Track Bernie on Twitter and the "Senator Sanders Unfiltered" weekly webisode on Facebook.
While markets surged past 10,000, the official unemployment rate stood near 10 percent. The United States is in a unique historical position. People on top are doing extraordinarily well, but in the real world the middle class is collapsing. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about. With all the issues we are dealing with -- from health care to global warming to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- please do not forgot what is happening to tens of millions of our brothers and our sisters out there who are struggling hard to keep their heads above water.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films. Submit your own video question for next week's show here.
Stay up-to-date with the goings on in the Senate by signing up for the Bernie Buzz newsletter and joining his Facebook page today.
Take our most recent web poll here.
Lyrics:
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/rolling-stone
The song is copyrighted.
Even the revolutionaries are in it for the money.
Because our leaders have all been either killed, jailed or harassed to the point of being driven underground.
Think I'm kidding? Look at COINTELPRO.
This was all according to plan.
Why do you think that John, Martin and Bobby were assassinated. It wasn't by chance.
Look at the last election. Just a little coopration gave victory to the most unlikely candidate. learn from that. The fight for a more just society will never be won if you don't join forces and then keep it up for the years to come. You don't win a war by winning one battle.
Our tea bagger friends have a visceral hatred of government. They are libertarians. Their view of society is akin to anarchy, where the rich and powerful run society according to their own rules.
We must find a way to bring the 'Beckers' to an understanding of the world that will result from their belief system, while simultaneously reining in corporate power.
Bernie is a breath of fresh air in a government that sold out the middle class since 1980.
And if they were getting decent wages, they would pay more tax.
Would make sense to go after the rich, their off-shore tax havens, etc. Make more money pay more taxes would make sense. But this is what you get - first you have to pay the people
in order to have a viable economy. Gone are the fulltime jobs, we replaced them with intermittent jobs in retail and food, which is a large segment of the population. They get 3 to 19 hours per week. Why shelf going after the tax cheats, makes no sense to me. And then with their bad decision don't you think they should have thought about not getting any revenue from taxes. And by the way, how come they keep finding money for this ridiculous war, which costs 3.6 billion a month. For whom do we fight this war?
The American middle class has been the worlds consumers for about 60 years. It's unsustainable. The middle class will not voluntarily cut down on it's over consumption of resources. It's obvious that consumerism has not made America a happy place. It would be nice if the government could try and ease the fall, but I think it will be up to individuals to create something new and potentially better for their friends and families.
Please get together with all the others of good will. There are people stepping up and speaking up for change from all sides of the political spectrum lately. We need to consolidate this nonpartisan movement for change in the areas we can agree upon, then hook it to both the grass roots and any good organizations that can be trusted. And we must work to identify and vote out all who stand in the way of positive change and replace them with real public servants.
The state legislatures should begin to organize a constitutional amendment that outlaws campaign donations and mandates publicly funded elections.
A NYT Books column today examines F. Scott Fitzgerald saying, "the rich are different from us," and Hemingway answering, "yes, they have more money."
Generalizations are always tough. I know many rich people (I'm middle class). Some of them are the hardest workers I've ever met in my life and understand people from other classes and professions better than anyone. But all have blind spots about their wealth. Yes, they worked hard, for instance, but usually they began with advantages others didn't have, like educational opportunities, inherited wealth, or a family business.
The yawning gap between the rich and the poor that we have now is too great. It's dangerous for our society. We accept uncritically the individualist belief that everyone can get wealthy. We don't actually check to see if it's true. More often than not, it isn't possible in America now. The difference is so great between rich and poor that it's much more than that the rich have more money.
The Fitzgerald quotation that feels more germane to me about today's rich is Nick Carraway's description of a rich couple he knew:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
I saw the mini-series of "John Adams" on HBO, and Bernie Sanders reminds me of John Adams. John Adams spent his whole life, even at the cost of his own family who he wouldn't see for years, trying to attain a better life for ALL Americans not just the wealthy. We need more men like Bernie Sanders in Congress.
Pitchforks and shovels!
theVoice of thePeople....who definitely deserves a biggerPodium.
G_od love you bernie.