Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts

Friday, June 19, 2020

Mayhem made in Venezuela?: Take a look at the photos of BLM leaders whooping it up with Nicolas Maduro in Harlem and Caracas | American Thinker




Mayhem made in Venezuela?: Take a look at the photos of BLM leaders whooping it up with Nicolas Maduro in Harlem and Caracas | American Thinker



The mainstream media would have you think the riots and looting that have erupted across the country are just spontaneous explosions of pent-up anger over the callous killing of a black suspect, at the hands of a blue-city Minneapolis police officer.

Well, I've covered a lot of riots — from Indonesia to Argentina to Russia to East Timor to Thailand to Venezuela, plus domestic ones in Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — as a journalist.  The one thing that's always come out in the aftermath is that none of these mass rioting and looting events was ever a simple spontaneous eruption.  All big riot events are man-made.

If the press had any curiosity at all, it would look to where the current mayhem is coming from.

Thus far, there have been accurate-looking comparisons of these riots and loot-fests hitting the U.S. on a mass scale to the doings of the Palestinian Authority and parallels to the events of the Russian and French Revolutions.  They are useful as pointers.  But the one place that really shows evidence of instigation is the failed state of Venezuela and its controlling agent, Cuba.  In this case, it's not just the similarities in the end result — the mass riots that engulfed much of South America's conservative-led states last year are remarkably similar to what is happening now in the States.  There's actual evidence of collusion.

Here are some photos of Black Lives Matter founder Opal Tometi whooping it up with Venezuela's malevolent dictator in Harlem:



Maduro is a pariah.  And these photos are recent.  What kind of organization hangs out with a brutal leftist thug like Maduro who is utterly discredited worldwide?  Only one that shares the same aims as Maduro.  Maduro has stated openly that he is all about raining revolution and mayhem on the U.S.  Looks like he's found a partner.  And it's worth noting that Maduro's mentor state, Cuba, has not hesitated to use Harlem-based black grievance groups to enact terror.  In the early 1960s, Fidel Castro's catspaw, Che Guevara, used black militant guerrilla groups in the U.S. to plot out an explosion under the subway below the Macy's flagship department store on black Friday, the then-busiest shopping day of the year in what would have been the first 9/11.  Only J. Edgar Hoover's alert agents stopped it.  No such luck with today's wokester FBI.  Interesting that the rioters seem to have finally laid Macy's low this time.


There was also the BLM appearance in Venezuela, probably Caracas.  Takes some connections to be posted to that country as an election "observer" at a time when no international organization would agree to go there.  How far gone do you have to be to endorse a flamingly fraudulent election?  Opal thought it was fine and was all in for trying to do Maduro the favor of trying to legitimize his dictatorship.  Favors, for sure.



What kind of people hang around with Nicolás Maduro, who's a global pariah, given the starvation and poverty foisted upon his hellhole nation, which, by the way, includes a lot of black people?


Based on the comments from the Latin Americans posting these tweets, the node of connection may have been Danny Glover.  That's the radical far left actor whom news reports said received millions from the Venezuelan regime to make movies about Venezuelan heroes such as Simon Bolivar — and as my Hollywood sources on the inside told me — somehow didn't make them.  Perhaps he never got the money.  Or perhaps the money was for something else.  It's just eyebrow-raising, and he certainly hasn't said anything.  What's known for sure is that unlike most Hollywood celebs, he hasn't repudiated Nicolás Maduro or denounced what has happened to that benighted pariah state.


Think the Latin nexus to riots are far-fetched? That's not the sentiment in Chile, where similar nationwide riots engulfed the prosperous South American nation last year after it had just elected a conservative, albeit weak, president, and talk was rife of Latin American intervention in Venezuela, given the millions of refugees that were flooding out and threatening to destabilize the neighboring countries.


According to this eye-opening report from Breitbart News:

Protests and violent riots throughout the United States, nominally expressing outrage over the death of Minnesota man George Floyd, attracted Latin American leftist iconography this week – not a coincidence given months of violent riots throughout South America, observers told Breitbart News.


Autumn 2019 saw looting, burning, and assorted destructive acts in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile, among other countries. Like the current situation in the United States, violence appeared to erupt nearly simultaneously throughout the continent and, like in America, many locals expressed frustration that the most violent acts appeared to be committed or paid for by foreign actors. 
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile all arrested foreigners, most tied to the socialist and communist regimes of Venezuela and Cuba, accused of fueling violence in the countries.

It's also noteworthy that many of the arrests of violent rioters in Chile, as well as Columbia and Peru, where riots also happened, were of Venezuelan nationals.


And it's even more noteworthy that Maduro and his drug-dealing henchman, Diosdado Cabello, have both vowed to rain riots onto the U.S. Get a load of this from Breitbart:


At the time, one of the most prominent leftists on the continent, Nicolás Maduro henchman and U.S.-sanctions drug trafficker Diosdado Cabello, used his Venezuelan state TV show to warn the United States would soon face similar violence.


"What is happening in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Honduras is just a little breeze, and what is coming is a Bolivarian hurricane," he said, referring to the Venezuelan socialist ideology. "The Bolivarian breeze will reach the United States and it will have someone who governs for the people."


Cabello's statement appeared to be a reference to the 2020 election at the time. His boss, Maduro, endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the 2016 election but did not endorse in 2020. An investigative report by Project Veritas revealed that staffers on Sanders' campaign this year had plans for violence against Americans regardless of Sanders' performance in the election.



Direct links with BLM. Indirect links with Antifa, via Bernie Sanders, who has yet to condemn the Venezuelan dictatorship, or even call it that.



As I noted last year in this piece here, Venezuela since its communist inception has held fomenting revolution all through the hemisphere as its foreign policy aim. The warning was made as early as 2001, at a conference I went to in New York. This could be peak Maduro, finally getting his licks in against the U.S. If so, it's really to demand some answers from Black Lives Matter and Antifa about their sponsorship. And it's really time to hose that Venezuelan hellhole out.



Image credit: Twitter screen shot.

Friday, March 13, 2020

DNC Fraud Law Suit Update W/ Jared Beck (3.12.2020 + Seth Rich Questions Election Commission about Ballot Integrity (6.7.2017)

DNC Fraud Law Suit Update W/ Jared Beck

•Streamed live 12 hours ago



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Seth Rich Questions Election Commission about Ballot Integrity

•Jun 7, 2017



77 subscribers
https://youtu.be/2yOEwQ9ijQ8


https://youtu.be/2yOEwQ9ijQ8


"Either you follow truth wherever it leads you to or you adopt a Truth which depends on the facts you have remaining immutable." Bob Whitaker

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

My name was Seth Rich.



My name was Seth Rich.



Home



You finally found me! I'm the source of the John Podesta/DNC Email hacks. I've been waiting so long for you to join me.


Thanks to Wikileaks and Trump Jr you'll all soon know why Hillary Clinton and John Podesta had me killed.


As you can see I'm no Russian agent. I was just a proud DNC staffer who believed in the system until I found out Hillary Clinton and the DNC rigged the primaries against my candidate Bernie Sanders. That's when I decided to take action and release these emails to Wikileaks.


John Podesta was determined to make an example out of me and had me taken care of. Why did you think they didn't let the FBI examine the DNC servers? Yep, those servers would have lead them straight to me. John couldn't let that happen.


BTW, did you know that John Podesta is a Pedophile? Just ask him about Pizzagate next time you see him for me. Thanks.


Thanks again Wikileaks for upping my reward to solve my murder. I wonder why you'd do that for me? Oh, you are trying to tell the world I was your source. Whoops cat's outta the bag now.






Source:

http://wlsearch.tk/

~~~


Note: You didn't die in vain, Seth. <3


~~~

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Court Claims Nothing Wrong with Rigging Primaries—Dismisses Lawsuit Against DNC | Free Thought Project


Wow. No words. Just this image as my commentary:
~PB


Court Claims Nothing Wrong with Rigging Primaries—Dismisses Lawsuit Against DNC | Free Thought Project

A lawsuit against the DNC and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for the corruption exposed by WikiLeaks during the 2016 Election has been dismissed.


dismissed


The lawsuit brought about by Bernie Sanders supporters against the Democratic National Committee and its former chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has been dismissed after a court conceded that the DNC and Wasserman-Schultz rigged the primaries—but were well within their rights to do so—seriously.


After first assuming all the plaintiff’s allegations were true, for the purposes of weighing their claims, Judge William Zloch dismissed the lawsuit on several grounds. The plaintiffs alleged fraud on the part of the DNC in three different ways:


1. The DNC did not remain unbiased as evidenced through the DNC emails Wikileaks published.


2. Donors to the DNC were defrauded because they donated to Bernie Sanders as a Democrat candidate and the fix was in for Hillary Clinton.


3. The potential for identity theft was demonstrated when the DNC failed to keep its database of donors and their personal information confidential.


As Michael Sainato writes in the Observer, Zloch, dismissed the lawsuit after several months of litigation during which DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own candidate. “In evaluating Plaintiffs’ claims at this stage, the Court assumes their allegations are true—that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent,” the court order dismissing the lawsuit stated.


Zloch concluded the plaintiffs failed to prove they were materially affected by the alleged bias with which the DNC engaged. He wrote:


“The Court must now decide whether Plaintiffs have suffered a concrete injury particularized to them, or one certainly impending, that is traceable to the DNC and its former chair’s conduct—the keys to entering federal court. The Court holds that they have not.”

The overwhelming opinion of those who have actually read WikiLeaks’ leaked DNC email database appears to be that the DNC, Wasserman-Schultz, and the mainstream media all colluded to ensure Clinton would earn the DNC nomination. This was evident on numerous occasions, many of which were caught on live video and openly admitted.



As The Free Thought Project has extensively reported, influential donors to the DNC are suing their political party for fraud in the 2016 presidential election where they say their candidate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, was discriminated against. High-ranking members of the DNC, by way of Wikileaks’ DNC email publications, were caught favoring Hillary Clinton over Sanders and actively working to subvert his chances at winning the party’s nomination.


Judge Zloch dismissed the lawsuit on technicalities (several of the plaintiffs lived outside of the court’s jurisdiction) and precedents (donors to nonprofits have no legal recourse as to what the organization does with the donations). Zloch never really addressed the claims of the plaintiffs, only whether or not they had a legal claim for damages.


Zloch admonished the plaintiffs his court was not the place to air their grievances. Instead, they should have done so at the ballot box, inside the DNC, and to work inside the system—a system they clearly believe to be rife with corruption. Zloch wrote:


“This Order, therefore, concerns only technical matters of pleading and subject-matter jurisdiction. To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech—not through the judiciary.”

Zloch dismissed the case against the DNC and Wasserman-Schultz by declaring, “the Court finds that the named Plaintiffs have not presented a case that is cognizable in federal court.”

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Jared Beck, went off! Here’s what he had to say in response to the dismissal and it’s epic! His rant starts at the 9-minute mark.


His reaction describes the deaths of process server Shawn Lucas, DNC data manager Seth Rich, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Beranton Whisenant alludes to the Deep State, and points the finger of blame at the Military Industrial Complex.:


https://youtu.be/-fmZq8lRyJs


“What really disappoints me about our society, H.A., is the fact that we had two witnesses die in this case, and I still have these f***ing people who call themselves ‘journalists’ mocking us… denigrating us for being concerned about that.


Ya know, it goes beyond a lack of awareness in this country. This country has a vicious, corrupt core… and the MOST vicious, corrupt people are sitting in D.C. right now, running the show and forming the media elite and establishment that surrounds and protects them, and promulgates their bullshit all over the airwaves.


And I am sick and f***ing tired of living in this country and having those be the people that run the show.


We see our clients lose in court, all the time. We see them get shafted by the healthcare system, get shafted by this country, and nobody in this country gives a f*** about them, who’s in the leadership…


Let me tell you something: I know that those problems… the problem in this country, in terms of corruption… I know that it’s so deep-seated… It’s taken root over many, many decades, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon.


But my HOPE—my hope in filing this lawsuit was that at least it might be some kind of spark to get things rolling, so that by the time my kids are adults in this society, they’re not living under an immoral, oligarchic, tyrannical piece-of-shit government that f***ing goes to war in MY name, with my tax dollars, on a perpetual basis and f***ing incinerating people, and I have NO f***ing channel to STOP it.


And as an American, I am ashamed. I am ashamed to call myself an American.
And let me tell you something else: There were people in Nazi Germany who didn’t know what the f*** was going on, either… They were f***ing clueless. They were f***ing brainwashed. And I’m not making this comparison because of any bullshit comparison between Trump and Nazism that’s going around that the mainstream media wants you to believe.

What I’m talking about is the REAL government we have in this country.
And in my view, they are morally equivalent, or worse, than the government of Nazi Germany… Because they’ve been going on longer, and they’ve been f***ing over not just everybody in THIS country, but around the world.
And I’m f***ing sick of it, as a human being.”

The dismissal of the DNC voter fraud lawsuit of 2017 will go down in history as a whimper in the annals of unsuccessful movements against the Deep State and its actors. But, perhaps, Beck’s comments will remain as a testament to just how powerful the establishment is, and the lengths to which they will go, including allegedly murdering anyone who gets in their way.



Friday, July 29, 2016

Real Authenticity!

WHOA! This woman is PISSED!


"We need to clean house, and I hope everybody understands the seriousness of this. If We the People do not get behind Democracy harder than we ever have in our entire lives, we're not going to have ANY Democracy!" ~ "What I remember is that by the thousands, and hundreds of thousands, in THIS election, people were wiped off the voter rolls, people's affiliation with prime party was swept to another. Did we hear the leaders of the Democratic Party, including President Obama, get out and try to do anything about it? NO, we've got to STOP it, we've got to clean house! We've gotta DEMAND it!".


Then she goes off on Hillary, and into an emotional rant about why she is there, "My heart's broken! I want my grandchildren to live in a Democracy! I'm 63 years old, I could be out working in my garden! I could be crotcheting for the next little great-grandchild I got coming! But I'm here because I really want this earth to LIVE! I want my babies to live, I want my grandchildren to go to college, and I don't give a shit who says we can't afford it, because this is about priority spending! Are the people that pull that lever for Hillary Clinton going to be able to answer one question...Is is OK for people to cheat and lie? Is that what we want in the the most important office in our world? Because that's what you're going to be voting for!"


She brought me near to tears with her passion!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77LTh9QIhxw


Monday, February 22, 2016

Nickel and Dimed in 2016: You Can’t Earn a Living on the Minimum Wage By Peter Van Buren




Nickel and Dimed in 2016:   
You Can’t Earn a Living on the Minimum Wage

By Peter Van Buren
Posted by D.J. Apollo

http://kielarowski.net/2016/02/16/nickel-and-dimed-in-2016/#like-11671

    When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?

    Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.

    My Working Life Then

    A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs, to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn’t afford childcare. (As it happens, 29% of low-wage employees are single parents.)

    At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America.

    I was lucky. I didn’t become one of those millions of people trapped as the “working poor.” I made it out. But with all the election talk about the economy, I decided it was time to go back and take another look at where I had been, and where too many others still are.

    My Working Life Now

    I found things were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2012, which meant — because there was no real improvement — that things were actually worse.

    This time around, I worked for a month and a half at a national retail chain in New York City. While mine was hardly a scientific experiment, I’d be willing to bet an hour of my minimum-wage salary ($9 before taxes) that what follows is pretty typical of the New Economy.

    Just getting hired wasn’t easy for this 56-year-old guy. To become a sales clerk, peddling items that were generally well under $50 a pop, I needed two previous employment references and I had to pass a credit check. Unlike some low-wage jobs, a mandatory drug test wasn’t part of the process, but there was a criminal background check and I was told drug offenses would disqualify me. I was given an exam twice, by two different managers, designed to see how I’d respond to various customer situations. In other words, anyone without some education, good English, a decent work history, and a clean record wouldn’t even qualify for minimum-wage money at this chain.

    And believe me, I earned that money. Any shift under six hours involved only a 15-minute break (which cost the company just $2.25). Trust me, at my age, after hours standing, I needed that break and I wasn’t even the oldest or least fit employee. After six hours, you did get a 45-minute break, but were only paid for 15 minutes of it.

    The hardest part of the job remained dealing with… well, some of you. Customers felt entitled to raise their voices, use profanity, and commit Trumpian acts of rudeness toward my fellow employees and me. Most of our “valued guests” would never act that way in other public situations or with their own coworkers, no less friends. But inside that store, shoppers seemed to interpret “the customer is always right” to mean that they could do any damn thing they wished. It often felt as if we were penned animals who could be poked with a stick for sport, and without penalty. No matter what was said or done, store management tolerated no response from us other than a smile and a “Yes, sir” (or ma’am).

    The store showed no more mercy in its treatment of workers than did the customers. My schedule, for instance, changed constantly. There was simply no way to plan things more than a week in advance. (Forget accepting a party invitation. I’m talking about childcare and medical appointments.) If you were on the closing shift, you stayed until the manager agreed that the store was clean enough for you to go home. You never quite knew when work was going to be over and no cell phone calls were allowed to alert babysitters of any delay.

    And keep in mind that I was lucky. I was holding down only one job in one store. Most of my fellow workers were trying to juggle two or three jobs, each with constantly changing schedules, in order to stitch together something like a half-decent paycheck.

    In New York City, that store was required to give us sick leave only after we’d worked there for a full year — and that was generous compared to practices in many other locales. Until then, you either went to work sick or stayed home unpaid. Unlike New York, most states do not require such a store to offer any sick leave, ever, to employees who work less than 40 hours a week. Think about that the next time your waitress coughs.

    Minimum Wages and Minimum Hours

    Much is said these days about raising the minimum wage (and it should be raised), and indeed, on January 1, 2016, 13 states did raise theirs. But what sounds like good news is unlikely to have much effect on the working poor.

    In New York, for instance, the minimum went from $8.75 an hour to the $9.00 I was making. New York is relatively generous. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and 21 states require only that federal standard. Presumably to prove some grim point or other, Georgia and Wyoming officially mandate an even lower minimum wage and then unofficially require the payment of $7.25 to avoid Department of Labor penalties. Some Southern states set no basement figure, presumably for similar reasons.

    Don’t forget: any minimum wage figure mentioned is before taxes. Brackets vary, but let’s knock an even 10% off that hourly wage just as a reasonable guess about what is taken out of a minimum-wage worker’s salary. And there are expenses to consider, too. My round-trip bus fare every day, for instance, was $5.50. That meant I worked most of my first hour for bus fare and taxes. Keep in mind that some workers have to pay for childcare as well, which means that it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which someone could actually come close to losing money by going to work for short shifts at minimum wage.

    In addition to the fundamental problem of simply not paying people enough, there’s the additional problem of not giving them enough hours to work. The two unfortunately go together, which means that raising the minimum rate is only part of any solution to improving life in the low-wage world.

    At the store where I worked for minimum wage a few years ago, for instance, hours were capped at 39 a week. The company did that as a way to avoid providing the benefits that would kick in once one became a “full time” employee. Things have changed since 2012 — and not for the better.

    Four years later, the hours of most minimum-wage workers are capped at 29. That’s the threshold after which most companies with 50 or more employees are required to pay into the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) fund on behalf of their workers. Of course, some minimum wage workers get fewer than 29 hours for reasons specific to the businesses they work for.

    It’s Math Time

    While a lot of numbers follow, remember that they all add up to a picture of how people around us are living every day.

    In New York, under the old minimum wage system, $8.75 multiplied by 39 hours equaled $341.25 a week before taxes. Under the new minimum wage, $9.00 times 29 hours equals $261 a week. At a cap of 29 hours, the minimum wage would have to be raised to $11.77 just to get many workers back to the same level of take-home pay that I got in 2012, given the drop in hours due to the Affordable Care Act. Health insurance is important, but so is food.

    In other words, a rise in the minimum wage is only half the battle; employees need enough hours of work to make a living.

    About food: if a minimum wage worker in New York manages to work two jobs (to reach 40 hours a week) without missing any days due to illness, his or her yearly salary would be $18,720. In other words, it would fall well below the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. That’s food stamp territory. To get above the poverty line with a 40-hour week, the minimum wage would need to go above $10. At 29 hours a week, it would need to make it to $15 an hour. Right now, the highest minimum wage at a state level is in the District of Columbia at $11.50. As of now, no state is slated to go higher than that before 2018. (Some cities do set their own higher minimum wages.)

    So add it up: The idea of raising the minimum wage (“the fight for $15”) is great, but even with that $15 in such hours-restrictive circumstances, you can’t make a loaf of bread out of a small handful of crumbs. In short, no matter how you do the math, it’s nearly impossible to feed yourself, never mind a family, on the minimum wage. It’s like being trapped on an M.C. Escher staircase.

    The federal minimum wage hit its high point in 1968 at $8.54 in today’s dollars and while this country has been a paradise in the ensuing decades for what we now call the “One Percent,” it’s been downhill for low-wage workers ever since. In fact, since it was last raised in 2009 at the federal level to $7.25 per hour, the minimum has lost about 8.1% of its purchasing power to inflation. In other words, minimum-wage workers actually make less now than they did in 1968, when most of them were probably kids earning pocket money and not adults feeding their own children.

    In adjusted dollars, the minimum wage peaked when the Beatles were still together and the Vietnam War raged.

    Who Pays?

    Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage focus on the possibility that doing so would put small businesses in the red. This is disingenuous indeed, since 20 mega-companies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers;Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) is in second place; and McDonald’s takes third. Overall, 60% of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered “small” by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, as was done with Obamacare.

    Keep in mind that not raising wages costs you money.

    Those minimum wage workers who can’t make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well, Walmart isn’t paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money, and Walmart employees account for 18% of all food stamps issued. In other words, those everyday low prices at the chain are, in part, subsidized by your tax money.

    If the minimum wage goes up, will spending on food benefits programs go down? Almost certainly. But won’t stores raise prices to compensate for the extra money they will be shelling out for wages? Possibly. But don’t worry — raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mean a Big Mac would cost all of 17 cents more.

    Time Theft

    My retail job ended a little earlier than I had planned, because I committed time theft.

    You probably don’t even know what time theft is. It may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but minimum-wage employers take time theft seriously. The basic idea is simple enough: if they’re paying you, you’d better be working. While the concept is not invalid per se, the way it’s used by the mega-companies reveals much about how the lowest wage workers are seen by their employers in 2016.

    The problem at my chain store was that its in-store cafe was a lot closer to my work area than the time clock where I had to punch out whenever I was going on a scheduled break. One day, when break time on my shift came around, I only had 15 minutes. So I decided to walk over to that cafe, order a cup of coffee, and then head for the place where I could punch out and sit down (on a different floor at the other end of the store).

    We’re talking an extra minute or two, no more, but in such operations every minute is tabulated and accounted for. As it happened, a manager saw me and stepped in to tell the cafe clerk to cancel my order. Then, in front of whoever happened to be around, she accused me of committing time theft — that is, of ordering on the clock. We’re talking about the time it takes to say, “Grande, milk, no sugar, please.” But no matter, and getting chastised on company time was considered part of the job, so the five minutes we stood there counted as paid work.

    At $9 an hour, my per-minute pay rate was 15 cents, which meant that I had time-stolen perhaps 30 cents. I was, that is, being nickel and dimed to death.

    Economics Is About People

    It seems wrong in a society as wealthy as ours that a person working full-time can’t get above the poverty line. It seems no less wrong that someone who is willing to work for the lowest wage legally payable must also give up so much of his or her self-respect and dignity as a kind of tariff. Holding a job should not be a test of how to manage life as one of the working poor.

    I didn’t actually get fired for my time theft. Instead, I quit on the spot. Whatever the price is for my sense of self-worth, it isn’t 30 cents. Unlike most of this country’s working poor, I could afford to make such a decision. My life didn’t depend on it. When the manager told a handful of my coworkers watching the scene to get back to work, they did. They couldn’t afford not to.

    Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the “reconstruction” of Iraq in his book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper’s War.

    Copyright 2016 Peter Van Buren

    https://medium.com/@TomDispatch/tomgram-peter-van-buren-minimum-wage-minimum-chance-2eb3f6631cbe#.hwm40y3fo

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Bernie Sanders, Iowa Caucus Speech 2/1/16





"Thank you. Iowa, thank you. Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state. We had no political organization; we had no money; no name recognition. And we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America.

And tonight while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie.

And while the results are still not complete, it looks like we'll have half of the Iowa delegates. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Secretary Clinton, somebody — yep — and her organization for waging a very vigorous campaign.

And I want to thank Governor O'Malley. It's never easy to lose. I've lost more than one campaign. But he should know that he contributed a whole lot to the dialogue, that he ran an issue-oriented campaign, and he won the respect of the American people. ... If I think about what happened tonight, I think the people of Iowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and, by the way, to the media establishment.

...Given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics. What the American people have said — and by the way, I hear this not just from progressives, I hear it from conservatives, I hear it from moderates — that is: "We can no longer continue to have a corrupt campaign finance system." I am the former chairman of the Senate veterans committee. In that capacity, not only have I worked hard to try to protect the interest of our veterans, I've had the privilege of meeting so many, men and women, who put their lives on the line to defend us and protect our way of life.

And what they were protecting is an American democracy of: One person, one vote. Not billionaires buying elections. I am overwhelmed, and I am moved by the fact that millions of people throughout this country have helped volunteer in our campaign, that three -- we have received in this campaign 3.5 million individual contributions. People who went to BernieSanders.com. And you know what the average contribution was? It was $27!

We do not represent the interests of the billionaire class, Wall Street or corporate America. We don't want their money. We will — and I am very proud to tell you, we are the only candidate on the Democratic side without a super PAC. And the reason that we have done so well here in Iowa, the reason I believe we're going to do so well in New Hampshire, and in the other states that follow, the reason is, the American people are saying no to a rigged economy. They no longer want to see an economy in which the average American works longer hours for low wages while almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1%.

What the American people understand is this country was based and is based on fairness. It is not fair when the top 1/10th of 1% today owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. It is not fair when the 20 wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America. So you guys ready for a radical idea? Well, so is America. And that radical idea is, we are going to create an economy that works for working families not just the billionaire class.

And when millions of our people are working for starvation wages, we are going to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And, yes, we are going to have pay equity for women. I've been all over this state of Iowa: We have spoken to some 70,000 people, and in meeting after meeting, I hear people standing up and, they say: "Bernie, I went to college. I graduated college — now I am 60, 80, 90 thousand dollars in debt." That is crazy. That is crazy. They want to get a decent education; they should not be punished.

That is why I believe in the year 2016, public colleges and universities should be tuition free. And then my critics say, well, Bernie, that's a great idea, all this free stuff, how are you going to pay for it? I will tell you how we will pay for it, we are going to impose a tax on Wall Street speculation. The greed, the recklessness and the illegal behavior of Wall Street drove this economy to its knees. The American people bailed out Wall Street, now it's Wall Street's time to help the middle class. And when we talk about transforming America. We will end the disgrace of having more people in jail than any other country. Disproportionately African American and Latino. What we are going to do is provide jobs and education for our kids not more jails and incarceration. I'll tell you something that really does astound me. I'm on the Senate energy committee — on the Senate environmental committee — I have talked to scientists all over the world. The debate is over: Climate change is real. And we have a moral responsibility to work with countries throughout the world to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

What amazes me, what totally amazes me, is that we have not one Republican candidate for president prepared to come up and tell us, and agree with what virtually all scientists agree with, and you know why they are not prepared to do that? Because on the day that they do acknowledge the reality of climate change and call for change, you know what happens? They're going to lose their campaign funds from the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel (industry) ...

So I say to the Republicans, stop worrying about your campaign funds from big oil or the Koch brothers, worry about the planet you're going to be leaving your children and your grandchildren. Now, I have been criticized during this campaign for many, many things. Every single day. That's okay. That's okay.

But let me repeat what I believe. I believe that at a time when every major country on Earth guarantees health care to all people as a right, that I believe that we should do the same in the United States of America.

So for all of my critics out there in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and in corporate America, wherever you may be, let me tell you straight up, yes, I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege!

And that is why I believe in a Medicare for all single payer program which will not only guarantee health care to all, it will not only end the pharmaceutical ripoff of the American people but it will save the middle-class family, the average middle-class family thousands of dollars a year in health care costs.

Let me conclude by saying what no other candidate for president will tell you. And that is that no president, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody else, will be able to bring about the changes that the working families and the middle class of this country, that our children, that the seniors, our seniors deserve. No one president can do it because the powers that be, Wall Street with their endless supply of money, corporate America, the large campaign donors are so powerful that no president can do what has to be done alone. And that is why — and that is why what Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution.

A political revolution that says when millions of people come together, including those who've given up on the political process, they're so dismayed and so frustrated with what goes on in Washington, with young people who before had never been involved in the political process, when young people and working people and seniors begin to stand up and say loudly and clearly, enough is enough, that our government, the government of our great country belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires, when that happens we will transform this country. Thank you all very much."

~Bernie Sanders, Iowa Caucus Speech 2/1/16


On C-Span
http://www.c-span.org/video/?404038-1/bernie-sanders-caucus-night-speech

On YouTube
https://youtu.be/g8QZjCOgeBo

On facebook
https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/videos/972918272763177/?pnref=story

BernieSander.com
https://berniesanders.com/

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 This is your movement.

Tonight we accomplished what the corporate media and political establishment once believed was impossible, and I want to be clear with you about what this really means.

This result is a victory for our political revolution. We have proved that when people come together, anything is possible. New Hampshire votes next, and what counts now is how we respond in this moment.

Make a contribution to our campaign tonight. Thank you.

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/how_we_respond?refcode=ads_fb_160201

Friday, April 11, 2014

What Happened to the American Dream? ~ Democracy vs. Oligarchy ~ A Threat to American Democracy


What Happened to the American Dream?
Sen. Bernie Sanders discusses oligarchy in a Senate floor speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWApW2eliRM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Democracy vs. Oligarchy
Monday, March 31, 2014
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/democracy-vs-oligarchy?utm_source=berniebuzz&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Read+Bernie+on+Democracy+vs+Oligarchy+link&utm_campaign=National+Bernie+Buzz+04-11

Poll: Do you support limiting individual and coporate contributions to political candidates?

Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech

In his 1943 painting "Freedom of Speech," Norman Rockwell illustrated American democracy in action by depicting a man speaking up at a town meeting. A framed poster of Rockwell’s painting hangs proudly on a wall in my Senate office in Burlington, Vt.

Since 1990, when I was first elected to Congress, I have held hundreds of town meetings in almost every community in Vermont.  Just this past Sunday I held a town meeting in Middlebury, Vt., with a video connection to meetings in three other towns.  At these town meetings I listen to what my constituents have to say, answer questions and give a rundown of what I'm working on and what's going on in Washington.

This process – an elected official meeting with ordinary citizens – is called "democracy."

Ironically, at the same time as I was holding town meetings in Vermont, a handful of prospective 2016 Republican presidential candidates (Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Scott Walker) trekked to Las Vegas to audition for the support of Sheldon Adelson, the multi-billionaire casino tycoon who spent at least $93 million underwriting conservative candidates in the last election cycle.  Those candidates were in Las Vegas for the sole purpose of attempting to win hundreds of millions from him for their presidential campaigns.

The disastrous 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United threw out campaign funding laws that limited what wealthy individuals and corporations could spend on elections. Since that ruling, campaign spending by Adelson, the Koch brothers and a handful of other billionaire families has fundamentally undermined American democracy. If present trends continue, elections will not be decided by one-person, one-vote, but by a small number of very wealthy families who spend huge amounts of money supporting right-wing candidates who protect their interests.

This process – a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process – is called "oligarchy."

The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.

Clearly, if we are to retain the fundamentals of American democracy, we need to overturn the Supreme Court decision. The fact that more than 500 communities and 16 states have expressed support for overturning Citizens United is a good step forward, but much more needs to be done.

Overturning Citizens United, however, is not enough. If we are serious about elections being fought over ideas, we must move toward public funding of elections.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Threat to American Democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQOCfweYLrE

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