DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE SAYS FOUNDERS “WROTE A LOT OF BIGOTRIES” INTO CONSTITUTION
“The founders were imperfect”
MARCH 15, 2019
Democratic Presidential candidate Cory Booker has claimed that the Founding Fathers were ‘imperfect’ because they wrote ‘bigotries’ into the US Constitution.
Booker, who is running in 2020 with seemingly a campaign based heavily on race issues, made the comments during a recent interview with NPR.
“The founders were imperfect geniuses. They wrote a lot of our bigotries into (the Constitution),” Booker said.
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/700552687/700998440
While Booker did not explain what specifically those bigotries are, he declared that his campaign will seek to overcome them.
“If you think about how we have overcome those things, it’s always been by creating, first, calls to consciousness, speaking truth about the injustices, and then bringing together those uncommon coalitions,” Booker said.
Booker has previously talked about plans to “fight wealth inequality” by using a Marxist, race-based system.
Booker’s latest comments about the Constitution drew an immediate backlash:
BILDERBERG ATTENDEE HICKENLOOPER JOINS 2020 RACE
Former Colo. governor could be globalist dark horse
By Paul Steinhauser
Touting that he’s proven he can bring people together “to produce the progressive change Washington has failed to deliver,” former two-term Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday morning launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I’m running for president because we need dreamers in Washington but we also need to get things done,” Hickenlooper said in a video announcing his White House campaign
Taking aim at Republican President Trump, Hickenlooper said a major reason he’s running is because “we’re facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for.”
And repeating a line he’s used on the campaign trail, he explained that “as a skinny kid with coke bottle glasses and funny last name, I stood up to my fair share of bullies.”
The 67-year-old geologist turned successful startup brewpub owner, who later served two terms as Denver mayor before being elected Colorado governor, joins a crowded field of contenders vying for the nomination.
Hickenlooper, who in January finished up his second term steering Colorado, becomes the second sitting or former governor to enter the race. Washington State Gov. Jay Insleeannounced his candidacy on Friday.
Like Inslee, Hickenlooper faces a long-shot bid against a number of higher-profile contenders such as Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama, is also running, as are Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
A number other Democrats are moving toward White House bids, including former Vice President Joe Biden, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Rep. Eric Swalwell of California.
HILLARY CLINTON SAYS COUNTRY IN ‘FULL FLEDGED CRISIS’
In his video, Hickenlooper spotlighted the challenges he faced during his first term as governor, from the historic recession to devastating droughts and forest fires and floods to the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora.
“We beat the NRA by enacting universal background checks and banning high capacity magazines,” he touted.
Hickenlooper also highlighted passing through a divided legislature health care legislation that now covers “nearly 95 percent of all Coloradans.” And he spotlighted bringing environmentalists and fossil fuel companies together to create “the toughest methane emission laws in the country” and moving the state from “40th in job growth to the number one economy in America.”
The listing of his progressive achievements is aimed at blunting perceptions of Hickenlooper as a moderate Democrat not in lockstep with the base.
HICKENLOOPER’S RESERVATIONS WITH MEDICARE-FOR-ALL, GREEN NEW DEAL
While many of his rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination have wholeheartedly supported both the Green New Deal and “Medicare-for-all,” two top wish-list items for the progressive base of the party, Hickenlooper expressed some reservations during a stop last month in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House.
“We will get to some version of single payer, but single payer doesn’t include getting rid of insurance companies,” he told reporters when asked about Medicare-for-all.
Asked about the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal that aims to transform the country’s economy to fight climate change while enacting a host of new health care and welfare programs, Hickenlooper told Fox News that he hadn’t seen all of the details of the plan, but “I’m going to guess that 99 percent of what’s in the Green New Deal I will be happy to embrace.”
But he said support for the Green New Deal shouldn’t be “a litmus test that you’re either with us or wrong.”
The Republican National Committee, though, tagged the former governor as yet another “liberal” joining the 2020 field, in response to his announcement Monday.
“John Hickenlooper is the latest tax-and-spend liberal to join the race. But according to Hickenlooper, he’s actually ‘a lot more progressive’ than his far-left opponents. In a primary dominated by socialist policies like the $93 trillion ‘Green New Deal,’ that puts him way outside the mainstream,” RNC Communications Director Michael Ahrens said in a statement.
Hickenlooper is expected to formally kick off his campaign on Thursday, with what’s being billed as a “hometown send-off” event in Denver. The next day the former governor heads to Iowa – the state that kicks off the presidential caucus and primary calendar – for two days of campaigning.
Dr. Phil: Medicare, Medicaid Force Doctors to ‘Throw Pills’ at Patients or Go Out of Business
By Robert Kraychik
Phil McGraw, best known as Dr. Phil, credited Medicare and Medicaid with compromising the quality of health care in a Tuesday interview with Joe Rogan. Insufficient compensation for physicians via Medicare and Medicaid, said Dr. Phil, transformed medicine into a “high-volume business” in which quality is sacrificed in pursuit of quantity.
Dr. Phil characterized the status quo of American health care as overmedicating patients (starts at 25:29):
JOE ROGAN: When you see all these folks that are on medication today, how many of these people do you think legitimately should be on medication? Is it something you can asses?
DR. PHIL: I can’t answer that … but in my personal experience, most of the people that I see on medications, in my opinion, don’t need most of the medications they’re on. Now, that’s just anecdotal. It’s my opinion. If you ask me to hand you a research survey or study to support that — I can’t hand it to you, or I can’t point you to one.
I can just tell you, after 45 years in this experience, I see people that are on medication. They’ve usually seen someone for six or eight minutes, and said, “I’m really feeling kind of down.” Here’s some Prozac. Here’s this. Here’s that. They give it to them. They don’t even really ask why. They just give it to them because medicine has become a high-volume business, and that’s not necessarily the doctors’ fault. I mean, the way that it’s now funded — Medicare and Medicaid — you’ve got to turn them and burn them or you can’t stay in business. So it’s a high volume business, so they throw pills at them because they don’t have an hour to sit down or don’t take an hour to sit down and say, “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
…
Most of the people I see on medications — not all, but most of the people I see are on too many medications in too high a dose or either don’t need it at all, and I am really bothered by polypharmacy. Thar’s where I really get frustrated.
JOE ROGAN: Yeah, what you’re saying is a very common sense approach, but it’s not the norm, today. It seems like more people are treating this — air quotes — depression issue as if it’s a medical disorder like diabetes, or something where you need medication.
ADHD and ADD are overly diagnosed, assessed Dr. Phil.
“Wastebasket diagnoses like ADD and ADHD,” began Dr. Phil. “What used to be a spoiled brat is now ADD or ADHD, so they start prescribing these neo-cortical stimulants like Ritalin, and you give a kid that does not need a neo-cortical stimulant a stimulant, you’re really going to throw him off the charts, now, because you’ve got a normally active brain that you’re now making hyperactive,s o you’re creating a problem that didn’t exist before the medication because you didn’t do the proper diagnosis.”
“You cannot chemically babysit your children,” added Dr. Phil.
Opioids are too quickly prescribed to patients, said Dr. Phil, describing opioid addiction and abuse as amounting to a national “epidemic”:
Medications are too readily administered. That’s certainly what we’ve seen in the opioid epidemic, right now. Opioids are so readily prescribed right now that there are enough opioid prescriptions for every man, woman, and child in America to have their own bottle, and if you renew that prescription one time — one time — if you are taking those opioids at the seven-day mark, your chance of being addicted one year is one-in-12, and if renew it [and] you’re still taking them at 30 days, your likelihood of being addicted is one-in-three. These things are getting written with way too high a pill-count, and so we’re seeing a whole different kind of addiction, now, coming out of the suburbs, and they take them for awhile and they’re very expensive, and after they take them for awhile, heroin is cheaper, so they dump the opioids and start taking the heroin. So you’re seeing soccer mom heroin addicts that you weren’t seeing 10 years ago because they get started on prescription opioids and then they can’t afford them — or finally the doctor cuts them off and they’re addicted — so they start taking heroin because it’s cheaper.
Mental health professionals are insufficiently available in rural regions, stated Dr. Phil.
“Fifty-eight percent of our rural markets today have no psychiatrists available, and something like roughly 50 [percent] have no mental health professionals available, at all; none,” remarked Dr. Phil. “So there’s just nobody available in the outlying areas. I think the more people you can get into the profession, so long as there’s a degree of competency, the better.”
Sound Familiar? Dem Governor Running For President Vowing To Switch To 100% Clean Energy, Provide Millions Of Green Jobs
By James Barrett
Second-term Washington Gov. Jay Inslee officially announced his presidential candidacy Friday, and he’s running on a platform that sounds like it was ripped from the since-deleted, much-maligned FAQ for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s “Green New Deal.”
In a presidential announcement video released Friday, Inslee issues some rather familiar doom-and-gloom warnings as well as some pie-in-the-sky promises.
“We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we’re the last that can do something about it,” the governor says ominously as apocalyptic images play in the background, which the viewer is clearly supposed to believe are the grim results of global warming.
“We went to the moon and created technologies that have changed the world,” he continues. “Our country’s next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time: defeating climate change. This crisis isn’t just a chart or graph anymore. The impacts are being felt everywhere.”
“We have an opportunity to transform our economy, run on 100 percent clean energy, that will bring millions of good paying jobs to every community across America, and create a more just future for everyone,” Insleee proclaims.
Inslee is a former congressman who was elected governor in 2012 and has another two years in office after winning his second election in 2016. Calling his bid a “longshot campaign,” The Seattle Times provides some highlights of Inslee’s progressive and largely “climate-focused” political career:
As governor, Inslee generally has pursued a liberal agenda, backing minimum-wage increases, higher taxes on the wealthy and businesses, raises for teachers and state government employees and declaring a moratorium on the death penalty. He also backed a record-setting, $8.7 billion tax-break deal to lure Boeing’s 777 plant and angered labor leaders by pressuring the Machinists union to approve a contract that ended workers’ defined-benefit pension plan.
He also has pushed an ambitious climate agenda, with mixed results, failing to persuade lawmakers and voters to adopt pollution fees on carbon emissions, but boosting electric-car infrastructure and creating a clean-energy fund that has poured millions into green projects. Despite Inslee’s agenda, greenhouse emissions in Washington have continued to rise, missing near-term reduction goals set in state law.
The Times reports that Democratic lawmakers in Washington are currently “making a big push” to try to ram through Inslee’s climate change agenda, many of the proposals of which have been stalled for “years.” Just a day before his announcement, the State Senate was debating his radical request to phase out the use of fossil fuels at Washington utlities, the paper notes.
Inslee, 68, has also proven that he’s willing to take on Trump on the national stage, opposing the president on rolling back business-stifling environmental regulations, arming teachers to better protect students, and the administration’s so-called “Muslim ban.”
The Democratic governor’s “green” candidacy shares much in common with AOC’s “Green New Deal,” which sets as its goals a massive overhaul of the economy, which will include 100% use of renewable energy in ten years, net-zero emissions, massive infrastructure projects — including high-speed rails all over the country and the “greening” of all buildings — Medicare-for-All, and living wage jobs for every American.
Study: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Would Cost Over $600,000 Per Household in the United States
February 25, 2019
The Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation, according to a new study that found it would cost up to $94 trillion dollars to implement.
A study from the American Action Forum found that, in a conservative estimate, it would cost over $600,000 per household over a ten year period.
The study explains that the “heart of the GND is an effort to curb carbon emissions and thus to slow climate change, but the package contains a wide set of other policy proposals that are not directly linked to climate policy: a job guarantee, food and housing security, and a variety of social justice initiatives.”
Since much of the GND is extremely vague, the study focused on the proposals for:
- A 10-year transition to an exclusively low-carbon energy electricity grid;
- Enough high-speed rail transit available that air travel becomes unnecessary;
- Guaranteeing union jobs with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;
- Universal health care;
- Guaranteed housing for every American; and
- Food security for every person in the United States.
The Free Beacon reports that the American Action Forum calculated guaranteed green housing would cost between $1.6 trillion and $4.2 trillion; a federal jobs guarantee between $6.8 trillion and $44.6 trillion; a net zero emissions transportation system between $1.3 trillion and $2.7 trillion; a low-carbon electricity grid for $5.4 trillion; and “food security” for $1.5 billion.
“The American Action Forum’s analysis shows that the Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation,” Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, told the Free Beacon.
“On the upper end, every American household would have to pay $65,000 per year to foot the bill,” he said. “The total price tag would be $93 trillion over 10 years. That is roughly four times the value of all Fortune 500 companies combined. That’s no deal.”
Barrasso’s office estimates it would also skyrocket electric bills by up to $3,800 per year.
Overall, the study found that the burden to taxpayers would be roughly $361,010 and $653,010 for each American household over 10 years.
Here We Go… Crazy Uncle Bernie Enters Crowded Democrat Party Primary
February 19, 2019
Here we go…
Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders entered the crowded Democrat Party primary on Tuesday.
The 77-year-old jumped into the race with a video release this morning.
This comes after President Trump’s historic speech against Socialism on Monday in Miami.
In 2016 the Democrat Party rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders, and to Crooked Hillary Clinton.
FOX News reported:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced Tuesday he will make another bid for president by entering the already crowded 2020 race, as he tries to rekindle the grassroots energy from his 2016 primary run against Hillary Clinton.
Sanders made the announcement in an interview with Vermont Public Radio, followed by a web video and email to supporters.
“Together, you and I and our 2016 campaign began the political revolution. Now, it is time to complete that revolution and implement the vision that we fought for,” he told supporters.
While blasting President Trump as a “pathological liar,” Sanders said in the radio interview he’s running to pursue policies like universal health care and a $15 minimum wage. His challenge this time, however, will be standing out in a field of candidates who largely have adopted the big-government policies he championed three years ago.
LABOR UNIONS FEAR ‘GREEN NEW DEAL’ A JOB KILLER
Unions withhold support for economy-destroying scheme
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Labor unions say they are withholding support for a Green New Deal unveiled by Democrats last week to transition the American economy away from fossil fuels, arguing the loosely-defined plan could kill jobs if its architects aren’t careful.
The cool response from unions underscores the challenge facing Democratic presidential hopefuls who support aggressive action on climate change but must also win back the blue-collar voters that swept President Donald Trump to victory in 2016.
The Green New Deal is a non-binding Congressional resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey that would legislate government-led investment in clean energy infrastructure with the goal of making America carbon neutral within a decade.
Democratic presidential hopeful Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have already thrown their support behind it.
The resolution’s backers say the plan – once fully sketched out in the legislation – would create jobs in much the same way as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s by putting Americans to work on transformative government-led projects.
It also calls for a “just transition” for current fossil fuel workers – from coal miners to pipeline workers – through guarantees of healthcare, jobs, and job training.
Union officials told Reuters they were skeptical.
“We will never settle for ‘just transition’ language as a solution to the job losses that will surely come from some of the policies in the resolution,” said Yvette Pena O’Sullivan, executive director of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), whose members work in construction and other industries.
Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers (UMWA), which represents workers in the coal industry, echoed the concerns.
“We’ve heard words like ‘just transition’ before, but what does that really mean? Our members are worried about putting food on the table,” he said.
LIUNA and UMWA said they were not contacted for input on the resolution before it was released.
Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, representing construction workers across all sectors including energy, said his staff had been contacted by Markey’s office about the Green New Deal, but said his members are skeptical of “green job” promises.
Members “working in the oil and gas sector can make a middle-class living, whereas renewable energy firms have been less generous,” he said at a pipeline safety event last week.
APPALACHIAN BACKLASH
Democrats backing the resolution are seeking to highlight the contrast in their position with the Trump administration’s vocal support for drilling and mining and its skepticism about the causes and impacts of global warming.
Trump’s approach was warmly received in 2016 in parts of Appalachia and the Rust Belt, which have been suffering from manufacturing and mining jobs losses.
Trump’s Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton struggled to sell her clean energy agenda in those regions, and suffered politically after saying her policies would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
The Sunrise Movement, a youth organization backing the Green New Deal, plans to launch a multi-state campaign in March to drum up support, featuring stops in Michigan, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
“A lot of places struggling with joblessness are fossil fuel dependent places that suffer from poor air and water quality. Guaranteeing the right of clean air, water and jobs is something we think a lot of people can get behind,” said Stephen O’Hanlon, a spokesman for the group.
Unions have expressed support in the past for more moderate approaches to addressing climate change, including cap-and-trade systems to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s offices did not respond to a request for comment.
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