Playinghardball
Playinghardball's Journal
'I'm Right and Everybody Else Is Wrong. Clear About That?'
Shortly after 9 a.m. on the second Saturday in May, at the altar of a massive, ornate church in Northampton, Massachusetts, a lanky, white-haired reverend named Todd Weir assumes the pulpit. His congregation is hosting a conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the grassroots organization Progressive Democrats of America. Before him sits an audience of several hundred. In the course of welcoming them to the church, Weir directs their attention to a bronze relief of the fire-breathing, 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards. "Edwards preached over and over again about the dangers of the concentration of wealth and power that were happening here in the Connecticut River Valley," he says. "I think he would be here today with the Progressive Democrats of America, saying, 'Run, Bernie, Run!' "
The image of Jonathan Edwards—a Puritan in a white powdered wig—stumping for the socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in front of progressive diehards wearing hiking boots has hardly settled in our minds when, several minutes later, a man in a cowboy hat takes the podium and begins whipping the crowd into an even more frenzied state. "I'm happy to be here with you rompin' stompin' scrappy 'n' savvy attendees, you corporate greed-whackers and butt-kickers," twangs the populist Texan radio host Jim Hightower. A few more minutes of inspirational preamble follow before he introduces the guest of honor: that "hell-raiser extraordinaire who drives the Koch-head corporate plutocrats crazy."
A roar emanates from the pews, and 72-year-old Bernie Sanders trudges up to the pulpit. He waves tersely and motions for the crowd to sit down. "What I wanted to do this morning," he tells his adoring and expectant fans, "is kind of bore you a little bit."
True to his word, Sanders proceeds to drain all the energy from the premises with an hour-long lecture full of bleak statistics and wonky digressions. Phrases like "chained CPI" and "real unemployment" feature prominently, along with endless talk of the Koch brothers and their abettors on the Supreme Court.
According to the day's agenda, the speech is supposed to be followed by a 15-minute meet-and-greet for the senator and audience members. Instead, when he finishes, Sanders bounds up the aisle, shakes some hands without breaking stride, then bolts out the front door. Back at the altar, a panel on media quickly assembles. It includes progressive radio host Thom Hartman, a baby-faced labor reporter named Cole Stangler, and the actress-activist Mimi Kennedy, who played the hippie mom on Dharma & Greg. "That," Stangler announces to the crowd, "was a pretty depressing speech."
Outside the Supreme Court on Oct. 8, 2013. (Getty Images)Indeed it was. The performance was vintage Sanders: brimming with umbrage and entirely lacking in charisma. It was also probably a warm-up act for what could be one of the more intriguing story lines of 2016. For months, it has seemed increasingly likely that Sanders is going to run for president. The founder of Progressive Democrats of America, Tim Carpenter—who died of cancer two weeks before the conference—had started a petition beseeching Sanders to run in 2016, and part of the point of the event was to gin up enthusiasm for his candidacy. Meanwhile, Sanders has visited Iowa and New Hampshire; boasted that he'd make a better commander in chief than Hillary Clinton; and repeatedly said he's "prepared" to enter the 2016 race, even informing me at one point—without making anything official—that he was "looking forward to running for president of the United States."
More here: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/i-m-right-and-everybody-else-is-wrong-clear-about-that-20140618
I'm down, Are Y'all?
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My 15 yr old niece shared this status - the students & youth are doing this all by themselves. We got you #Ferguson
10:35 AM - 1 Dec 2014
http://theobamadiary.com/
Canada’s Green Energy Sector Now Employs More People Than Its Tar Sands
Between 2009 and 2013, employment in Canada’s clean energy sector increased by 37 percent — meaning it now supplies more jobs than the country’s infamous tar sands, according to a new report.
Tracking the Energy Revolution — released Tuesday by Clean Energy Canada, a climate think tank — defined clean energy jobs as any work involved in the production of clean power; in the manufacture of the related equipment; in creating energy efficiency technology or services, like smart grids and building energy savings; in infrastructure for green transpiration; and in biofuels. All told, those sectors employed 23,700 people in Canada as of 2013, while the tar sands industry employed only 22,340.
“Clean energy has moved from being a small niche or boutique industry to really big business in Canada,” said Merran Smith, the director of Clean Energy Canada.
Green energy tends to be more labor intensive than energy from fossil fuels, meaning that every unit of energy produced by green sources tends to employ more people than those sources that come along with carbon emissions. In America, research suggests green jobs are more accessible to workers without a college education, that green sectors grow a bit faster than the economy as a whole, and that they more successfully weathered the 2008 recession.
More here: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/02/3598312/canada-green-energy-tar-sands/
(BRAWHAHAHAHAAAA) Bernie Sanders: Global warming isn't real because I was cold today
Burlington, VT
Bernie Sanders: An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward
The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country.
The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.
Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.
Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.
The American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families, not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, to raise wages and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives.
As Vermont's senator, here are 12 initiatives that I will be fighting for which can restore America's middle class.
1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not more war.
More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/an-economic-agenda-for-am_b_6249022.html
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Name: California KidGender: Male
Hometown: Northern California
Member since: Wed Nov 17, 2010, 02:02 PM
Number of posts: 11,665
