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Robert Reich | Bernie's Right! We Need a Democracy That Responds to All of America, Not Just the Powerful.
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "Hillary Clinton attacks Bernie Sanders for being a 'single issue' candidate: 'If we broke up the big banks tomorrow would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the L.G.B.T. community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?'"
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illary Clinton attacks Bernie Sanders for being a “single issue” candidate: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the L.G.B.T. community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”
What she fails to see is that ending the dominance of Wall Street, large corporations, and billionaires over American politics is the prerequisite to everything else that needs doing. We can’t hope to reverse climate change as long as big money has a strangle hold on our democracy. We can’t overcome structural racism, sexism or discrimination against the LGBT community, or achieve equal opportunity and upward mobility for the poor, unless we reclaim our government from the moneyed interests. We can't rebuild the middle class when giant corporations and Wall Street make the rules. We can’t have a sensible foreign policy when giant military contractors have disproportionate influence. We can’t have a sensible health care system without limiting the power of pharmaceutical companies and for-profit insurers.
In other words, the only way toward an economy that works for all of America and not simply for the powerful and privileged is by way of a democracy that’s responsive to all of America, and not only the powerful and privileged. And the only means of achieving a democracy that’s responsive to all of America is by reducing the power of the moneyed interests. This is what Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” is all about.
This is not “single-issue” politics. It is essential to the politics we must create in America.
What do you think?
Obama's Nuclear Security Summit Neglects 98 Percent of the World's Bomb-Ready Uranium
Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Emmons writes: "At President Obama's fourth and final nuclear security summit taking place this week, world leaders are confronting the danger posed by nuclear terrorism - specifically, by reducing the ways that terrorists could get their hands on the uranium they would need to build a nuclear bomb."
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Lots of People Are Going to Get High at the White House This Weekend
Joel Warner, International Business Times
Warner writes: "The idea of marijuana smoke wafting across the White House lawn and snaking around the tall Ionic columns of the iconic Truman Balcony, perhaps even sneaking inside past the gilded furniture and portraits of presidents past, is a tantalizing prospect for organizers of a planned Pennsylvania Avenue demonstration."
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$15 Minimum-Wage Movement Sets Sights on More States
Jennifer Peltz and David Klepper, Associated Press
Excerpt: "California and New York - where almost 1 in 5 Americans live - are on their way to raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the activists who spearheaded those efforts are now setting their sights on other similarly liberal, Democratic-led states."
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This Is How Hard It Is to Get a Voter ID in Wisconsin
Alice Ollstein, ThinkProgress
Ollstein writes: "A few days before millions of Wisconsin voters head to the polls to vote in the Republican and Democratic primaries, Milwaukee residents Ernest Barksdale and Nefertiti Helem struggled up the steps of the downtown DMV in the pouring rain, hoping to obtain IDs that comply with the state's voter ID law."
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This Hacker Rigged Elections in 9 Latin American Countries
teleSUR
Excerpt: "A highly sophisticated Colombian hacker rigged elections across Latin America in favor of right-wing candidates for almost eight years, pulling in hefty paychecks for highly-coveted dirty work in at least nine different countries' elections, including for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's rise to power."
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Native American Nations Unite to Ride Against Proposed North Dakota Pipeline
Nicky Woolf, Raw Story
Excerpt: "Dozens of tribal members from several Native American nations took to horseback on Friday to protest the proposed construction of an oil pipeline which would cross the Missouri river just yards from tribal lands in North Dakota."
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Dozens of tribal members from several Native American nations took to horseback on
Friday to protest against the proposed construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota.
(photo: Megan Mitchell/NBC)
bout 200 people rode on horseback to protest against pipeline that encroaches on tribal lands and could pollute Missouri river: ‘We’re looking out for all people’
Dozens of tribal members from several Native American nations took to horseback on Friday to protest the proposed construction of an oil pipeline which would cross the Missouri river just yards from tribal lands in North Dakota.
The group of tribal members, which numbered around 200, according to a tribal spokesman, said they were worried that the Dakota Access Pipeline, proposed by a subsidiary of the Dallas, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, would lead to contamination of the river. The proposed route also passes through lands of historical significance to the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux Nation, including burial grounds.
“They’re going under the river 500 yards from my son’s grave, my father’s grave, my aunt who I buried last week,” said Ladonna Allard, a member of the Standing Rock nation and the closest landowner to the proposed pipeline. “I really love my land, and if that pipeline breaks everything is gone.”
“We must fight every inch of our lives to protect the water,” Allard said.
A “spiritual camp” will be set up starting Saturday at the point where the proposed pipeline would cross the river, and the tribal members plan to stay and protest indefinitely.
The group is composed of members of the Standing Rock nation as well as others from North and South Dakota nations, including the Cheyenne River Lakota and the Rosebud Sioux. They joined together to ride, run and walk from the Tribal Administration Building north to Cannonball, North Dakota, on the reservation’s northern edge.
The Missouri river is the primary source of drinking water for the tribal reservation, according to Doug Crow Ghost, a spokesperson for the Standing Rock Sioux and the director of the tribe’s water office, who joined the protest on Friday. Tribal members also fish in the river, he said.
“Because we are going to be fighting this giant, all the rest of the nations came on horseback to say ‘we support you’,” said Allard. “That is why this horse ride is so important to us. Because we’re not alone in this fight. All of our nations are coming to stand with us, and all our allies and partners. This pipeline is illegal.”
The pipeline is currently waiting on a decision from a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, who oversees such projects, on whether Dakota Access will be granted a permit to proceed, according to Dallas Goldtooth, a Keep It In The Ground campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. The tribes are petitioning for an environmental impact study, which has not at this point been done, into the pipeline.
Goldtooth is optimistic about the tribe’s chances of stopping the pipeline. “It infringes on the tribe’s water rights, which are guaranteed by treaties, and the protocols associated with those rights were not followed,” he said. “The tribes have a really strong standing-point on this issue and we’re confident that we’ll see a whole environmental impact study enacted.”
Energy Transfer Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
“Although we do live on a reservation, the land that [the Dakota Access pipeline is] going to be crossing is on original land that was given us by treaty,” said Dakota Kidder, a member of the Standing Rock nation. “This is where it gets people fired up when you talk about broken treaties.”
“Without water there is no life, and this is our main source,” Kidder added. “It’s not just our issue. Everybody downriver of us is going to be affected, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. We’re not just looking out for ourselves; we’re looking out for all people.”
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36096-native-american-nations-unite-to-ride-against-proposed-north-dakota-pipeline