Saturday, May 25, 2019

You cannot change a corrupt system by begging those who profit it from it for their money Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders<info@berniesanders.com>
To  alfred johnson  

Our opponents are raising big money at high-dollar fundraisers in the homes of wealthy executives and lobbyists. We don’t do that. Our average donation is $19. So we need your help to close the gap before our next official FEC fundraising deadline comes to a close.


Alfred -
Here is the truth: Big money dominates absolutely everything that goes on in government. In Washington, D.C., you get what you pay for:
The military-industrial complex gets their weapons systems and our children get shipped off to endless wars.
The fossil fuel industry gets to keep pumping and burning oil and the rest of us deal with the consequences of climate change.
The pharmaceutical industry gets to charge whatever they want for life-saving drugs and people are forced to sit at their kitchen tables cutting pills just to survive.
Health care CEOs profit tremendously from a dysfunctional system of care that prioritizes profits over patients while 30 million people lack any health care at all and even more are under-insured.
The gun manufacturers get laws that allow almost anyone to easily buy a firearm without a background check while almost 40,000 people each year are killed with a gun and parents are sending their kids to school with bulletproof backpacks.
Big banks get to make obscene levels of profit with little to no oversight, and millions of Americans lose their homes and life savings because of the greed and recklessness of Wall Street.
The needs and desires of the rich and powerful are almost always well-attended to, and the pain of working families is ignored.
And on and on and on and on it goes.
The truth is, you cannot change a corrupt system that is stacked against the American people if you are begging the people who profit from that system for their money.
Our campaign does things differently than anyone in the history of American politics. This is a campaign funded almost exclusively by the people, young people and working people, giving small amounts of money, mostly responding to emails like this.
But that also means from time to time we have to ask. And today, with our opponents raising huge sums of money at high-dollar fundraising events in people’s homes, I have to ask:
Can you make a contribution before our end of month fundraising deadline as a way of saying you have had ENOUGH of the billionaire class buying elections in this country?
Today, virtually no piece of legislation can get passed unless it has the okay from corporate America. That is going to change when we are in the White House.
In 2016, we proved that one could run for president without hustling rich people for money. In 2020, we’re going to prove that we can win.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders






Student/Farmworker Alliance leaders announce back-to-back #BootTheBraids Truth Tours for summer 2019!

Coalition of Immokalee Workers<workers@ciw-online.org>
Building on the momentous campus actions of the CIW’s 4 for Fair Food Tour and last month’s national Day of Action, farmworkers in Immokalee and SFA organizers are hitting the road this summer with the truth about Wendy’s stubborn refusal to open its supply chain to the industry-leading human rights monitoring of the Fair Food Program...
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Connect with us
A copy of the CIW's official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Florida Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free 1-800-HELP-FLA (435-7352). Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the state. The website for the Florida Division of Consumer Services is  https://www.freshfromflorida.com  

People Over Pentagon RootsAction Team

RootsAction Team<info@rootsaction.org>



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U.S. government spending has been moved so heavily to militarism, and away from everything else, that groups and individuals who haven't objected to it before are finally doing so.
A huge coalition is demanding that at least $200 billion be moved out of the Pentagon's budget and into human and environmental needs. We're taking this demand to Congress and to presidential candidates. While we've successfully brought similar demands to city councils and to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, this is a new and bigger opportunity to move it toward reality, with a larger multi-issue coalition advancing this demand.
U.S. military spending across numerous agencies is now at $1.25 trillion per year1, or roughly as much as the rest of the world combined, with much of that rest of the world being U.S. allies and weapons customers.2
Trump's proposed 2020 budget makes militarism 57% of discretionary spending, leaving 43% for everything else.3
Military spending endangers us and generates terrorism.4 Reducing it makes us safer.5
Military spending is immoral6, threatens our environment7, erodes our liberties8, and fuels bigotry9.
Fractions of the $200 billion we are proposing to move could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college10, end hunger and starvation on earth11, provide clean drinking water everywhere it’s needed on the planet12, build fast trains between major U.S. cities13, and double non-military U.S. foreign aid.
Defending the immoral funding of the criminal (can you name a recent war that didn't violate the UN Charter?), counterproductive, catastrophic war enterprise as a "jobs program" is obscene, but it's also false. Economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have documented that military spending is an economic drain.14

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The fact is that the United States dominates world military spending, pushes allies to spend more, and drives an arms race that it could easily choose to reverse.
Forward this email to everyone you can to help push this movement past a tipping point!
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now. 



-- 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, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Footnotes:
1. TomDispatch: Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget
2. World BEYOND War: Militarism Mapped
3. National Priorities Project: Trump's FY2020 Budget Request Bloats Militarized Spending—and Slashes Actual Human Needs
4. Consortium News: How the West’s War in Libya Spurred Terrorism in 14 Countries
5. World BEYOND War: War Endangers Us
6. World BEYOND War: War Is Immoral
7. World BEYOND War: War Threatens Our Environment
8. World BEYOND War: War Erodes Our Liberties
9. World BEYOND War: War Promotes Bigotry
10. The Washington PostFree College: We Can Afford It
11. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: The World Only Needs 30 Billion Dollars a Year to Eradicate the Scourge of Hunger
12. UN Environment Program: Clean Water for a Healthy World
13. The World Bank: Cost of High Speed Rail in China One Third Lower than in Other Countries
14. Political Economy Research Institute: The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: 2011 Update

 
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People being represented by anti-choice Democrats deserve competitive primaries without the DCCC putting its thumb on the scale of democracy. Having a (D) next to your name does nothing to protect the rights of women whose constitutional right to an abortion is under attack.

Our Revolution<info@ourrevolution.com>

Our Revolution

Friends,
Last month, Our Revolution Illinois hand-delivered tens of thousands of your signatures directly to Rep. Cheri Bustos in Chicago to protest the DCCC Blacklist. She promised us a follow-up meeting to discuss reforming this undemocratic policy which favors incumbents over progressive challengers.

Clem Balanoff (left), leader of Our Revolution Chicago, with Richard Rodriguez, National Board Member of Our Revolution delivering petitions to DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos in Chicago.
But here’s the problem – Rep. Bustos just backed out the meeting with Our Revolution leaders. Not only did she cancel our meeting, Rep. Bustos also announced that the DCCC was going to continue to throw big dollar fundraisers for incumbents like Rep. Dan Lipinski, an anti-choice member of Congress who opposes Medicare for All – even though there are real progressive champions running to oppose him.
This week, after we announced we were going to protest the fundraiser, Bustos withdrew her involvement – this is a victory, but crucially, she maintained that the DCCC could offer Lipinski financial support to defeat primary challengers.
Being a Democrat who opposes Roe v. Wade doesn’t reflect the values that the Democratic Party claims to uphold.
Being a Democrat who opposes Medicare for All doesn’t help 30 million people without health insurance and the millions more who are underinsured.
It’s not just Lipinski, and it’s not just on issues of women’s choice and health care.
Being a Democrat who takes money from the fossil fuel industry doesn’t help us transform our energy system to save us from environmental catastrophe.
Being a Democrat who takes money from Wall Street doesn’t help working people who are being ripped off by corporate shareholders.
In Solidarity,
The Team at Our Revolution


Letter to the editor: Sen. Collins steps up for BIW – why not for hungry kids?

 

Letter to the editor: Sen. Collins steps up for BIW – why not for hungry kids?

 
May 24, 2019
Re: “Federal watchdog flags issues with warships” (May 18, Page B1):
Living in a shipbuilding state, I’ve often wondered if Bath Iron Works could build one less warship and use the money to feed Maine’s hungry families. Turns out it would be a good idea, based on a story by Staff Writer Peter McGuire in last Saturday’s Press Herald.
In a stunning story that may have been missed by many, the General Accounting Office said two Zumwalt ships built at the shipyard at a cost of $8 billion each – seven times more than expected – do not have functioning weapons systems or a clear role in the Navy.
Inspectors found hundreds of “serious deficiencies” in the two ships in 2016 and last year, the GAO said. For one thing, the Navy has not found replacement ammunition for the ships’ main gun after deciding that the original ammo, at $800,000 per round, would be too expensive. “As a result, the guns will remain inoperable on the ships for the foreseeable future,” the report said.
The GAO says the problems were not BIW’s fault but the Navy’s for numerous design changes.
Did Sen. Susan Collins, a relentless champion of BIW, know about this when she grilled Navy officials recently on whether the Navy had enough ships in the Atlantic fleet? Of course she did. She mentioned design problems but didn’t say we have $18 billion worth of nonfunctioning ships sitting in Bath.
Meanwhile, one in six Maine children lives in poverty, one in 13 in extreme poverty, living on less than $840 a month for a family of three. And it’s getting worse.
Sen. Collins obviously didn’t create the BIW problem, and she can’t fix it. But she can, if she chooses, divert some of her attention to Maine’s hungry children. They truly need a champion.
Donna Halvorsen
South Portland