I was going to get to your post, but I've been on break from classes, and I'm actively trying to think about taxes as little as possible for the moment.
I DO HOWEVER HAVE BERNIE NEWS:
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John Davis remembers a meeting in 1986 when Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, confronted the owners of the city’s largest affordable-housing complex. The federal program that had subsidized the Northgate Apartments for 20 years had a loophole that allowed the landlords to convert the buildings into market rentals or luxury condos.
“Bernie pounded his fist on the conference table in his office and told the owners, ‘Over my dead body are you going to displace 336 working families. You are
not going to convert Northgate into luxury housing,’” recalled Davis, who was Sanders’s key housing aide.
Under Sanders’s leadership, the city adopted a number of laws to stifle the owners’ plans. One ordinance required apartment owners to give residents two years’ notice before a condo conversion. Others gave residents a pre-emptive right to buy the units and prohibited landlords from bulldozing buildings unless they replaced them with the same number of affordable units. (These measures lowered the selling price of the property.) Sanders then worked with the state government and Senator Patrick Leahy to get the $12 million needed to purchase and rehabilitate the buildings. The city allocated funds to help the tenants hire an organizer, form the Northgate Residents Association, and start the process of converting the complex to resident ownership. Today, Northgate Apartments is owned by the tenants and has long-term restrictions to keep the buildings affordable for working families.
The battle over Northgate Apartments illustrates Sanders’s general approach to governing. In addressing this and many other issues, he encouraged grassroots organizing, adopted local laws to protect the vulnerable, challenged the city’s business power brokers, and worked collaboratively with other politicians to create a more livable city.
Now that Sanders is running for president, the eight years he spent as Burlington’s chief executive (1981–89) will be under close scrutiny. Although President Obama recently joked at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that Sanders is a “pot-smoking socialist,” he was actually a hardworking, pragmatic, effective mayor who helped transform Vermont’s largest city (population: 38,000) into a thriving town.
Thanks to the enduring influence of the progressive climate that Sanders and his allies helped to create in Burlington,
the city’s largest housing development is now resident-owned, its largest supermarket is a consumer-owned cooperative, one of its largest private employers is worker-owned, and most of its people-oriented waterfront is publicly owned. Its publicly owned utility, the Burlington Electric Department, recently announced that Burlington is the first American city of any decent size to run entirely on renewable electricity.
Burlington is now widely heralded as an environmentally friendly, lively, and livable city with a thriving economy, including one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. Burlingtonians give Sanders credit for steering the city in a new direction that, despite early skepticism, proved to be broadly popular with voters.
A growing number of cities—including Seattle, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark, and others—are now led by progressive mayors. They are adopting municipal minimum wage laws, requiring developers to build mixed-income housing, strengthening regulations against corporate polluters, and enacting other policies to address the nation’s growing economic inequality and environmental crises.
What they can learn from Sanders is that good ideas are not sufficient. Creating more livable cities requires nurturing a core of activist organizations that can build long-term support for progressive municipal policies."
What Kind of Mayor Was Bernie Sanders? | The Nation
Sen. Bernie Sanders is often characterized by the media as an out of the mainstream presidential candidate, but a new CBS/New York Times poll revealed that 80% of Republicans agree with Sanders on the issue of getting money out of politics.
The
CBS/NYT poll found that:
– 80% of Republicans believe that money has too much influence in our politics.
– 54% believed that most of the time candidates directly help those who gave money to them.
– 81% of Republicans felt that the campaign finance system needed fundamental changes (45%) or a complete rebuild (36%).
– 64% are pessimistic that changes will be made to reform the campaign finance system.
– 71% want to limit the amount that individuals can give to campaigns.
– 73% felt that super PAC spending should be limited by law.
– 76% thought that superPACs should be required to disclose their donors.
All of these positions are held by Bernie Sanders, and the opinion of the majority on each question is the exact opposite of the reasoning used by the majority of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision.
Poll Finds: 80% Of REPUBLICANS Agree With Bernie Sanders On Citizens United
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A presidential candidate is scheduled to hold his first rally in Minnesota Sunday morning.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent politician since 1979, is seeking the democratic nomination, and will likely try to pull support from liberals who are disillusioned with the Clintons.
Sen. Sanders will be hosting a town hall meeting Sunday morning at the Minneapolis American Indian Center on East Franklin Avenue. More than 3,000 people have already registered to attend the event on
Sen. Sanders’ campaign website.
Bernie Sanders To Hold Town Hall Meeting In Mpls. « CBS Minnesota
Friday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan welcomed the co-founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, to talk about why they have thrown their support behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his run for President in 2016.
Cohen and Greenfield, who introduced Sen. Sanders at his campaign kickoff earlier this week and donated ice cream to the crowd, talked about their long association with Sen. Sanders, what a Bernie Sanders-inspired flavored ice cream would taste like, and their commitment to fare wages for employees:
COLMES: Ben, what’s your reaction when people say, and I’m guilty of having said this too, well I’m not sure that he could win. What are the chances he can actually get the nomination and go on and win the Presidency? What’s the purpose of the candidacy? What’s your reaction when you hear that typical argument about Bernie Sanders?
COHEN: He’s a long shot, but so were Ben and Jerry. Every once in a while long shots come in. You know the thing about Bernie is that he’s a populist, and if the policies that he’s supporting, healthcare for all, college for all, putting people back to work, are things that support millions and millions and millions of Americans, the huge majority of Americans. And if they just get behind him, he’ll win.
Ben & Jerry: We Were Long Shots Just Like Bernie Sanders Once | Alan Colmes Radio Show
Joining the ranks of stuffed bears honoring presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama, a Bernie Sanders bear was released last week by the Vermont Teddy Bear company, in an announcement they called a “campaign” that went out on the same day the Vermont senator declared his run for POTUS.
As of Sunday, “several hundred” orders had been placed for the
Bernie Sanders bear, according Jason Baer, vice president of sales and marketing for Vermont Teddy Bear.
“We will probably wait until the actual party nominees to make the other candidates,” said Baer. “We could not resist jumping in earlier with Bernie, as it’s not very often a candidate from Vermont runs!”
Hundreds order Bernie Sanders Look-Alike Teddy Bear - VTDigger
Following recent media attention showcasing Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is adding to his popularity and drawing large crowds during his travels through Iowa, a new study reveals he’s also the only presidential candidate – either Republican or Democrat – to drastically increase his internet presence across multiple media platforms.
“The only announced candidate to improve on his/her net sentiment post-announcement was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. His formal announcement received virtually no attention, and then he received boosts from appearances on network television talk programs on two successive Sundays –the inspiration behind the title of our report: ‘Media Weekends at Bernie’s (and other highlights of the first wave of presidential candidate announcements),’” noted a press release from SHIFT Communications,
Zignal Labs’ public relations agency – the company that conducted the analysis.
The study comes from George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management and Zignal Labs, which joined together and launched the Public Echoes Of Rhetoric In America (PEORIA)
Project. It examines how American voters have reacted to political messages from formal campaign announcements.
Sanders' Popularity Growing Across the Internet, Study Suggests - Breitbart
A candidate worth listening to
Thanks for your article on Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. I hope the
Times will tell us more about the achievements of this remarkable man, whom Vice President Joe Biden described as the conscience of the Senate.
Representing a small state, he has worked tirelessly for the rights of our veterans, has fought for better wages and working conditions, and works to bring jobs back from overseas.
He also is a dedicated advocate for seniors and has submitted a bill to extend Medicare to cover dental care, pointing out that about 25 percent of all Americans over 65 have no teeth — and this in the world's richest country.
He will have a great deal to say in the coming months about our country and its problems, and much of it will probably be very different from what other candidates say. I hope to see more in the
Times.
Wednesday's letters: Sanders a candidate worth listening to | Tampa Bay Times
Hillary Clinton is Charging $1,000 to Join Her ‘Grassroots’ Campaign
