Bernie Sanders is on a crash course with the Congressional Black Caucus.
In a letter sent to both the Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns, the CBC is expressing its resolute opposition to two key reforms demanded by Sanders in the run-up to the Democratic convention: abolishing the party’s superdelegate system and opening Democratic primaries up to independents and Republicans.


"The Democratic Members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently voted unanimously to oppose any suggestion or idea to eliminate the category of Unpledged Delegate to the Democratic National Convention (aka Super Delegates) and the creation of uniform open primaries in all states," says the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO. "The Democratic Party benefits from the current system of unpledged delegates to the National Convention by virtue of rules that allow members of the House and Senate to be seated as a delegate without the burdensome necessity of competing against constituents for the honor of representing the state during the nominating process."

The letter — which was also sent to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — follows a Wednesday CBC meeting where members discussed for over an hour the impact of eliminating superdelegates on the African-American community, according to CBC Chairman Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.).

"We passed a resolution in our caucus that we would vehemently oppose any change in the superdelegate system because members of the CBC might want to participate in the Democratic convention as delegates but if we would have to run for the delegate slot at the county level or state level or district level, we would be running against our constituents and we're not going to do that,” said Butterfield. “But we want to participate as delegates and that's why this superdelegates system was created in the beginning, so members would not have to run against their own constituents."

The opposition to open primaries is based on the fear that allowing independent or Republican voters to participate in Democratic primaries would dilute minority voting strength in many places.

Here is the CBC letter: http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000155-6a23-dbd7-a5d5-fe6f76ef0000

Here is the 2nd letter which is attached ~ By James E. Clyburn D-SC: http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000155-69c5-d0c4-a1fd-fbc710260001

BURLINGTON, Vt. — When Sen. Bernie Sanders, the now-vanquished Democratic presidential candidate, returns to Capitol Hill to vote on Monday, he is expected to be accompanied by his constant traveling companions from the campaign trail: the U.S. Secret Service.

Though Hillary Clinton has clinched the party’s nomination, Sanders retains one of the trappings of a top-notch candidate. A team of agents still guards him at his home, where they’ve constructed a small watch station on the property. They travel with him on commercial and charter flights and use a motorcade to whisk him through cities he visits. And they recently marched alongside him during a gay pride event here in his hometown after the Orlando shootings.

Such round-the-clock protection can cost taxpayers more than $38,000 a day. And with the potential for the Secret Service to be watching over Sanders through the Democratic convention in Philadelphia five weeks from now, the taxpayers may get stuck with a big security bill long after his campaign receded from the daily cable news cycle.

The continued security presence also reflects a larger reality of Sanders’s muddled standing in the Democratic race. He has virtually no chance of becoming the party’s nominee, and he is no longer pressing his case to Democratic leaders that he should. Yet Sanders remains an active candidate because he has not “suspended” his campaign or taken any other steps that would alter his official status.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders arrives at the Capital Hilton last week, his Secret Service detail in tow, to meet with rival and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

“We will be holding a massive bean supper for Bernie Sanders delegates on American Street in my Kensington neighborhood on the afternoon of July 28,” she said. “We are setting up a Clintonville there, modeled on the Hoovervilles of the 1930s where the poor and unemployed built shanty towns. The Sanders delegates, their bellies full of beans, will be able to return to the Wells Fargo Center and greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing."

A Whopping 674 Foreign Nationals Illegally Donated to Bernie Sanders in March 2016
Posted on June 18, 2016 by Grace Laine

The principal campaign committee of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders identified 674 foreign nationals who contributed to his presidential campaign during a single month. The extremely high number of illegal donations occurred during March 2016. The names of each individual contributor (see below) is itemized in a Form 99 submitted to the Federal Election Commission on 14 June 2016 by the senator’s principal campaign committee.

Bernie 2016, the senator’s fundraising arm, will be required to refund all of these 674 donations.

A foreign national is not an American citizen or legal resident of the United States. Under federal law, these individuals are prohibited from contributing money or influencing elections in the U.S.

The FEC has spotted foreign donations given to Sanders’ campaign committee every month since he started his run for the presidency. What is alarming is that the number of foreign national contributions has increased rather than dropped since late 2015.

In the committee’s Quarterly Report covering October-December 2015, there were 106 identified foreign nationals. FEC reports from each succeeding month saw that number rise from 125 in January 2016 to 277 for February 2016.

The 674 contributors is a three-fold increase in actual individuals from the previous month. The total amount of these donations will be identified in the committee’s June Monthly Report.


Below are the names of the 674 foreign nationals who made prohibited donations to Bernie Sanders during March 2016. This information is also publicly accessible at this link.

In fact, Rep. Gabbard has declined to co-sponsor any common sense gun control legislation, including H.R.4269— the Assault Weapons Ban of 2015 — which is co-sponsored by 125 of Gabbard’s fellow Democrats. Here are the other nine gun bills that Gabbard has NOT supported:


H.R.4748—Imported Assault Weapons Ban of 2016
H.R.3926 — Gun Violence Research Act
H.R.3411 — Fix Gun Checks Act of 2015
H.R.2380 — Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2015
H.R.1745 — Support Assault Firearms Elimination and Reduction for our Streets Act
H.R.752 — Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act
H.R.226 — Keeping Guns from High Risk Individuals Act
H.R.225 — Firearm Safety Act of 2015
H.R.224 — To require the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service to submit to Congress an annual report on the effects of gun violence on public health.

If Tulsi Gabbard does not support common sense gun laws, she should let the residents of her district know that before they go to the polls this August. If she does support these gun laws, she needs to join her fellow Democrats (and some Republicans) and co-sponsor the above bills immediately.

New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes
If the presumptive GOP nominee keeps hiding his returns, Congress could force him to show his hand with a one-line amendment to the tax code.
New questions about the integrity of Donald Trump’s income tax returns, and new indications that he does not pay income taxes, arise from rulings in two tax appeals that Trump filed in the 1990s. Trump lost both cases.
Trump’s 1984 federal income tax return included a Schedule C, the form used by sole proprietors, the decision in the first case shows.
Trump listed no income on that form, yet he deducted $626,264 as expenses. His New York City tax return also showed no income, but listed slightly less in expenses: $619,227.
No receipts, invoices, or other documentation were provided when Trump was under audit or during his appeal from what he argued was an unfair demand for more tax.
“The record does not explain how Petitioner [Trump] had significant expenses without any concomitant income from his consulting business,” wrote H. Gregory Tillman, the city administrative law judge who heard the case on April 29 and May 28 of 1992.
Jack Mitnick, the lawyer and accountant who prepared Trump’s tax returns for more than two decades, was Trump’s only witness. Mitnick testified that he was “thoroughly familiar” with the Trump tax returns and all aspects of the finances of Trump Tower, which were central to the appeal.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston wrote a terrific piece in The Daily Beast yesterday, that there is New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes.

As a tax accountant by trade, an Enrolled Agent (EA) licensed to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, Johnston is one of my heroes. He has been ever since I read Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat E verybody Else.

How he discovered this new evidence is telling. As he told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! this morning, back in the 1920’s, tax returns were public information, and newspapers routinely reported how much prominent citizens earned and how much tax they paid. Today, as an EA, thanks to Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 7216, I cannot even acknowledge that anyone is even my client , let alone give out any information from a tax return, without having a specific form signed by the client giving me express consent to provide specific information to a specific person or entity, such as a bank looking to approve a mortgage. I can’t do it without the signature. An email isn’t enough. A phone call giving me verbal authorization is not enough. i need the signature.

So how did Johnston find this? Court documents are public record, including tax court. Trump filed two tax appeals in the 1990’s and lost both cases. From these cases, Johnston gleemed some very damaging information.

New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes
If the presumptive GOP nominee keeps hiding his returns, Congress could force him to show his hand with a one-line amendment to the tax code.
New questions about the integrity of Donald Trump’s income tax returns, and new indications that he does not pay income taxes, arise from rulings in two tax appeals that Trump filed in the 1990s. Trump lost both cases.
Trump’s 1984 federal income tax return included a Schedule C, the form used by sole proprietors, the decision in the first case shows.
Trump listed no income on that form, yet he deducted $626,264 as expenses. His New York City tax return also showed no income, but listed slightly less in expenses: $619,227.
No receipts, invoices, or other documentation were provided when Trump was under audit or during his appeal from what he argued was an unfair demand for more tax.
“The record does not explain how Petitioner [Trump] had significant expenses without any concomitant income from his consulting business,” wrote H. Gregory Tillman, the city administrative law judge who heard the case on April 29 and May 28 of 1992.
Jack Mitnick, the lawyer and accountant who prepared Trump’s tax returns for more than two decades, was Trump’s only witness. Mitnick testified that he was “thoroughly familiar” with the Trump tax returns and all aspects of the finances of Trump Tower, which were central to the appeal.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston wrote a terrific piece in The Daily Beast yesterday, that there is New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes.

As a tax accountant by trade, an Enrolled Agent (EA) licensed to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, Johnston is one of my heroes. He has been ever since I read Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat E verybody Else.

How he discovered this new evidence is telling. As he told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! this morning, back in the 1920’s, tax returns were public information, and newspapers routinely reported how much prominent citizens earned and how much tax they paid. Today, as an EA, thanks to Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 7216, I cannot even acknowledge that anyone is even my client , let alone give out any information from a tax return, without having a specific form signed by the client giving me express consent to provide specific information to a specific person or entity, such as a bank looking to approve a mortgage. I can’t do it without the signature. An email isn’t enough. A phone call giving me verbal authorization is not enough. i need the signature.

So how did Johnston find this? Court documents are public record, including tax court. Trump filed two tax appeals in the 1990’s and lost both cases. From these cases, Johnston gleemed some very damaging information.

In fact, Rep. Gabbard has declined to co-sponsor any common sense gun control legislation, including H.R.4269— the Assault Weapons Ban of 2015 — which is co-sponsored by 125 of Gabbard’s fellow Democrats. Here are the other nine gun bills that Gabbard has NOT supported:


H.R.4748—Imported Assault Weapons Ban of 2016
H.R.3926 — Gun Violence Research Act
H.R.3411 — Fix Gun Checks Act of 2015
H.R.2380 — Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2015
H.R.1745 — Support Assault Firearms Elimination and Reduction for our Streets Act
H.R.752 — Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act
H.R.226 — Keeping Guns from High Risk Individuals Act
H.R.225 — Firearm Safety Act of 2015
H.R.224 — To require the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service to submit to Congress an annual report on the effects of gun violence on public health.

If Tulsi Gabbard does not support common sense gun laws, she should let the residents of her district know that before they go to the polls this August. If she does support these gun laws, she needs to join her fellow Democrats (and some Republicans) and co-sponsor the above bills immediately.

Author and local Democratic Party activist Shay Chan Hodges has decided to run against U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard this year, Chan Hodges told us on June 6, one day before the state’s deadline for candidate filing. Though Gabbard–who is also a Major in the Hawaii Army National Guard and an Iraq War veteran–is one of the more high-profile Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Chan Hodges believes that she simply isn’t progressive enough to represent Maui.

First, that Gabbard has helped out billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation who opposes organized labor and is a major campaign donor to conservative Political Action Committees and Republican candidates. Chan Hodges noted in her essay that Gabbard has introduced Adelson-backed legislation that would kill online gambling–a major threat to Adelson’s interests.

Second, Chan Hodges noted that Gabbard has repeatedly criticized and mocked the Obama Administration for not saying we’re at war with “Islamic extremism”–something even Sanders opposes. “While I believe that no elected official should be above critique –lest we devolve into a cult of personality over substance –our district elected President Obama with a 70% majority, and a respectful discussion in an appropriate forum reflects both our district and Hawaiian values,” Chan Hodges noted.

Finally, Chan Hodges criticized Gabbard for supporting legislation that would make it more difficult for refugees fleeing the bloody Syrian civil war to get to the U.S. “[O]n November 19, 2015, Gabbard voted with 46 Democrats and 242 Republicans to pass HR 4038 — the American SAFE Act of 2015, to institute a stronger screening process for refugees from Iraq and Syria who apply for admission to the U.S.,” Chan Hodges wrote. “Previously, in 2014, Gabbard called for visa waivers to be curtailed from European countries with “Islamic extremist” populations –specifically Britain, Germany, and France. (A year later, Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the US.)”

Bernie's BFF Tulsi Gabbard is on CNN ripping POTUS for not saying "radical Muslim terrorist." She's also called for more bombs. Mmmm