MARCH 17, 2019

NEWS AND VIEWS

THE WEARIN’ O’ THE GREEN : OF ALL MY BRITISH COUSINS, I LOVE THE IRISH BEST. I LOVE THEM FOR THEIR PASSION FOR LIFE AND ARTISTIC GENIUS, AND OF COURSE, RIVER DANCE. IF I CAN MANAGE TO WIN THE MILLION ON THE LOTTO, I’LL HOPEFULLY GO OVER THERE TO SEE THEM BEFORE I DIE. BUT FOR NOW, I’M JUST GRATEFUL FOR MY TEN-DAY TRIP TO ENGLAND PROPER, IN 1985. I WENT WITH A FRIEND, BY PLANE TO LONDON, THEN DRIVING A BRITISH CAR WITH THE STEERING WHEEL ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE CAR, AND WITH THE TRAFFIC COMING AT ME FROM THE WRONG DIRECTION, TO CANTERBURY AND DOVER FROM THERE AND THEN AROUND THE COAST SOUTH AND WEST TO THE WESSEX AREA TO VISIT STONEHENGE AND BATH – ROMAN AND NORMAN FORTS, SPENDING THE NIGHT IN A WALKING SIZED MEDIEVAL WALLED CITY, NORMAN CATHEDRALS, DEEPLY GREEN FIELDS WITH WOOLY WHITE SHEEP AND THATCHED ROOFS. JUST WHAT I WANTED TO SEE -- MY OWN FAIRY TALE WORLD, AND THE HOME OF MY FOREFATHERS. THANK YOU, GENEROUS DEITY, FOR THAT TRIP.

NOW FROM HAPPY MEMORIES TO NEWS, WHICH IS NOT SO HAPPY.

THE ONSLAUGHT ON BERNIE SANDERS HAS BEGUN, IN THE NEWS AND OPINION WAR, AND POSSIBLY IN THE WORLD OF HUMAN EVIL; FOR INSTANCE, THERE ARE ALREADY RUMORS THAT BERNIE SANDERS’ 7 STITCHES-LONG CUT ON THE SHOWER GLASS WAS IN REALITY SOMETHING WORSE THAN THAT DESCRIPTION, LIKE AN ASSAULT. I WOULD LOVE TO BE ABLE TO DISCOUNT THAT AS A WILD AND RIDICULOUS STORY, BUT UNFORTUNATELY WORLD EVENTS ARE SWIRLING STRONGLY IN THE ATMOSPHERE HERE IN TRUMPWORLD, AND RAW POWER IS THE AIM OF THE GAME, WHICH THE REPUBLICANS CALL “HARDBALL.” I JUST CALL IT INTENSELY DISHONEST.

SIMPLY PUT, COULD THIS INCIDENT IN THE SHOWER ACTUALLY BE AN ATTACK, PERHAPS? IF IT IS, BERNIE IS NOT DISCOURAGED. LIKE HIM OR NOT, YOU HAVE TO SAY ONE THING ABOUT BERNIE. HE ISN’T TIMID, WEAK, SENILE, NOR WILL HE EVER BE CALLED “LIAR IN CHIEF.” SO I TRUST HIM. IN A SOCIETY LIKE OURS TODAY, ONLY STRONG PEOPLE CAN BE HONEST. ONE ARTICLE SAID THAT SOME NEWS SOURCES ARE SAYING THAT THE FAR RIGHTIST GROUPS CLUSTERING AROUND TRUMP MAY BE JOINING FORCES WITH THE SURPRISINGLY UNGENTLE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD DNC GROUP; THE ONES WHO WANT TO SAY ABOUT BERNIE THAT HE IS “LOUD.” HE HAS A STRONG SPEAKING VOICE, AND DOESN’T TRY TO LOOK ANY MORE PASSIVE THAN HE IS. I LIKE THAT. THAT’S THE WAY WORKING CLASS MEN ARE, AND SINCE I GREW UP AROUND THEM, I LIKE THE CHARACTERISTIC. ARE YOU DISCOURAGED YET? I AM, OR SADDENED AT ANY RATE, BUT I’M ALSO ANGRY, SO I’M NOT READY TO GIVE UP. GO, BERNIE, GO!! THERE IS EVIL, YET, TO BE VANQUISHED.

TAKE A MOMENT TO EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TODAY’S NEWS; AND YOU WILL SEE WHY I BELIEVE, 77 YEARS OLD OR NOT, THAT BERNIE SANDERS CAN STILL DO THE JOB AND, BEING THE SORT OF PERSON THAT HE IS, DO IT THE RIGHT WAY. AS MY FAVORITE OLD SAYING GOES, “IT’S NOT THE DOG IN THE FIGHT, BUT THE FIGHT IN THE DOG.” BUT FIRST, LOOK AT THESE THREE GREAT BERNIE PHOTOS -- https://www.apnews.com/bb512b6ff6174474bf7ae3ccfbead19b/gallery/media:34c25b290c1b43f783c40cfed58de5ee.

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FILE - In this March 3, 2019, file photo, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and his wife, Jane Sanders, greet supporters as they leave after his 2020 presidential campaign stop at Navy Pier in Chicago. Bernie Sanders’ revolution is Jane Sanders’ career. And her political and business activities have at times been his headache. His closest adviser, she is perhaps the most influential woman in the 2020 campaign who isn’t a candidate. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

Bernie Sanders, Jane O'Meara SandersBernie Sanders, Jane Sanders
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FILE - In this March 3, 2019, file photo, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., right, and his wife Jane Sanders, greet supporters as they arrive arrive [sic] for a campaign event at Navy Pier in Chicago. Bernie Sanders’ revolution is Jane Sanders’ career. And her political and business activities have at times been his headache. His closest adviser, she is perhaps the most influential woman in the 2020 campaign who isn’t a candidate. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

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FILE - In this April 19, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his wife Jane take a walk in State College, Pa. The Sanders Institute, a think tank founded by Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders’ wife and son, has stopped accepting donations and plans to suspend all operations by the end of May. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)


https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/mar/16/bernie-sanders-tells-nevada-audience-we-are-going/
Bernie Sanders tells Nevada audience, ‘We are going to bring our people together’
MIRANDA ALAM/SPECIAL TO THE SUN
By Ricardo Torres-Cortez (contact)
Saturday, March 16, 2019 | 6:46 p.m.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally in Henderson, Nev. on Saturday, March 16, 2019. Miranda Alam/Special to the Sun

Progressive proposals now popular with Democrats were mostly shun when Bernie Sanders touted them during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The establishment deemed his platform — that included raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare coverage to all and investing in infrastructure — “too radical,” the Vermont senator said Saturday afternoon in Henderson during an outdoor rally.

“Those ideas that we talked about four years ago that seemed so very radical at that time,” Sanders said. “Today, virtually all of those ideas are supported by a majority of the American people and have overwhelming support from Democrats and independents,” he added, likely taking a shot at the expanding Democratic field of candidates vying for the presidency.

Hundreds of festive Sanders’s supporters showed up Saturday afternoon to Morrell Park in the far southeast valley for an intimate-feeling, but packed “political revolution.”

Before Sanders took to the lectern for his 45-minute speech, supporters made their way to the park, wearing clothes with the candidate’s face, and shading the sun with their blue “Bernie” signs.

A staffer with his campaign jived to music, giving high fives to attendees. Aside from agitators yelling into a bullhorn or purposely revving motorcycle engines to interrupt, attendees were mostly smiles.

Friends Andy Houston and Jill Glass wore matching Sanders red, white and blue shirts with a “Feel the Bern 2020” design. Houston supported Sanders in 2016 when his bid to the White House ended with Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

Houston, 41, said Sanders is a “man of character. I think he’s a man for the people, I think he has a lot of class and he has some great ideas,” the Las Vegas resident said.

Politics and the media have “burned Glass out “a little,” the 39-year-old said, noting she wanted to listen to Sanders to lift up her spirits. “I’m here to support him and applaud him. I’m hoping that he’ll just give us an uplifting message and get us all back excited about politics.”

Alexis Salt, a Clark County School District teacher, took the stage first, and spoke the future of younger Americans.

“There’s so much more that unites us than divides us, but i’m not here to talk about what adults want,” she said.

She said she promised her kids she would talk about them. Their future is more than standardized tests and needing fundraisers to pay for health insurance, she said.

Amy Vilela gave an impassioned speech about her daughter, who she said she lost to the “nation’s barbaric healthcare system” four years ago when she had a curable condition but her “fate was sealed when they asked her if she had health insurance.”

“On issue after issue, Bernie is not just leading, he’s changing the turn of the debate.” said Nina Turner, national co-chair of the political campaign. “Sisters and brothers, if we come together for the political revolution and do the impossible, Bernie Sanders will win the Nevada caucus,” she concluded to an erupting crowd.

Then Sanders, who wore a Vegas Golden Knights cap, took to the stage to speak about his widely reported vision, which includes “aggressively” combating climate change, healthcare for all, a $15 minimum wage, tuition-free higher education, increasing social security benefits, and

criminal justice and immigration reforms.

Under Sanders’s proposals, he said, the 1.8 million immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals would gain legal status. A “humane border policy” would be in place for those seeking asylum, he said.

“No more snatching babies from the arms of their mothers,” he said.

He also attacked President Donald Trump, saying the president “wants to divide us up by the color of our skin, our country of origin, our gender, our religion and our sexual orientation. We are going to do exactly the opposite. We are going to bring our people together.”

His campaign, Sanders said, will be driven by an unprecedented grassroots effort.


https://www.apnews.com/bb512b6ff6174474bf7ae3ccfbead19b
Is Jane Sanders the most powerful woman not running in 2020?
By STEPHEN BRAUN, WILSON RING and STEVE PEOPLES
yesterday – MARCH 18, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before Bernie Sanders took the stage to formally launch his 2020 presidential campaign this month, the candidate’s most influential adviser took the mic. To cheers, Jane Sanders introduced herself to the Brooklyn crowd as “Bernie’s wife,” then conceded that wasn’t the most politically correct label.

To be sure, identifying Jane Sanders as “the wife” hardly captures the scope of her influence on her husband’s political career. Across 30 years and a dozen campaigns for federal office, she has served variously as her husband’s media consultant, surrogate, fundraiser, chief of staff, campaign spokeswoman and top strategist.

His political revolution has become her career. And her political and business activities have, at times, become his headache. As the Vermont senator undertakes his second presidential run and scrambles his inner circle, Jane Sanders remains his closest adviser, making her perhaps the most influential woman in the 2020 campaign who isn’t a candidate.

“Bernie’s top adviser always has been and will continue to be Jane,” said Jeff Weaver, a Sanders adviser. She has a voice in almost every major political decision her husband makes, travels with him for major events and is deeply involved in formulating policies, issues and campaign infrastructure. “At every level,” Weaver said, “Jane is intimately involved.”

That involvement has drawn questions sometimes about her political judgment, family opportunism and flawed ethics — from political foes, good government advocates and longtime Sanders-watchers in Vermont and in the progressive movement. Most recently, critics questioned the role played by the Sanders Institute, a nonprofit co-founded by Jane Sanders and her son, for blending elements of fundraising, family and campaign policy development.

Her dual roles at the institute and in her husband’s campaign carried echoes of the Clinton Foundation, which Bernie Sanders criticized in 2016 as a possible ethics conflict and back door for foreign donors seeking to influence his then-rival Hillary Clinton.

“Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016 criticizing her for the vast sums of money she raised and he seems to be following in some of her footsteps,” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. “Now he’s raising vast sums of money and it’s being controlled and shaped by his family.”

Jane Sanders acted this past week to remove the think tank as a possible campaign ethics target, telling The Associated Press that the institute’s operations and fundraising would be suspended for the balance of her husband’s 2020 presidential campaign. Since its creation in 2017, the group raised more than $700,000, but has not disclosed most of its donors. She said the decision to put the Sanders Institute on hiatus was “a forward-looking way to deal with potential concerns.”

Sanders may prove an important surrogate for her husband, particularly in a race crowded with female candidates and potentially hinging on how women vote. She publicly defended her husband when he faced criticism for the way his 2016 campaign handled accusations of sexual harassment.

She’s become an essential liaison to the progressive activists at the heart of the Sanders’ base, using the institute to host meetings of policymakers and activists. An affable, if low-key public speaker, she was the star of the December “Gathering” in Burlington, Vermont, a three-day policy gathering that featured progressive speakers including environmentalist Bill McKibben, actor Danny Glover and her husband.

Steeped in years of involvement in progressive causes, Sanders comfortably slipped into the role as the event’s emcee. Before a crowd of more than 250 progressive activists, she stoked applause lines for favored organizations and lavished compliments on institute fellows.

Similarly, in videos posted on the institute’s website, she has led numerous policy conversations with experts in a Brooklyn accent fainter than her husband’s.

Jane Sanders is not compensated for her role at the institute. Her son, David Driscoll, has been paid $100,000 a year as a co-founder and executive director, she confirmed. Driscoll had been an executive for Nike and the Vermont snowboarding company Burton, but had no previous nonprofit experience, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Like her husband, Jane Sanders “has learned not to trust a lot of people. Family is a lot more dependable than outsiders,” said University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson, an acquaintance and veteran Sanders-watcher.

Jane Sanders expressed frustration about concerns that she and some of her children have at times benefited from their activities affiliated with Sanders’ expanding political apparatus.

“How can we say nepotism here? It just doesn’t fit,” she said. She added that the Sanders Institute has “developed policy and the content that we get completely separate” from her husband’s campaign.

Politics has long been a family project for the couple.

Jane Sanders first worked with her future husband as director of the mayor’s youth Office in Burlington. They were both displaced New Yorkers, Jane noted at the launch rally, stamped by childhood days on Brooklyn’s city streets. “We had very similar experiences,” she said. “We spent a lot of time playing stickball, running races and just hanging out on the streets with the kids in our neighborhoods.”

They wed in 1988 — a second marriage for both — two years before Sanders won his first election to Congress. Jane Sanders went to Capitol Hill as his volunteer deputy — gaining experience in policy, legislation and as chief of staff.

In the early 2000s, she took on a new role along with her daughter, Carina. Two women set up a consulting firm, paid more than $90,000 in consulting fees by Bernie Sanders’ House campaigns.

In 2004, the year before Bernie Sanders’ launched his winning Senate campaign, his wife was named president of Burlington College, a local small liberal arts college. In 2010, she worked out a $10 million deal for the college to buy 32 acres of waterfront land on Lake Champlain and a 77,000-square-foot former orphanage and administrative offices of Vermont’s Roman Catholic Church, which needed the money to settle a series of priest sex abuse cases.

She promised at the time the deal would be paid for with increases in enrollment and about $2.7 million in donations. But her plans never took wing and under fire, she resigned from the college in 2011. The school closed in 2016, citing debt from the land deal as a major reason for its failure. Prompted by complaints filed by a Republican lawyer about her involvement in the land deal, federal investigators looked into Jane Sanders’ stewardship but informed her last November that she would not be charged.

“We’ve learned we’re going to be attacked,” she said during an interview, adding “that’s the fact of today’s politics.”

But she said she was confident that the decision to put the think tank on hiatus was “best for the institute to not have the possibility of misinterpretation.”

The move, she said, will allow her to expand her campaign work freely for the Sanders campaign, including more solo stops on her husband’s behalf.

“I will be more active throughout,” she said.

___

Ring reported from Montpelier, Vermont, and Peoples from New York.


“A LITTLE BLACK EYE IS NOT GOING TO STOP ME,” SAID THE CANDIDATE TO CHEERS.” FUNNY HOW, NO MATTER WHAT BERNIE SAYS, THE AUDIENCE CHEERS, AND HE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO PAY PEOPLE TO STAND AROUND IN THE CROWD TO IMPROVE THOSE PHOTOGRAPHS. DONALD TRUMP COULD THINK IT WORTH HIS WHILE TO TRY TO DO MORE TO BERNIE THAN GIVE HIM A BLACK EYE. TAKE CARE, BERNIE.

https://news3lv.com/news/local/bernie-sanders-brings-campaign-to-southern-nevada
Bernie Sanders brings campaign to Southern Nevada
by Jeff Gillan
Sunday, March 17th 2019

PHOTOGRAPH -- Bernie Sanders held spoke at his campaign rally in Henderson March 16. (KSNV)

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Bernie Sanders arrived at Henderson’s Morrell Park before a crowd his campaign put at 2,200.

It's Sanders’ first stop in Nevada since he said he's running for president last month.

But first things first: the bandage. The eye. The day before, Sanders collided with a shower door in South Carolina, requiring seven stitches.

“A little black eye is not going to stop me,” said the candidate to cheers.

The guy who made populism cool in 2016, who almost went on to face Donald Trump that November, says this is what his campaign this year means.

“This campaign [sic] is about transforming our country and creating an economy, and a government that works for us, not just the one percent,” Sanders told the crowd.

He's still fired up, now in 2019, for a campaign that he says is fighting for, “economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.”

Three years later, Sanders arrives in a very different contest, with now more than a dozen democrats in the race.

This time he’s not the only progressive populist.

RELATED| Sanders holds health care roundtable in South Carolina

In the crowd, I met local Jim Norman.

I asked him about all those Democrats running, and if he’s still “shopping around.”

“Well, the field, it's everybody and their brother is running,” Norman told me. But he says Sanders is the real deal. He's consistent.

“When you watch, Bernie has stayed in line his whole career,” Norman says.

And you saw that Saturday as Sanders stayed on message.

“Democracy is not about billionaires buying elections,” Sanders said, talking about what’s at stake in the upcoming election.

“So we say to the health care industry and the insurance companies, whether you like it or not, we are going to pass a Medicare for all single payer program,” Sanders said, talking about his prescription to get health care to all Americans.

He will fight for free tuition at a public college or university.

“You should not have to go deeply into debt to get a damn education,” Sanders told the crowd, many of whom were younger.

He will fight to fix the environment.

“Today we say to Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry that climate change is not a hoax, but is a massive threat, an existential threat to our country and the entire planet,” said Sanders.

Republicans today said Sanders’ proposals would bankrupt the country. They say he’s pushing for a “socialist agenda.”

“Bernie Sanders returns to the Silver State as a failed presidential candidate with absurd policies that reach further into the pockets and lives of Nevadans,” said Republican Party spokesperson Renae Eze.

To guys like Stephen Daley, at his first campaign rally, “you can tell he really, he really knows his stuff. He believes his stuff, honestly, he's the best candidate right now,” Daley says.

In 2016, Sanders’ message resonated with many voters, many of whom took part, and took an interest in politics for the first time.

“Turns out that we won 22 states, turns out that we received over 13 million votes that we ended up winning more votes from young people, black and white and Latino, Native American, Asian American than Clinton and Trump combined,” Sanders told the crowd.

Translation: game on, for Bernie 2.0, as Sanders sees how well his message will resonate in a party he helped transform.