Scott Walker Insults Bernie Sanders By Suggesting He Isn’t A Real Presidential Candidate

Scott Walker Insults Bernie Sanders By Suggesting He Isn’t A Real Presidential Candidate On ABC's This Week, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) isn't a real presidential candidate by saying that Hillary Clinton isn't facing a "real" primary challenge. shared from

The Last Nail in the Duggar Media Coffin. Gimme the Hammer! The parents and the church are enablers in this case through their naive belief that all is well. It's not, and if I were in the vicinity of the Duggar clan and the parent of a small child, I wouldn't buddy up with Josh or, frankly, his parents.     Read more » Texas Police Under Investigation For Seizing Phone and Pepper Spraying Innocent Bystander A second incident of inappropriate police behavior has sparked an investigation as a police officer in Austin is being investigated for seizing a phone and pepper spraying an innocent bystander who was recording their behavior.     Read more » Chris Christie Claims That Hillary Clinton Is Trying To Steal The Election Republicans are already making excuses for losing the 2016 election, as Chris Christie claimed that Hillary Clinton is trying to increase voter fraud.     Read more » Scott Walker Insults Bernie Sanders By Suggesting He Isn’t A Real Presidential Candidate On ABC's This Week, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) isn't a real presidential candidate by saying that Hillary Clinton isn't facing a "real" primary challenge.     Read more » President Obama Is More Popular Than Bobby Jindal In Deep Red Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is going to be running for President, but his approval rating has sunk so low that President Obama is more popular than the Republican in deep red Louisiana.     Read more » Ann Coulter’s Appalling Demographic Engineering Ann Coulter thinks it's "Adios America" unless we can keep out overweight women, the physically disabled, and the visually impaired     Read more »

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If the TPP stays secret

It dies in sunlight.  Share this action on Facebook  Share this action on Twitter The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a job-killing, environment-destroying, 1% enriching, antidemocratic trade treaty. We know this from leaked sections of it, but even the leaked sections can't be discussed in Congress as they're still considered "classified." If the TPP stays secret, Congress could pass "fast track," a procedure used only for the worst corporate trade agreements to rush them through without amendment or debate. Candidate Obama opposed fast track, but President Obama knows it will just about guarantee passage of the TPP. If the TPP is made public, there will be no fast track and no passage. We'll stop it like we stopped the corporatist Free Trade Area of the Americas. RootsAction is joining with a major coalition to achieve the greatest impact. With your help we will pressue Congress members to take action. The House and Senate "intelligence" committees have the power to declassify any document in their possession if they believe that doing so would serve the public interest. Any individual Member of Congress could publish — e.g., by entering into the Congressional Record — a portion of the draft TPP negotiating text, as Republican Congressman Darrel Issa did when he published the intellectual property chapter. Members of the House who have not yet committed to vote no on Fast Track could pledge to vote no on Fast Track if the text of the TPP is not made public before the vote.  Please forward this message to your friends. -- The RootsAction.org Team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others. P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate. www.RootsAction.org

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SOLAR BOTTLE STREET LAMPS IN MANILA

SHARED FROM REJECT RPT 20 MOVEMENT BY MYRNA ARCEO VIA FACEBOOK

Myrna Arceo shared Barnaby Lo's video.

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Will Americans Vote for a Democratic Socialist?

BY LAWRENCE S. WITTNER

The recent announcement by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed “democratic socialist,” that he is running for the Democratic nomination for President raises the question of whether Americans will vote for a candidate with that political orientation.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the idea of democratic socialism — democratic control of the economy — had substantial popularity in the United States. At the time, the Socialist Party of America was a thriving, rapidly-growing political organization, much like its democratic socialist counterparts abroad — the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, the German Social Democratic Party, the Australian Labor Party, and numerous other rising, working class-based political entities around the world. In 1912, when the United States had a much smaller population than today, the Socialist Party had 118,000 dues-paying members and drew nearly a million votes for its candidate, Eugene V. Debs, the great labor leader, for President. (The victor that year was the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who drew six million votes.) Furthermore, the party held 1,200 public offices in 340 cities, including 79 mayors in 24 states. Socialist administrations were elected in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Butte, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Schenectady, New York, and all across the country. In 1912, the Socialist Party claimed 323 English and foreign language publications with a total circulation in excess of two million.

The Democratic and the Republican parties, faced with this threat to their political future, turned to supporting progressive agendas — breaking up or regulating giant corporations, curbing corporate abuses, and championing a graduated income tax — that stole the socialists’ thunder.

Of course, this socialist surge didn’t last. The Democratic and the Republican parties, faced with this threat to their political future, turned to supporting progressive agendas — breaking up or regulating giant corporations, curbing corporate abuses, and championing a graduated income tax — that stole the socialists’ thunder. In addition, after U.S. entry into World War I, an action opposed by the socialists, the federal and state governments moved to crush the Socialist Party — arresting and imprisoning its leaders (including Debs), purging its elected officials, and closing down its publications. Moreover, one portion of the party, excited by the success of revolutionaries in overthrowing Russia’s Czar and establishing the Soviet Union, broke with the Socialist Party and established Communist rivals. Co-opted by the mainstream parties, repressed by government, and abandoned by would-be revolutionaries, the Socialist Party never recovered.

Even so, democratic socialism retained a lingering influence in American life. When a new wave of reform occurred during the New Deal of the 1930s, it included numerous measures advocated and popularized by the Socialist Party: Social Security; public jobs programs like the WPA; minimum wage laws; maximum hour laws; and a steep tax on the wealthy. Here and there, although rarely, socialists even secured public office, and Milwaukee voters regularly elected socialist mayors until 1948. Starting in 1928 and running through the early post-World War II era, Norman Thomas became the attractive, articulate leader of the Socialist Party, and was widely respected among many American liberals and union leaders.

Eugene V. Debs

What nearly eliminated the Socialist Party was a combination of New Deal measures (which drew labor and other key constituencies into the Democratic Party) and the public’s identification of Socialism with Communism. Although, in fact, the American Socialist and Communist parties were bitter rivals — the former championing democratic socialism on the British model and the latter authoritarian socialism on the Soviet model — many Americans, influenced by dire conservative warnings, confused the two. Particularly during the Cold War, this further undermined the Socialist Party.

In the early 1970s, with the party barely surviving, most democratic socialists decided it was time to reassess their strategy. They asked: Did the collapse of the Socialist Party mean that, in the United States, democratic socialism was unpopular, or did it mean that third party votingwas unpopular? After all, large numbers of Americans supported democratic socialist programs, ranging from national healthcare to public education, from public transportation to taxing the rich, from preserving the environment to defending workers’ rights. What would happen if democratic socialists worked for their programs within the Democratic Party, where the typical constituencies of the world’s democratic socialist parties — unions, racial minorities, women’s rights activists, and environmentalists — were already located? Led by the party’s titular leader, Michael Harrington, whose book The Other Americasparked the War on Poverty of the 1960s, they organized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and plunged into major social movements and into the Democratic Party.

Although, in the ensuing decades, DSA made little progress toward rebuilding a mass, high profile democratic socialist organization, it did manage to pull thousands of union, racial justice, women’s rights, and environmental activists into its orbit. DSA also discovered a significant number of leftwing Democratic and, sometimes, independent candidates for office who welcomed its support and occasionally joined it. Bernie Sanders — an independent who was elected as mayor of Burlington, Vermont’s only Congressman, and a U.S. Senator from Vermont — is certainly one of the most successful of these politicians. Indeed, in 2012 he won re-election to the Senate with71 percent of the vote.

But will Americans actually support a democratic socialist in the Democratic Presidential primaries? Sanders himself has conceded that the odds are heavily against him. Even so, although a Quinnipiac poll of American voters in late May of this year found him far behind the much better known and better funded Hillary Clinton, his 15 percent of the vote placed him well ahead of all other potential Democratic candidates. Also, there’s great potential for broadening his support. The latest poll on Americans’ attitudes toward “socialism,” taken in December 2011, found that 31 percent of respondents had a positive reaction to it. And what if Americans had been asked about their attitude toward “democratic socialism”?

Consequently, even if Hillary Clinton emerges as the Democratic nominee, as seems likely, a good showing by Sanders could strengthen the democratic socialist current in American life.

READ MORE

Lawrence Wittner

History News Network

POSTED ON JUNE 7, 2015

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Now Texas Begs for Help

Now Texas Begs for Help Walter Brasch: The President didn’t even worry about whether Texans liked him or not, even though a majority of that state’s politicians think of him as incompetent, evil, and—horrors!—a firebreathing Muslim. READ HERE SHARED FROM

SUNDAY, 7 JUNE 2015 Ageless Tina Dupuy: The hooker with a heart of gold is a lie. No one propagates how coalminers with black lung still love coal. But we feel better thinking prostitutes have so much love to give that it’s a full-time occupation. In every sense it’s a f**king job. READ MORE Friend on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend FIFA, Banks, and the Rule of Law Frank Fear: Why go after FIFA when, for years, bank cronies have gone unpunished? Institutional fines, not individual jail time, have been the penalties levied for wrongdoing—billions and billions in fines, but no hard time. READ HERE Real Heroes Wanted Kevin Uhrich: Can we do better than Marvel’s ‘Universe’ of overpaid psychotic misfits? READ MORE Just How Conservative Are GOP Presidential Candidates? Ted Vaill: The results are extremely interesting, as the "clown show" is now beginning in earnest. READ MORE Now Texas Begs for Help Walter Brasch: The President didn’t even worry about whether Texans liked him or not, even though a majority of that state’s politicians think of him as incompetent, evil, and—horrors!—a firebreathing Muslim. READ HERE

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Sign the petition to Congress: Use your power to publish the TPP

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