This morning, Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed a Democrat running for a House seat in Pennsylvania. Senators don't often endorse in House races and almost never endorse in primaries in other states.
Most Americans have supported Social Security ever since it was enacted into law in 1935. Republican presidential nominee, Alf Landon, made the repeal of Social Security the main issue in the 1936 election, thus making the election a referendum on whether the American people wanted to keep or repeal Social Security. The response of the electorate was a massive vote in favor of keeping Social Security.
If you haven’t yet heard of Ron Unz, you may soon. The conservative, successful software developer, theoretical physicist from Harvard and former publisher of the American Conservative magazine is launching a California initiative that asks voters in November to raise the state minimum wage to $12 per hour (it is now $8 an hour and is going to $9 an hour by July, 2014).
According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. It is Greece all over again.
Sad when cowardly Democrats bend over backwards to play the dipshit bipartisan game with always ill-intentioned Republicans. And it never pays off… at least not for Democrats. In the video above, Alan Grayson explains the "misconception that the best way to elect more Democrats is to have them run as Republicans." It's Steve Israel's basic philosophy as DCCC chairman. And Grayson, wisely, warns, "that's just wrong… Voters deserve a choice. They deserve an honest answer to their questions and they deserve an actual choice on the ballot.
Last year, President Obama offered to compromise Social Security inviolability on the alter of the plutocrats and their advocates (the GOP and the ConservaDems) who want to cut-- if not abolish-- social insurance. It was a bad mistake but, lucky for America, the Republicans, who had demanded it, refused to compromise and Chained CPI wasn't adopted. This year, the president has decided to focus on his State of the Union message about opportunity as his budgetary vision. It's a reflection that the budget is falling rapidly already and would fall more if Congress passes immigration reform.
In the new ad above, the DCCC-connected SuperPAC, House Majority PAC, quotes AARP about the dangers seniors face if conservatives ever get their way in regard to privatizing Social Security. And they point out that the Republican candidate in the FL-13 special election, for the remainder of Bill Young's term, David Jolly, was a lobbyist who worked to privatize Social Security and who still favors that approach. All true.
The USA and European Union (EU) continue on their downward trajectory in the 14th year of 21st Century. The perpetual state of war against terror, drugs, immigrants, the press and whistle-blowers moves on uninhibited. Another war, this time named Austerity, is being waged by USA and EU leaders against the middle and lower classes. Youth are particularly hard hit with the average unemployment rate in the EU at 23 percent. In the USA the figure is 17 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But never mind that.
I don’t care if you are 75 and retired, 61 and just about to reach the age when you become eligible for Social Security, 50 and looking out 15 or 20 years to the time when you’ll need to retire, or 25 with grandparents collecting retirement benefits and wondering what will be there when you get old. Whatever your age, don’t let anyone tell you Social Security is in trouble, or that it “won’t be around” when you need it.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is relevant these days with many in Congress playing the role of Scrooge before he was visited by the Christmas spirits. Dickens was greatly concerned about the plight of children forced to work under dreadful conditions and about the lives of the poor in Britain under industrial capitalism in the 1840s.
Pope Francis recently echoed these ideas when he expressed concern about unfettered capitalism. The Pope also called on world leaders to address poverty and growing inequality. Specifically, he said:
