On the Road . Puerto Rico| Bernie Sanders

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[eridani]

1. Sanders to Senate Dems: Do You Stand with Puerto Rico or with Wall Street?

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/23/sanders-senate-dems-do-you-stand-puerto-rico-or-wall-street

After the latest version of the bill was unveiled last week, Sanders blasted the creation of this "undemocratic board," which he said "would have the power to slash pensions, cut education and health care, and increase taxes on working families in Puerto Rico."

"Even worse, Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker [Paul] Ryan would be in charge of handpicking a majority of the control board's members," Sanders said at the time, "while the people of Puerto Rico would be in charge of choosing none. That may make sense to the Tea Party and one of the largest trade groups representing Wall Street—groups that endorsed this legislation—but it makes absolutely no sense to me."

He doubled down on that critique in his letter on Monday, noting that right-wing organizations like Tea Party Forward and a major Wall Street trade group representing Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America endorsed the bill.

"We must make it clear that hedge fund managers on Wall Street cannot get a 100 percent return on Puerto Rican bonds they purchased for as little as 29 cents on the dollar yielding interest rates of up to 34 percent," Sanders wrote, "while the budget for hungry children in Puerto Rico would be cut."

"In my view," he said, "we must never give an unelected control board the power to make life and death decisions for the people of Puerto Rico without any meaningful input from them at all. We must not balance Puerto Rico's budget on the backs of children, senior citizens, the sick, and the most vulnerable people in Puerto Rico."

[eridani]

2. Bernie Sanders Fights Against Austerity For Impoverished Puerto Ricans

http://www.nationofchange.org/news/2016/05/22/bernie-sanders-fights-austerity-impoverished-puerto-ricans/

“We need austerity for billionaire Wall Street hedge fund managers who have exacerbated the financial crisis in Puerto Rico,” Sanders asserted. “We don’t need more austerity for children in Puerto Rico who are going hungry.”

Roughly one month before the U.S. entered World War I on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act which granted U.S. citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico. After passing the Selective Service Act of 1917, Congress was able to impose mandatory conscription into the U.S. military on Puerto Ricans just as the U.S. entered the Great War.

“Today, I am proud to stand in strong opposition to this bill not only with the people of Puerto Rico, but the AFL-CIO, UAW, SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW and other unions that recognize just how bad this bill would be,” Sanders announced on Friday. “We must stop treating Puerto Rico like a colony and start treating the American citizens of Puerto Rico with the respect and dignity that they deserve.”
Robert Reich: Nobody Wins When Corporations Stockpile Money

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37019-nobody-wins-when-corporations-stockpile-money

Next time you hear that corporations need a tax cut, know the claim is baloney. According to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service, big American corporations are sitting on the largest pile of cash in history – over $1.73 trillion. What are they doing with it? Not investing it in new plant and equipment, not using it for research and development of new products, not distributing it to shareholders, and not sharing it with employees. They’re just stockpiling it – mostly abroad, to avoid paying U.S. taxes on it.

No one benefits from this. Stockpiling cash isn’t even helping shareholders. Apple, for example, is sitting on more cash than any other company but Apple shareholders have lost $240 billion in paper profits since its stock peaked.

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3. I really wish the south would have voted Bernie

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

This race would have been long over by now.