WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2015, 12:13 PM

​Why Labor Should Get Behind Bernie Sanders in the Primary Elections

BY STEVE EARLY

Bernie Sanders during his 1981 campaign mayor of Burlington, Vermont. (Vermont Press Bureau)  

This post first appeared at Jacobin.

When I first met Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders, he was a relatively marginal figure in his adopted state of Vermont. It was 1976 and he was running, unsuccessfully and for the fourth time, as a candidate of the Liberty Union Party (LUP).

Liberty Union was a radical third party spearheaded by opponents of the Vietnam War who had, like Sanders, washed up in the Green Mountain State as the sixties subsided. At its historic peak, the LUP garnered maybe 5 or 6 percent of the statewide vote for some of its more presentable candidates—in short, nothing like the winning margins racked up in recent years by the far more savvy and effective Vermont Progressive Party, which now boasts a ten-member legislature delegation and attracts growing union support.

During Sanders’s quixotic mid-1970s bid to become governor of Vermont, I accompanied him to a meeting of local granite cutters, teamsters and electrical workers. This was not a “flatlander” crowd, nor one dominated by full-time union officials. His audience was native Vermonters, some of them Republican, who were still punching a clock at local quarries, trucking companies and machine tool factories in an era when the future home state of Ben & Jerry’s and Vermont Teddy Bear Co. still had impressive blue-collar union density.

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The TRUTH will set you FREE.

New Data Offer First Infuriating Glimpse At How The Richest 0.001 Percent Pay Income Taxes

New Data Offer First Infuriating Glimpse At How The Richest 0.001 Percent Pay Income Taxes

By:  Alan Pyke  Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Think Progress

Tax day doesn’t sting much if you live at the gilded edge, according to new data on how the top one-hundredth of one percent and the top one-thousandth of a percent of all filers pay their income taxes. People who make tens of millions of dollars enjoyed falling income tax rates and ballooning wealth for a decade as middle-class taxpayers floundered.

The new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data helps illustrate the logic behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) call for radically reshaping the American income tax system to create pricey new brackets for extremely high earners. The numbers provide a deeper look inside the highest income echelon, breaking out data on income tax rates and total yearly earnings in previously unpublished detail. In the last year of the Bush tax cuts, there were well over a thousand people who reported more than $60 million in earnings but paid federal income tax rates far below 20 percent.

In late May, Sanders called for restoring top income tax rates as high as 90 percent. The graduated income tax system means that policymakers could create new tax brackets up at that level without raising taxes on everyone below whatever level of wealth they choose to target.

Sanders based his comments on generalized information about wealth inequality, but the new IRS data on income inequality bolster his argument. Currently, the highest income tax bracket and capital gains tax bracket each kick in at a little over $400,000 in annual income. But there are nearly 14,000 tax filers who earned more than $12 million in 2012 as members of the best-paid 0.01 percent of all taxpayers, according to the IRS, and about 1,360 who earned over $62 million that year. Their vast earnings were not taxed any more heavily – and indeed, they paid a lower overall income tax rate than their merely one-percent brethren.

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The TRUTH will set you FREE.

These Are the 6 Bold Ideas Fueling Bernie Sanders' "Political Revolution"

These Are the 6 Bold Ideas Fueling Bernie Sanders' "Political Revolution"

SHARED FROM

 By Zeeshan Aleem June 03, 2015

BOOK: 

It's more than seven months until the first votes will be cast in the Democratic presidential primaries, but much of the media has already written off Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont.

"He Won't Win, So Why Is Bernie Sanders Running?" asked Newsweek. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer went so far as to say that "Kim Kardashian has a better shot at winning the presidency than Bernie Sanders."

Inside the East Coast political media bubble, outsiders running for president are often met with a special kind of disdain. Candidates who buck the status quo and show no interest in playing by the typical rules of Washington are effectively written out of the race before it even begins.

This tendency to dismiss candidates like Sanders is a good example of pundits equating unusual ideas with bad ones. It's particularly unfortunate given that Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist," has been exceptionally substantive early on in his campaign about what kind of policies he would pursue if elected. And there's good bit of evidence that these policies appeal to many Americans, as exotic as some of them may seem to the beltway commentariat.

Rather than compulsively denounce Sanders' proposals based on the fact that they sound foreign, the media should instead focus on whether or not these strange ideas like free health care are actually good for the country — or better yet, educate the public about them and allow people to decide for themselves.

With that in mind, here's a breakdown of what Sanders has been focusing on so far in his campaign:

1. Fighting economic inequality

Addressing soaring inequality in America is the lynchpin of Sanders' campaign. "The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time and it is the great political issue of our time," he said during his kickoff speech in Burlington, Vermont, last week. He proposes to address inequality in three ways.
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Source: Mic/Getty Images

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Sinkhole Severs Sewers, Wipes Out Lift Station

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Public Works officials at the City of Granbury (Texas) are surveying the damage left behind by a 45-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep sinkhole in the parking lot of a local grocery store after heavy rainfall washed out a stormwater culvert. Sewer lines that were attached to a nearby lift station were severed, and the lift station itself is a total loss. More »

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The TRUTH will set you FREE.

FIFA World Cup gets red-carded by John Oliver for the death, slavery, and bribery things.

FIFA World Cup gets red-carded by John Oliver for the death, slavery, and bribery things.

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The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Urge them to vote NO on Fast Track.

Tell Congress No Fast Track at 888-804-8311

Dear FRIEND,

Ways & Means Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) is pushing to bring Fast Track legislation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to a vote in the House. Please call your representative now at 888-804-8311 and urge them to vote NO on Fast Track.

Representative Ryan’s Fast Track bill has already passed in the Senate, and if approved by the House, would allow secretive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be rushed through Congress, with little or no substantive debate.

The negotiation of the TPP has been shrouded in secrecy and the text of the agreement has never been made public. If the lack of transparency is not enough of a warning sign, a quick review of what we do know about the trade deal raises serious concerns:

• Undue corporate influence: While the public and the press have been kept in the dark, a select group of over 500 corporate “advisers” have been given special access to the text, even drafting provisions on intellectual property and other controversial issues.
• Weak environmental protections: The TPP’s environmental chapter is expected to be weaker than previous agreements and will include commitments that are not enforceable through dispute resolution.
• New rights for corporations: The TPP will provide multinational corporations with the right to sue states over alleged acts of discrimination that reduce their profits. Using similar rights in other FTAs, multinationals have filed over 600 cases against over 100 governments, challenging everything from clean water laws to an increase in the minimum wage. All of these investor-state disputes are heard in private tribunals closed to the public.
• Bad for development: Development groups warn that the intellectual property and pharmaceutical pricing provisions are a step backward for public health, reducing developing nations’ access to life-saving medications. They also raise concern about how the agreement’s provisions on agricultural market access will hurt small farmers in developing nations and threaten food security in rural areas.

Granting a Fast Track rubber-stamp for the TPP would accelerate a global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions that nobody wins — except, of course, for large, transnational corporations.

We need our elected officials looking out for us, not corporate elites. TAKE ACTION NOW: please call your Congressperson at 888-804-8311 and urge them to vote NO on Fast Track.

The good news is that, together, we can win this fight. Thousands of organizations — representing the environmental, family farm, civil rights, consumer, Internet freedom, LGBT, student and other movements — have united with labor in saying NO to Fast Track. We need your voice, too.

This really is the time for action. Fast Track proponents are trying to move quickly. Please call your Representative now.

Many thanks,

Eric Gottwald
Legal and Policy Director
International Labor Rights Forum

PS. For more on ILRF’s perspectives on the TPP, check out my blog “The TPP’s dirty labor laundry.”

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

A Bad Deal for Science

A Bad Deal for Science If the bill known as "Fast Track" passes, everything—from global warming emissions reductions, to drug safety protections, to fracking safety measures—could be at risk. Tell your member of Congress to vote "NO" on the Fast Track bill. Call Today! ACTION ALERT Call and Urge Your Member of Congress to Protect Science-Based Safeguards Dear Antonio, Any day now, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that could significantly undermine science-based safeguards we currently take for granted. Everything from global warming emissions reductions, to drug safety protections, to fracking safety measures could be at risk. In the name of free trade, the bill known as "Fast Track" would block science's ability to inform policy making on countless issues that deeply effect our health and safety. Call now and tell Rep. Scott Peters to vote "NO" on the Fast Track bill. How can you be sure your dinner tonight is safe to eat? Or that the medicine you take won't hurt you? What about the children's toys your family will play with this weekend? If the Fast Track bill passes, it will be much harder for you to be sure you're making safe choices for your family. Multinational corporations such as Koch Industries, GlaxoSmithKline, and Dow Chemical will be able to secretly influence trade deals, avoid public or policy-maker review, and even sue countries that have public health and safety protections in place whenever the corporation feels those protections threaten their profits! Your representative is facing intense pressure from corporations and President Obama to push Fast Track through. Rep. Peters needs to hear from you today that the Fast Track bill puts the health and safety of people in your district at risk. While international trade is important, there's no excuse for giving corporations a blank check to pursue profit at the expense of our health, safety, and environment—especially when trade steamrolls the role of science and transparency in our democracy. Sincerely, Danielle Fox Outreach Coordinator Center for Science and Democracy Union of Concerned Scientists

The TRUTH will set you FREE.