Among the welter of Republican candidates and the few Democrats running for president, Bernie Sanders is far and away the best.
Senator Sanders, Vermont Democrat, socialist and presidential candidate, recently declared that immigrants should be welcomed and assimilated, not stigmatized and criminalized, as some Republicans insist on.
Sanders would protect young immigrants and their parents from deportation. He would designate them as permanent legal residents–humane treatment for 11 million unauthorized immigrants.
His election platform calls for another political revolution, the most progressive since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s.
More items in Sander’s forward-looking agenda:
• Wages: “Millions of Americans are working for starvation wages. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It should be $15 an hour.”
• Taxes: “The skyrocketing of income and wealth inequality is grotesque and immoral. It serves the One Percent and harms the 99 percent. Congress votes for the rich at the expense the vast majority.”
• Universal health care: “America is the only major country without universal national health care, a gross embarrassment for the wealthiest nation in the world.”
• Wall Street: “Its six major financial institutions have assets worth 60 percent of our gross national product, issue 35 percent of mortgages and two-thirds of credit cards. This excess is spurred by a tax system rigged for the rich. The big corporations earn billions in profits, stash the money in tax havens abroad and pay nothing in federal income taxes. Billionaire hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than teachers or nurses.”
• Campaign finance: “As a result of the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United (2010), billionaires spend an exorbitant amount for candidates and elections. This undermines democracy.”
• Climate control “If we do not act boldly on climate change, the planet we leave our grandchildren may be uninhabitable. The scientific community is nearly unanimous that climate change, caused by human beings, is already damaging the planet.”
• Infrastructure: “Congress refuses to appropriate the necessary funds to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges, railroads, airports, water systems, wastewater plants, dams and levees.”
The New York Times in October declared Hillary Clinton “the unrivaled leader in the Democratic contest.” Meanwhile, most of the mainstream newspapers declared that Sanders was far too radical for most American voters.”
Unrivaled? Too radical? FAIR, media watchdog, noted in its December newsletter, Extra, that in the first primary state, New Hampshire, Clinton trailed Sanders by two points in one poll. Pollsters can be wrong, and November is many months away. But it is clear that Sanders is very much in the race.
So vote fearlessly for Sanders!
ROSE BELONGS IN HALL OF FAME
Pete Rose is banned from baseball for the terrible wrong of gambling on games as a player and manager. But he should not be barred from the Hall of Fame.
Rose’s record fairly screams for admission to the Hall. As a player for the Cincinnati Reds he got 4,256 hits, more than any player in history. He won three batting titles, was selected for the All-Star game 17 times and played in three World Series.
His uniform, No. 14, is already in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. So is a video of his hit No. 4,192, which broke the record of the great Ty Cobb, another rough-and-tumble player like Rose.
It’s the Hall of Fame, for god’s sake, not the hall of shame.
Jake Highton is an emeritus journalism professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. (jake@ur.edu)
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