Sanders talks income inequality in front of overflow crowd in Salem

[think]

A nice article that actually mentions issues. Imagine that. (Posted in GD: P also)

Sanders talks income inequality in front of overflow crowd in Salem

By ELLA NILSEN Monitor staff - Aug 23, 2015

Bernie Sanders took the microphone at Woodbury School in Salem on Sunday night and didn’t relinquish it for the next hour and a half – his stump speech covering everything from income inequality to international trade to free public education without so much as a break.

At the end, the Democratic presidential candidate apologized to the crowd of about 1,000...

~Snip~

To do so, he’s proposing ideas like raising the minimum wage to $15, making public universities free for students by taxing Wall Street speculation, going to a single-payer health care system and putting millions of Americans back to work by investing $1 trillion of federal money into rebuilding the country’s roads and bridges.

While many of the Republicans running in 2016 would scoff at all of those ideas, to Sanders they are the basic ways to get the United States back on track.

“Remember that radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower who built the interstate system?” Sanders boomed, referencing the former Republican president and revered World War II general. “We need ideas like that again.”

Full article:
https://politics.concordmonitor.com/2015/08/politics-election/sanders-talks-income-inequality-in-front-of-overflow-crowd-in-salem/

Side note: Bernie has three town meeting events schedule for today in New Hampshire:

Conway, NH Town Meeting
August 24 @ 10:30 AM EDT

Berlin, NH Town Meeting
August 24 @ 2:30 PM EDT

Littleton Town Meeting
August 24 @ 7:00 PM EDT

[Catherina]

1. I missed it but I saw pics of the packed gymnasium on twitter

Lot of enthusiasm too. Are these being livestreamed?

[think]

2. Yes. Salem was. Bernie2016TV is livestreaming the one in Littleton tonight also

I don't have link yet. Sorry. Will try an post it later.

Usually Bernie 2016 Tv posts a link to their live streams on Twitter sometime during the day before the event:

https://twitter.com/Bernie2016tv

Things don't always go smooth but they are all volunteer and doing the best they can. Their team seems to be growing and they have a pre & post event discussion as well as the event itself.

[Catherina]

5. Thanks! n/t

[HFRN]

3. interesting location, given the 'white supremacist' witchhunt of him nt

[think]

4. ...

[marym625]

6. K&R!

[merrily]

7. Four things--because I like facts:

1. This is the only one of the four items that is not purely factual. However, I bet Bernie talked wealth inequality, not only income inequality. Everyone wants to pretend he's only about income inequality, but that is false. He always talks about the concentration of wealth in this country and I'd be shocked if he omitted that in Salem, NH.

2. The exact Truman quote:

In Bremerton, Washington (during his 1948 Presidential campaign), Truman delivered a speech attacking the Republicans. During the speech a supporter yelled out "Give 'em Hell, Harry!". Truman replied, "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's Hell." Subsequently, "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" became a lifetime slogan for Truman supporters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_'em_Hell,_Harry!

3. The IDEA for a national highway system was NOT Eisenhower's. (IMO, Democrats give Eisenhower way too much credit, and this is an example.) Between 1916 and At least fifteen federal road and federal highway bills had been passed before Eisenhower ever took office, starting in 1916. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act

By the late 1930s, the pressure for construction of transcontinental superhighways was building. It even reached the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt repeatedly expressed interest in construction of a network of toll superhighways as a way of providing more jobs for people out of work.

He thought three east-west and three north south routes would be sufficient. Congress, too, decided to explore the concept. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 directed the chief of the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) to study the feasibility of a six route toll network. The resultant two-part report, Toll Roads and Free Roads, was based on the statewide highway planning surveys and analysis.

Part I of the report asserted that the amount of transcontinental traffic was insufficient to support a network of toll superhighways. Some routes could be self-supporting as toll roads, but most highways in a national toll network would not. Part II, "A Master Plan for Free Highway Development," recommended a 43,000-kilometer (km) nontoll interregional highway network. The interregional highways would follow existing roads wherever possible (thereby preserving the investment in earlier stages of improvement). More than two lanes of traffic would be provided where traffic exceeds 2,000 vehicles per day, while access would be limited where entering vehicles would harm the freedom of movement of the main stream of traffic.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/96summer/p96su10.cfm See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act

FDR drew a grid on the map of the US and wanted it done. He never got to it because of the war. Eisenhower liked the idea because it was good for General Motors and New Jersey Standard Oil (now Exxon, I think). FDR drew a grid on a map of the US to show what he envisioned. FDR's war tax and general tax scheme was still in effect during the Eisenhower years, so there was the money to build it.

4. Sanders had been putting references to racial and gender injustice into his speeches since at least Denver. I mention the Denver rally (June 21, 2015) only because that was the first rally I caught on TV (C-Span). He may have been using those references before that. He certain did not start only after BKM confronted him at Netroots Nation, which was mid-July. Of course, some people are still saying he never addresses those issues. They're either liars or way too uninformed to be opening their mouths about this is as polite as I can be about that.

[think]

8. Thank you for the additional information. I wasn't aware the FDR put the Fed highway ideas &

legislation in motion.

Much appreciated!

I do admit I was more focused on the fact that the article was actually mentioning major issues of Bernie's and didn't pay as much attention to the overall accuracy of some of the statements and claims.

[merrily]

9. They started passing bills in 1916, even before FDR, but FDR was very instrumental.

Last edited Mon Aug 24, 2015, 01:16 PM - Edit history (1)

We don't know that because Republicans systematically rehabilitate past Republican Presidents and very often praise Eisenhower for the National Highway System. The "guns and butter" economy for which he gets credit can be attributed to FDR, too. Eisenhower's reputation while in office was mostly about playing a LOT of golf.

It don't impress me much either that a man who went to West Point and spent most of the rest of his life in the military, spent 8 years as POTUS and CIC warned Americans about the MIC on his very last day in office. What the hell are average Americans supposed to do about the MIC anyway, if a five star general and the CIC can't do anything?

And thanks to him, "under God" made its way into the Pledge of Allegiance--supposedly as an anti-Communist measure.

As I said, I think Democrats give him way too much credit. Republican revisionist history is a bummer.

I'm always keeping an eye on media. They are sloppy and/or intentionally deceptive way too often--and their "mistakes" seldom redound to the benefit of the left.

I have a diner rule. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1280&pid=37667

[think]

10. Yes, Ike should have been fighting against the influence of the MIC while in office & not waiting

until the last day in office to make that ominous warning.

I think Dems tend to give more credit to Eisenhower mostly to remind the GOP voters that Republicans also use to stand for things other than the current philosophy of austerity and tax cuts.

Still it would be much better to see Dems take credit for things they got started and remind the voters of this.

2014 was a very disappointing example of this as candidates running away from Obama and his accomplishments like the ACA. I don't agree always agree with Obama but overall he did some wonderful things to move America in a better direction and to see candidates not stand behind these accomplishments was very disheartening.

I respect greatly that Sanders takes the time is some speeches to mention that he believes Obama will be looked upon historically much better than the current opinions give him credit for.

[merrily]

11. Remember: Before Eisenhower, Democrats had occupied the Oval Office for 20 straight

years, with FDR having been elected an unprecedented number of times. So, if you were a Republican aspiring to be President, as did Eisenhower and Nixon, you would have seen running far to the right as a huge risk. And, at least in your first term, you would not have governed far to the right, either, because you wanted re-election, as did Eisenhower and Nixon. Plus, for most or all of their administrations, they had Democratic majority Congresses. Not until Goldwater did a Republican nominee come out as an unabashed conservative--and he lost.

As for candidate Reagan, since 1980, he's been sold to us as the excuse for reason why leftists can't have nice things anything but Third Way candidates. Oversimpification is an understatement for that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778872

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778873

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12779277

The other alleged reason, McGovern, is covered here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12778825 Be sure to read the replies as well as the OP.

In sum, the Party's right wing has been selling us a bill of goods since the anti-Vietnam War movement.

[eridani]

12. Still, that top marginal tax rate of 90% was very helpful

I know people rarely paid more than 50-60%, but that was much more than 35%, not to mention 15% on capital gains.

I'm wondering if even Sanders can get by with advocating that.