Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist and 2016 presidential candidate, has one-upped the White House with a plan that should make college students—and their tuition-paying parents—stand up and cheer. If his long-shot plan becomes reality, it could help the U.S. compete in the global economy and lay the first cornerstone to bridge the wealth divide between whites and African Americans.

Sanders on Tuesday introduced the College for All Act, a bill that would eliminate tuition at public four-year colleges and universities. He’d pay part of the $750 billion, 10-year price tag with a new tax on Wall Street, siphoning off a small percentage of profits made through stock, bond, and financial derivative trades.

“It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of young Americans today do not go to college, not because they are unqualified, but because they cannot afford it,” Sanders, who is running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement introducing the bill. Other countries, such as Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, offer free tuition, he said, and the U.S. must take a bold step to avoid falling further behind those nations in developing a 21st-century workforce.

“We have got to make sure that every qualified American in this country who wants to go to college can go to college—regardless of income,” he said.
...

The Robin Hood Tax swooped into America’s national spotlight when presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders joined with National Nurses United and student groups in Washington, D.C. at a press conference today to announce his introduction of two Senate bills - the College for All Act and the Robin Hood tax bill that would levy a small tax on Wall Street financial transactions in order to fund free tuition at every public college and university in the United States, as well as slash interest rates on existing student loans.

The College for All Act and the Robin Hood Tax would set a 0.5 percent tax on most stock transactions, and a lesser tax on bond and derivative trades. Such a tax has been championed for years by NNU, the country’s largest organization of registered nurses, and other healthcare and climate change groups and is already in effect in more than 40 countries around the world, including Britain, Germany, Switzerland, and China. A similar Robin Hood Tax bill, H.R. 1464, introduced by Rep. Keith Ellison, is pending in the House of Representatives. The tax is estimated to raise about $300 billion per year to fund programs such as free higher education, healthcare for all, and a reversal of climate change.

RoseAnn DeMoro, NNU’s executive director, said that nurses often see the health results that a lifetime of accumulated debt, stress, and poverty cause.

“The nurses are here because we have fought long and hard for a Robin Hood Tax to fund education, healthcare, shoring up our environment, to fund everything that has to do with human suffering,” said DeMoro. “Because what the nurses end up seeing at the bedside is all the unnecessary human despair and suffering when we don’t have these things.”

The country’s young adults are currently drowning in about $1.3 trillion of student loan debt that is borrowed at rates often set higher than mortgage and car loan rates. This crushing debt is a huge burden that prevents many young people from advancing in their careers and lives, stopping them from buying a car, getting married, buying a house, or having children.

“The time is long overdue for the American Congress to start listening to the needs of the American people and not just Wall Street,” said Sanders, flanked by students and registered nurses. “This is not a radical idea. Only in a Congress dominated by Wall Street and big money is this considered a radical idea."

Published on May 15, 2015

Lyrics: Imagine it’s your birthday party
and someone brings a cake
it looks so good and you just can’t wait for a piece
time comes to cut it up
and something goes terribly wrong
20 people at the party, 10 don’t have any cake at all
5 people just have a bite
4 have tiny slices
1 greedy bastard has got the rest of the cake in a vice grip

This is what’s happening in our country now
we’ve got such inequality
and most of us don’t really see
and you know that I’ve loved Hillary
for quite some time
well that time is done, she’s just another vessel of lies
and backed by
goldman sachs and merrill lynch and the rest of wall st.

I hear this discourse of hopelessness
like there’s nothing we can do to fix our country
entrenched in corruption, we’re in too deep
well I disagree
We’ve got an opportunity
his name is Bernie

Well he’s backed by Unions, never run a negative ad
he’s callin out the billionaires, no wonder he’s so madI’m mad too, and I hope you are
pernicious political power play
Has gone too far

We need a change we need to all try something different
and if you’re gonna say you hate the government
then GO OUT AND MAKE IT DIFFERENT

We have an opportunity
and his name is Bernie
I beg you to go and read
about this candidate
save the hate
nothing will ever change if you
keep talking that way

Bernie Sanders
Wake up, he’s the answer
There’s more of us normal folk
than there are of the powerful
Bernie Sanders
Wake up, he’s an answer
to all of the corruption
that’s traumatized our Nation until now
If you wanna how
to get involved it’s not that hard
just go on the internet
but you’ve gotta give a shit
and I hope you do
Cause I live here how about you
and I’m not ready to give up on our nation just yet
we gotta get get get get get Bernie Sanders

The Sanders campaign said Thursday it has brought on Pete D'Alessandro to be its coordinator.

D'Alessandro, who is from Des Moines, has worked with Democratic candidates in the state for 20 years, including as the political director for former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver.

Sanders announced last month that he would run for president, and he is planning a three-day swing to the first-in-the-nation caucus state at the end of the month, after his May 26 kickoff in Vermont.

D'Alessandro said Thursday that he has been retained to put a team together in Iowa, from the state director level to field staffers. He said he also would be helping Sanders with visits to the state and putting him in touch with people.

D'Alessandro said that he has heard from people who want to work for the campaign and that he was impressed with Sanders' foresight on issues such as the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and opposing the Patriot Act and the Iraq War.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will make a three-day run through the state later this month to speak with Iowans about their concerns, while also addressing long-standing platform issues such as income inequality, global warming and supporting the middle class.

"He's done hundreds of town meetings in Vermont and he's doing many of them in Iowa now," said Michael Briggs, communications director for the campaign.

In late April, the U.S. senator from Vermont announced he was running for president. He's already made several trips to Iowa during this year's caucus season.

Schumer all along — both in committee and at the microphones Tuesday — said his goal was not to use his currency proposal as a poison pill to kill fast track, which is why he offered it as an amendment to the separate customs bill last month.

That had an incredulous Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly quoting Schumer to rebuff a push by some Democrats to package all four bills together, a move the Kentucky Republican said would kill the underlying measure and turn it into veto bait.

The deal offered by Schumer at the microphones Tuesday — votes on all of the bills — is ultimately what McConnell accepted Wednesday.

“Democrats are not going to go … down this path without assurances from Sen. McConnell that we are going to get opportunities to vote on all of these bills,” Schumer said Tuesday.
...