CONCEDE WHAT?

                                                    

from sam 6/30/2016

THEN

From the office of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders - a brief reminder that neither the Democratic nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, nor the NewYorker everyman paper ,the Daily News, ever "got" Bernie - or perhaps understood him all too well: Here is the "Bernie Buzz" of - NOVEMBER 29, 2012

  

The Face of Class Warfare

BLANKFEIN FACTS

Lloyd Blankfein was paid $16.1 million in 2011, a 14 percent increase, while Goldman's earnings fell 47 percent During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received a total of $814 billion in virtually zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve and a $10 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury »
Goldman Sachs received a $278 million refund from the IRS in 2008, even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion that year »

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein came to Capitol Hill this week to call for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. As Congress and the White House are negotiating a year-end deficit deal, Blankfein blustered about the need to “lower people’s expectations” about their retirement and health care. He was loose with his facts. He spoke with all the sympathy for someone struggling to get by on a $14,000-a-year retirement that you’d expect from a Wall Street banker paid $16 million last year. To Bernie, Blankfein’s attack on working families is obscene. “Think about the arrogance of these guys on Wall Street who were bailed out by the middle class of this country when their greed and recklessness nearly destroyed the financial system, and now they come to Capitol Hill to lecture Congress and the American people about the need to cut programs for working families,” Bernie said. “This is what class warfare is all about.”

NOW

And here is this morning's -June 30, 2016- almost incoherent editorial from that NY Daily News

B.S. from B.S.: Bernie Sanders sees a vast conspiracy behind middle- and working-class economic woes

• Editorials

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, June 30, 2016, 4:10 AM

Throughout his energetic, failed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders portrayed Americans as victims of a rigged system. Now, he has revealed that he also views them as dupes and dolts.
The New York Times on Wednesday published an Op-Ed by Sanders that drew note for his continuing refusal to endorse Hillary Clinton. More interesting were these two sentences:
“The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite.”
In other words, a cabal of the very rich has exerted a hidden hand around the globe that has driven down standards of living for the many so that the few can live gloriously.
Since well before this presidential campaign — and brushing off President Obama’s economic puffery — the Daily News Editorial Board has highlighted the falling fortunes of working- and middle-class Americans.
Sanders marshals just some of the evidence in the Times, reporting that 60,000 factories have closed in the U.S over the last 15 years, that the country has lost 4.8 million manufacturing jobs, that the median male worker makes $726 less annually than in 1973 and that nearly 47 million Americans live in poverty.
Spanning more than four decades, the downward trend has reduced the middle class from claiming almost two-thirds of the national income in the 1970s to just 43% today.
During those 40 years, Americans voted Democrats and Republicans into and out of the White House and into and out of control of Congress — with markedly changing approaches to rapidly evolving economic challenges.
Democrat Jimmy Carter weathered two recessions and the Federal Reserve’s radical action of imposing sky-high interest rates to tame inflation.
Republican Ronald Reagan introduced so-called Reaganomics, which called for lower taxes and less government.
Democrat Bill Clinton brought “Clintonomics,” which included a large tax increase, low interest rates and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Republican George W. Bush favored tax cuts. Obama eliminated those cuts on the wealthy and established Obamacare.
But do not be fooled, says Sanders, who has always been way too smart to be fooled. Concealed behind the bipartisan turbulence, the “economic elite” established an “economic model” that was successfully designed to fatten their wallets regardless of America’s ballot box choices.
Sanders’ simple-minded conspiracy theory is worthy of a politician on the order of Donald Trump. Come to think of it, billionaire Republican Trump and Democratic Socialist Sanders are both selling patent-medicine remedies after both men diagnosed the public as just plain dumb.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
For this their genius editorial writer arose early and boozy-eyed to make sure this crap was posted by 4:10AM. Now lets see an editorial about those unavailable transcripts of Hillary's $600,000 "speeches" to Lloyd and the boys and girls at Goldman Sachs.

REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY RISES FOR US ALL:

Believe it or not the House of Representatives has quite a few capable and very qualified men and women...well women, anyway, who could and should and would make a

fine President of the United States. Unfortunately, they are not candidates for our exalted presidency. Among them is Representative Janice Schakowsky of Illinois. A voice for democratic and progressive values she recently celebrated a birthday (May 26) and we at the American Appoggiatura just wanted to wish her a happy one. Abigezunt




TOP TEN ABUSES OF THE ``SELECT INVESTIGATIVE PANEL'' REPUBLICANS -- (House of Representatives - May 25, 2016)

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   The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) for 5 minutes.

   Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday 181 Democrats wrote to Speaker Ryan to ask the Republican Select Panel to Attack Women's Health--that is what we call it--to be shut down.
   From the outset, this investigation has been a political weapon to punish women, doctors, and scientific researchers, not an objective, fair-minded, or fact-based search for the truth.

   Here are the top 10 reasons to shut down this partisan panel immediately:

   One: The select panel is a waste of taxpayer money.
   Republicans are wasting taxpayer dollars in their chasing of inflammatory allegations of anti-abortion extremists.
   Three Republican-led House committees, 12 States, and one grand jury have already investigated charges that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for a profit. None found any evidence of wrongdoing.

   Two: The select panel is an attack on women's rights.
   Republicans are using the panel as part of their campaign to deny women access to legal reproductive health services, including abortions--the panel comes at a time when Republicans have voted repeatedly to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides health services to over 3 million American women and men each year--to eliminate family planning services, and to restrict access to abortion.

   Three: The select panel is harming scientific research.
   Republicans are using the panel to intimidate scientists into stopping legal fetal tissue research on treatment for cures for diseases and conditions that afflict millions of Americans, including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. Some medical research outfits have already been canceled.

   Four: The select panel is just partisan politics.
   Republicans are conducting an unfair, one-sided, and partisan campaign. They refuse to put indicted video maker David Daleiden under oath, who made those highly edited tapes against Planned Parenthood, while issuing subpoenas and demanding sworn testimony from law-abiding researchers and doctors.
   Republicans have suppressed facts that contradict their preferred partisan narratives. For example, they refused to hear directly from tissue procurement companies while they publicly accused them of misconduct based on misleading and inaccurate staff-created exhibits that lacked any sourcing or foundational information.

   Five: The select panel is a McCarthy-like witch hunt:
   Mirroring the bullying behavior of Senator Joe McCarthy, Republicans are demanding that universities and clinics name names of their researchers, graduate students, lab technicians, clinic personnel, and doctors. When Democrat Jerry Nadler asked Chair BLACKBURN to explain why she needs to amass this database of names, she responded: No, sir. I am not going to do that.

   Six: The select panel threatens innocent lives.
   Republicans are putting researchers and doctors at risk by publicly naming them as targets of their investigation and creating a database of names.
   On May 11, Republicans issued a press release that publicly named a physician who had already been the target and the subject of violence by anti-abortion extremists. That physician was never contacted to voluntarily provide information before he received a subpoena. 

 Seven: The select panel is dangerous.
   Republicans are refusing to protect confidentiality despite known risks and tragedies, such as the murders of three people at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood women's health clinic. That murderer echoed the words of our Republican chairman of the select committee.
   The killer used words like ``no more baby body parts.'' Even after they promised to protect confidentiality, the committee said: We will not assure that witnesses' names or any of the other names used in the deposition will remain private.

   Eight: The select panel is an abuse of power.
   Republicans are abusing congressional subpoena power. The overwhelming majority of their unilateral subpoenas--30 of 36--have been sent without any effort to obtain voluntary compliance.
   We should provide physicians, medical researchers, and others with an opportunity for them to provide information voluntarily. A subpoena should not be the first contact they have with Congress.

   Nine: The select panel excludes Democrats.
   Republicans have consistently refused to work with Democratic panel members. They have refused to discuss or to even give Democrats copies of their unilateral subpoenas until after they have been served, which is in violation of the House.

   Ten: The select panel bullies witnesses they don't like.
   It is time, Mr. Speaker, to end this panel right now.


WHY WE NEED TO LOWER PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES -- (Extensions of Remarks - May 25, 2016)

[Page: E795]  GPO's PDF
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SPEECH OF HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY OF ILLINOIS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2016

• Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the following article, written by Heather Block. I encourage all of my colleagues to read this short and powerful piece, which provides us with yet another personal testimony highlighting the need to lower the price of prescription drugs and support the Medicare Part B Demonstration Project proposed by CMS. In this article, Ms. Block describes ``what it is like to have stage 4 cancer, and to fear bankruptcy as much as cancer due to our health system and the lack of drug pricing regulation''. Sadly, her story is not unique. Across this country, millions of people who are already facing devastating health issues suddenly find themselves in dire financial straits due to the cost of prescription drugs. Let us not forsake the wellbeing of the many for the financial gain of the very few. I ask you to join me in taking the side of people like Heather by supporting CMS's proposal.HEATHER BLOCK may 23, 2016 I testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health last week. It was a big deal for me. As I told my brother, I want my niece to know that we can speak to the powers that be--even individuals like me, without any group or organization to back me up. I want her to know that our voices can still be heard in America.
  I testified about what it is like to have stage 4 cancer, and to fear bankruptcy as much as cancer due to our health system and the lack of drug pricing regulation. I also said that I support a Medicare proposal to evaluate ways to lower drug costs. It would reduce financial incentives that could encourage doctors to use more expensive drugs, while trying several different approaches that would improve quality of care and potentially cut drug costs for taxpayers and patients.
  I felt like most of the Representatives had already made up their minds. Probably not due to the actual proposal, but to the pressures placed by groups that would lose money if the so-called Medicare Part B Demo is launched. I joked before I testified that I might ask, ``Could anyone that doesn't receive any money from the pharmaceutical industry, raise their hands,'' and that I would probably be the only one with a hand raised in the room.
  Turns out my joke wasn't that far off-base. Imagine my surprise when Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) pointed out that two of the five witnesses had several pages of identical testimony--identical down to the highlights. What that says to me is that the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists are so confident of their power that they can be sloppy.
  I do not have that luxury. I have limited time; no one knows how much with stage 4 cancer and certainly limited means. My friends jokingly call me ``Dona Quixote.'' But I feel urgency around the issue, and I do appreciate Representative Peter Welch for pointing out this urgency.
  I know I cannot be alone. Other patients are slowly being bled dry by the cost of our life saving drugs
  While the Medicare Part B Demo will not solve the problem of high prescription drug spending, it's at least a thoughtful step in the right direction. I hope to keep pushing and reminding everyone of the urgency of this issue. Americans recognize that the cost of drugs is not sustainable but no one knows what to do. And so far, no one knows how to overcome the money and power being mobilized by the drug companies to keep their profits high, even as patients go bankrupt
  While the Medicare Part B demo may not be perfect, it's at least a step in the right direction when everyone else seems to be more interested in standing still.
  Let's proceed.
  Heather Block served as a witness for the Energy and Commerce's Health committee hearing on the proposed Medicare Part B Payment Demonstration Project on May 17, 2016.
  
  

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SANDERS-205,000 CLINTONS-28,000,000

A TALE OF TWO FAMILIES

"According to his tax forms, Sanders and his wife paid $27,653 in federal income tax and another $7,903 in Vermont income tax last year. The couple paid an effective tax rate of 19.6 percent on their federal taxable income of $140,994.

Bernie Sanders and his wife made $205K, 

Sanders reported receiving $156,441 from his Senate job, after contributions to a savings plan and health insurance. The couple reported receiving another $46,213 in Social Security benefits, of which $39,281 was taxable.

Sanders also reported income of $4,982 from the pension he receives having been mayor of Burlington, Vt., in the 1980s. And his wife had another $4,900 in compensation for sitting on a commission devoted to the management of low-level radioactive waste disposal.

On a separate disclosure form required of presidential candidates, Sanders reported having between $25,000 and $65,000 in credit card debt at some point during the past year.

Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said the debt was related to weddings of a daughter and niece and that Sanders and his wife had since paid the balance on the two credit cards down to zero."- USA Today 

USA TODAY

Clinton income doubled since 2010, tax docs show

"Clinton released her tax returns, filed jointly with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in July. They show the couple earned just over $28 million in 2014 and $27 million in 2013, more than double the $13 million they earned in 2010, when she was still serving as secretary of state. The 2014 total included $10.5 million in speaking fees for Hillary Clinton, $9.8 million in speaking fees for the former president, and $6.4 million he earned from "consulting."

Hillary Clinton and her husband made $28 Million

In a statement, Hillary Clinton noted the family had given $15 million to charity since 2007. The tax returns show $14.8 million of that went to the Clinton Family Foundation. Clinton said the couple has paid $43.9 million in federal taxes since 2007, and that last year they paid an effective rate of 35.7%."

Sanders has been under pressure for weeks to release his returns. Clinton raised the issue during the debate to counter questions about why she won’t release transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. Clinton received $675,000 for speeches to the company in 2013, according to her own disclosure. 

Money do talk. There probably should be a better etiquette to all this as I for one find it ill-mannered and maybe crass to bother about people's personal finances - what they make is their own business really except of course when the people involved are publicly elected and so should be obligated to give up their financial privacy to show how much and why and that things are for the most part copacetic. As a son of an accountant myself I was proud when my father would ask me to help out by filling in those compressed lines on the income forms with the numbers he had put down on  the "unofficial" form he had already completed - a recognition of my very legible copyhand and showing an early established faith in his scatterbrained son. He would sometimes point out that the figures I was copying did not necessarily reflect the value or worth of a single individual  - who makes more, who has more, who owns more - who is richer, poorer, but they do reflect a kind of , well, accounting of how a person lives his or her life-whether by choice or forced circumstance who could tell -and what they officially declared they made and what they were obligated to pay the government was all sanctioned by a kind of communal commitment to maintain this nutty country we call America. 

IT'S ALWAYS OPENING DAY in AMERICA

THE KISS OF SOLITUDE

I knew it. There WERE the usual oh so serious commentary this morning conflating OPENING DAY with the presidential primaries - two grand AMERICAN  seasonal traditions- except on this Sunday morning it seemed almost sacrilegious to mention

 them in the same breath as it bestowed SANCTION and  LEGITIMACY on the latter at the risk of denigrating the former and to add the always recurring INSULT it brought to mind the always beer-chasing CONTENTION of how long the major league BASEBALL SEASON is at least in the northern climes, how long the games have now become - thanks to the ENDLESS discussion of pitch counts and relief pitchers and tender elbows and CODDLED egos, not to mention all those

ERECTILE disfunction commercials; not to mention the number of visits to the mound by COACHES and MANAGERS and PLAYERS - strategy codes and base coverage and wedding presents(?)- they're even officially "timing" these meetings to keep the game rolling along as each visitation is given a 30 second LIMIT from the time a TIME-OUT is called to the time the coach leaves the discussion which rather humorously will give some TEAMS an advantage as some pitching coaches and some managers are now far beyond their more svelt INNINGS and carry a heavier burden which makes for a very hard encounter to watch when say a coach who now is about 40 and more pounds over his younger self is forced to actually run back and forth between the DUGOUT and the mound - he has barely enough time to catch his breath before he has to turn around and run back -

AND I HAVEN'T MENTIONED THE UMP-
Jogging out to the mound to break
up the secret meeting

 and this "time discussion" continues with the time afforded between pitches- the fidgeting habits of each batter; adjusting this batting glove and the other one (Mays never WORE a batting glove, not WILLIAMS nor AARON, SHOELESS JOE  and MANTLE),  and re-positioning their elbow pads and tightening their shin and ankle guards and all this AFTER each pitch. And still in all the length and seemingly timeless baseball season with all its posturings and nuance and chatter and pitch counts does not hold a long-wicked candle to the NEVER ending and  now PERMANENT campaign season. This presidential campaign started the day after President Obama was elected almost 8 YEARS ago. You can circle the date. AND the campaign before that and before that. The Obama years have been particularly more intense as they have shown in a stark relief just how racist and obstructionist the "LOYAL" opposition is - in a way it has made us at least talk more about our racist underpinnings and misunderstandings but I wonder what happens to that CONVERSATION when Obama splits the scene- we have hit upon some these themes in other posts under other titles- but for now it is enough to bemoan this condition of a permanent campaign- an endless campaign commercial for the hearts and minds of the always discriminating American viewer fed by our TV News

 in what can only be described as an ongoing loop of speculation and polling numbers. Much ado about...

It is almost a sort of self-cannilbalism- is that even a thing?- eventually Chuck Todd devours the very salad bowl he uses to trim his hair every Sunday morning. I know I'm getting into ad hominem which some of my Twitter admirers have- and rightfully so- accuse me of but Chuck is just our trope for the main news in general- Chuck, "get in there and pitch the 2020 elections; "Chuck, baby, the latest NBC/Highlights Poll for Chelsea Clinton's chances in 2028" you get the idea. A feeding frenzy of  limitless nonsense and eventuality. Lets see what the Republicans (and Democrats) have to say about abortion; immigration? guns? election after election the trigger words, buzzwords, polling-words- minimum wage, medicaid, social security- the national debt ( do a majority of their viewers even know what that is?) The same responses year after year, election after election. Obama in trying to work with the obstructionist Republicans for all these years has garnered a fairly decent record of accomplishment but lets face it the country would have been much better served had the Republicans been at least willing to talk and compromise and work things out for the betterment of all the American people; Chuck and the News, however, would always talk in terms of the "American people's ANGER at Washington" seeming to put much of the blame for what little success has filtered through since the GREAT REPRESSION on Obama and never faulting the Republicans for failing to meet their political and moral obligations. They have no idea on how to handle a loose cannon like Trump. They know he's THEIR creature too. They haven't figured out to just shut off their cameras to him. Cameras are his oxygen. But then again ask the failed TV actor and now head of CBS, Les Moonves, about that. Trump is money in the bank for them.

 It's undoubtably the start - or the middle - of what can be called THE GREAT REACTION. The Republicans are hoping for what they could consider the RESTORATION- Either title and America is set back 60 years. Question for final- What is a MODERATE Republican? For extra credit- why are so-called conservatives republicans? What are they conservative about? If conservatives are PRO status-quo, what's their problem? If they espouse "smaller" government- why then don't they like Obama's? Compare his administration with Bush's. Discuss.

Sunday morning in America and the first thing I must check is my trusty cable guide that will tell me which one of the networks my gal, PEGGY NOONAN, will grace with her presence today.

 AH, yes, she'll return to CBS' Face the Nation with that seemingly sympathetic young man who looks a little like the grown up Doogie Howser.

BERNIE AT LIBERTY

from Sen. Bernie Sanders speech at Liberty University, Virginia, Sept. 14, 2015:


"Now here is my point. Some of you may agree with me, and some of you may not, but in my view, it would be hard for anyone in this room today to make the case that the United States of America, our great country, a country which all of us love, it would be hard to make the case that we are a just society, or anything resembling a just society today."

"In the United States of America today, there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality. Injustice is rampant. We live, and I hope all of you know this, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world."

"But most Americans don't know that. Because almost all of that wealth and income is going to the top 1 percent."

Oil on canvas by Jacqueline Jolles

"... at that very same moment, there are millions of people in our country, let alone the rest of the world, who are struggling to feed their families. They are struggling to put a roof over their heads, and some of them are sleeping out on the streets. They are struggling to find money in order to go to a doctor when they are sick.
Now, when we talk about morality, and when we talk about justice, we have to, in my view, understand that there is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little..."


“I conclude with this thought, I would hope very much that as part of that discussion and part of that learning process, some of you will conclude that if we are honest in striving to be a moral and just society, it is imperative that we have the courage to stand with the poor, to stand with working people and when necessary, take on very powerful and wealthy people whose greed, in my view, is doing this country enormous harm.”