SunSeeker
SunSeeker's JournalConfirmed: Sanders is selling a fantasy agenda
The analysts found that Sanders’s program is very progressive, jacking up taxes massively on the rich and providing a range of new benefits to the poor. Though every working person would face higher payroll taxes, the value of these benefits would leave 95 percent of households better off. They granted Sanders that his single-payer health system, in which the government would pay for everyone’s care and demand no co-payments or other cost-sharing, would expand health-care access and cut the growth of health-care costs, and they made “aggressive” assumptions about how much the new system would reduce drug and other prices.
But there is a massive catch. Sanders’s assurance that he has “a plan to pay for every spending program he has introduced to date” is wrong. And not just wrong, but extravagantly so. Even with his large tax increases, Sanders would fall $18 trillion short over just 10 years. Factoring in interest costs, his plan would add $21 trillion to the debt over a decade. That is more than the roughly $19 trillion the Treasury already owes. And the picture would probably get much worse as time went on. Expanding Social Security, for example, would become much more expensive as more people retired.
Sanders’s health-care plan is the big budget-buster. It alone would cost $32 trillion over 10 years — “more than twice the new revenues” that Sanders would raise, Len Burman, the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said on Monday. When reporters have asked Sanders about the costs of his health-care plan in the past, the senator has typically responded that other countries maintain functioning single-payer systems — as though he has not proposed a specific plan that should be assessed on its own merits. Burman pointed out Monday that other countries do not promise their people as much as Sanders does. Making his system less costly, the analysts found, would require doing very unpopular things. Deeply cutting payments to doctors and hospitals, for example, would induce “supply constraints” — that is, a shortage of providers willing to meet demand for health services, which would make it harder to access care. Think long wait times and other hurdles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/05/09/confirmed-sanders-is-selling-a-fantasy-agenda/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Hillary's plans are the only plans of any candidate that do not explode the national debt. They are also the only plans that work with - rather than ignore - reality in the U. S.
Hillary Clinton only needs 17 percent of remaining delegates to clinch nomination
Remember those superdelegates, the Democratic Party leaders and elected officials who can vote for the candidate of their choice? The ones Sanders' supporters have been complaining about for months? It turns out, to have a shot at beating out Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, he needs them.
A lot of them.
Sanders needs the delegates who remain uncommitted, as well as more than 200 of those who have already publicly endorsed Clinton. Mathematically, Sanders cannot win the nomination without that support.
...
Clinton won the Guam caucus on Saturday and now needs just 17 percent of the delegates at stake in upcoming contests to clinch the nomination. That means she could lose every single contest by a landslide and still be the nominee if all of her superdelegates continue to support her.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-only-needs-17-percent-of-remaining-delegates-to-clinch-nomination/
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Sanders (and some of his cyberspace supporters) have berned a lot of bridges with the Superdelegates. He will never get enough of them to flip.
Obama Thanks His 5th Grade Teacher on Teacher Appreciation Day
In honor of Teacher Appreciation Day, President Obama tweeted his thanks today to his fifth grade teacher, along with a photo of his fifth grade class.
"To my 5th grade teacher Ms. Mabel Hefty and the educators who inspire our young people every single day: Thank you," Obama wrote.
...
The president expanded on why his fifth grade teacher, Ms. Hefty, had such a lasting impact on him in an email sent to the White House email list last year.
“The first time she called on me, I wished she hadn't. In fact, I wished I were just about anywhere else but at that desk, in that room of children staring at me. But over the course of that year, Ms. Hefty taught me that I had something to say -- not in spite of my differences, but because of them. She made every single student in that class feel special,” Obama wrote.
"She reinforced that essential value of empathy that my mother and my grandparents had taught me. That is something that I carry with me every day as President. This is the simple and undeniable power of a good teacher," the president continued.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-5th-grade-teacher-teacher-appreciation-day/story?id=38850063
Great picture of Obama with his 5th grade class and Ms. Hefty at the link!
Petty? Using campaign cash for family vacations is a felony.
Sanders brought his wife, 10 stepchildren and their kids on an all expense paid Roman holiday in a chartered Delta jet--all covered with campaign cash.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3542360/Bernie-Sanders-takes-private-flight-Rome-speak-Vatican-conference-burning-gallons-fuel-just-hours-attacking-Hillary-Clinton-climate-change.html
(Cross-posted from GDP) Kos: Delusion sets in at Camp Sanders
<snip>
"When we arrive at the convention, it will be an open convention, likely with neither candidate having a majority of pledged delegates," Weaver told host Chris Cuomo.
There are two candidates. No one else has delegates. By definition, someone will have a majority of pledged delegates. What that candidate won’t have is a majority of all delegates, including the supers. But who cares? The only count that matters is pledged delegates. And if Sanders stages the biggest comeback in anything history to win a majority of pledged delegates? Kudos to him! He will have earned the nomination!
But pretending that 1) we’re going to have a brokered convention, when the math literally says it’s impossible, and 2) pretending that the super delegates would abandon Clinton for him despite his historical and current antipathy toward the Democratic Party is simply delusional.
<snip>
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1510862/-Delusion-sets-in-at-Camp-Sanders?detail=email1&can_id=ad31a2e2debc6b615c4f6fd212476c6b&source=email-delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&email_referrer=delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&email_subject=delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&link_id=1
Posted in GDP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511661949
Kos: Delusion sets in at Camp Sanders
<snip>
"When we arrive at the convention, it will be an open convention, likely with neither candidate having a majority of pledged delegates," Weaver told host Chris Cuomo.
There are two candidates. No one else has delegates. By definition, someone will have a majority of pledged delegates. What that candidate won’t have is a majority of all delegates, including the supers. But who cares? The only count that matters is pledged delegates. And if Sanders stages the biggest comeback in anything history to win a majority of pledged delegates? Kudos to him! He will have earned the nomination!
But pretending that 1) we’re going to have a brokered convention, when the math literally says it’s impossible, and 2) pretending that the super delegates would abandon Clinton for him despite his historical and current antipathy toward the Democratic Party is simply delusional.
<snip>
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1510862/-Delusion-sets-in-at-Camp-Sanders?detail=email1&can_id=ad31a2e2debc6b615c4f6fd212476c6b&source=email-delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&email_referrer=delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&email_subject=delusion-sets-in-at-camp-sanders&link_id=1
CNN on Townhall: Hillary Had "Moment of the Evening" & Her Stopping Trump Answer was "Home Run."
When moderator Roland Martin followed up by asking Jackson if he was satisfied by Clinton's answer, he affirmed that he was.
<snip>
When asked to name three specific ways in which she could help stop Trump (a question Sanders faced too), she answered it well. She reminded people that she is the only candidate to have received more votes than Trump, that she is well-tested on the political battlefield, and that she is uniquely qualified as a former secretary of state to make the case for a president with sound and serious judgment. Home run.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/14/opinions/cnn-democratic-town-hall-ohio-reyes/index.html
Another great night for Hillary!
Samantha Bee on the Flint Democratic Debate
Axelrod backtracks on Hillary criticism, says she was on "right side of history" on TARP vote.
Presidents are often faced with galling, imperfect choices, particularly in these times of deep polarization and divided government.
Hillary was on the right side of history with her vote, even if she crossed the line in her retelling of it. Bernie was wronged in the debate, but his vote raises questions about how a political "revolutionary" would deal with the realities of governing.
I should have made this point, as well.
The character of some arguments simply can't be captured in 140 characters.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/11/opinions/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-auto-dustup-opinion-axelrod/index.html
Samantha Bee Rips Bernie's Interrupting & Hand Waving!
The whole video is gut busting funny, but she addresses Bernie's interrupting and his finger starting at the 2:00 mark:
And of course, there's this classic bit she put together making fun of his hand waving:
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