SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2015 11:00 AM PDT

7 ways Bernie Sanders could transform America

He may not capture the Democratic nomination, but the Vermont senator still has a chance to reshape the party VIDEO

TOPICS: VIDEO, THE DAILY DOT, BERNIE SANDERS, GERMANY, DENMARK, SWEDEN, HILLARY CLINTON,WALL STREET, BUSINESS NEWS, POLITICS NEWS

Bernie Sanders (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

This article originally appeared on The Daily Dot.

Say what you will about the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), but if nothing else, it has certainly introduced some interesting ideas into America’s political debate. Considering that the most recent polls show Hillary Clinton with a nearly five-to-one lead over her nearest rival, this can only be viewed as a positive thing.

As Reddit‘s favorite politician, Bernie Sanders has enormous influence on our political discourse, and his recent policies have been making huge headlines on the Internet. Here are seven ways in which our national discussion on a wide range of issues could be transformed by the Sanders campaign.

1) Guaranteeing free college

In a press conference on Monday, Sanders advocated that the government fund tuition at four-year public colleges and universities through a so-called Robin Hood tax on Wall Street, one that would set a 50 cent tax on every $100 of stock trades on stock sales, as well as lesser amounts on other financial transactions.

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While Sanders’ critics are expected to denounce the plan as socialistic, the Vermont Senator is quick to point out that similar proposals are already in effect and successful elsewhere. “Countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and many more are providing free or inexpensive higher education for their young people,” Sanders points out. “They understand how important it is to be investing in their youth. We should be doing the same.”

Although Obama promised free community college for students who qualify, Bernie Sanders’ proposed policy shows that with America’s burgeoning debt crisis, we need to go even further.

2) Addressing income inequality

In an interview with the Associated Press confirming his presidential run, Sanders cited America’s growing income inequality as one of the chief motivators behind his campaign, a well-timed stance given the recent #FightFor15 on Twitter.

“What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels,” Sanders argued. “This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans.”

Sanders has proposed a number of reforms to solve this problem, from legislation that would close corporate tax loopholes to raising the minimum wage above $7.25 an hour, a rate Sanders describes as a “starvation wage.” For the working poor, getting by continues to be a daily struggle, and Sanders is fighting to change that.

3) Regulating Wall Street

If you think Sanders’ free college plan has Wall Street concerned, you can only imagine how they feel about Sanders’ proposed bill for breaking up banks that are considered “too big to fail.” In fact, polls show 58 percent of likely voters agreewith his basic argument that “if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” indicating that merely denouncing Sanders as a radical won’t necessarily work for this measure.

What’s more, banking lobbyists are concerned that anti-bank sentiment within the Democratic grassroots could push Clinton to the left on this issue. “The prospects of it becoming law are nil,” reported one banking lobbyist to the Hill. “But we care about whether this impacts Hillary and whether she’ll try to pander to the far left.”

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But for the millions who continue to be affected by the 2008 crash and the effects of the American banking bubble on our Great Recession, it’s not just about pushing Hillary to the left. It’s about pushing America forward.

4) Legalizing marijuana

Although Sanders told Time magazine that he doesn’t consider marijuana legalization to be “one of the major issues facing this country,” his sympathies on the subject are pretty clear.

“If you are a Wall Street executive who engaged in reckless and illegal behavior which helped crash the economy leading to massive unemployment and human suffering, your bank may have to pay a fine but nothing happens to you,” heexplained in an AMA session on Reddit. “If you’re a kid smoking marijuana or snorting cocaine, you may end up in jail for years.”

He also supports increased use of medical marijuana and takes pride in the fact that no one was arrested for marijuana possession or use when he was mayor of Burlington, Vt. Given the negative impact of three decades of the War on Drugs on incarcerating urban residents at disproportionate rates, particularly black men, this is a policy that is long overdue.

Although Hillary has vowed to fight the prison-industrial complex, Sanders shows he’s already ready to take the first steps.

5) Fighting free trade

There is another issue in which Bernie Sanders may push Clinton to the left: free trade.

Although hardly a trending topic, Sanders is a longstanding opponent of international trade agreements like NAFTA that he believes work against the interests of average American laborers. His current target is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being pushed by the Obama administration despite the fact that its provisions have not been made public.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP,” Sanders wrote in a letter to the Obama White House, “while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it.”

6) Confronting climate change

Sanders’ has made no secret of his contempt for global warming deniers. To embarrass anti-science Republicans, he introduced a “sense of Congress” resolution in January that simply acknowledged man-made climate change was real and needed to be addressed. By voting in favor of the measure, Congress would do little more than place itself  “in agreement with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community.”

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Although the amendment was tabled by a mostly party-line vote of 56-42, Sanders’ reputation as an unwavering advocate of pro-environmental policies when dealing with climate change hasn’t gone unnoticed. Climate Hawks Vote, a super PAC dedicated to addressing global warming, ranked Sanders as the number-one climate leader in the Senate.

7) Criticizing Israel

If elected in 2016, Sanders would be America’s first Jewish president, and that makes his willingness to criticize Israel all the more significant. During a town hall event last year, Sanders got into a shouting match with constituents who were angered by his statement that Israel “overreacted” in its military campaign against Hamas and was “terribly, terribly wrong” for bombing UN facilities.

His stance on Israel could hardly be described as blindly pro-Palestinian, however. In the same town hall meeting, he acknowledged that Israel was in a tricky situation because Hamas was firing rockets from populated areas, but he has no love for Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, distinguishing himself as the first Senator to openly refuse to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Sanders’ views on these issues, the odds are still far greater than not that he won’t receive the Democratic nomination next year. In addition to being on the far left in his own party, Sanders is a septuagenarian from a minority background who hails from one of America’s smallest states.

At the same time, he is still giving voice to a series of positions that deserve a more prominent place in our political debate. When all is said and done, this can only be a good thing.

Matthew Rozsa is a Ph.D. student in history at Lehigh University as well as a political columnist. His editorials have been published in “The Morning Call,” “The Express-Times,” “The Newark Star-Ledger,” “The Baltimore Sun,” and various college newspapers and blogs. He actively encourages people to reach out to him at matt.rozsa@gmail.com

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Cleveland police officer acquitted in killings that followed 2012 car chase

By James Queally, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was acquitted Saturday of manslaughter charges brought after he shot two unarmed people at the end of a wild 2012 car chase in which officers fired 137 shots.

Brelo, 31, was accused of jumping onto the hood of a car and unleashing a fatal barrage of gunfire at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. On Nov. 29, 2012, Russell led police on a 20-mile chase after he allegedly fired a gun at officers near the city’s downtown justice center.

 Brelo was found not guilty by a judge’s verdict.

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Senate Staff, Not Senators, Decided to Close Pentagon Budget Debate

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May 23, 2015            Editor's Choice Senate Staff, Not Senators, Decided to Close Pentagon Budget Debate The votes to keep debate of the Pentagon budget behind closed doors were cast by staffers and not the actual senators who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Allowing staff to vote on the key decision whether to open or close the markup of a bill that determines how to spend over half a trillion dollars is not only a violation of the Senate rules, but a breach of the public trust. Read more on POGO's Blog. Email Shows How Credit Suisse Works the Revolving Door Former Department of Labor lawyer Melanie Nussdorf could not say thank you enough to her former agency after getting a favorable response on behalf of her client, Credit Suisse, so she wrote it 600 times in an e-mail. Nussdorf was worried that Credit Suisse would have to tell all its clients that their retirement accounts would be overseen by a company that had just admitted to helping Americans evade U.S. taxes. The Department of Labor told her that wouldn't be necessary. Read more on POGO's Blog. The Pentagon Conned Washington..AgainPOGO's Mandy Smithberger, of the Straus Military Reform Project, joined Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in explaining how Congress' Pentagon spending budgetary shenanigans are likely to postpone a series of reforms that nearly everyone in Washington knows are long overdue. Years of bloated budgets have insulated the Pentagon from the need to make smart strategic choices, and have allowed policymakers to avoid a needed debate about whether our use of force in the last two decades has made us any safer. Read more at War Is Boring. Tweets of the Week Let's See Action: 8 contracting transparency proposals for the 3rd National Action Plan http://t.co/iIFfexaAO1 via @POGOBlog — Neil Gordon (@NEGordon) May 21, 2015 The trifecta of terrible. Throw in the fact that DoD tried to sneak in #FOIA exemptions and it's basically anarchy. https://t.co/11EwSnphH4 — Liz Hempowicz (@lizzy_loo_hoo) May 19, 2015 War=waste. This unused and unneeded $36 million headquarters in Afghanistan makes that clear. https://t.co/dpNzOcQuKE pic.twitter.com/suLBAPFGEG — Mark Thompson (@MarkThompson_DC) May 20, 2015

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Oil hunt raises risk of climate disaster

Oil hunt raises risk of climate disaster

May 22nd, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

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By Peter Husk: Saturday May 23, 2015

There’s an Alice-in-Wonderland quality about Royal Dutch Shell’s attitude towards the risks involved in its plan to drill for oil in the US Arctic.

The decision has sparked protests in Seattle, where the Polar Pioneer, one of two rigs the Anglo-Dutch oil giant intends to use, is berthed.

Shell sees the risks in its plan as financial. Critics see a far worse threat to the world’s climate.

Another rig, the Noble Discoverer, is docked along the coast at Everett. Both vessels are expected to sail north to Alaska next month and start exploratory drilling in the Chukchi prospect, between the United States and Russia, in late July.

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Posted in: Alaska, Arctic, Beaufort Sea, Ben van Beurden, Chukchi Sea, Climate Change,Environment, Greenpeace, Human Rights, Litigation, Oil, Oil Spill, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell Project Delays, Shell Project Overruns, United States.
Tagged: Alaska · Arctic Ocean · Chukchi Sea · Environment · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell

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Shell boss endorses warnings about fossil fuels and climate change

Shell boss endorses warnings about fossil fuels and climate change

May 22nd, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

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Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell, acknowledges that we cannot burn all the world’s fossil fuel reserves without risking a breach of the 2C limit needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty

Terry Macalister and Damian Carrington: Friday 22 May 2015 

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Posted in: Alternative Energy, Alternative Fuels, Ben van Beurden, Climate Change,Environment, Oil, Pollution, Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Tagged: Ben van Beurden · Environment · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell

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Shell handpicked auditor to sign off on government’s Arctic drilling renewal

Shell handpicked auditor to sign off on government’s Arctic drilling renewal

May 22nd, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

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Rose Hackman in New York: 22May 2015

The Obama administration’s process for giving Shell the go-ahead for restarting its drilling in the Arcticlacked transparency and prevented an informed public response, environmental groups have warned.

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Posted in: Alaska, Arctic, Business Principles, Environment, Litigation, Oil Spill,Pollution, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, United States.
Tagged: Alaska · Arctic Ocean · Chukchi Sea · Environment · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc ·Shell

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