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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California: Retiree with $183,690 Annual Pension Attacks Pension Critics

“Critics of public employee retirement benefits are engaging in hyperbole and pointing to potholes as evidence that millions of elderly Californians should be stripped of their retirement savings.”
Brian Rice, president, Sacramento Area Fire Fighters, Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2015

Notwithstanding the possibility that saying pension reformers want to see “millions of elderly Californians stripped of their retirement savings” is itself “hyperbole,” Brian Rice’s recent Sacramento Bee submission requires a detailed rebuttal. Rice’s piece, entitled “Pensions aren’t being paid at expense of filling potholes,” was in response to a study written by Stephen Eide and released by the Manhattan Institute entitled “California Crowd-Out, How Rising Retirement Benefit Costs Threaten Municipal Services,” published in April 2015.

Rice leads off by attempting to link the Manhattan Institute to the supposedly infamous Koch Bros., despite offering zero evidence that the Koch Brothers contribute to that organization. And, of course, he is relying on this unsubstantiated link to discredit Eide’s work, apparently because if the Koch’s funded the work, then the author had to come up with data and conclusions that fit their agenda, instead of the facts and logic.

We’ll get to facts and logic in a moment, but first it is necessary to consider Brian Rice’s agenda. Because there is virtually no comparison between California’s urban firefighters and the “working class,” “minority, low-income and rural communities,” to whom Rice makes reference in his article, and for whom unions are more legitimately challenged to represent. Brian Rice, who retired in 2011 after 28 years of service, collected a pension in 2013 of $183,690, NOT including other benefits which probably add at least another $10,000 to his total retirement package.

Here’s pension data for Brian Rice. Notice how during retirement his pension still increases each year.

Via: California Political Review

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Reid hammered by GOP after claiming all ObamaCare 'horror stories' untrue

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being hammered by Republican lawmakers after he claimed on the Senate floor that all the ObamaCare "horror stories" being circulated are untrue.

Reid tried to clarify his remarks late Wednesday by saying he was only referring to the “vast majority” of stories featured in ads funded by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and not the complaints of everyday Americans. However, he added fuel to the fire by continuing to slam the group’s backers, the Koch brothers, calling them “un-American.” 

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, in response, said Reid had effectively "attacked the character and integrity of every American who had the courage to share how they're being hurt by the president's health care law." 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called Reid's original remarks "astounding and offensive." 

Reid said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor that he believes Americans for Prosperity hires actors in their ads to tell fake stories about canceled policies, higher premiums and ruined lives under ObamaCare.

“There’s plenty of horror stories being told,” Reid said. “All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.” 

It was an apparent reference to, among other instances, an AFP ad that featured a woman with cancer who claimed her health care became unaffordable under the law. Her story was called into question by critics, but she and AFP are standing by the ad. 

Via: Fox News

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'Evil' Koch brothers just 59th on top political donation list

Sometimes, if you listen to some Democrats, they're running against the "Evil" Koch brothers rather than a specific Republican candidate.

The brothers that liberals like to hate are often trotted out as prime examples of why campaign finance reform is necessary. They are often portrayed as one of the biggest contributors to political candidates, their evil money financing evil Republicans.

The group OpenSecrets.com has compiled a list of top donors to candidates and, to the left's surprise, the Koch brothers are far down the list.

Washington Examiner:

Charles and David Koch are the two most evil people in American politics, right? We know that because Jane Mayer proved it with her landmark "Covert Operations" tour de liberal force in 2010.

Well, it turns out that Mayer's aim was off just a little, by like 58 slots on the all-time biggest donors in American politics list, as compiled by OpenSecrets.org.

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.

Unions, unions, unions

So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are ... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.

These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).

In other words, the six biggest union donors in American politics gave 15 times more to mostly Democrats than the Evil Koch Bros.

Via: American Thinker

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Koch Brothers’ Group Uses Health Care Law to Attack Democrats

WASHINGTON — Americans for Prosperity, the political group backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, is targeting three of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats who are up for re-election next year. The group’s efforts are part of a new $3.5 million attack advertising campaign that hammers lawmakers for supporting President Obama’s health care law.

The senators — Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana — are all from conservative-leaning states that voted to elect Mitt Romney in 2012. The ads will start running in those states on Wednesday.

Americans for Prosperity is also targeting three Democratic members of the House who are in danger of losing next year: Ron Barber of Arizona, Joe Garcia of Florida and Patrick Murphy, also of Florida.

With the health care law’s flaws now front and center, Republicans and their allies have been trying to ratchet up the pressure on Democrats, especially where voters are most likely to respond negatively to the Affordable Care Act.

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, said that reminding voters about problems with the way the law had been carried out so far was part of a much larger strategy.

“We want to make sure Obamacare is the No. 1 issue they’re thinking about,” he said. “We believe repealing Obamacare is a long-term effort, and a key part of that effort is keeping it in front of the American people night and day.”

The ads are specifically aimed at women because the group’s research has shown that they are not only more undecided than men about the merits of the Affordable Care Act, but that they also tend to make the decisions about their family’s health care.

Women are featured as narrators in the ads.

Via: NYT

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Shock report: Liberal groups spent more on state elections in 2012 than conservatives

Do you think the Koch brothers and other super-rich conservatives are the ones spending more money than anyone else to influence elections in states across the country?

You’re wrong.

A new study by a non-profit investigative journalism outfit says unions and liberal groups are actually the ones dumping the most dough into elections through third party groups.

The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity — funded in part by the liberal billionaire George Soros — did an analysis of spending since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. That case opened up the ability of outside groups to spend freely on elections.

What the report found: in 2012, outside nonprofits and super PACs spent at least $209 million on state elections, but pro-Democratic Party groups outspent their Republican counterpoints by about $8 million.

The authors use last year’s gubernatorial election in New Hampshire to show how such spending from liberal groups have won races. Republican candidate Ovide Lamontagne had much more in the campaign coffers than Democrat Maggie Hassan. But the report points out that the groups with union ties spent nearly $7 million and national unions spent $2 million directly in support of Hassan, who went on to win the race.

“Hassan was propped up and carried to victory by the outside groups,” Fergus Cullen, a GOP operative, told the authors.

Via: Daily Caller

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KOCH INDUSTRIES SEND LETTER TO THE SENATE: REID LIED ABOUT US

On Tuesday, Koch Industries, the company run by the left’s favorite bugaboo, the Koch brothers, sent a letter to the Senate denying that they had anything to do with the government shutdown. Members of the mainstream press, including The New York Times, have attempted to blame the Kochs for the shutdown. So has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

“A great deal of what you read and hear about Koch Industries is erroneous or misleading,” Philip Ellender, president of government and public affairs at the Koch Companies, wrote to Reid. “Indeed, there was false information presented about Koch on the Senate floor by Senate Majority Leader Reid, who claimed yesterday that Koch was behind the shutdown of the federal government in an effort to defund the Affordable Care Act or ‘Obamacare.’….Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare.”

The left, however, is still operating from the 2012 anti-Romney playbook; if something is wrong, it must be the Koch brothers’ fault.

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

Via: Breitbart

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