here and around the world — and Clinton hasn’t said boo about it. Some ask how she gets away with it. I’m not so sure she does.

Politicians have always ducked tough issues, but today’s Democrats are the worst. When the TPP came before the House, enough Democrats played it cute to leave the outcome in doubt till the very end. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t tip her hand until just before the vote. Many who voted no never said exactly why. Some want to curb currency manipulation. Some oppose the fast track process, others the secret tribunals or the intellectual property rules that actually restrain competition. If the caucus as a whole has a bottom line, no one knows what it is.

The TPP is a mystery because our leaders wish it so. We don’t know what’s in it because our president won’t let us read it, and not out of respect for precedent or protocol. George W. Bush showed us drafts of his trade agreements. We’re negotiating one right now with Europe, and Europeans get to read those drafts. If a comma gets cut from the TPP, hundreds of corporate lobbyists know in an instant. The only people who don’t know are the American people — and that’s only because our president thinks our knowing would ruin everything.

Via: Salon

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