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Sanders at White House: Statehood and Democracy
“Two states — Vermont and Wyoming — have smaller populations. About ten more have populations that are comparable. The fact that we’ve not been able to determine our own policies has done real damage to the people of the city. There’s some attention paid to Congress running roughshod over the public’s attempts to have gun control or medical marijuana, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We don’t get to appoint or elect our own judges — that’s done through Congress. Congressmen have even threatened to arrest city officials for not being sufficiently servile. We don’t have budget autonomy.…
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FBI is “Cooking up” Cases Against Muslims
“A report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the International Human Rights Clinic in 2012 also studied the use of sting operations and asserted that ‘the government’s use of intrusive surveillance, untrained paid informants, and manufactured terrorism plots raises serious human rights concerns that must immediately be addressed.’ “While outrage has rightly been focused on Donald Trump’s Islamo-racist rants, attention should also be paid to the Bush and Obama administration’s long-running ‘counterterrorism’ policies that fan the flames of bigotry. The use of paid informants to entrap and demonize vulnerable members of the Muslim community has been…
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Hillary Clinton’s “Faux Feminism”
“Clinton’s biggest policy contribution as first lady of the United States was in the area of health-care reform. There she played a critical role in narrowing the national policy discourse — by disavowing a single-payer system, which would lower costs and ensure that everyone could have access to care, as in Canada. … This is a feminist issue. As the Our Bodies Ourselves organization — authors of the indispensable women’s health book of the same name — pointed out in 2009, single-payer health care (also recognizable to U.S. policy wonks as Medicare for All) is the only system in which…
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AP Calling Nomination a “Disservice to Democracy”
“Superdelegates — who have a role in the Democratic nominating process based on their institutional positions rather than being chosen by voters — do not vote until the Democratic National Convention, to be held on July 25. They can declare their intention to vote for one candidate or another, just as voters can tell pollsters who they intend to vote for before Election Day, but like voters they can (and do) change their mind at any time before the actual voting. Media do not generally call elections weeks before the actual voting based on voters’ intentions.”
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NSA, Trump and Clinton vs Snowden Facts
Wheeler said today: “Emails released to VICE News reveal that multiple Edward Snowden colleagues reported discussions about privacy or the Constitution — but NSA deemed those conversations not to rise to raising concerns. The emails also reveal NSA’s previous story, that Snowden had submitted and received a response to a simple question from NSA’s General Counsel, was actually not quite that simple. In fact, a senior NSA official apologized to NSA’s Director Admiral Mike Rogers because he did not provide necessary context. But when we tried to answer questions about that context, such as why NSA was just writing up…
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Latino Vote in California: Trump’s Divisiveness and Clinton’s Policies
“The protest at a Clinton event in East Los Angeles on May 5 represented an elevated political consciousness where we’re not reacting to divisive rhetoric but seeing policy for what it is, and if Hillary Clinton wants to continue in the ‘Deporter-in-Chief’s’ [President Obama’s] footsteps, that’s something that’s caused a definite form of activism from certain segments of Latino communities where we did see youth, undocumented youth, protesting in the offices of not Republicans, but Democrats, and pushing the agenda forward until there were these concessions for DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] and DAPA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]…
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Clinton Foundation Opaque “Fundraising Arm of Campaign”
Silverstein said today: “The Clinton Foundation is a de facto fundraising arm for the Clinton family, its cronies and of Hillary Clinton’s political campaign. It’s a way for people — especially foreign leaders and wealthy individuals — to curry favor with unlimited money that is incredibly opaque. It is only able to operate because of the meaningless ‘memorandum of understanding’ the Foundation signed with the Obama administration.” Silverstein writes: “It is beyond dispute that former President Clinton has been directly involved in helping foundation donors and his personal cronies get rich. Even worse, it is beyond dispute that these very…
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Are New Payday Reforms Meaningful? Is Postal Banking a Solution?
“The CFPB’s approach seems to be more concerned with getting tough on borrowers rather than lenders. Poor people don’t need more discipline. They need access to credit and inexpensive financial services. The rules will make it harder for people to access the short-term cash they need to get through tough spots at a time when wages are low, partial employment has replaced full employment, and being poor is expensive. Over 60 percent of Americans currently lack the financial security to survive a $500 emergency. And, of course, if the CFPB really did get tough on lenders, they could simply stop…
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California Frackin’
“Last Friday, the Obama administration released two reports that would allow renewed offshore fracking in California after the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit for lack of environmental review. The two reports claimed that offshore fracking poses no significant environmental impact, despite new peer-reviewed science that demonstrates that fracking chemicals, and the oil and gas they release, pose significant risks to public health and the environment. The reports come one year after the Santa Barbara oil spill in which more than 100,000 gallons of crude bled into the ocean. The spill was but one shocking example of how offshore fracking…
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Clinton Caters to the Military-Industrial Complex
“She is counting on such voters to be scared of Trump. Watch out! He might get us into war through what she calls his ‘reckless risky talk.’ Such talk is bad. But reckless risky actions are worse — especially when they lead to war, as [Clinton’s] have already done. The disastrous Libyan regime change war is the centerpiece of the ‘experience’ which she boasts should qualify her to be in a position to start more wars.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn