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Archive for January, 2020

“What CNN did to Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential debate — stabbing him with the gender card on behalf of a weakened Elizabeth Warren — was cheap and unfair. And it was shameful,” John Kass of the Chicago Tribune wrote the day after last week’s little-watched Democratic Party debate.

Did Bernie really tell Elizabeth Warren in 2018 that a woman could not be president of the United States? I suspect it is highly unlikely.

As you can hear in the video above, it’s Sanders saying he thinks a woman can be president, and that was thirty years ago. Likewise, in the video below, Michael Moore says it is highly unlikely Bernie said that. And considering that Hillary Clinton received nearly five million more votes for president in 2016 than the electoral college elected Donald Trump, and you can begin to call in doubt that Bernie ever said anything like what Warren said about women not being able to be president of the United States.

I am not suggesting Warren lied, although it could be the case, but it could also be that she misunderstood something Bernie said. Or perhaps the corporate, that is to say, Wall Streeters who control the Democratic Party, were prepared to do anything to stop the surging in the polls Sanders, and Warren decided to give them a helping hand.

Kass noted, “Just before the debate, CNN ran a story portraying Sanders as a misogynist who thinks a woman couldn’t be elected president. That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t believe that.

And at the CNN debate, moderator Abby Phillip took Warren’s gender card, fashioned it into a knife and stabbed Sanders just weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

“Sen. Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Sen. Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Phillip asked of Sanders.

“Well,” Sanders said, “as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it.

“I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time on this, because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want,” Sanders added. “Anybody knows me knows that it’s incomprehensible that I would think that a woman cannot be president of the United States.

“Go to YouTube today,” Sanders said. “’There’s a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States.’”

That video is at the top of this story. You can see the obvious. Why would Warren engage in a plot with Wall Street Democrats to derail Bernie Sanders? That too is incomprehensible, but it appears to be so.

It is also, Kass notes, probably not a coincidence that the Democrats are impeaching Donald Trump at this very moment. This pulls Bernie off the campaign trail into the halls of the Senate just when he is surging. Is not that an amazing coincidence?

“And now,” Kass wrote, “after weeks of stalling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has finally brought the impeachment of President Donald Trump to the Senate.

This means Democratic presidential candidates who are also senators, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Warren of Massachusetts and Sanders of Vermont, are stuck in Washington as jurors.

And Joe (Biden)? With Bernie on Trump jury duty in Washington, Biden is left to wander around Iowa with (former) Mayor Pete — who also was not challenged by CNN — and that radical billionaire environmentalist who made his gold in fossil fuels.

No wonder Sanders’ supporters are upset. They’ve seen this before. They watched the same game play out three years ago, when the Democratic nomination was almost his, and establishment media handmaidens of the Democratic National Committee protected Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump.”

Column: CNN’s shameful treatment of Bernie Sanders–Chicago Tribune

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Income inequality continues to rise, according to a September 2019 study from the United States Census Bureau. However, it is terribly understated. In Oregon, income inequality continues to grow. This reflects what is happening nationally, as well as internationally.

According to the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), “Oregonians are facing a scary reality: the income gap separating those Oregonians in the middle of the income ladder and those at the very top has never been wider. In 1980, it took 26 typical (median income) Oregonians to equal the average income of the highest-earning taxpayers — the top one-tenth of 1 percent. By 2017, this had grown to 131 typical Oregonians. That is nearly a five-fold increase.”

“As frightening as income inequality is, inequality by wealth is even scarier. Income refers to how much money you earn in a year, while wealth is the sum total of all of your assets minus all of your debts. No good sources for wealth inequality at the state level exist, but national figures show that wealth is even more concentrated at the top than income. In 2018, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans together held 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom half of Americans together owned only 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.” In addition, three Americans (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans, and these figures are from two years ago, meaning these figures are most likely understated as of 2020.

With rising inequality, our faith in the “American Dream” is fading, being replaced instead with an American Nightmare. Research from the Center for American Progress found that as income inequality has increased, it has contributed to Americans becoming more pessimistic and less trusting of one another and our political leaders.

Federal policy, and the policy of both major political parties, is to redistribute income and wealth from the 99.5 percent to the 0.5 percent, the multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Quite naturally, the corporate media have now undertaken a campaign of disinformation, questioning what is obvious to the vast majority of Americans, seeking to instill doubt about the extent of income and wealth inequality.

However, both inequalities are far more significant than have been accepted. For example, three economists have examined U.S. income tax returns from the last several decades. These three have determined the top 1 percent receive 22-23 percent of all income produced in the United States nowadays compared to 8 percent in 1979. The Census Bureau’s study shows the top five percent took 23.2 percent of all income in 2018, compared to 22.3 percent in 2017.

On the other hand, there is unreported income, income hidden in Panamanian and Swiss banks, as well as elsewhere. The reality is that the top 1 percent steal closer to 38 percent of all income made in the USA. No doubt their accumulation of wealth mirrors that since you need income to generate wealth.

The results of these growing inequalities have not been kind to the 99 percent. Suicide rates, alcoholism, rates of depression and other maladies have all increased for the 99 percent during this era of inequality and political corruption. The corporate news media has been supportive of the growing inequalities by sowing the seeds of discord, pitting a variety of sectors of the 99 percent against each other in order to divert our eyes from income and wealth inequality. People trust each other less than in decades past because of the media.

In the meantime, the corporate news media, the billionaires who control both major political parties, have waged war against the only two presidential candidates of the people, while supporting the candidates of the billionaires, such as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg’s recent attacks on Sanders and Warren suggest the billionaires who control him have unleashed him in order to stop veteran billionaire brown-noser Joe Biden from having to do so and alienating Warren and Sanders voters in the process, which might not be a good thing to do with the general election coming up.

Do not fall for this con if you are tired of working more and earning less so that billionaires can have more of what you earned.

US Census Bureau on Income Inequality

See https://www.ocpp.org/2019/10/30/scary-facts-economic-inequality/

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