Daily Sanders: Thursday, August 22nd.

Bernie’s Green New Deal, the DNC blocks a climate change debate, the Washington Post’s anti-labor spin and more

from Organizers for Sanders

Today

Sanders promotes the releases of the campaigns’s historic Green New Deal policy at a Town Hall in Chico California this afternoon, followed by a rally in Sacramento tonight. No links for live-steams at this time.

Bernie’s Green New Deal

Issues — Climate Justice

Sanders released the boldest and most comprehensive Green New Deal plan of any candidate today.

The New York Times called it, “the latest and most expensive proposal from the field of Democratic presidential candidates aimed at reining in planet-warming greenhouse gases.”

However the article undersells exactly how this plan would get passed: taking back the wealth stolen by the rich. The Times claims, “Mr. Sanders’s plan would be funded in part by imposing new fees and taxes on the fossil fuel industry.” That’s an understatement.

First of all, the plan calls for a National Emergency on climate change, which gives more powers to the office of the presidency. Sanders is proposing using war time powers to stop a species-ending crisis.

How will a Sanders administration pay for the 16.5 trillion dollar plan? Three ways: prosecuting the rich in court to take their money back; stop federal handouts to fossil fuel companies; leverage sanctions against polluting nations.

The plan calls for federally prosecution of oil executives who knew the effects of climate change were coming, but spread disinformation promoting inaction against these catastrophes. The proposal compares these crimes to the lies the tobacco industry spread that suppressed medical research proving cigarettes cause cancer.

Furthermore, it calls for massive divestment in fossil fuel subsidies. The government pays oil drillers, coal extractors, and natural gas pipeline builders billions, as United States citizens consume energy and United States industry sells energy. Under Sanders plan, that tax money go would not to the companies that build pipelines or drill oil. A Sanders presidency means no more handouts to the rich vampires destroying the planet.

Without subsidization, oil/gas/coal cost will cost what it really costs to extract from the earth — prices for gas will rise, making non-renewable technology cost-prohibit for use.

Sanders plan calls for the fossil fuel industry to pay Americans to buy electric cars, put solar panels on their house. It pay farmers to convert to organic farming that isn’t destructive to soil and miners five years guaranteed wage as they get access to education and retraining programs.

This plan is exhaustive — no blogpost could do it justice. Read the plan here:

DNC Blocks Climate Debate

As activists across the country show up to San Francisco to demand the DNC host a climate debate, the party leadership voted against hosting a debate focused on one issue.

At the DNC convention, Joe Biden senior advisor Simon Sanders argues that a climate debate would “fundamentally change the game” among factions in the Democratic Party, therefore they should keep ignoring it.

Symone Sanders arguing against a climate debate

This isn’t the only venue for candidates to discuss climate change. NPR reports,

“Even if the Democratic Party rejects the Sunrise Movement’s request for a climate debate, CNN plans to hold a climate change town hall with candidates next month. The Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service also plans to hold a climate forum with candidates that will air on MSNBC a few weeks later.”

This shows that DNC establishment candidates — Joe Biden in particular — are afraid to confront the substantial differences between Sanders aggressive, democratic socialist policy that takes money from the rich and pays it back to the working class. Biden’s liberal policy that invest in tech companies to invent a new disruption to solve the climate crisis that will not work.

DNC Primary

The other climate candidate, Washington Governor Jay Inslee dropped out of the race today. Rolling Stone asks, “Is Sanders the New Climate Candidate?” as Inslee’s 9 trillion dollar Green New Deal plan was formerly the highest-budgeted plan, and arguably Inslee’s single-issue campaign galvanized activists to push the DNC to have a climate focused debate.

Here’s the budgets for other candidates Green New Deal plans as reported by the New York Times.

Bernie Sanders — $16.5 Trillion

Jay Inslee — $9 Trillion

Beto O’Rourke — $5 Trillion

Elizabeth Warren — $2 Trillion

Joe Biden — $1.7 Trillion

As with Medicare for All, the scale of candidates differences toward combatting climate change will be clearly displayed in the coming debates and town halls.

Yesterday

from Organizers for Bernie

Issues: Workplace Democracy Plan

Yesterday (8/21), The campaign released its The Workplace Democracy plan at the AFL-CIO conference. It received significant coverage in left-media, but quiet or bias coverage in corporate funded sources.

Jacobin writer Barry Eidlin honed in on something interesting about the proposal:

“Sanders understands that winning the WDP will require a mass mobilization of people willing to fight for it. In other words, it is less of a policy proposal than a call to arms: winning the reforms contained in the WDP will be the result of mass mobilizations that shift the balance of power. They will not themselves cause that shift.”

In other words, the plan gives a rousing call to workers to organize their workplaces and the promise the president will enforce the laws that protect them.

In These Times clarifies how the plan explicitly lays out protection for unions who get Medicare 4 All

“One very attention-grabbing plan responds directly to Joe Biden’s bad-faith arguments that a Medicare-for-All system would be unfair to unions who have historically traded higher wages for employer-sponsored health insurance. Sanders’ NLRB would support unions reopening their collective bargaining agreements in order to recoup as much of an employers’ cost savings from taxpayer-funded health care as possible as new wage gains. His platform implies that a unionized employer that does not share financial data and agree to sharing its cost savings would be charged with committing an unfair labor practice.”

Simply stated, your boss is legally mandated to tell you how much money he’s saving by not paying into your healthcare plan, and your union bargains for you to get that savings in increased wages.

Corporate Bias Tracker: The Washington Post

The Washington Post, on the other hand, published a complete fabrication about Bernie’s Medicare for All.

The lead sentence,

“Sen. Bernie Sanders announced a key change to his Medicare-for-all insurance plan Wednesday,”

can’t be true — as Medicare for All is a Senate bill with co-sponsors. Sanders “wrote the damn bill,” remember.

The primary issue here is that The Post is covering a new policy proposal as back-tracking or flip-flopping on already published policy. It won’t addressing the substance of the Workplace Democracy proposal (make more unions) it instead uses union members as a dividing wedge for the left (a classic, corporate media tactic).

One sentence in the story reveals a true misunderstanding why unions exist,

“The change announced Wednesday would effectively give organized labor more negotiating power than other consumers…”

Of course unionized employees have more power than individual product consumers. That’s literally the entire point of organized labor. An organized workplace has more control over how the work and how much they receive in compensation than consumers do. Sanders campaign proposed the Workplace Democracy in an effort to make more unions and help workers organize their workplace and extend this privilege to more citizens as a union is what allows employees to collectively bargain for compensation!

The major factual error of this piece calls the healthcare bargaining guarantee in the Workplace Democracy a “new wrinkle,” which further plays into The Post’s continued and deliberate mischaracterization of Sanders politics,

“Sanders and his staff have cast the Vermont independent as the purest liberal in the field.”

Wrong! The independent senator is a democratic socialist, not a liberal — that’s a significant ideological distinction. A democratic socialist taxes the rich, while a liberal gives taxpayer money back to the rich in the forms of subsidies and investments. Neither the Workplace Democracy nor Medicare for All would be best described as liberal (that is, unregulated markets) policy.

At the end of the story, they quote two union representatives for Medicare-For-All, one against it, and a “a political coordinator for the UAW” (i.e. a public relations representative for the United Auto Workers). T

he three writers of the story interviewed zero rank-and-file union members — they talked to no workers who belong to a union and actually work on the shop floor.

So why did the Post cover the Workplace Democracy plan so badly, and completely confuse the issue around Bernie’s Medicare-For-All bill?

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and as owner of the exploitative retail company, Amazon, he is the one person who stands to lose the most if his company unionizes.