FEBRUARY 26, 2020
“I feel terrible about it,” Wright says of ABC’s coverage of the presidential election. “I feel that the truth suffers, the voters are poorly informed and people have the opportunity to tune into whatever they want to hear.”
“It’s like there’s no upside in, or our bosses, don’t see an upside in doing the job we’re supposed to do; which is to speak truth to power and hold people accountable,” he adds.
In another part of the video, Wright claims that the media doesn’t hold President Donald Trump to account, and then admits that reporters don’t give the president “credit” where it’s due. “I think, some of that at least in the place that I work and places like it, is that with Trump, we’re interested in three things: we’re interested in the outrage of the day, the investigation, and of the palace intrigue of who’s backstabbing who,” he says.
Later in the footage, Wright is asked about his political ideology, to which he says that he not only sees himself as a Democrat-socialist, but a full-blown socialist. “I think there should be national health insurance,” Wright argues. “I’m totally fine with reining in corporations, I think there are too many billionaires, and I think that there’s a wealth gap. That’s a problem.”
The video concluded with Wright saying that the establishment media is more interested in covering the election as a “horse race” than a contest about issues important to voters. “I don’t think we’re terribly interested in voters,” he concedes.
“In addition to the candidate of the week, we need the story to move on,” Wright explains. “We’re happy to have Buttigieg be the story last week and we’re happy to have Klobuchar as a new subject this week, and then when we’re tired of her we’ll be delighted if Elizabeth Warren kicks ass in Nevada because then we have something new to talk about.”
“We’re all guilty of the same thing,” Wright continues.” I think that all of the big news organizations… ABC, CBS, NBC.”
“We recognize that we’re dinosaurs and we’re in danger of dying,” he adds.
By HANNAH BLEAU
While Sanders has released a suite of lofty plans with the promise to improve the lives of middle class and low income Americans, critics have repeatedly asked the socialist senator to explain how his administration will pay for his grandiose proposals.
His campaign released a fact sheet on Monday listing each of his “major plans” and providing a line on how he will make it a reality.
His $16.3 trillion Green New Deal plan, perhaps one of his most prolific proposals, will be paid for, he claims, through a variety of methods including slashes in military spending and lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry.
He is calling to reduce defense spending by $1.215 trillion “by scaling back military operations on protecting the global oil supply.” His campaign claims he will raise $3.085 trillion by “making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies.” He expects to garner another $6.4 trillion “from the wholesale of energy produced by the regional Power Marketing Administrations.”
“This revenue will be collected from 2023-2035, and after 2035 electricity will be virtually free, aside from operations and maintenance costs,” his website states.
Sanders also claims his Green New Deal plan will create 20 million jobs, which will effectively create a new tax base and eliminate the need for $1.31 trillion in “federal and state safety net spending due to the creation of millions of good-paying, unionized jobs.”
His campaign actually argues that enacting his multitrillion-dollar climate change proposal will save the United States $2.9 trillion in the next decade, $21 trillion over the next 30 years, and $70.4 trillion over the next 80 years.
“If we do not act, the U.S. will lose $34.5 trillion by the end of the century in economic productivity,” he claims.
That is far from Sanders’ only proposal. Offering free college and cancelation of student debt will cost, according to his estimates, $2.2 trillion. Sanders claims the plan is “fully paid” for with a “modest tax on Wall Street speculation,” contending that it will raise more than enough — $2.4 million over the next decade.
Sanders says his $1.5 trillion housing for all plan and $1.5 trillion universal child care/pre-K plan will be paid for with “a wealth tax on the top one-tenth of one percent – those who have a net worth of at least $32 million.” He claims it will raise “a total of $4.35 trillion.”
His other plans rely almost entirely on new taxes on the wealthy. His vow to erase $81 billion past-due medical debt will be “fully paid for by establishing an income inequality tax on large corporations that pay CEOs at least 50 times more than average workers.” Additionally, Social Security expansion will be paid for, he says, with a tax on Americans with incomes over $250,000.
Instead of explicitly stating how Sanders will fund his Medicare for All plan, which some experts say could cost over $60 trillion over the next decade, the fact sheet simply touts a “menu of financing options that would more than pay for the Medicare for All legislation he has introduced,” which includes raising taxes on the middle class.
Per the fact sheet, those options include:
Creating a 4 percent income-based premium paid by employees, exempting the first $29,000 in income for a family of four.
Imposing a 7.5 percent income-based premium paid by employers, exempting the first $1 million in payroll to protect small businesses.
Eliminating health tax expenditures, which would no longer be needed under Medicare for All.
Raising the top marginal income tax rate to 52% on income over $10 million.
Replacing the cap on the state and local tax deduction with an overall dollar cap of $50,000 for a married couple on all itemized deductions.
Taxing capital gains at the same rates as income from wages and cracking down on gaming through derivatives, like-kind exchanges, and the zero tax rate on capital gains passed on through bequests.
Enacting the For the 99.8% Act, which returns the estate tax exemption to the 2009 level of $3.5 million, closes egregious loopholes, and increases rates progressively including by adding a top tax rate of 77% on estate values in excess of $1 billion.
Enacting corporate tax reform including restoring the top federal corporate income tax rate to 35 percent.
Using $350 billion of the amount raised from the tax on extreme wealth to help finance Medicare for All.
The release of the fact sheet follows Sanders growing frustration over the mounting questions over the costs of his massive proposals.
Anderson Cooper grilled Sanders on the costs of his various proposals during the presidential hopeful’s recent sit-down interview with 60 Minutes.
“But you say you don’t know what the total price is, but you know how it’s going to be paid for. How do you know it’s going to be paid for if you don’t know how much the price is?” Cooper asked.
“I can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime,” Sanders said. “But we have accounted for — you talked about Medicare for All — we have options out there that will pay for it.”
By Joel B. Pollak
A CNN panel in the spin room after the fourth Democrat debate on Tuesday night in Columbus, Ohio, struggled to pin Warren down on the question of whether her policy would raise middle class taxes.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the author of the bill Warren backs, has admitted openly that middle class Americans would pay higher taxes under his (and her) plan, but argues that middle class families would save money overall because their health insurance costs would supposedly fall.
But Warren has dodged the question in debate after debate, and interview after interview — and did so again when confronted by her opponents in the debate.
In the spin room after the debate, CNN’s anchors and political pundits struggled to extract an answer from Warren. Jake Tapper tried to help her craft an answer that would admit the tax hike, but argue for lower overall costs; John King pointed out, sympathetically, that Warren ran the risk of being accused of lying to the public.
Warren replied, over and over again: “My commitment is I will not sign a bill into law that raises costs on middle class families.”
David Axelrod, former White House adviser to President Barack Obama during the Obamacare fight, was incredulous at Warren’s claim that she knew with certainty that “Medicare for All” would not result in higher overall costs for any middle class family. “How can you even make an assurance as to how all this is going to pencil out?”
Warren stuck to her talking point, refusing to admit she would raise taxes — but declining to deny she would, either.
By Hank Berrien
Colin Rogers, 55, suffered a basilar artery occlusion on April 14, which he could have survived if he had undergone a thrombectomy, which removes a blood clot from the brain.
Instead, Rogers was taken to Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil. The University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff could have performed the procedure, but enough specialists staff were reportedly not available. Rogers died on April 18.
His son Callum, 26, stated, “Although we don’t know what the outcome would have been, this potentially could have saved his life. My dad was denied the chance of survival as Wales does not have access to this treatment and doesn’t have any units. We were also told [by a stroke consultant] that if he fell ill on a weekday they would have had a chance to transfer him to a specialist unit in England. Because this was a Sunday it was impossible. To find this out is just gut-wrenching.”
Colin Rogers’ family issued a statement saying, “Up to 500 people a year in Wales may die or be left profoundly disabled because of a lack of availability of endovascular thrombectomy. This has to be done within 24 hours or it is too late. Colin is not the only person to have died because of this postcode lottery and this is not a new problem. We want to change this. We want to raise awareness and campaign for equal access for patients such as Colin, who will die or live a profoundly disabled life without treatment. We want to make a difference so that people are not failed by the system as Colin was.”
A spokeswoman from the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee (WHSSC) stated:
Whilst we do not comment on individual cases the general position in Wales is that WHSSC took on the commissioning of mechanical thrombectomy from April 2019. Prior to this individual health boards commissioned the service directly from providers. In south Wales, WHSSC accesses treatment from provider hospitals in Cardiff and Bristol on a case-by-case basis dependent on the capacity available at the hospitals when required. The capacity depends on the availability of specialist staff able to carry out the procedure which has varied over time.
The University Hospital Wales, Cardiff, has recently recruited a second consultant who is due to start in autumn 2019, allowing the service to be developed further. Treatment for patients from mid Wales and north Wales is usually commissioned from hospitals in the Midlands or Liverpool, again dependent on the availability of specialist staff. To the extent that specialist staff are available, this is a seven day a week service.
A basilar artery occlusion (BAO) starts with variable and stuttering symptoms which can cause a delay in diagnosis; the attack has high morbidity and mortality. BAOs represent 1% to 4% of all ischemic strokes.
A fundraising page has been created to push for 24-7 access for clot-removal treatment.
APRIL 17, 2019
The video, narrated by AOC and accompanied with watercolor painted scenes, explains a naive scenario where Democrats have taken control of all three branches of government, and have started to push their socialist vision for America.
“The wave began when Democrats took back the House in 2018,” she says. “And then the Senate and the White House in 2020, and launched the Decade of The Green New Deal.”
“A flurry of legislation that kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planet. It was the kind of swing-for-the-fence ambition we needed.”
“Finally! We were entertaining solutions on the scale of the crises we faced, without leaving anyone behind. That included Medicare For All: the most popular social program in American history,” she adds.
Despite the fact the estimated cost for Medicare For All would cost around $32 trillion, and the Green New Deal would cost about $93 trillion (more than the entire global money supply), AOC then explains how her plan to retrofit every single building with solar panels and construct trains all over the country would fix America.
“Funnily enough, the biggest problem in those early years was a labor shortage!” Ocasio-Cortez says. “We were building a national smart grid, retrofitting every building in America, putting trains like this one all across the country – we needed more workers.”
AOC then talks about an imaginary person named Iliana, a “child of the Green New Deal” who starts out as a solar engineer before working for the “Universal Childcare Initiative” that helps lower “carbon” emissions.
The delusional and out-of-touch nature of the video didn’t just concern some on social media, it genuinely scared them.
Notable tenets of the disastrous Green New Deal, which has already been overwhelmingly rejected in the Senate, include elimination of air travel, total overhaul of every single building in the U.S., trains all over the country, and the elimination of cows.
By ASHE SCHOW
But this rationing leads to consequences. Hundreds of elderly citizens go blind each year while waiting for eye surgeries. The latest report on the issue comes from the Times of London. The outlet reports that the latest survey from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) found rationing of cataract surgery continues even after guidance was issued suggesting patients not have the surgery delayed.
“The [National Health Service] has ignored instructions to end cataract treatment rationing in defiance of official guidance two years ago, a survey by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists has found,” the Times reported.
The outlet reported that removing cataracts was one of the most common NHS procedures. More than 400,000 such surgeries are conducted each year. Two years ago, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stated that patients requiring cataract surgery should not have to wait until they are almost blind to receive treatment, yet that appears to still be the case in 2019.
“Nothing has changed,” Mike Burdon, president of the RCO, told the Times. “We can’t have a situation where Nice is set up to make these decisions and [local health groups] simply say ‘we don’t like the answer’ and deprive the elderly population of the chance of a better quality of life. I’m bitterly disappointed.”
He called cataract surgery “probably the most life-transforming procedure the NHS does.”
Helen Lee, the policy manager for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, stressed the importance of cataract surgery in a statement to the Times:
NHS, naturally, pushed back on concerns. Julie Wood, chief executive of NHS Clinical Commissioners, told the Times that “Nice guidance is not mandatory and clinical commissioners must have the freedom to make clinically led decisions that are in the best interests of both individual patients and their wider local populations.” She added that “The NHS does not have unlimited resources.”
This is just the latest report on the lack of access to important eye surgeries. Last June, the Telegraph reported that patients were going blind while waiting for treatment for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. A survey at that time found that up to 22 patients were going blind or partially blind each month waiting for treatment.
The problem was also reported in 2013. At that time, more than four in ten NHS ophthalmologists said they had patients who had gone blind waiting for treatment.
This is what will happen in America if Democrats get their way on “Medicare for all.”
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