70s Bernie seemed like kind of a nut (though still not even close to Bachmann/Akin-level). Do you have anything from the last 20 years? Anything he’s said while in office in the Senate, or while running for president?
One nutty article from the early 70s is pretty weak as far as presidential-candidate-nuttiness.
Sanders has just released a letter, signed by three other senators (Franken, Warren & Markey), asking the FCC to investigate the pricing practices of cable & broadband companies like TWC and Comcast. Sanders contends that the majority of Americans are served by cable companies that are operating as defacto monopolies. The senators ask the FCC to start by examining the pricing practices of these companies, in particular, by bringing transparency to hidden fees.
That’s right. Bernie Sanders is making “The Cable Bill Is Too Damn High” a part of his campaign. He just might win this thing, after all!
Full letter is here:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/071015fccletter/?inline=file
Ars Tech article about it here:
Give 'em hell, Bernie!
A writeup on Bernie in Politico
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-119927.html
You know what, he seems like one of the extremely rare birds - an honest politician, with principles, who says what he thinks and not what his aides/pollsters tell him to say. I am starting to like this guy. Of course, his policies would be anathema to me, but it is so freaking refreshing to actually see an honest politician, I am enjoying to see him run. Hope he does well. And that’s straight up, not just because I despise Hillary.
The 70’s was at best over 35 years ago. Comparing that to the likes of Bachmann is the kind of false equivalency that I’ve come to expect from the right these days.
That’s the disadvantage of a 73-year old candidate. He still thinks cable is important.
And I don’t want to hear any whining if people use the fact he’s not tech savvy against him. You guys brought that out as a reason to not vote for McCain, so it’s fair game now.
How’s this for a dog whistle from Bernie?
That’s just a fact.
I don’t know. How is that a dog whistle?
Sounds to me like he’s saying guns in white states aren’t a problem, whereas guns in cities with large minority populations are a problem.
He’s not just talking about cable tv; he’s also talking about cable & broadband internet.
His lack of tech savviness is only in your head, making it a reflection of your own lack of tech savviness.
Everybody in the country hates their cable company. The cable companies deserve it. Bernie is saying that he’s going to stick it to the cable companies. It’s a great move.
He also lacks constitutional knowledge. By definition it’s not interstate commerce. Localities grant those monopolies. Or not. If Sanders wants to change that, I suggest he run for mayor of Burlington.
You haven’t actually read the letter, have you?
Cable, Internet and Telephone communications, among other things, are handled by the Federal Communications Commision.
Bernie and the others are, quite properly, asking the congressionally appointed oversight organization to investigate the cable & internet companies’ pricing practices as well as their defacto monopoly status. The mayor of Burlington doesn’t enter into it.
The FCC hasn’t tried to rein in local monopolies, because it can’t actually do it. A court challenge would see a pretty quick 5-4 decision saying they don’t have that power. Local monopolies are not interstate commerce.
I interpret it as inner-city guns are a different thing than rural guns.
I just got an email from Bernie’s campaign claiming that more people have contributed to his campaign than to any other candidate of either party. Clearly they aren’t donating as much per person as some of the other campaign, but I think that’s a really encouraging sign for him.
Still, I predict he’ll lose to Hilary.
Bernie keeps rising, and a lot of the gap between him and Hillary is because of her extraordinary name recognition. Not many non-political-nerds outside of Vermont knew much about Bernie a few months ago, and still few outside of NH and Iowa do. If he manages to win one or both of those states and not go all James Stockdale at the debates, his stock will continue to rise.
Well, if you are socialist but also nationalist, that is kinda national socialism. “Real” socialism is internationalist. And frankly, I think that socialism loses what moral authority it has when it’s combined with nationalism. The whole point of socialism is that people are equal and deserve economic and social justice, wherever they live. Nationalism says, “We come first!” I understand that a lot of Western socialists are comfortable with this, but it’s a far cry from the idealism of early socialism.
More interestingly, Bernie Sanders still doesn’t understand African-Americans any better than white Republicans do:
That ignores that “national socialism” is generally used to refer to Hitler and co., not anybody who has both socialist and nationalist tendencies. Its also pretty obvious that Kevin Williamson was deliberately using the term to smear Sanders, nevermind that Sanders is Jewish and had relatives who died in the Holocaust.
Why should socialism be confined to narrow utopian positivist 19th Century Marxism and the even more naive hippies of the 20th and Tumblristas of the 21st Centuries? Also by this reasoning “real” capitalism is also internationalist, at least if the reasoning of classical economics is taken to its logical conclusion.
Why should it anymore than capitalism?
The question isn’t of either/or but between what can be achieved in the short-term and the long-term.
Its called adapting to the circumstances. If the choice is between achieving reform in one country or wasting support and time in pursuing utopianist schemes, the former is preferable. Very few supporters of capitalism outside of the Murray Rothbard types think its a good idea to engage in free trade with North Korea-does that undermine the “idealism of early capitalism”? :dubious::rolleyes:
It should be noted that I have assumed in the above that the left-wing social democratic ideology of Sanders and kindred social democratic movements should be placed under the umbrella term of “socialism” in opposition to “capitalism”.
Kudos to the Senator for standing up to those nilhistic hecklers, although I’d be delighted if the concern troll Right aligns itself with the Social Justice Warrior hacks.