person:bernie sanders

Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, the TPP “Corporate Coup d’État” & Writing to the White House | Democracy Now!
Friday, May 1, 2015
▻http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/1/ralph_nader_on_bernie_sanders_the

http://www.democracynow.org/images/story/54/27354/splash/Ralph-Nader-Forward-to-Sender-1.jpg?201504221305

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders’ announcement came one day before May Day, celebrated around the world as International Workers’ holiday. Many events are planned across the country today, many mass protests that will also show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, the immigrants’ rights movement, as well.

Well, today we’re joined by a former presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. His new book is called Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015, the book dedicated in part to the workers of the U.S. Postal Service.

Ralph Nader, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, let’s get your response to the announced candidacy of Bernie Sanders. It might bring back memories for you, the number of times that you ran for president.

RALPH NADER: Well, that’s a good—good news. We don’t want a coronation of Hillary Clinton. We want a vibrant debate in the televised primaries next year, and Bernie Sanders will provide an alternative view of where the country should be going. I hope he’ll be stronger on pulling back on empire. I’ve always thought his foreign policy and military policy were not up to his great domestic reforms and corporate accountability from Wall Street to Houston.

AMY GOODMAN: The issue of TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that doesn’t get a heck of a lot of attention in the mainstream media—when it does, presenting largely one point of view—is a mainstay, one of the things that Senator Sanders has been speaking against. It’s also an issue that you have been taking on, dealing with 40 percent of the global economy.

RALPH NADER: Well, the people have got to demand that their members of Congress block the fast track that is now beginning to circulate in Congress, which will allow an up-or-down vote, no amendments whatsoever to the subsequent Trans-Pacific Partnership, so-called. This is a corporate coup d’état. This is worse than NAFTA. It’s worse than the World Trade Organization. It’s bad for consumers, for labor, for the environment. All these necessities are subordinated to the supremacy of international commercial trade, and a tremendous invasion on local, state and national sovereignty. And all the disputes that may affect American workers and dealing with poverty and investment in poor areas in this country, all the disputes are going to be before secret tribunals. They cannot go to our courts. This is blatantly unconstitutional. But any citizen that tries to take these trade agreements to the federal courts are dismissed because of no standing to sue. So, we’ve got a real fight coming up. Go to GlobalTradeWatch.org, and you’ll get the details. I’m telling you, people, if this one passes, with about a dozen other countries on the Pacific Rim, it’s going to affect the pace of exporting jobs and industry, and subordinating the ability of the United States to be first, and environmental, labor and consumer standards.

2ème partie de l’entretien :
▻http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/5/1/pt_2_ralph_nader_on_bernie

Why the Planet Is Happy That Bernie Sanders Is Running for President
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-the-planet-is-happy-that-bernie-sanders-is-running-for-president

After lunch, right about the time that Bernie Sanders was actually announcing his run for president, I went for a walk in the woods, and polled three chickadees, two wild turkeys, one vernal...

Give ’Em Hell, Bernie
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/give-em-hell-bernie

Many years ago I pitched a magazine editor on a story about Bernie Sanders, then a congressman from Vermont, who’d agreed to something extraordinary – he agreed to let me, a reporter, stick...

Bernie Sanders Forces Republicans to State Their Views on Climate Change
▻http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/bernie-sanders-forces-republicans-to-state-their-views-on-

With Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell promising an open debate on the #Keystone_XL pipeline bill, Senator Bernie Sanders, the maverick Independent from Vermont, has crafted a beauty of an amendment. He plans to offer a “sense of Congress” resolution in the debate asking each senator if he or she agrees with “the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community” that climate change is a factually proven problem resulting in “devastating problems in the United States and around the world.”

[...] The Sanders amendment confronts what lately has been the classic answer from Republican politicians trying the shave the issue: “I’m no scientist.”

“Okay, but what do you think as a senator?” is effectively Mr. Sanders’ follow-up question. No I’m-glad-you-asked-me-that essay answers, please. An aye or a nay will do, on the record.

#climat #Etats-Unis

Sacrificing the Vulnerable, From Gaza to America
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/sacrificing-the-vulnerable-from-gaza-to-america

Chris Hedges gave this speech Saturday at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo, Wis., before a crowd of about 2,000. His address followed one there by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont...

What the U.S. Can Learn About Health Care from Other Countries
▻http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/us-can-learn-other-countries-health-care

Other major countries offer better health care at less cost than the United States, according to witnesses who testified on Tuesday at a Senate hearing chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders. “What this hearing is really about is two fundamental issues. First, the U.S., the wealthiest country on the planet, is the only major industrialized country in the world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its citizens. Should we consider joining the rest of the world? I’d argue we should,” Sanders said. “Second, the U.S. spends twice as much as other countries that have much better health outcomes. What can we learn from these countries?” asked Sanders, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging.

Citing World Health Organization data, Sanders said the U.S. spends as much as three times more on health care than other industrialized countries. Health care outlays in the U.S. account for about 18 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, significantly more than in France, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Taiwan and Israel.

In Denmark, “all citizens have access to care; no one may be denied services on the basis of income, age, health or employment status,” according to Jakob Kjellberg, an economist from Copenhagen. Victor Rodwin, an expert on the French health care system, said “the French have easy access to primary health care, as well as specialty services, at half the per capita costs of what we spend in the U.S.”

Other witnesses said the money Americans sink into their expensive health care system does not buy better care. “Canada achieved health outcomes that are at least equal to those in the U.S. at two-thirds the cost,” according to one witness at the hearing, Dr. Danielle Martin of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.

The United States ranks 26th in life expectancy compared to other countries ranked by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. People who live in Italy, Spain, France, Australia, Israel, Norway and other countries live 2 to 3 years longer than Americans.

The Affordable Care Act has improved access to insurance, but millions of Americans still lack insurance or have plans with such high deductibles and copayments that they cannot afford the care they need. As a result, some 45,000 uninsured Americans die each year because they didn’t go to a doctor in time.

A major factor driving up health care costs in the U.S. is the high cost of prescription drugs. Hospital stays also cost more. While hospitals in Germany and France charge $3,000 for an appendectomy, for example, the average price for the same procedure in American hospitals is $13,000. Some U.S. hospitals charge $28,000.

“It is time for the U.S. to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee access to health care as a right of all people, not just a privilege for those who can afford it,” Sanders said.

#Système_de_soins_de_santé

Senator presses NSA to reveal whether it spies on members of Congress (or other American elected officials)
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/03/nsa-asked-spying-congress-bernie-sanders

Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and socialist, asked army general Keith Alexander, the NSA’s outgoing director, if the NSA “has spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”.

Avec une réponse en pur bois d’arbre…

On Saturday, the NSA released a statement in response to Sanders’ letter, which said: “ NSA’s authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of US persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons.

NSA is fully committed to transparency with Congress. Our interaction with Congress has been extensive both before and since the media disclosures began last June. We are reviewing Senator Sanders’s letter now, and we will continue to work to ensure that all Members of Congress, including Senator Sanders, have information about NSA’s mission, authorities, and programs to fully inform the discharge of their duties. ”

Spying on Congress | TribLIVE
▻http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/5381582-74/nsa-congress-members#axzz2qMqTyE3E

Just when you thought the NSA spying scandal couldn’t get any worse, it has.

S en. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote to Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, and asked plainly whether the NSA has been or is now spying on members of Congress or other public officials .

The senator’s letter was no doubt prompted by the revelations of Edward Snowden to the effect that the federal government’s lust for personal private data about all Americans and many foreigners knows no bounds and its respect for the constitutionally protected and statutorily enforced right to privacy is nonexistent.

But the NSA refused to answer Sanders’ question directly. And that’s a tacit admission because we are all well aware that the NSA collects identifying data on and the content of virtually every email, text message and phone call sent or received in the United States.
#NSA
#surveillance

If members of Congress are treated no differently than the American public, then the NSA is keeping tabs on every email, text and phone call members of Congress send and receive, too. Which raises a host of constitutional questions.

We must not accept this economic ’new normal’ | Senator Bernie Sanders | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/02/us-economy-recovery-wealth-inequality

Les mauvaises nouvelles sociales contenues dans les bonnes nouvelles économiques.

...

The good news is that instead of losing more than 700,000 jobs a month as we were five years ago, we’ve been gaining almost 200,000 jobs a month since January. The bad news is that, in addition to those job numbers being much too low, nearly 60% of the jobs gained since the “recovery” are low-wage jobs that pay less than $14 an hour, while most of the jobs lost during the recession were decent-paying middle-class jobs.

The good news is that the official unemployment rate has gone down from 10% in October of 2009 to 7.5% in April. The bad news is that 20 million Americans still are looking for work and the real unemployment rate – counting those who have given up looking for work and those working part time when they need full time jobs – is 13.9% The very bad news is that youth and minority unemployment is far higher than that and, with the decline in factory jobs, income for poorly educated men has shrunk by nearly two-thirds over the past four decades.

...

Bernie Sanders introduces anti-pharma-patent bill, aims to replace drug monopolies with prizes - Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing)
►http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/27/bernie-sanders-intro.html

Jamie Love sez, “Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced legislation in the US Senate that would use prizes to reward medical R&D, and eliminate all drug monopolies. It includes an open source dividend of $4 billion per year.”

#pharma #brevets