Published on Jun 13, 2019
Americans would be ‘delighted’ to pay more taxes for socialized healthcare – Bernie Sanders
In his latest push for universal healthcare, 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders argued that Americans would be “delighted to pay more taxes” if that meant guaranteed access to treatment.
Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, the socialist stalwart made the case for bringing a European-style healthcare system to the US.
“I suspect that a lot of people in the country would be delighted to pay more in taxes if they had comprehensive health care as a human right,” Sanders told Cooper.
“Your kids in many countries around the world can go to the public colleges and universities tuition-free, wages in many cases are higher,” Sanders continued. “So, there is a tradeoff, but at the end of the day, I think… most Americans will understand that is a good deal.”
Though Sanders cited Germany as an example of an ideal healthcare system, there are some key differences between the German model and the ‘Medicare for All’ plan advocated by Sanders. The German system is a multi-payer system funded by private and public sources. ‘Medicare for All,’ at least in its current iteration, is a single-payer system that would bar employers from providing competing private alternatives and could eliminate America’s $600 billion private insurance industry.
Medicare for All is a generous package that comes with a hefty price tag. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – a supposedly non-partisan think tank – puts the price at $28 trillion, or nearly ten percent of the US’ GDP. Sanders’ own estimate turns out a cost of $13 trillion over ten years, still a roughly 30 percent increase in federal spending and an outlay more than 18 times larger than even the US military’s astronomical annual budget.
Americans largely support the idea of Medicare for All, with 70 percent in favor of a single-payer system, according to a Reuters poll taken last August. However, support for such a system drops off to 37 percent once they learn it would necessitate a massive tax hike to implement.
Bernie Sanders blasts Trump as ‘socialist for rich & powerful’
The sheer cost to the taxpayer of overhauling the US healthcare system has been trumpeted by conservatives to dismiss Sanders’ proposal. To date, Sanders has not managed to clarify exactly how this money would be raised. A paperreleased by his office in April suggested foisting some of the tax burden on employers, applying a premium to middle class households, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and imposing levies on financial institutions and offshore accounts.
Sanders maintains that these tax hikes would cut the country’s overall healthcare expenditure and leave the average American family “in a better financial position than they are under the current system.”
LA Pride Paraders Can’t Admit That TRUMP IS NOT THAT BAD
Published on Jun 11, 2019
This week we hit the LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood. Some people were able to admit that Trump is not that bad, others, not so much.
House to Hold Hearing on Slavery Reparations
By Tony Lee
A House Judiciary subcommittee will hold hearings on reparations next Wednesday, marking the first time in more than a decade that the House will discuss potentially compensating the descendants of slaves.
“The Case for Reparations” author Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover are reportedly set to testify before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the hearing’s stated purpose will be “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice,” according to a Thursday Associated Press report.
The June 19 hearing also “coincides with Juneteenth, a cultural holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved blacks in America.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who sits on the subcommittee, again introduced H.R. 40 earlier this year to create a reparations commission. Jackson Lee said her bill would create a commission “to study the impact of slavery and continuing discrimination against African-Americans, resulting directly and indirectly from slavery to segregation to the desegregation process and the present day.” She added in January that the “commission would also make recommendations concerning any form of apology and compensation to begin the long delayed process of atonement for slavery.”
“The impact of slavery and its vestiges continues to effect African Americans and indeed all Americans in communities throughout our nation,” Jackson Lee said. “This legislation is intended to examine the institution of slavery in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present, and further recommend appropriate remedies. Since the initial introduction of this legislation, its proponents have made substantial progress in elevating the discussion of reparations and reparatory justice at the national level and joining the mainstream international debate on the issues. Though some have tried to deflect the importance of these conversations by focusing on individual monetary compensation, the real issue is whether and how this nation can come to grips with the legacy of slavery that still infects current society. Through legislation, resolutions, news, and litigation, we are moving closer to making more strides in the movement toward reparations.”
Jackson Lee argued that despite the progress of African-Americans in the private sector, education, and the government in addition to “the election of the first American President of African descent, the legacy of slavery lingers heavily in this nation.”
“While we have focused on the social effects of slavery and segregation, its continuing economic implications remain largely ignored by mainstream analysis,” she continued. “These economic issues are the root cause of many critical issues in the African-American community today, such as education, healthcare and criminal justice policy, including policing practices. The call for reparations represents a commitment to entering a constructive dialogue on the role of slavery and racism in shaping present-day conditions in our community and American society.”
In the Senate, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a 2020 presidential candidate, introduced the companion legislation, saying creating a reparations committee “is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country.”
“It will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed,” Booker said in April.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in addition to nearly every Democrat running for president, has endorsed Jackson Lee’s bill.
And though Coates praised Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-CA) this week on the reparations issue, Warren, like nearly every other 2020 Democrat with the exception of former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, has squirrelly dodged questions about whether the United States government should make cash payments to the descendants of slaves.
Russia Hoax 4-Eva: House Intel Committee Subpoenas Michael Flynn
By Joshua Caplan
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday subpoenaed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and former Trump Deputy Campaign Manager Rick Gates for documents and testimony.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the panel’s chairman, claims the pair have been uncooperative in Congress’s “oversight” investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses,” Schiff said in a statement. “Both Michael Flynn and Rick Gates were critical witnesses for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, but so far have refused to cooperate fully with Congress.”
The California Democrat continued: “That’s simply unacceptable. The American people, and the Congress, deserve to hear directly from these two critical witnesses. We hope these witnesses come to recognize their cooperation as being with the United States, not merely the Department of Justice.”
Flynn and Gates are to turn over documents to the committee by June 26th and sit for an interview, under oath, on July 10th, the subpoena states.
Flynn admitted to making false statements to the FBI regarding conversations he shared with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2017, while Gates pleaded guilty to false statements and conspiracy charges related to political consulting efforts he and onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort undertook for Ukraine. The trio was charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into now-debunked collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
The development comes a day after Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor, hired seasoned lawyer Sidney Powell as his new counsel as he awaits sentencing.
The former Assistant U.S. Attorney is an outspoken critic of the Mueller probe and has called Andrew Weissmann, often referred to as the special counsel’s “pit bull,” the “poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.”
The move came after court filings revealed last week that Flynn terminated his lawyers Stephen Anthony and Robert Kelner of Covington & Burling LLP, as his counsel.
President Trump praised Powell’s hiring on social media Thursday morning, calling her a “great lawyer.”
“General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted.
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 1989 . . .
PLEASE READ THE MIDDLE PARAGRAPH
Facebook Bans ‘Dysfunctional Veterans’ Page That Raises Money For Homeless Veterans
Facebook banned the popular veterans page for the second time this week.
By
Dysfunction Veterans, a Facebook page run by Michael Rivers, himself a veteran, was banned from Facebook for allegedly violating its content policies regarding firearms.
Speaking to Big League Politics, Rivers explained that his page was banned for buying ads on Facebook to promote a contest where entries could win an AR-15 rifle, even though according to the letter of Facebook’s community guidelines, his promotion was following Facebook’s rules.
“We do try to stay within Facebook’s guidelines, they just make them up as they go along,” said Rivers. “We ran a contest, a promo to give away an AR-15. It was a licensed firearms company, and we are an online retailer. According to Facebook rules, it’s okay because we are two online retailers that follow all applicable state and federal guidelines.”
He went on to explain that 8 days into the advertisement, which was approved by Facebook, they removed the advertisement and banned the staff member who posted it for 30 days. Rivers immediately ended the advertisement and removed all reference of it from the page, but Facebook proceeded to ban members of his staff two more times for the same, deleted advertisement.
“They banned us again for the same exact thing,” said Rivers. “So again, we appealed it, and then yesterday the page was unpublished and they cited the same thing again.”
“We had ended the promo last month, midway through it. After two or three weeks of not running it, they banned us for the same advertisement.”
Rivers says he appealed the latest ban and supplied Facebook with relevant excerpts from their own community guidelines as evidence his page did nothing wrong. He is currently waiting to hear back from the big tech platform.
In addition to selling merchandise via the Dysfunction Veterans online store, Rivers also runs a non-profit organization focused on providing housing to homeless veterans, DV Farm, that sometimes receives cash injections from the profits made from the Dysfunctional Veterans retail operation. Rivers provides housing and support to up to five homeless veterans at a time, and says his organization focuses on the “problem child” cases that are ignored by the Veterans Administration and other veterans organizations.
While Rivers remained optimistic about DV Farm’s ability to continue, it seems Facebook’s decision to remove the page for a post that seemingly did not violate the big tech platform’s rules may impact the non-profit.
“We are not federally or state funded so we rely solely on donations,” said Rivers. “Every month, of course, the non-profit being brand new, there would be a shortfall. We try to keep it in the black, but it can be an expensive project.”
“No matter what, whatever I make off the Dysfunctional Veterans store, goes to making sure the non-profit keeps running.”
Rivers also revealed that a similar incident happened in the days before the 2016 presidential election. His page was removed by Facebook without an explanation, and after other veterans who are now CEO’s and prominent business individuals reached out to Facebook on Rivers’ behalf, the page was reinstated. Rivers still has no idea why his page was removed, or why it was reinstated.
“In the last few days before the voting started, we were on fire. Every meme we posted was reaching millions,” said Rivers. “And we were shut down, and of course they would not show us what we posted that violated the community guidelines.”
“People reached out to me from other organizations, other CEO’s, and within 24 hours Dysfunctional Veterans was back up.”
He explained that this is a “habit” of Facebook, where they will remove content and ban pages without giving them an explanation of what they did wrong or what behavior they should avoid in the future.
Big League Politics contacted Facebook for comment on why the Dysfunctional Veterans page was removed, and did not receive a response.
Rivers’ other Facebook page, Veteran Humor, is still published on the platform.
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